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An Indian site, YourStory, has an unusually broad ranging interview with Richard Stallman. While much of the background and goals will already be familiar to SN readers, the interview is interesting not only for its scope but also that India is starting to take an interest in these matters.
To know Richard Stallman is to know the true meaning of freedom. He's the man behind the GNU project and the free software movement, and the subject of our Techie Tuesdays this week.
This is not a usual story. After multiple attempts to get in touch for an interaction with Richard Stallman, I got a response which prepared me well for what's coming next. I'm sharing the same with you to prepare you for what's coming next.
I'm willing to do the interview — if you can put yourself into philosophical and political mindset that is totally different from the one that the other articles are rooted in.
The general mindset of your articles is to admire success. Both business success, and engineering success. My values disagree fundamentally with that. In my view, proprietary software is an injustice; it is wrongdoing. People should be _ashamed_ of making proprietary software, _especially_ if it is successful. (If nobody uses the proprietary program, at least it has not really wronged anyone.) Thus, most of the projects you consider good, I consider bad.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ants_in_pants on Wednesday August 30 2017, @09:43PM (38 children)
Your neighbor might want your unit, but they're probably not miserable in their current one. If you try to minimize misery rather than maximize happiness you end up with a much more sustainable outcome.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @10:51PM (6 children)
That's some outlook on life you have.
Old hippie? Buddhist? Socialist parents?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:09AM (5 children)
Why is it so interesting? I just think that it's a lot easier to alleviate suffering than it is to make someone perfectly content, and the net benefit is the same.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @01:27AM
I'm not challenging your positions.
I'm just wondering how you got to where you are philosophically.
I'm the most outspoken Socialist in this joint;
the son of a career military officer, raised in a smallish town in The South, no less.
I've always questioned authority/the status quo.
Moving to (more Progressive) California seemed a natural direction for me.
Discovering Pacifica Radio here made that like finding my natural habitat.
Similar deal for the World Socialist Web Site, more recently.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:08AM (3 children)
I think you are setting a pretty low bar. How much misery or suffering would there be if everyone were dead?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:47AM (2 children)
There'd be quite a bit misery and suffering in getting everyone there.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 31 2017, @08:37AM (1 child)
Imagine you had the ability to create a planet-wide killer wave that moves at the speed of light and immediately destroys every molecule it passes. When applying that, nobody will even notice that he is killed; people (and everything else) will just suddenly stop existing. Application of that killer wave to the planet would obviously end all suffering, but would cause zero suffering on its own. Would you therefore advocate its application?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:10PM
I wouldn't violate everyone's autonomy that way. Obviously you can't only apply that one maxim and solve all ethical problems.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 30 2017, @11:21PM (22 children)
See? I tell you lot that socialists aren't interested in making the poor not poor but instead on dragging everyone else down to poverty and do you listen? Well, there you have it right out of one of their mouths.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Wednesday August 30 2017, @11:28PM
yes, because a generalized statement that is a slightly modified version of utilitarian ethics is an admission of "I want everyone to be poor"
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @11:30PM (2 children)
Having all you needs met is NOT poverty, nitwit.
...and doing whatever is necessary to get all that you WANT is called GREED.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 30 2017, @11:58PM
Yes, it is. Check the US poverty line. It's above "having all your needs met" in most areas of the nation. Unless you go by your own special version of what constitutes "needs".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday August 31 2017, @01:27PM
Worse than that it's also impossible. Unchecked desire expands to exceed any amount of satisfaction. The only way to get everything you want, is to choose to desire only what you already have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday August 30 2017, @11:47PM (4 children)
The other side of the coin is: "I ain't rich enough if you ain't dirt-poor" - because if you aren't dirt-poor and dependent, you may decide that you have enough and I can longer control you.
If I can't control enough of the society, it makes no difference I'm millionaire (today) or billionaire or trilionaire. These numbers only start to make sense when if comes to "how many others I can have control over".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:00AM (3 children)
Project much? I'm doing quite well for myself and I couldn't give a rat's happy ass about having power over anyone else.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:25AM
Nope.
Just putting it the same amount of exaggeration as you when you present the "socialists".
