On Wed, May 09, 2012 at 11:17:25AM -0700, Jacob Appelbaum wrote:
True capitalism (anarchocapitalism) is not about control (it is voluntarily
society). I would not call the current system "capitalistic", it is more
a socialistic corporativism.
Anarchist theory generally suggests that so-called "anarchocapitalism"
is a co-option of anarchist theory. Generally speaking anarchism
requires mutual aid, solidarity, democracy and order enforced through
consent, not force. To be clear - I'm talking about anarchist theory and
not about some Hobbesian notion of the world as chaos without a State.
If we don't quibble about every point above and just look at democracy,
we can see that capitalism is oriented at devaluing each person in order
to enrich a few. There are lots of benefits and just as many downsides.
This is not true - our society is not a "zero-sum" game as many people think
(i.e. "rich people" means that some other people have to be "poor"), our
society is a "positive-sum" game. If you are a (honest) rich man, usually you
gain a lot of money because some other people give you them voluntarily in
exchange for some "life-quality-improving" services. It means that in
voluntary business benefits are mutual on both sides.
Capitalism attempts to value a person in society by their collection and
accumulation of wealth. This is inherently anti-democratic - one person
Don't forget that if people give you money voluntarily, they also have benefits
from your accumulation of wealth. You provide them something that improves
their life (because they buy it).
is valued far above another as a matter of fact - in theory, capitalists
say this is because of merit but in practice, I find this to be rubbish.
I think that anything that is not voluntary is not fair, including "forced
solidarity" taxes for poor people. Solidarity simply cannot be forced (and
that's what our governments do).
Corporations are the core of capitalist ideology in the modern
implementation. I would say that Facebook is however not a socialistic
This not entirely true, in a real free society, you can also have
non-profit, non-commercial organizations or voluntary "communistic" companies
where all employees are also their shareholders.
You can create any kind of organization on voluntary basis.
corporation at all - it is all a matter of so-called "voluntary"
"choices" - of course ignores the network effect and other lots of
subtle things.
The current system is capitalism and it's hilarious to hear cries of
failure about it not being "pure" enough. One hears this from communists
all the time in defense of communism, despite Stalin's reign of terror
in the 20th century. Facebook is a capitalist success - private capital,
free association, investment, private property, riches - in the end, it
is happening because of the value of surveillance and control. What will
become of it? What is happening now as a result
I admit that Facebook does some privacy threatening things (datamining,
corellations, etc) in order to improve their business impact, but do not
forget that surveillance and control is usually _too expensive_ for normal
business and many companies just do it because it is enforced by the
government's regulations and anti-terroristic laws (and of course paid from
our taxes), not because that they voluntarily want it.
Consider censorship, data retention laws - from the business point of view
it does not make sense - on a free market censorship is definitely not a
competitive advantage, nobody voluntarily will pay for censored Internet,
also data retention is usually too expensive in contrast with fact that most
ISPs want to offer as cheap as possible services because it is another
competitive advantage.
So personally I think our freedom is primarily threatened by our governments,
not corporations (they just care about their business and their customers and
restrictions on freedom are simply not good for their business, because people
would prefer their competitors).
As it turns out - notions of "voluntary" participation are not all
they're cracked up to be if one looks at things on a small scale. Most
people have little choice about joining such networks once they become
the defacto standard. I've chosen to opt-out, a few others will as well
- probably at some kind of societal cost we do not yet understand.
But this is their decision. If you do not like these networks, you can inform
people about their security risks, promote security awareness etc, but I think
you have no moral right to regulate these social networks using money from
taxes of all people. If people are not aware of the security risks of their
behaviour and also ignore your security awareness activities, they should just
bear the consequences of their actions.
Ahem. I'm sure Dmytri will have lots to say on the matter. We don't
always agree about the words we use; I do think we largely agree about
the goals a society might want overall. I look forward to his reply -
it's always fun to discuss these things with him!
Anyway, we have the same goal - freedom! :-)
Pavol
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