path: root/rfd2/rfd2.txt

Libre Society                                                      A. Yu
Request 'for' Discussions: 2                    The 2nd School Aff. to FDU
                                                           18 April 2022


                 Email Thread for Mathematical Society
                       Request for Discussions 2

Abstract

   This memo documents an email conversation on LibrePlanet-discuss
   about the ideas and feasibility of a mathematical social
   system.[THREAD]

Status of This Memo

   This memo is a record of communication.  This is an experimental
   thought.  It does not describe a best current practice or standard.
   Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Table of Contents

   1.  Original Message  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   1
   2.  Reply from Paul Sutton  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.1.  Reply from Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
       2.1.1.  Reply from Jean Louis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
       2.1.2.  Reply from Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
       2.1.3.  Reply from Jean Louis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   3.  Reply from Erica Frank  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     3.1.  Reply from Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
   4.  Reply from vidak  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
     4.1.  Reply from Andrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
       4.1.1.  Reply from Jean Louis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  31
       4.1.2.  Reply from Erica Frank  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35
       4.1.3.  Reply from Jean Louis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  40
   5.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  40
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  40

1.  Original Message

From:   Andrew Yu
Subject:        A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society
Date:   Tue, 11 Jan 2022 01:02:29 +0800
Hi, friends at Libreplanet.

During a discussion in #fsf, we were quite critical of modern society,
especially on copyright, patents, "intellectual property", healthcare
and Capitalism.  A (possibly sarcastic of modern society) suggestion



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was raised to build islands in the middle of oceans from plastic waste
and run a free society there.  This is obviously infeasible, but it
reinforced my thoughts that free software isn't enough.  With people
constantly in poverty, healthcare being so expensive in countries such
as the United States, companies and individuals focusing on profit
rather than genuine good for society, etc., free software is a step to
bring us closer to good-old freedom, but with a society that hasn't
woken up from the endless advertising (brainwashing) of cooprporations
and governments, we'll almost inevitably be forced to use nonfree
software, and have our right to freedom violated in countless other
ways.

I thought: Why aren't we doing a great job convincing users to switch to
free software as a replacement to the proprietary software they use?
Some classmates that I tried convincing into using Trisquel GNU/Linux
noted that most modern programs that they use day-to-day only run on
Android, Apple iOS, Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows, and these
themselves are nonfree software that they can't escape using (For
example, school here in China requires the use of WeChat and Tencent
Meetings to have online classes, and does not have a way to let me
dial-in by phone, despite my efforts explaining the Constitution and my
rights to deny a contract I disagree with. [1]  They even went as far as
saying "We don't care what the Constitution says, you play by our
rules", which was a surprise to me.).  I reconsidered the situation,
explained to them what freedom is in this context, and linked them to a
comprimise, Deepin Linux, a (GNU/)Linux distribution targeted at new
Chinese users who need WeChat, Tencent Meetings and all that in the
application center.  This was a comprimise, but this is the best I could
do given their situation.  Personally I use virtual machines that
reset to snapshots every boot to run these programs, sometimes even run
a GNU/Linux distribution inside the virtual machine and use Wine from
there.  They aren't technically skilled and couldn't handle this.
Some sources state that US courts require the use of Zoom, which is
frustrating to think about.

I asked myself:  Why do people choose convenience over freedom?  This is
still a mystery to me, as this one of the problems in the to-solve list
of the upcoming project.   I have a theory that it's a combination of
social pressure and coorporate brainwashing, as companies are taking
advantage of human psycology, creating an information cocoon of
"convenience is the most important thing in your life", pushing products
to users with social engineering in order to profit from sales or the
information of their users.  They do everything for profit; they even
sign contracts with schools to push their products to students, often
with the students unable to reject.  In this case, how the school and
government handles this situation is a good example of short-term
thinking (Or, it might be not caring about their students, I hope it's
the first, but my conversation with school makes me afraid it's the



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latter.)

My family has been to the US in 2013.  One of my biggest negative
impressions was that health care was terrifyingly expensive.  A simple
X-ray, a two dollar checkup in most hospitals in Shanghai, China costs
hundreds of dollars in the US (I do not remember which state or region
it was, I was just 5 years old then.  What I do remember is that we had
some kind of medicaid; even then, the prices are in hundreds).  A
standard CT scan, around 20--35 dollars in Shanghai, costs hundreds or
even thousands of dollars.  A ride in the ambulance costs 10 dollars on
average in Shanghai, but thousands in ths US.  (Note that by "the US", I
am referring to the state I was in, I do hope that there are saner ones.)
Apparantly this is caused by the US not having a good system of
medicaid, which I hope gets better implemented with Obamacare, but that
seems to be just a wish.  This leads me to the point that governments
are responsible for their citizens in exchange for the citizens giving
up certain liberties (note that liberty isn't freedom exactly),
including keeping citizens healthy---it is impossible to have a
prosperous planet with bad healthcare.  (Don't get me wrong, I have more
positive impressions in the US :P)

For a government to be able to handle social needs, it must not be
corruputed.  Theories such as the separation of powers exist, but in
contemperory times, implementations such as the US have
sometimes-corrupt but almost always ineffective governments.  The Senate
fillibuster is a important reason, but not the culprit.  The culprit is
the inherent eager to compete with other political parties and to gain a
political advantage, rather than coorporating, working together, and
actually managing the country with decent manners.

Humanity's system of managing society progressed from the rule of
monarchs to the rule of law.  But laws can be unclear and
misinterpreted.  The recent development of mathematics and computer
science may as well be utilized to create a system of society and
government, which algorithmicly distributes power in an explicit manner
(Maybe with something like monads, I haven't got into the mathematical
part yet.)

Godel Incompleteness tells us that we can never make a system of
mathematics that gets understood the same way everywhere; math is also
an evolving field (albeit very slowly).  If this (currently nil) system
is to be ever used anywhere (may be the island), we'll definitely find a
lot of fissues.  In such a system we also have the burden of educating
people in abstract algebra, which is relatively easy compared to
developing the system itself.  My intuition tells me that Group Theory
will come in handy, but that's just intuition.

Currently, I host this project at [2].  I've only recently gotten into



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Group Theory and abstract algebra, it may take time for us all to come
up with ideas.  But it's worth trying.

References
==========

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2021-10/msg00011.html
    My previous memo on the use of software in education, COVID-19 and
    the courts.

    Ironically, I was still using GitHub at the time.  I recently
    deprecated all of my GitHub in a notice, and moved all of my current
    projects to git.andrewyu.org and project.andrewyu.org.  The avenir
    repository is moving there some time, after I re-write the website
    with plain HTML---I don't see a reason to use a static site
    generator anymore.  This GitHub link is not provided here.

[2] https://project.andrewyu.org/libresociety
    A "checked out" version of the repository.  The PDFs are of primary
    interest.

    git://git.andrewyu.org/libresociety
    The repository itself.  SSH protocol version also exist, described
    in the PDF itself.

    https://notabug.org/andrewyu/libresociety
    A mirror of the above repository.  Links Out
=========

[a] https://stallman.org/there-ought-to-be-a-law.html
    A collection of bills/laws "proposed" or agreed upon by Richard
    Stallman, mostly in support for a freer society, a less
    corrupt/corruptable government, public benefit, etc.  I don't agree
    with all of them, but many of these will be taken into account in
    this project.

Some of the thoughts I had during writing this memo will appear in the
next commit of the project.

This memo probably contains spelling errors and odd context-hopping.
When sitting down in front of my computer on the actual book, I'll be
more careful, and have a notebook and a pencil in front of me to plot
relation maps.  Please forgive me, a 13-year-old with an undeveloped
brain from a non English-native country.

Sincerely,
Andrew Yu <andrew@andrewyu.org>




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:P

2.  Reply from Paul Sutton

Hi Andrew

Firstly, thank you for your well researched and referenced e-mail. I
can't answer all these, I can try and answer some points.

"Why aren't we doing a great job convincing users to switch to
> free software as a replacement to the proprietary software they use?"

In terms of using for example MS office over Libreoffice, I am running
a STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) event at my local
library, the person who I am running this with likes MS office because
she says it is better, has better features, looks more professional etc,
this is because it has millions of dollars invested in it.

I use libreoffice because as it runs on Debian and I am not prepared
to pay £100's for a office package when I can get one, that while not
a programmer i can at least contact developers and report problems.
LibreOffice would be perfectly usable for a small business.

Another issue is that many businesses use MS office, therefore
training is provided by colleges etc in MS office, the result is you
haver a trained workforce that can use what a business uses and
therefore demands. If a business wanted to switch to libreoffice the
software may be free but the cost of actually moving over may not be.

People also rely now the fact office 365 is more web / cloud integrated.
LibreOffice can be linked to Nextcloud, but it is not natively
integrated. I think there is https://www.collaboraoffice.com/ this has
integrations, but LibreOffice is not listed by the looks of it.

So you need to factor this in, people can login to their MS account
from anywhere and just keep working, like you can do with Cryptpad or
overleaf etc.

The modern world is more mobile, we are not sitting at the same desk
every day using the same computer, we may use laptop, tablets, phones
etc to do our work, we can leave our desk, grab a coffee in the work
canteen and keep working, we can attend meetings in person / remotely
and everything is just designed to work.