(and my apologies for not being explicit about: when I used "you" and "me/I", I meant an "impersonal you/me/I" - replace them with X/Y as abstract notations if you like).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday August 31 2017, @11:33PM (1 child)
Please, please, Mr. Buzzard! Since you don't want to have power over any one, could you see your way to stop blocking aristarchus from modding comments? He would very much like to participate in this thread!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 01 2017, @12:55AM
Nope. I take no part in implementing or reversing moderation decisions involving myself.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:45AM (12 children)
I see it as not 'dragging everyone else down to poverty': i see it as, "don't treat people like shit just to make you a dollar more. don't rape the environment for same. don't be so greedy that you have more money in the bank than some countries and yet you lay off people who helped you make that money when you 'start to lose money'.
I see it as more of treating people as being of worth, not treating them as worthless in order to make 'one more dollar'.
Does Bill Gates really need more money to the point where he would lay people off in order to make it? (Yes i know he is no longer 'in charge' of MS, but you know he still holds power there); the same people who helped him make his
millionsBILLIONS?I just don't see it: yes, i want a nice life, but do i really need 89.2 billion dollars and treat people like shit in order to increase it?
His philanthropy is a joke: he gives out free medicine to people while investing in businesses that pollute the air, ground and water around those people.
Just doesn't make sense to me.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:56AM (7 children)
Most people, even rich people, don't have Gates's level of hubris. He thinks he needs the money because he needs the power to change things because only he has the correct solution. Thus have tyrants always been created.
I've never in my life treated an employee as shit and I've done quite well for myself. My roomie currently works for a company that pays him to sit on his ass three weeks out of four. He was actually told in his job interview to keep a fishing pole on his company truck that he gets personal use of and the gas paid for in.
Not all capitalists feel the need to treat employees poorly. The trick is you need to enable people who aren't rat bastards to compete with the rat bastards. Then it's a simple matter of if you're a shitty employer, you can't keep employees.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @02:02AM (3 children)
Not all capitalists feel the need to treat employees poorly
You're reminding me of Aaron Feuerstein. [cbsnews.com]
When his factory burned down, all those workers who had been so loyal to him for so many years he kept on salary while he figured out how to rebuild IN THE SAME TOWN.
...though the reason these stand out is that they are so rare.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 31 2017, @02:18AM (2 children)
They're really not. Most SMBs are run by decent human beings. You have to go to big corporations to be treated like shit for the most part.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:03PM
They're really not. Most SMBs are run by decent human beings.
That's not what I've observed at all. It's really more of a mixed bag. At least with the big corporations, they're more consistent in their treatment; you won't get really great treatment, but you won't usually be totally fucked over for no reason at all. Big companies are risk-averse and have deep pockets that lawyers like to go after, so they develop practices and policies to avoid risk, so you get stuff like harassment training and policies against harassment, specific policies for lay-offs, etc. At small companies you can be harassed and have no real recourse besides quitting because they don't have enough assets to go after, and they can violate employment law more easily because again you won't profit off a lawsuit so it's generally not worth your time to sue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @06:23PM
Hahahah, maybe overall that statistic holds out, but I believe there is a significant percentage of SMBs that don't treat their employees very well. A large part of it is that SMBs have been squeezed by big corporations and they often can not afford to treat their workers well. Also, a good percentage are shitty bosses who overwork their employees and violate labor laws.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 31 2017, @03:15PM (2 children)
Most people, even rich people, don't have Gates's level of hubris. He thinks he needs the money because he needs the power to change things because only he has the correct solution. Thus have tyrants always been created.
To be fair, this is not an illogical viewpoint. Look at what happens when the masses have the power to choose their leaders: you get people like Trump elected, or worse. Hitler was elected too, remember. Too much democracy ends up in mob rule; that's why democratic republics have all kinds of mechanisms built-in to avoid this (like having an appointed, unfireable judiciary as a check on the other branches). And people in general are terrible at managing shared resources, which is why we have the phrase "tragedy of the commons" (e.g. if some grazing pasture is available to everyone in an agrarian society, they'll all graze their sheep there but not take care of it and pretty soon there's no grass left). People are generally very bad at working collectively for the greater good. The tyrants are right: the people are too stupid and disorganized. The problem is that the tyrants frequently don't have the correct solution, or are themselves greedy, selfish, and/or corrupt, so they don't do any better.
With Gates, it seems like his deal is to give out free "charity", but then attach strings requiring recipients to buy Microsoft licenses and use MS products.
He was actually told in his job interview to keep a fishing pole on his company truck that he gets personal use of and the gas paid for in.
