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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @10:33PM (4 children)
Deep Space Nine wasn't in Federation space, that's why it was called a "deep space" station. Very little about average civilian life was ever portrayed beyond the occasional episode set on Risa or scene set in Sisko's restaurant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @12:17AM (3 children)
if Sisko's dad's restaurant charged customers for the meal/service, or if he ran it totally pro-bono?
Because at least the implication to me, along with Picard's farm, was that some form of currency was stil in use, otherwise why would these individuals still have individual businesses they were running?
I don't imagine just anyone could get a farm or restaurant in a socialist regime, and I don't imagine 'businesses that have been in the family for generations' would've retained their ownership during whatever revolution lead them there.
Of course I could be wrong.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday August 31 2017, @02:14AM (2 children)
They did really gloss over how the "post-money" society worked in the Federation, but if you wanted to speculate you might look at pre-monetary societies on Earth. Contrary to the popular story, created by individuals who had only ever lived under capitalism, and only studied cultures that had at some point in their history used money, there's very little evidence to suggest that barter was actually common within pre-monetary communities, but rather only *between* communities. To the contrary, pre-monetary societies seem to most commonly be gift-economies, where (as I understand it) people essentially "compete" on the quality and suitability of the gifts they give each other.
I would assume that those who are the most skilled at giving also attract better gifts, but apparently that's not really a driving force. I'll admit, the whole concept seems a bit strange to me, but it's heartening to know that are are viable alternatives to the insane rat-race I've been imperfectly indoctrinated into.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @05:13PM (1 child)
Not really, the show stresses personal responsibility as a totally average trait. No one goes and replicates beyond their needs, and people provide services in order to feel useful and contribute to society. As the best starfleet captain said "We no longer value the pursuit of money. The challenge is now to improve yourself."
It is hard to understand the concept when you've been submerged in capitalistic rhetoric your whole life, but have you ever wanted to change careers just to try something out? But you've decided against it because financially it doesn't make sense? For example: I would love to spend a year+ as a park ranger, but they are paid next to nothing. I would also love to travel the world teaching English, learning new languages and cultures, but I would hardly save any money at all and the jobs would not be great for a resume. Same for EMT, firefighter, military, etc. I would probably bounce around from job to job as I got bored with them. If humanity made such job transitions simple, and a moneyless society would make it trivial, then there would be the upside of having a much more adaptable population. Also increased happiness levels as people are no longer stuck in a job in order to pay the bills.
Truly money free society won't happen for a long time, and even Star Trek people used money to trade with other civilizations. It is simply that money was no longer required for daily living, it became useful only for luxury goods and services and I am fine with that.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday August 31 2017, @10:02PM
Yes, they givea lovely 10,000 foot view, butno details. How do they decide who gets to live at and operate the choice beach front property, vineyards, etc? How is it decided who does and doesn't get their own private spaceship or holodeck? There's obviously a lot of people living on Earth, and choice real estate if nothing else is a finite resource.