Offerings for devices such as the various open source phones appears
to be, for me, confusing,

https://joinmastodon.org/apps



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So from that, can I buy a pinephone and run a mastodon client on it, ?
Add to this, there is fairphone and a host of other free software
operating systems, some are based on Android others not. Only 1 app
for something called sailfishOS.

I think your classmates make a good point, they need certain
applications, and therefore are tied in to the non free software /
devices they have.

We need to break that cycle, perhaps one way is to take people who are
already using free software and use their examples of how it is used
in the real world how a business or school can run on free software.

Paul

2.1.  Reply from Andrew

On 22/01/10 06:56PM, Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss wrote:
> Hi Andrew
>
> Firstly, thank you for your well researched and referenced e-mail.  I can't
> answer all these, I can try and answer some points.

Wasn't well-researched lol, I wrote it down with pencil and paper late
at night.

> > "Why aren't we doing a great job convincing users to switch to
> > free software as a replacement to the proprietary software they use?"
>
> In terms of using for example MS office over Libreoffice,  I am running a
> STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) event at my local library,
> the person who I am running this with likes MS office because she says it is
> better, has better features, looks more professional etc, this is because it
> has millions of dollars invested in it.
>
> I use libreoffice because as it runs on Debian and I am not prepared to pay
> £100's for a office package when I can get one, that while not a programmer
> i can at least contact developers and report problems. LibreOffice would be
> perfectly usable for a small business.

Funding has always been an issue with free software.  If people can get
it for gratis, non only the people who can't afford paying (which
includes a student like me, sadly) won't pay, the others who can afford
it are just too lazy to donate.  It's probably worse in China: donations
aren't in the culture.

> Another issue is that many businesses use MS office, therefore training is
> provided by colleges etc in MS office,  the result is you haver a trained



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> workforce that can use what a business uses and therefore demands. If a
> business wanted to switch to libreoffice the software may be free but the
> cost of actually moving over may not be.

Yeah.  OnlyOffice is a project that mimics the look and feel of
Microsoft Office, has online collaboration through a document server
with optional Nextcloud support.

> People also rely now the fact office 365 is more web / cloud integrated.
> LibreOffice can be linked to Nextcloud, but it is not natively integrated.
> I think there is https://www.collaboraoffice.com/ this has integrations, but
> LibreOffice is not listed by the looks of it.

CollaboraOffice has something to do with LibreOffice, I remember.

I can't say much about office suites because I don't use them, not even
the free ones because I use Groff and TeX.

> So you need to factor this in, people can login to their MS account from
> anywhere and just keep working, like you can do with Cryptpad or overleaf
> etc.

I actually use Git for collaboration in editing, seems more robust than
any other alternative to me.  For home use, I put up a FreeBSD ZFS NFS
with three 8 TB disks (never gonna use that much), but I do suspect
normal users won't be able to do so.

> The modern world is more mobile, we are not sitting at the same desk every
> day using the same computer,   we may use laptop, tablets, phones etc to do
> our work,  we can leave our desk,  grab a coffee in the work canteen and
> keep working,  we can attend meetings in person / remotely and everything is
> just designed to work.
>
> Offerings for devices such as the various open source phones appears to be,
> for me, confusing,
>
> https://joinmastodon.org/apps
>
> So from that, can I buy a pinephone and run a mastodon client on it, ? Add
> to this, there is fairphone and a host of other free software operating
> systems, some are based on Android others not.  Only 1 app for something
> called sailfishOS.

No idea with phones, I generally don't use them unless if it's school
stuff.

I have multiple computers that I use, the main one is my Raspberry Pi
(surprise), decent enough in performance for me to hook it up to a 4K



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screen and a decent Ergodox to use.  Emacs is slightly sluggish, but I
use Vim on slower computers so no worries for me.  I add, commit and
push to my main repo for everything I'm working on (even for school
essays, teachers want PDFs or TXT so I typeset them in XeLaTeX, the
source is plain text so I can git them well).  It's really easy to set
up a script to do that automatically on the close_write event of a file
(inotifywait -e close_write file.tex && git-cycle), but I do know normal
users can't do that.  There should be commit-listener GUI apps out
there.

> I think your classmates make a good point,  they need certain applications,
> and therefore are tied in to the non free software / devices they have.
>
> We need to break that cycle,  perhaps one way is to take people who are
> already using free software and use their examples of how it is used in the
> real world how a business or school can run on free software.

Sadly that's rare.

> BTW are you in China or the US?

Shanghai, China.

Sincerely,
Andrew

:P

2.1.1.  Reply from Jean Louis

* Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss <libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org>
[2022-01-12 23:59]:
> Funding has always been an issue with free software.

No, not always, I did not get that as personal impression. In fact my
first encounter with free software was that I have paid for it, and
continued paying for quite some time. Majority of companies in Germany
and generally in European countries marketed GNU/Linux CD/DVD ROMs and
later other operating systems. We were paying for books like 100
German marks which included GNU/Linux on CD-ROM. Today there are many
free software projects which sell their services or otherwise profit
from free software as service providers, example is Amazon, Digital
Ocean, and plethora of hosting providers. Free software runs Internet,
that is fact, and funding comes from its usage and provision, thus
direct and indirect sales. Red Hat is still there
https://www.redhat.com/en and OpenSUSE https://www.opensuse.org and I
can just guess many other companies are still on market making quite a
bunch of money, thus getting the funding, and also contributing back



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to Free Software, such as contributing to kernel and various other
programs.

> If people can get it for gratis, non only the people who can't
> afford paying (which includes a student like me, sadly) won't pay,
> the others who can afford it are just too lazy to donate.

People like you and many others undergo various changes in their
life. While I did pay first time for free software, and kept paying
for it, that was because I was in the same time awarded with quality
printed manuals, real books, and the whole package looked magically
good. And in reality it was better than good as compared to how much
money and time and effort I have wasted on broken Windoze. But then
later I have not paid anything apart Internet for long time, I have
been downloading it and updating through Internet. Then again I came
to stage where I could donate to free software projects, and so I did.

Yes, sometimes you will not be able to pay. But sometimes you will pay
either in the form of money, or in the form of your own free software
projects. Payment is not only money. Contributions, bugs, discussions,
initiatives, speeches, there are many forms of "payments".

> It's probably worse in China: donations aren't in the culture.

Sales are in the culture in China, so just sell free software.

> I can't say much about office suites because I don't use them, not
> even the free ones because I use Groff and TeX.

Recently for many documents I am using Asciidoctor and Asciidoctor
PDF:

Asciidoctor | A fast, open source text processor and publishing toolchain for
converting AsciiDoc content to HTML5, DocBook, PDF, and other formats.
https://asciidoctor.org/

asciidoctor/asciidoctor-pdf: Asciidoctor PDF: A native PDF converter for
AsciiDoc based on Asciidoctor and Prawn, written entirely in Ruby:
https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-pdf/#themes

Asciidoctor Example
https://jianmin.dev/asciidoctor-example/

Using AsciiDoc and Asciidoctor to write documentation - Tutorial
https://www.vogella.com/tutorials/AsciiDoc/article.html


Jean



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Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

2.1.2.  Reply from Andrew

On 22/01/19 07:26PM, Jean Louis wrote:
> > Funding has always been an issue with free software.
>
> No, not always, I did not get that as personal impression. In fact my
> first encounter with free software was that I have paid for it, and
> continued paying for quite some time. Majority of companies in Germany
> and generally in European countries marketed GNU/Linux CD/DVD ROMs and
> later other operating systems. We were paying for books like 100
> German marks which included GNU/Linux on CD-ROM. Today there are many
> free software projects which sell their services or otherwise profit
> from free software as service providers, example is Amazon, Digital
> Ocean, and plethora of hosting providers. Free software runs Internet,
> that is fact, and funding comes from its usage and provision, thus
> direct and indirect sales. Red Hat is still there
> https://www.redhat.com/en and OpenSUSE https://www.opensuse.org and I
> can just guess many other companies are still on market making quite a
> bunch of money, thus getting the funding, and also contributing back
> to Free Software, such as contributing to kernel and various other
> programs.

True.  But look at what Red Hat, for example, gave us.  Systemd.

I'd argue that systemd isn't evil, but it's damaging the free software
movement in subtle (and minor) ways, for example, hardcoding Google DNS
servers into the init system (of course you can change that, but most
users don't know how, as in the future we don't intend GNU and other
free systems to be only used by technical people) which imposes slight
reliance on big companies.  It's also taking over everything in our
system.  Probably not evil.

Then look at Linux.  A mess of Microsoft, Google, name-your-companies.
So now?  Digital Restrictions Management in the kernel, fun.

> > If people can get it for gratis, non only the people who can't
> > afford paying (which includes a student like me, sadly) won't pay,
> > the others who can afford it are just too lazy to donate.
>
> People like you and many others undergo various changes in their
> life. While I did pay first time for free software, and kept paying
> for it, that was because I was in the same time awarded with quality



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> printed manuals, real books, and the whole package looked magically
> good. And in reality it was better than good as compared to how much
> money and time and effort I have wasted on broken Windoze. But then
> later I have not paid anything apart Internet for long time, I have
> been downloading it and updating through Internet. Then again I came
> to stage where I could donate to free software projects, and so I did.
>
> Yes, sometimes you will not be able to pay. But sometimes you will pay
> either in the form of money, or in the form of your own free software
> projects. Payment is not only money. Contributions, bugs, discussions,
> initiatives, speeches, there are many forms of "payments".

