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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: 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.