When I commented earlier on my surety, I took Danny's uncertainty to be about whether the software and the software substitutes are in the area of fascism because of the unethical licensing and the consequent likelihood that the software is malware.
Jean Louis has confirmed that he is sure of his statement about fascism. He has also elaborated on many policies related to SARS-CoV-2 and explained that he is sure those are fascist. I thus wish to confirm that I am considering only the aspects of SARS-CoV-2 policies and implementation related to software, since I consider the other issues to be out of scope for the present mailing list. For purposes of present discussion, I am accepting COVID-19 testing as a reasonable request in the context of interest, and I am considering only whether the de facto requirement to be used by malware is fascist. Jean writes: > 1. (2) fascism -- (a political theory advocating an authoritarian > hierarchical government (as opposed to democracy or liberalism)) Earlier I commented that I am sure the effective smartphone dependency has certain aspects that I think to be part of fascism, but I wasn't familiar enough with fascism to classify it as fascism. Using the definition that Jean presented, I can now classify this de facto requirement as surely fascist. The components are satisfied as follows. * The political theory is that government services should be outsourced to companies who may decide whether and how to provide those services to the people. * The new government is the company, which is hierarchical as opposed to democratic or liberal. * The company is authoritarian because if its power in establishing the rights and responsibilities of the involved parties. It decides that services will be allowed only under a contract that it furnishes and that the services will in fact be dis-services that run proprietary software. The normalization of such contracts with non-governmental governments reduces their accountability. The software licensing further reduces accountability: Because the software is proprietary, it is impractical for the people (and the democratic government) to understand what it does, and people (and the democratic government) are prohibited from removing malware from the software. Thus we have fascism as defined by whatever dictionary Jean used. Danny, I remain curious about your unsurety about fascism and your thoughts on monopoly. Do you know why you were unsure about the situation being fascism? Also, what is your thought on the distinction between fascism and monopoly as a description of the situation of interest? Cordially, Fischers Fritz _______________________________________________ libreplanet-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