I agree.  However in a society where money is needed for the most basic
things to a human's life (food and healthcare), those who devote their
lives to developing free software and/or activism don't live well.  (I'd
argue that such a society is unjust.)

> > It's probably worse in China: donations aren't in the culture.
>
> Sales are in the culture in China, so just sell free software.

Good idea.

> > I can't say much about office suites because I don't use them, not
> > even the free ones because I use Groff and TeX.
>
> Recently for many documents I am using Asciidoctor and Asciidoctor
> PDF:
>
> Asciidoctor | A fast, open source text processor and publishing toolchain for
> converting AsciiDoc content to HTML5, DocBook, PDF, and other formats.
> https://asciidoctor.org/
>
> asciidoctor/asciidoctor-pdf: Asciidoctor PDF: A native PDF converter for
> AsciiDoc based on Asciidoctor and Prawn, written entirely in Ruby:
> https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-pdf/#themes
>
> Asciidoctor Example
> https://jianmin.dev/asciidoctor-example/
>
> Using AsciiDoc and Asciidoctor to write documentation - Tutorial
> https://www.vogella.com/tutorials/AsciiDoc/article.html

Heh!  I've actually looked at asciidoc before, pretty cool.  Looking for
a functional implementation for it.

Andrew




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2.1.3.  Reply from Jean Louis

* Andrew Yu <libre@andrewyu.org> [2022-01-20 21:00]:
> On 22/01/19 07:26PM, Jean Louis wrote:
> > > Funding has always been an issue with free software.
> >
> > No, not always, I did not get that as personal impression. In fact my
> > first encounter with free software was that I have paid for it, and
> > continued paying for quite some time. Majority of companies in Germany
> > and generally in European countries marketed GNU/Linux CD/DVD ROMs and
> > later other operating systems. We were paying for books like 100
> > German marks which included GNU/Linux on CD-ROM. Today there are many
> > free software projects which sell their services or otherwise profit
> > from free software as service providers, example is Amazon, Digital
> > Ocean, and plethora of hosting providers. Free software runs Internet,
> > that is fact, and funding comes from its usage and provision, thus
> > direct and indirect sales. Red Hat is still there
> > https://www.redhat.com/en and OpenSUSE https://www.opensuse.org and I
> > can just guess many other companies are still on market making quite a
> > bunch of money, thus getting the funding, and also contributing back
> > to Free Software, such as contributing to kernel and various other
> > programs.
>
> True.  But look at what Red Hat, for example, gave us.  Systemd.

OK. But still, Systemd is free software and you need not use it. I use
that on VPS-es and don't use it on personal computers. I cannot say it
works well, it doesn't, it fails to run my daemons with stability, so
I add always some supervision software. But that is not a point. It is
free software and you can change it as you wish.

> I'd argue that systemd isn't evil, but it's damaging the free software
> movement in subtle (and minor) ways, for example, hardcoding Google DNS
> servers into the init system (of course you can change that, but most
> users don't know how, as in the future we don't intend GNU and other
> free systems to be only used by technical people) which imposes slight
> reliance on big companies.  It's also taking over everything in our
> system.  Probably not evil.

You can submit bug reports or use other software. I am using OpenRC,
but I would prefer S6 system.

> Then look at Linux.  A mess of Microsoft, Google, name-your-companies.
> So now?  Digital Restrictions Management in the kernel, fun.

You are free to change it. It is free software. Submit bug reports,
make your own versions of kernel. I am using Linux-libre kernel.




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> I agree.  However in a society where money is needed for the most basic
> things to a human's life (food and healthcare), those who devote their
> lives to developing free software and/or activism don't live well.  (I'd
> argue that such a society is unjust.)

There are many people in free software who live well. There are many
people in any kind of business that don't live well.

Free software is issues without any warranty or suitability for
particular purpose.

What you get is freedom.

Not guarantee for good life.

> Heh!  I've actually looked at asciidoc before, pretty cool.  Looking for
> a functional implementation for it.

There is Org mode export to asciidoc. There are many functional
implementations, a2x and asciidoctor are most notable and work very
well.

--
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

3.  Reply from Erica Frank

On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 9:44 AM Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss
   <[1]libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org> wrote:

     Hi, friends at Libreplanet.
     During a discussion in #fsf, we were quite critical of modern
     society,
     especially on copyright, patents, "intellectual property",
     healthcare
     and Capitalism.  A (possibly sarcastic of modern society) suggestion
     was raised to build islands in the middle of oceans from plastic
     waste
     and run a free society there.

   This has been tried. Multiple times. It flops horribly because (1) the
   people throwing money at it would like to believe that they won't be



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   bound by international treaties & local laws and (2) it's invariably
   started by a group that wants to be a master class, and imagine they
   will bring in servant-types at some later date, and that those
   servant-types will be content to live and work under conditions that
   don't give them the protections they have from existing laws.
   Examples:
   2014 [2]https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10
   2016
   [3]https://www.gq.com/story/the-libertarian-utopia-thats-just-a-bunch-o
   f-white-guys-on-a-tiny-island
   2017
   [4]https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-springs-
   libertarian-experiment-america-215313/
   2020 [5]https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-b
   ear-book-review-free-town-project
   2021
   [6]https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voyage-satos
   hi-cryptocurrency-cruise-ship-seassteading
   And the shiny new attempt for 2022: [7]https://cryptoland.is/
   A "free" ocean nation is possible... if you don't need wifi or other
   technology that comes from land; if you don't need to buy food or get
   medical services from land; if you don't need to dock a ship anywhere;
   if you don't intend to export goods or services to any country. If you
   do plan to maintain connections with the mainland, there's a host of
   laws and international treaties that will apply. And most of the "live
   free" movements want that to be "live free and rich," not "find
   somewhere that we can do subsistence farming where no gov't will care
   enough to notice us." You can live free by moving to any number of
   remote, inhospitable locales. In groups, even. But you can't live
   tax-free and still participate in commerce with people who pay taxes.
   (Well, it's possible, but the setup for that isn't "invent a country in
   a spot nobody's claimed"; it's "invent a business that shuffles money
   in so many directions that governments get dizzy trying to find the cup
   with the ball under it.")

     I thought: Why aren't we doing a great job convincing users to
     switch to
     free software as a replacement to the proprietary software they use?
     Some classmates that I tried convincing into using Trisquel
     GNU/Linux
     noted that most modern programs that they use day-to-day only run on
     Android, Apple iOS, Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows,

   The reason people don't switch to Linux is that support for new users
   SUCKS. You'd think that, after 20+ years of Unix-based software,
   there'd be a plethora of "How to Dump Windows And Switch To [version]
   Linux!" websites. There are not. Instead, plenty of Windows users who
   try to switch discover "I have installed this new OS.... and my wifi



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   doesn't work." Or their audio doesn't work. Or they try to install WINE
   so they can use the apps they need for work, and it doesn't work. Or
   they try to play games and discover that Steam-for-Linux and
   Steam-via-WINE have two different feature sets, and one of them doesn't
   work for their favorite game. And so on.
   (I have two adult daughters who have switched from Windows to Linux.
   They both hate Windows. Neither has strong software requirements. Both
   occasionally have to wipe their system and reinstall the OS because
   they can't figure out how to fix the odd problems that show up.
   ...Neither of them has work-related content or settings that would be
   destroyed by a reinstall.)
   I am on Windows because I'm a power user of several apps with no Linux
   versions: Acrobat Pro, InDesign, MS Word, FineReader (you've probably
   never heard of it, and that's very reasonable). I'm a regular user of
   other programs with no Linux versions. And seeing the nightmares my
   kids have had with using WINE does not make me happy at the idea of
   switching. (I'm aware that there's LibreOffice and other free software
   that cover most of what Word does. They don't cover everything that
   Word does, and they won't cover the 25% extra time it'll take me to
   find everything for a few months while I get used to them. A big part
   of my job is "Hey here is a document; it's got [list of problems]; fix
   those and get it back to me within an hour before the client meeting."
   I can't do that on unfamiliar software.) I do a lot in PowerPoint, not
   because I like PPT (nobody who has actual editing experience likes
   PPT), but because the company does a lot with PPT. And opening
   word/ppt/excel/etc files in non-MS programs sometimes has weird results
   - changes the hidden formatting features, and so on. So they'd look
   fine to me, and I hand them back, and they discover the fonts have
   changed or the images have moved around.
   Anyway. If you want free software to be more popular, find a way to
   make it easy to switch for people with decent awareness of technology
   and no command-line experience. I can pick up command-line work - when
   I started learning computers, there was nothing else - but there are no
   simple guides for "so now you're using Linux; here's the two-page
   cheatsheet for Ubuntu/Gnome/Mint/whatever."
   You can usually search Google or DDG for "here's my error message; how
   do I fix it?" And the answers are often on StackExchange or similar -
   and they are often hostile and condescending enough that I am never,
   ever going to ask for Linux help for specific problems in public. The
   result is: I'm using proprietary software with an unknown amount of
   data harvesting, that sometimes changes or removes the features I rely
   on - but I'm not being regularly insulted (or threatened) by sexist
   jerks who think I'm an idiot for not having encountered this problem
   before.