Wow, that sounds pretty horrible actually. If they let him work on personal projects on work time, that'd be good, but the last thing I want to do is fish. I'd rather work. I was talking to my sister about this recently, and she commented that fishing is one of those things that people either really like, or really really hate.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 01 2017, @12:58AM (1 child)
Nice, that's just more fish for me to catch then.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 01 2017, @04:08AM
Knock yourself out. I really don't like eating freshwater fish anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @01:06AM (3 children)
There's a story that Hollywood has filmed again and again because it rings true, generation after generation.
Spending those ridiculous amounts of money on actual goods is actually difficult. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @06:45AM (2 children)
What's up with the google fetish?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @07:03AM (1 child)
Here's your chance to demonstrate a way to make that same point but more effectively.
Awe us with your brilliance.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 31 2017, @08:39AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Brewster%27s+Millions&title=Special%3ASearch&fulltext=Search [wikipedia.org]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:36AM (7 children)
No. But the people living in the shitty slum apartments several blocks away are. Should I have to take one in, and suite out my basement? That'd be a nice upgrade for them, but a downgrade for me. I still wouldn't be 'miserable'; i'd still have more space to myself and a nicer place than my last condo as I wasn't "miserable" there either.
I'm not sure striving for least misery works. It feels like it would reduce my standard of living to 'just a hair above misery' and hold it there; because if I get any happier than that, I should sacrifice something to move someone else up.
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:25PM (6 children)
What's up with all this zero-sum thinking? It's not like that. The resources are there to improve basically everyone's lives, what's lacking is the logistics to adequately do it. And when I say the logistics are lacking, I mean that our current economic system is not intended to address it at all.
Nobody needs to move in with you. Vacant homes abound, tenement blocks can be fixed up, neighborhoods can be cleaned.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @06:26PM
Their mental process is operating under the assumptions of capitalism and the examples of dictatorships-as-socialism models that inevitably fail. They never latch on to the examples where socialist practices work (Mondragon, many coop / worker owned businesses in the US, etc.) because those examples violate their personal assumptions of how the world works. They bury their heads in the sand because facing how bad the US has gotten is a tough pill to swallow. RED PILL YOURSELVES MOTHERFUCKERS :D :D :D
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Thursday August 31 2017, @07:04PM (4 children)
All at no cost or sacrifice to the people who own them, or the people with money?
Literally not. But metaphorically I still need to pay to fix up their neighborhoods, pay to repair their tenement homes, and take a loss to give them vacant homes I am not using. (as I own shares in the banks that own the properties I'm guessing...)
Look, I am not a libertarian, I agree with social welfare programs, and I happily pay taxes to help with welfare, unemployment, low income housing initiatives. I support universal healthcare, and I support paying taxes to pay for it. I am not against taxes to help others. However, to 'minimise misery' what are you proposing? 100% taxes and complete wealth redistribution? That's not going to work. Otherwise, we just have regular old capitalism with tax payer funded social programs. But it sounds like you want a paradigm shift. So what is that paradigm shift?
And after we make it, how do we decide who gets to live in the mansion by the lake, and who gets to live in a fixed up tenement block?
(Score: 1) by ants_in_pants on Thursday August 31 2017, @07:46PM (3 children)
Oh yes, lament for the landlord!
Me, personally? The abolition of money and the state.
democratically.
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday September 01 2017, @02:04PM
So, money is gone, and the state is gone. Your democracy votes for X, 60% to 40%.
Why is the 40% group going to pay any attention to the outcome of the vote?
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Saturday September 02 2017, @01:54AM
Is your proposal then to simply take the property from its owners ... presumably by force? I thought I wasn't going to have share my condo in your utopia? Now it seems if 5+ miserable people want to move in with me to improve their lot in life, now its up to a simple majority vote?
Replacing it with what? By what mechanism are people going to efficiently and equitably distribute resources that are inhenrently scarce? Even if energy and food can be produced sufficiently that we can each all have as much as we want, there is still only so much beachfront to go around.
With no state? Who holds the elections? Who certifies the results? Who enforces the outcome? What if I decide 'fuck democracy' and just take the mansion by the lake?
Wait... you're not the "contracts guy" are you?? :p
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:20PM
So here we see that ants_in_pants spouts unmitigated nonsense that apparently cannot be defended when shown how absurd it is.
That's OK, it happens to many of us while we are still so young that we haven't yet seen our fantasies collide with reality. Think it through, read, grow up, discuss... clarity will come eventually to most.