     I asked myself:  Why do people choose convenience over freedom?

   The simple, quick answer is "I see you don't have children of your



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   own." All of human history has been a matter of giving up some freedoms
   in exchange for convenience. It has always been possible for almost
   anyone to go off alone and survive by scrounging or potentially even
   farming. There are exceptions - some types of slavery, most prisoners,
   etc. But for most of history, most people have been free to pick a
   direction and walk until nobody else is in range. Unsurprisingly, most
   of of them choose to remain in contact with others, which means giving
   up some autonomy for the convenience of a community.
   If you mean, "why do people choose this particular convenience over a
   freedom I believe is readily available" - then you have to get into the
   details. Because a freedom that looks obvious and simple to you may not
   be as apparent - or as easy - to someone else.

      I have a theory that it's a combination of
     social pressure and coorporate brainwashing,

   Humans are social critters. We thrive in communities. All communities
   involve giving up freedoms. There is no brainwashing involved in
   "convince people to go along with the group instead of following their
   every impulse"; that's the socialization that begins in infancy. (The
   end result is: we get communities so that a broken leg doesn't mean
   death, so that children live past the age of two, so that we can eat
   something other than raw fruit in season and meat cooked on sticks over
   a fire. And, y'know, so we can have books and houses and chat with
   people in other countries, but those aren't why we have communities;
   they're just some of the more recent benefits.)
   There are corporations taking advantage of that, and warping our social
   drives for profit, to the long-term detriment of both communities and
   the planet. But the problem isn't "people are prone to accept
   whatever's easiest and go along with the crowd."

     My family has been to the US in 2013.  One of my biggest negative
     impressions was that health care was terrifyingly expensive.

     A ride in the ambulance costs 10 dollars on
     average in Shanghai, but thousands in ths US.  (Note that by "the
     US", I
     am referring to the state I was in, I do hope that there are saner
     ones.)

   There are not; the US medical industry's costs are absolutely shocking
   to most of the rest of the world. An ambulance trip in the US can run
   thousands of dollars even with good insurance; there are no states
   where that's not true. Some states are somewhat better about medical
   costs - or rather, some states regulate who pays for the costs better -
   but the costs are still being set by profit-seeking insurance companies
   rather than having anything to do with the actual cost of services.




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     For a government to be able to handle social needs, it must not be
     corruputed.

   [citation needed]
   ...can you name some non-corrupt governments as examples?
   This is important. Listing problems with a government is easy. If the
   solution were simple, we wouldn't have these problems. Even with as
   much as the current people in power will fight to maintain that - if
   there were a simple solution that resulted in better living for
   everyone, that didn't result in thousands of small-to-medium disasters
   (at a minimum) during a transition phase, we'd have put it into place.
   That doesn't mean I think improvement is impossible, just that it's not
   a matter of "swap this government system for that other one, and things
   will be better immediately and much better in the long term."
   For example: Copyright, trademark, and patent laws are currently
   horrible, and causing a lot of damage. However, just removing them
   wouldn't help - that'd just mean that mega-corporations could use
   anyone's work to make profit for themselves without paying for it. It'd
   mean a return to private patronage and extensive contracts involved
   before you can read a book or watch a movie.... and ordinary citizens
   would not be the ones with the advantage in that situation. (...What I
   want is an end to the Berne convention, copyright dropped to about
   25-30 years automatic, and requiring registration & growing fees to
   extend it. $100 US for the next 10 years, in the US - a nominal fee
   that covers registration costs. $1000 for 10 years past that: you have
   to still be making money to bother. $10,000 for every ten years past
   that - if Disney wants to keep Snow White in its control, it can do so,
   but they have to pay the public to keep the monopoly. And that's per
   work, not per franchise: Every episode of Star Trek would need to be
   registered and extended.)

     Theories such as the separation of powers exist, but in
     contemperory times, implementations such as the US have
     sometimes-corrupt but almost always ineffective governments.

   On the one hand: yes, I get that.
   On the other: cars do not regularly run people over on the sidewalk in
   my neighborhood. The wiring in my house does not cause fires. The food
   I buy at local restaurants does not poison me. My neighbors do not burn
   tires for heat in the winter. The water in my kitchen sink is safe to
   drink. And for all the gun violence in my local area, nobody sits on
   their front porch and does target practice on other human beings. My
   family's doctors do not demand intimate favors in exchange for health
   care services.
   My government has a lot of flaws, but it also has successfully provided
   enough safety regulations that I can be comfortable enough to criticize
   it.
   I don't mean, "we should just celebrate the good that governments have



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   done." I mean that saying "it's horribly corrupt; we should throw it
   out" needs to start with an awareness of the thousands of small
   benefits that laws have brought. Any anarchist/libertarian "free
   community" needs to first decide, "can you burn waste in your backyard?
   If so, what kinds; if not, who's going to enforce that rule?" ...Will
   you have private land ownership, and if so, can you cut down all the
   trees on "your" land? Can you throw waste into "your" river?
   ...Can you have a business selling heroin to teenagers? How about
   alcohol? Tobacco? Caffeine?
   What toxins are acceptable to sell to anyone, which are restricted, and
   which are forbidden? Who decides, and who enforces those rules?
   I am firmly in favor of free software. I would like to see governments
   be required to use free, open-source software for government purposes -
   to not be beholden to any business or company for essential government
   functions. (Or even optional government functions.) But I am aware that
   the visible government--currently-elected legislators--is a small
   portion of a complex system, and that there is no possible simple,
   sweeping reform that will fix the current batch of problems (and there
   are so, so many problems) without bringing in a host of others. And I
   am not so sanguine as to trust the people who say "eh, we'll deal with
   those when they come up."

   if you want to build a government that's free-and-equal, start by
   talking to single mothers with kids under 5 years old, and asking what
   they need from a government. Design a system that works for them, and
   you'll have a foundation that can be extended to support any size of
   community.
   (Sorry this has gotten rather far from "free software" discussion. I
   think it does all tie together - one of the reasons free software has
   problems catching on, is corporate influence over governments, so the
   very structure of government is part of the discussions. But it does
   wind up getting pretty far from "why can't schools just use Linux-based
   laptops?")

     _______________________________________________
     libreplanet-discuss mailing list
     [8]libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
     [9]https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discus
     s

References

   1. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
   2. https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10
   3.
https://www.gq.com/story/the-libertarian-utopia-thats-just-a-bunch-of-white-guys-on-a-tiny-island
   4.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-springs-libertarian-experiment-america-215313/



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   5.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
   6.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voyage-satoshi-cryptocurrency-cruise-ship-seassteading
   7. https://cryptoland.is/
   8. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
   9. https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss

3.1.  Reply from Andrew

At the time of writing this reply, Erica's original message hasn't
reached the list yet, shouldn't be a problem.

The Libre Society Project
=========================

On 22/01/10 01:06PM, Erica Frank wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 9:44 AM Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss <
> libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org> wrote:
>
> > Hi, friends at Libreplanet.
> >
> > During a discussion in #fsf, we were quite critical of modern society,
> > especially on copyright, patents, "intellectual property", healthcare
> > and Capitalism.  A (possibly sarcastic of modern society) suggestion
> > was raised to build islands in the middle of oceans from plastic waste
> > and run a free society there.
>
> This has been tried. Multiple times. It flops horribly because (1) the
> people throwing money at it would like to believe that they won't be bound
> by international treaties & local laws and (2) it's invariably started by a
> group that wants to be a master class, and imagine they will bring in
> servant-types at some later date, and that those servant-types will be
> content to live and work under conditions that don't give them the
> protections they have from existing laws.
>
> Examples:
> 2014 https://www.vice.com/en/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v21n10
> 2016
> https://www.gq.com/story/the-libertarian-utopia-thats-just-a-bunch-of-white-guys-on-a-tiny-island
> 2017
> https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-springs-libertarian-experiment-america-215313/
>
> 2020
> https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
> 2021
> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voyage-satoshi-cryptocurrency-cruise-ship-seassteading
> And the shiny new attempt for 2022: https://cryptoland.is/



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I should have made things clearer.  The whole island thing is just a
intro to what made me think of this project.  I am not trying to build
an island, make specific policies to how it runs, or similar things.
I'm thinking of a theoretical base for a modern nation should such
oppurtunities open up.  Of course, setting up a new government at any
country is unlikely.  This doesn't matter to this project; a general
base is good enough, for example, on how to handle power, how to vote
(blockchains might be good here, but proof-of-work and proof-of-stake
do harm to the environment or causes polical inequality) and the way we
write laws.  We're not defining the legal system itself; we're creating
an algorithm to define such legal system indirectly via legislators.

> A "free" ocean nation is possible... if you don't need wifi or other
> technology that comes from land; if you don't need to buy food or get
> medical services from land; if you don't need to dock a ship anywhere; if
> you don't intend to export goods or services to any country. If you do plan
> to maintain connections with the mainland, there's a host of laws and
> international treaties that will apply. And most of the "live free"
> movements want that to be "live free *and rich*," not "find somewhere that
> we can do subsistence farming where no gov't will care enough to notice
> us." You can live free by moving to any number of remote, inhospitable
> locales. In groups, even. But you can't live tax-free and still participate
> in commerce with people who pay taxes. (Well, it's possible, but the setup
> for that isn't "invent a country in a spot nobody's claimed"; it's "invent
> a business that shuffles money in so many directions that governments get
> dizzy trying to find the cup with the ball under it.")

Aside from the fact that this is theoretical, a real implementation (if ever)
would need to be a fork (branch) of the theoretical model, usually taking
account of nearby countries, trade, and other things that deal with "normal"
countries.

The amount of money you have mostly depends on how your parents are
doing, at least for two generations.  The amount of work they do (and
the intelligence they put into it) compared against their wealth in
money doesn't give a constant result---the poor have a much higher
ratio.  Money is an ancient system of economics, I don't think using
money to request for social stuff is appropriate.

Free Software
=============

The replies below are mainly targeted at free software, doesn't have
much to do with Libre Society any more.

> > I thought: Why aren't we doing a great job convincing users to switch to
> > free software as a replacement to the proprietary software they use?
> > Some classmates that I tried convincing into using Trisquel GNU/Linux



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> > noted that most modern programs that they use day-to-day only run on
> > Android, Apple iOS, Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows,
>
> The reason people don't switch to Linux is that support for new users
> SUCKS. You'd think that, after 20+ years of Unix-based software, there'd be
> a plethora of "How to Dump Windows And Switch To [version] Linux!"
> websites. There are not. Instead, plenty of Windows users who try to switch
> discover "I have installed this new OS.... and my wifi doesn't work." Or
> their audio doesn't work. Or they try to install WINE so they can use the
> apps they need for work, and it doesn't work. Or they try to play games and
> discover that Steam-for-Linux and Steam-via-WINE have two different feature
> sets, and one of them doesn't work for their favorite game. And so on.

On the topic of free software, this is true.  My new strategy that works
better (seems so to me) is to convince friends to use OnlyOffice when
they can, use my Jitsi instance instead of Tencent Meetings when they're
hosting meetings, etc.  The Jitsi part isn't doing well, probably
because people are bought into the ecosystem of Tencent, but it has
helped two or three people.

> (I have two adult daughters who have switched from Windows to Linux. They
> both hate Windows. Neither has strong software requirements. Both
> occasionally have to wipe their system and reinstall the OS because they
> can't figure out how to fix the odd problems that show up. ...Neither of
> them has work-related content or settings that would be destroyed by a
> reinstall.)

Yeah that happens some times, some people say it's a side effect of the
freedom we have, which is understandable.  I've also had issues with my
Windows VM and I have to reinstall (actually, restore from snapshot).

> I am on Windows because I'm a power user of several apps with no Linux
> versions: Acrobat Pro, InDesign, MS Word, FineReader (you've probably never
> heard of it, and that's very reasonable). I'm a regular user of other
> programs with no Linux versions. And seeing the nightmares my kids have had
> with using WINE does not make me happy at the idea of switching. (I'm aware
> that there's LibreOffice and other free software that cover most of what
> Word does. They don't cover everything that Word does, and they won't cover
> the 25% extra time it'll take me to find everything for a few months while
> I get used to them. A big part of my job is "Hey here is a document; it's
> got [list of problems]; fix those and get it back to me within an hour
> before the client meeting." I can't do that on unfamiliar software.) I do a
> lot in PowerPoint, not because I like PPT (nobody who has actual editing
> experience likes PPT), but because the company does a lot with PPT. And
> opening word/ppt/excel/etc files in non-MS programs sometimes has weird
> results - changes the hidden formatting features, and so on. So they'd look
> fine to me, and I hand them back, and they discover the fonts have changed
> or the images have moved around.



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Comptaibility is the biggest issue in terms of users switching to free
software.  There are projects like OnlyOffice that does this pretty
well, and if put on Nextcloud or its own document server can match MS
products (actually more like Google Docs) in terms of collaboration.
Personally I use LaTeX2e, but I do support developing office suites.

> Anyway. If you want free software to be more popular, find a way to make it
> easy to switch for people with decent awareness of technology and *no
> command-line experience*. I can pick up command-line work - when I started
> learning computers, there was nothing else - but there are no simple guides
> for "so now you're using Linux; here's the two-page cheatsheet for
> Ubuntu/Gnome/Mint/whatever."

Absolutely!  I've met people who needed help bring up the Help
application in GNOME 3.  Distributions that are designed to fit new
users are awesome, like Linux Mint.  Obviously they don't provide
"future links" to completely free distributions, understandable, but I
hope some distro does that---when the user switched to totally free
software already, that's a good step.  I'll note down the idea on
cheatsheets.

> You can usually search Google or DDG for "here's my error message; how do I
> fix it?" And the answers are often on StackExchange or similar - and they
> are often hostile and condescending enough that I am never, ever going to
> ask for Linux help for specific problems in public. The result is: I'm
> using proprietary software with an unknown amount of data harvesting, that
> sometimes changes or removes the features I rely on - but I'm not being
> regularly insulted (or threatened) by sexist jerks who think I'm an idiot
> for not having encountered this problem before.

In my experience, things have gotten better over the years.  Currently
I'm mostly on BSD systems, and reading the manuals help a lot.  These
manuals are mainly for command-line programs(1,8), system calls and
functions(3,9), file formats(5,7) and what not.  I like reading these,
but I can imagine the feeling of a new user reading a manual page
telling them to add themself to a UNIX group in order to use serial
ports (maybe for accessories).

Social Stuff Again
==================

> > I asked myself:  Why do people choose convenience over freedom?

> The simple, quick answer is "I see you don't have children of your own."
> All of human history has been a matter of giving up some freedoms in
> exchange for convenience. It has *always* been possible for almost anyone
> to go off alone and survive by scrounging or potentially even farming.
> There are exceptions - some types of slavery, most prisoners, etc. But for



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> most of history, most people have been free to pick a direction and walk
> until nobody else is in range. Unsurprisingly, most of of them choose to
> remain in contact with others, which means giving up some autonomy for the
> convenience of a community.
>
> If you mean, "why do people choose *this particular* convenience over a
> freedom *I believe is readily available*" - then you have to get into the
> details. Because a freedom that looks obvious and simple to you may not be
> as apparent - or as easy - to someone else.

Yup.  This reminds me of the veil of ignorance by John Rawls.  When I
vote for something, I use the best of my knowledge of society,
notwithstanding who I am and my personal interests*.

  * It should be noted that my view on freedom, as explained by Erica,
    could be considered something of personal interest.  However, I mostly
    believe that it's my stance on social freedom, not anything of
    personal interest per se.

> >  I have a theory that it's a combination of
> > social pressure and coorporate brainwashing,
>
> Humans are social critters. We thrive in communities. All communities
> involve giving up freedoms. There is no brainwashing involved in "convince
> people to go along with the group instead of following their every
> impulse"; that's the socialization that begins in infancy. (The end result
> is: we get communities so that a broken leg doesn't mean death, so that
> children live past the age of two, so that we can eat something other than
> raw fruit in season and meat cooked on sticks over a fire. And, y'know, so
> we can have books and houses and chat with people in other countries, but
> those aren't *why* we have communities; they're just some of the more
> recent benefits.)

The social contract stuff has been stuck in my head for long.  Of course
we need to reach a comprimise between liberty and security, but exactly
how is up to discussion.  It's also questionable to what extent should
we help people.

My drama teacher in Grade 7 (who comes from the US) had a pretty bad
time with the heat when he came to Shanghai the first time.  He even
threw up at the door of a small restaurant.  He said that the staff of
the restaurant asked if he was okay and gave him a cup of water.  This
is not rare here and is a good demonstration of socialization as in
helping others.  My intuition tells me that if this was to happen in the
US, it'd have been much worse for the him.

> There are corporations taking advantage of that, and warping our social
> drives for profit, to the long-term detriment of both communities and the



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> planet. But the problem isn't "people are prone to accept whatever's
> easiest and go along with the crowd."

I'd say most coorporations that normal people know today count.

> > My family has been to the US in 2013.  One of my biggest negative
> > impressions was that health care was terrifyingly expensive.
>
> > A ride in the ambulance costs 10 dollars on
> > average in Shanghai, but thousands in ths US.  (Note that by "the US", I
> > am referring to the state I was in, I do hope that there are saner ones.)

> There are not; the US medical industry's costs are absolutely shocking to
> most of the rest of the world. An ambulance trip in the US can run
> thousands of dollars even with good insurance; there are no states where
> that's not true. Some states are somewhat better about medical costs - or
> rather, some states regulate who pays for the costs better - but the costs
> are still being set by profit-seeking insurance companies rather than
> having anything to do with the actual cost of services.

That's indeed pretty shocking to me.  Capitalism has enabled the
development of our economy and has propelled industrilization (Today we
think of it as something good, except environmentally.) and general
welfare, but leaving everything to the invisible hand causes things like
this.  There are things that are rare in supply (ambulance services),
rare in demand, but when there is demand, it's an emergency with the
life of a fellow somewhere.

> > For a government to be able to handle social needs, it must not be
> > corruputed.

> [citation needed]
> ...can you name some non-corrupt governments as examples?

I mean, for a government to do things efficently.  I'd say most
governments handle things badly, so the point is kind-of there.

> This is important. Listing problems with a government is easy. If the
> solution were simple, we wouldn't have these problems. Even with as much as
> the current people in power will fight to maintain that - if there were a
> simple solution that resulted in better living for everyone, that *didn't*++>
> result in thousands of small-to-medium disasters (at a minimum) during a
> transition phase, we'd have put it into place.
>
> That doesn't mean I think improvement is impossible, just that it's not a
> matter of "swap this government system for that other one, and things will
> be better immediately and much better in the long term."




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Agreed.

If you take a look at China's revolution in the 1910s, people didn't
bother with it.  It was just a thing of the people who understand what
democracy is.  Therefore people started the social movement in the
1920s, educating the general public about democracies, science, and the
very monarchy they've been living in.

Outright just changing the system of government is no use for sure.  Of
course we need social changes, especially of how people think of money.
I don't have much to talk about in this aspect yet, when I have more
spare time I'll include it in the project.

> For example: Copyright, trademark, and patent laws are currently horrible,
> and causing a lot of damage. However, just removing them wouldn't help -
> that'd just mean that mega-corporations could use anyone's work to make
> profit for themselves without paying for it. It'd mean a return to private
> patronage and extensive contracts involved before you can read a book or
> watch a movie.... and ordinary citizens would not be the ones with the
> advantage in that situation. (...What I want is an end to the Berne
> convention, copyright dropped to about 25-30 years automatic, and requiring
> registration & growing fees to extend it. $100 US for the next 10 years, in
> the US - a nominal fee that covers registration costs. $1000 for 10 years
> past that: you have to still be making money to bother. $10,000 for every
> ten years past that - if Disney wants to keep *Snow White* in its control,
> it can do so, but they have to pay the public to keep the monopoly. And
> that's per work, not per franchise: Every episode of *Star Trek* would need
> to be registered and extended.)

Yes.

> > Theories such as the separation of powers exist, but in
> > contemperory times, implementations such as the US have
> > sometimes-corrupt but almost always ineffective governments.
>
> On the one hand: yes, I get that.
> On the other: cars do not regularly run people over on the sidewalk in my
> neighborhood. The wiring in my house does not cause fires. The food I buy
> at local restaurants does not poison me. My neighbors do not burn tires for
> heat in the winter. The water in my kitchen sink is safe to drink. And for
> all the gun violence in my local area, nobody sits on their front porch and
> does target practice on other human beings. My family's doctors do not
> demand intimate favors in exchange for health care services.
>
> My government has a lot of flaws, but it also has successfully provided
> enough safety regulations that I can be comfortable enough to criticize it.

Not false.



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Though here where I live you can't be sure about the last point.

> I don't mean, "we should just celebrate the good that governments have
> done." I mean that saying "it's horribly corrupt; we should throw it out"
> needs to start with an awareness of the thousands of small benefits that
> laws have brought. Any anarchist/libertarian "free community" needs to
> first decide, "can you burn waste in your backyard? If so, what kinds; if
> not, who's going to enforce that rule?" ...Will you have private land
> ownership, and if so, can you cut down all the trees on "your" land? Can
> you throw waste into "your" river?
>
> ...Can you have a business selling heroin to teenagers? How about alcohol?
> Tobacco? Caffeine?
>
> What toxins are acceptable to sell to anyone, which are restricted, and
> which are forbidden? Who decides, and who enforces those rules?

I'll reply to this when I get more of social contact theory.

> I am firmly in favor of free software. I would like to see governments be
> required to use free, open-source software for government purposes - to not
> be beholden to any business or company for essential government functions.
> (Or even optional government functions.) But I am aware that the visible
> government--currently-elected legislators--is a small portion of a complex
> system, and that there is no possible simple, sweeping reform that will fix
> the current batch of problems (and there are so, so many problems) without
> bringing in a host of others. And I am not so sanguine as to trust the
> people who say "eh, we'll deal with those when they come up."
>
> if you want to build a government that's free-and-equal, start by talking
> to single mothers with kids under 5 years old, and asking what they need
> from a government. Design a system that works for them, and you'll have a
> foundation that can be extended to support any size of community.

Good idea.

> (Sorry this has gotten rather far from "free software" discussion. I think
> it does all tie together - one of the reasons free software has problems
> catching on, is corporate influence over governments, so the very structure
> of government is part of the discussions. But it does wind up getting
> pretty far from "why can't schools just use Linux-based laptops?")

The LibrePlanet mailing list isn't just a place to discuss about free
software, I suppose.  Social ideas are of course good here, there've
been people discussing about nonfree software requirements in COVID
tests, which went on to social stuff.

Regards,



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Andrew

4.  Reply from vidak

Andrew,

Your email is warmly welcomed. I have had exactly the same thoughts
recently.

It is interesting to me because, and I have no shame in admitting this,
I am an anarchist. I see Free Software as a way to resist the State and
try and dissolve it completely.

I would highly recommend you go back to them and show them GNU Guix?
Maybe the point is moot now. Guix is _insanely_ advanced, and that's the
angle you could take to them--the perfect package manager has finally
been built. To my mind, we've now perfectly solved the problem.

The way I look at the issue, though, is that the problem is with Statist
society in general. Hierarchical societies are not natural for humans,
so I maintain. I like GNU for its American sort of approach to this. I
don't share a lot of American culture, but GNU reminds me of Henry David
Thoreau's famous epithet: "the best government is that which governs
least of all, that is to say: not at all".

I come from an anarcho-communist approach. Perhaps we should have a
discussion about attracting attention to the radical elements of GNU--we
could convince people to join on that basis?

Anyway, I have gone on far too long.

Awesome to read your email (:

~vidak

4.1.  Reply from Andrew

vidak wrote:
> Your email is warmly welcomed. I have had exactly the same thoughts
> recently.
>
> It is interesting to me because, and I have no shame in admitting this,
> I am an anarchist. I see Free Software as a way to resist the State and
> try and dissolve it completely.

These are things that I agree with that I don't usually say because of
*practical reasons* and *some type of law that's an exception to article
25 (freedom of expression) in the PRC*.



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> I would highly recommend you go back to them and show them GNU Guix?
> Maybe the point is moot now. Guix is _insanely_ advanced, and that's the
> angle you could take to them--the perfect package manager has finally
> been built. To my mind, we've now perfectly solved the problem.

Good idea.  I use the Guix package manager on my system.  I've tried
Guix System, but there was a problem---Guix is still heavily integrated
with UNIX-like operating systems (GNU/Linux), where everything is
supposed to be a file in specific locations.  How /gnu/store and Guix
profiles work causes insane compatibility and maintainance issues in
UNIX-like systems.

As far as I know, Guix is written in Scheme, a dialect of Lisp.  It may
be a good idea to implement a fork of it in
http://metamodular.com/Common-Lisp/lispos.html.

We might use Lisp machines instead of poorly designed modern processor
architecture, utilizing functional programming to a great extent.  (Or
Haskell, but that's not the point lol)

> The way I look at the issue, though, is that the problem is with Statist
> society in general. Hierarchical societies are not natural for humans,
> so I maintain. I like GNU for its American sort of approach to this. I
> don't share a lot of American culture, but GNU reminds me of Henry David
> Thoreau's famous epithet: "the best government is that which governs
> least of all, that is to say: not at all".

What a government should do is a crucial question to be discussed in
this project.  I believe that the government must keep some control over
people.  Life is a sacrifice between (protection and liberty) => freedom.
Please take a look at my notes below.

> I come from an anarcho-communist approach. Perhaps we should have a
> discussion about attracting attention to the radical elements of GNU--we
> could convince people to join on that basis?

I live in China, with communism.  Not going to comment here.  I'd be
willing to discuss that in private, though.  My OpenPGP key is
https://www.andrewyu.org/andrew.asc.

> Anyway, I have gone on far too long.
> Awesome to read your email (:

Definitely shorter than many two the previous emails :)  Great to hear
from people who have thoughts on government power too.

> ~vidak
>



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> https://zoinks.one/vidak

I get a blank page when I go there, with "To use Pleroma, please enable
JavaScript."  Apparantly Pleroma is free software, glimpsed through the
JavaScript, whitelisted it in LibreJS.

---

From your website/profile (you post so much, can't read them all):

> We anarchists distinguish ourselves from other movements and political
> organisations by holding to a concept of social and political freedom
> that is radically different—and for that reason far more
> authentic—than any other. Where virtually every other political
> tendency seeks to capture or win power through the state—be it merely
> some rung or portion of it, or its entire structure—anarchists argue
> that we should do away with it.
>
> We seek the formation of a society where there are no large masses of
> people, such as ourselves, who are Governed and coerced by small
> numbers of rulers—be they in Parliaments, Centrelink offices, Courts,
> or law firms. Our picture of the future imagines a Western Australia
> where people are, both individually and through our communities, the
> deciders of their own fates. We anarchists have good reason to say
> that States and Governments are the places where culture and
> creativity go to die.
>
> Every kind of social power and social domination of a minority over a
> majority comes with its own type of slavery. The boss over the
> worker. The principal of the State school over a student. The landlord
> over the renter. The Centrelink bureaucrat over the unemployed and
> impoverished, and so on. We say that when you look at social
> organisation this way, you see life in our communities for what it
> is—the suffering of the commanded by those who wield command.

Definitely understandable, but consider two simple problems:

1.  What if, in an anarchy, people get murdered?  Is that okay?
2.  Are people in the anarchy free to setup a dictatorship, with guns
    and cannons?  Is this power limited?  If it is, how is this an
    anarchy?

Boils down to the exact definition of anarchy.

> Society should be, so we say, directly democratic. That is, the people
> who are affected by decisions should be the ones making them. People
> in houses should be the ones controlling them. People who work should
> should be the ones who decide how and why that work is done.



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Another problem:  it's hard to keep up educating people on things that
affect them.  Few people are good at all of: economics, environmental
protection, mathematics, political science, psychology, and all other
things that must be considered while running a country.  We may be able
to work out this education, not in the forseeable future, but a good
idea nevertheless.  Ancient Greece (especially Athens) is democratic,
but people who can't make good military/diplomatic decisions partially
caused its war with Sparta and subsequently its fall.  We have
representative democracy, not only because direct democracy doesn't
scale (this could be overcome with blockchains and decentralized
networking), it's also because the people don't make the best decisions
in the long term.  There are people who specialize in fields, because we
can't learn everything.

Of course, modern decisions require knowledge from multiple "fields".
As much as we are trying to understand everything in the world, we
cannot (proof needed, intuition used).  Currently, people just work
together (or fight with each other, allowed by bugs in political
systems).  For reasons not to be discussed in this brief email, humans
communicate with each other much less efficiently than when we are
thinking by ourselves, assuming the combined set of knowledge is the
same.  Rethinking collaboration is needed.

However, as a result of elections in representative democracy,
politicians' goal in mind is to win the next election to get sweet
money.  Elected?  Sure, just do everything promised, then sit in wage
and bribes and relax doing nothing at all for the people.  Just make
sure the people who elected you are pleased and get reelected and get
money.  This must be overcome.

Before we get rid of money entirely, the easiest way to do that would be
to pay politicians by their performance (which would be hard to
measure), not to give them a fixed/slightly-variable wage.

Maybe a system where everybody voices their opinion would work.  We
create a distributed network (e.g. a blockchain) (assuming people have
computers, and that RSA hasn't been cracked yet or there's an
alternative algorithm) that stores the reputation of each person's
thoughts in a specific field, and their voices are taken more with a
higher reputation, kind of like how Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow works,
but distributed (avoiding a central authority which may become corrupt).

There are two major problems with this approach.  Firstly, with the
development of science, fields become blurry.  It may be hard to feel
the existance of "fields" at all!  At that point, if we just give a
generic catchall reputation to each person, it might be abused for
totally irrelevant source-of-reputation and use-of-reputations.




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(Note here that the "reputation" may be a higher-dimensional number,
something like $1+2i+3j+4k$.  They don't need to be defined in terms of
reals, of course.)

Secondly, simply put:  Who, or what algorithm, after collecting those
"voices", gives the final decision?

4.1.1.  Reply from Jean Louis

O* Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss <libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org>
[2022-01-21 18:18]:
> Good idea.  I use the Guix package manager on my system.  I've tried
> Guix System, but there was a problem---Guix is still heavily integrated
> with UNIX-like operating systems (GNU/Linux), where everything is
> supposed to be a file in specific locations.  How /gnu/store and Guix
> profiles work causes insane compatibility and maintainance issues in
> UNIX-like systems.

My impression on Guix is quite contrary as /gnu/store is installed on
any compatible hardware such as x86_64, i686, armhf, aarch64, and
powerpc64le, see: https://guix.gnu.org/en/download/

Guix as package manager may be run as separate system on the host
system. So as long as hardware is compatible, your Guix as guest
system will be compatible.

Maintenance issues are actually minimized, I cannot see what you
see. Guix is everything but not causing insane compatibility and
maintenance issues.

If you have any real issue, report it to Guix bug trucker.

> As far as I know, Guix is written in Scheme, a dialect of Lisp.  It may
> be a good idea to implement a fork of it in
> http://metamodular.com/Common-Lisp/lispos.html.

I would like to see that for reason that I know Common Lisp so much
better than Scheme, though there are technical advantages for scheme
and GNU Guile in particular. If you ask me I would like GNU Emacs to
run as PID 1 hanling all other processes.

> We might use Lisp machines instead of poorly designed modern
> processor architecture, utilizing functional programming to a great
> extent.  (Or Haskell, but that's not the point lol)

Yes, please. Show us. Though so much work has been put in Guix, why
simple not improve the existing OS?




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> > The way I look at the issue, though, is that the problem is with Statist
> > society in general. Hierarchical societies are not natural for humans,
> > so I maintain. I like GNU for its American sort of approach to this. I
> > don't share a lot of American culture, but GNU reminds me of Henry David
> > Thoreau's famous epithet: "the best government is that which governs
> > least of all, that is to say: not at all".
>
> What a government should do is a crucial question to be discussed in
> this project.  I believe that the government must keep some control over
> people.  Life is a sacrifice between (protection and liberty) => freedom.
> Please take a look at my notes below.

Oh my. Of course, we are all either individualists or collectivists.

https://opinionfront.com/individualism-vs-collectivism

But OK, I don't mind, as I am aware that society is full of robots,
prisoners who wish to become prisoners' ward. And so it goes.

> > I come from an anarcho-communist approach. Perhaps we should have a
> > discussion about attracting attention to the radical elements of GNU--we
> > could convince people to join on that basis?
>
> I live in China, with communism.  Not going to comment here.  I'd be
> willing to discuss that in private, though.  My OpenPGP key is
> https://www.andrewyu.org/andrew.asc.

Ahahaha you see, government is keeping control over you.

> Definitely understandable, but consider two simple problems:
>
> 1.  What if, in an anarchy, people get murdered?  Is that okay?

It is not okay.

Freedom is easy, do whatever you wish but don't force other people to
do it. If we all follow that simple principle, we would not have any
troubles. Create agreements and do it with people in agreement.

> 2.  Are people in the anarchy free to setup a dictatorship, with guns
>     and cannons?  Is this power limited?  If it is, how is this an
>     anarchy?

I find anarchy represents freedom. Anarchy means that above, do what
you wish, but don't force others.

As soon as you start forcing others to do anything, that is
government.



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We don't need governments, we need consciousness.

> > Society should be, so we say, directly democratic. That is, the people
> > who are affected by decisions should be the ones making them. People
> > in houses should be the ones controlling them. People who work should
> > should be the ones who decide how and why that work is done.

That does not work, as that is manipulated and controlled by few.

In companies people don't accept any staff members, right? So they ask
for qualifications of staff members, as such people have to have
specific skills, knowledge, experience, analytical capabilities.

In direct democracy, which never truly existed in history by the way,
people are asked to decide about things they have no adequate
knowledge.

> Another problem:  it's hard to keep up educating people on things that
> affect them.  Few people are good at all of: economics, environmental
> protection, mathematics, political science, psychology, and all other
> things that must be considered while running a country.  We may be able
> to work out this education, not in the forseeable future, but a good
> idea nevertheless.  Ancient Greece (especially Athens) is
> democratic,

That is one way of looking at it, but when you look into facts it was
never truly democratic. For example women were not allowed to
vote. How is that democracy? Were women not "demos" or volk, people?!

> but people who can't make good military/diplomatic decisions
> partially caused its war with Sparta and subsequently its fall.

Which proves we shall learn from animals.  It also proves insanity in
humanity.

> We have representative democracy,

We have illusions under which we live with purpose to keep being
controlled by those in charge. There is no such thing as
"representative democracy", the term itself is fully corrupted. But
let us live the illusion.

> not only because direct democracy doesn't scale (this could be
> overcome with blockchains and decentralized networking), it's also

It could scale. I don't vouch for democracy. But it is easy to
scale. Give me example of decision to be made and I will let you know
how. If you wish to make a road in specific village, so ask



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villagers. Why it would not scale? It is quite easy to do that.

> because the people don't make the best decisions in the long term.

Because majority want to live a life and are not qualified to improve
humanity. Teaching them is worth.

> Of course, modern decisions require knowledge from multiple "fields".
> As much as we are trying to understand everything in the world, we
> cannot (proof needed, intuition used).  Currently, people just work
> together (or fight with each other, allowed by bugs in political
> systems).

Currently? Or always was so?

> For reasons not to be discussed in this brief email, humans
> communicate with each other much less efficiently than when we are
> thinking by ourselves, assuming the combined set of knowledge is the
> same.  Rethinking collaboration is needed.

That is right, with more communication we would be such better greater
civilization.

> However, as a result of elections in representative democracy,
> politicians' goal in mind is to win the next election to get sweet
> money.  Elected?  Sure, just do everything promised, then sit in wage
> and bribes and relax doing nothing at all for the people.  Just make
> sure the people who elected you are pleased and get reelected and get
> money.  This must be overcome.

Yes, by raising awareness.

> Before we get rid of money entirely, the easiest way to do that
> would be to pay politicians by their performance (which would be
> hard to measure), not to give them a fixed/slightly-variable wage.

Money is not bad. But you have to get rid of banks, not money. Banks
which create money out of thing air are controlling the planet. But
money as such, like gold or silver, platinum, use it, it is not
bad. Just tell to world not to lie that money is there while it is
not.

> Maybe a system where everybody voices their opinion would work.

That is always good idea.

But as of 2021 we live in system where we can voice our opinion so
much less than in 2020, and so much less than in 2019. So I don't know



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where this leads.

> We create a distributed network (e.g. a blockchain) (assuming people
> have computers, and that RSA hasn't been cracked yet or there's an
> alternative algorithm) that stores the reputation of each person's
> thoughts in a specific field, and their voices are taken more with a
> higher reputation, kind of like how Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow
> works, but distributed (avoiding a central authority which may
> become corrupt).

It will never work.

Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

4.1.2.  Reply from Erica Frank

On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 11:06 AM Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> wrote:

     > > The way I look at the issue, though, is that the problem is with
     Statist
     > > society in general. Hierarchical societies are not natural for
     humans,

   [citation needed]
   We have always had hierarchies. We have not always had absolute
   hierarchies, where the person/people in charge of one area are presumed
   to be in charge of all others. But human societies have never been
   "every person decides what to do for themselves, without repercussions
   if they disagree with the leaders."
   ...This is pretty much built into our genes, as three-year-olds who
   decide to do what they want without paying attention to their leaders,
   generally don't grow up to pass on those genes. Obedience to authority
   is a survival trait.
   It's one that needs temperance as people grow - teens challenge
   authority so that, as adults, they can learn to be authorities. (Even
   if only over themselves. 8-year-olds don't get to make all their own
   decisions; adults do. What age or milestone makes someone "adult"
   varies widely by culture.) But any claim that "people should be free to
   decide their own actions" needs to consider how that applies to small
   children. Do they decide? Do their parents decide? What about abusive
   or neglectful parents? (Who steps in to stop them?)




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     > 1.  What if, in an anarchy, people get murdered?  Is that okay?
     It is not okay.

   How is that decision enforced in an anarchy? Who decides what behaviors
   are not okay, and who's responsible for making other people go along
   with them?
   This has always been the problem with proposed anarchies. Most
   anarchists agree that various acts of violence are wrong and not
   allowed - murder, torture, theft, and so on - but their proposed
   non-government doesn't have any method for dealing with people who do
   these things. It's like the assumption is, "if we get rid of
   governments, nobody will want to murder their neighbor for playing
   their music too late at night. Nobody will murder their ex-girlfriend
   and her new boyfriend."

     Freedom is easy, do whatever you wish but don't force other people
     to
     do it. If we all follow that simple principle, we would not have any
     troubles. Create agreements and do it with people in agreement.

   The idea of "free to act as long as others agree" handwaves past the
   existence of scam artists and charismatic predators. In an anarchist
   society, is one free to convince others to take heroin? Is there an age
   of consent? If so, who decides what it is, and who decides what happens
   to people who violate it?
   It also skips over the problem of accidents. If I light my home with
   candles and, with the wax buildup on the walls, a spark makes my house
   catch on fire, and it burns down three other houses and kills several
   people - am I a murderer?
   If I burn charcoal for heat in winter and most of my family dies from
   carbon monoxide poisoning - am I a murderer? (Will there be a public
   education system to warn people not to burn charcoal indoors? Who
   administers it? Who pays for it?)

     > 2.  Are people in the anarchy free to setup a dictatorship, with
     guns
     >     and cannons?  Is this power limited?  If it is, how is this an
     >     anarchy?
     I find anarchy represents freedom. Anarchy means that above, do what
     you wish, but don't force others.
     As soon as you start forcing others to do anything, that is
     government.
     We don't need governments, we need consciousness.

   [citation needed]
   You seem to be saying that if everyone were reasonably well-educated,
   there would be no predators, no people working in bad faith, no
   short-sighted people who insist that it's fine if they dump toxic waste



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   in the river near their house because it'll just wash out to sea and
   not be a problem. Modern corporate shenanigans says this is not true.
   Education and resources do not bring empathy. I'm not sure what
   "consciousness" means here, but a few million years of human history
   show that it's never going to be a universal trait.
   I understand the appeal of "if people would just pay attention and try
   to get along, we could sort out all these problems! We have the
   resources to make the world a much better place!" Where I disagree, is
   the apparent assumption that there is some magic-button method that
   will switch the majority of people from however they are today, to
   whatever kind of people they'd need to be for this method to work.

     > not only because direct democracy doesn't scale (this could be
     > overcome with blockchains and decentralized networking), it's also

   Blockchain and decentralized networking cannot fix the problems with
   democracy, because "decentralized" anything cannot fix the problems of
   identity scams.
   We have plenty of decentralized systems right now. The entire fediverse
   is decentralized. IRC is decentralized. Anyone can host a server and
   set up a communications hub. Once that needs to tie to a legal
   identity, "decentralized" goes out the window.
   You cannot solve democracy problems with software because it's a social
   system. There is no amount of online-identity-checking that can address
   the problem of "parent threatens 18-year-old with homelessness if he
   doesn't hand over his voting access code." (There are similar exploits
   possible in the current systems, but anonymous paper voting makes them
   more difficult.)
   ...If you want to address democracy with software, start with arranging
   free internet access for everyone. After that's in place - and
   functional - we can look into "what can we do with this universal
   resource?" But until internet is actually guaranteed, not just "oh,
   everyone has that... we can ignore rural communities of a few dozen
   people who don't... and people whose electricity has been shut off...
   and  households where a teen got caught pirating movies so comcast shut
   off their internet..." there's no point in talking about coordinated
   government online, because it's not "democracy" but "control by the
   elite who have resources not available to everyone."

     It could scale. I don't vouch for democracy. But it is easy to
     scale. Give me example of decision to be made and I will let you
     know
     how. If you wish to make a road in specific village, so ask
     villagers.

   At this point, I wish to bring up the Simpson's Monorail episode.
   "Ask the villagers" implies that the person asking is (1) not lying and
   (2) actually has the village's well-being as a goal.



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     > For reasons not to be discussed in this brief email, humans
     > communicate with each other much less efficiently than when we are
     > thinking by ourselves, assuming the combined set of knowledge is
     the
     > same.  Rethinking collaboration is needed.
     That is right, with more communication we would be such better
     greater
     civilization.

   We currently have instant, near-global communication, and we have had
   it for decades. Short of mass telepathy, we're not getting better
   communication options.

     > However, as a result of elections in representative democracy,
     > politicians' goal in mind is to win the next election to get sweet
     > money.  Elected?  Sure, just do everything promised, then sit in
     wage
     > and bribes and relax doing nothing at all for the people.  Just
     make
     > sure the people who elected you are pleased and get reelected and
     get
     > money.  This must be overcome.
     Yes, by raising awareness.

   Any solution predicated on the raised consciousness of the masses is
   doomed.
   This is not because the masses are stupid, but because they are busy.
   Most people are focused on survival, with their "extra" time mostly set
   aside for leisure. Assigning them the task of "figure out how your
   survival method impacts strangers a thousand miles away, and use your
   limited leisure time to research and understand this" is going to be
   soundly rejected. Most people are willing to make adjustments that
   improve everyone's lives in the future, but figuring out what those are
   is never going to be everyone's job.

     > Before we get rid of money entirely, the easiest way to do that
     > would be to pay politicians by their performance (which would be
     > hard to measure), not to give them a fixed/slightly-variable wage.
     Money is not bad. But you have to get rid of banks, not money. Banks
     which create money out of thing air are controlling the planet. But
     money as such, like gold or silver, platinum, use it, it is not
     bad.

   Money based on scarce resources has its own set of problems, which is
   why basically everyone switched to fiat money. I've considered an
   economic system based on labor-hours instead of a physical resource,
   but I don't understand enough economic theory to sort out how it would
   function. (It's hard to research. A lot of the texts about "economic



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   theory" are more focused on "how people get rich" than "how money
   actually works.")

     > Maybe a system where everybody voices their opinion would work.
     That is always good idea.
     But as of 2021 we live in system where we can voice our opinion so
     much less than in 2020, and so much less than in 2019. So I don't
     know
     where this leads.

   I don't have any less freedom to voice my opinions now than I did 3
   years ago, or 10 years ago. In fact, I have access to several
   communication platforms now that didn't exist in the past.
   Whole lot of people think "freedom to voice an opinion" means "freedom
   from social consequences of voicing that opinion." Or that "freedom to
   voice an opinion" should include "ability to make people pay attention
   to & respect my opinion." Those, we may have less of. But there's no
   shortage of places and ways to voice an opinion these days.

     > We create a distributed network (e.g. a blockchain) (assuming
     people
     > have computers, and that RSA hasn't been cracked yet or there's an
     > alternative algorithm) that stores the reputation of each person's
     > thoughts in a specific field, and their voices are taken more with
     a
     > higher reputation, kind of like how Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow
     > works, but distributed (avoiding a central authority which may
     > become corrupt).
     It will never work.

   That, I fully agree with. Starting with the problem of "assuming people
   have computers..."
   Fix that first. Then see where the rest of the equation stands. Don't
   even look past that point until that part is solved, because I don't
   think that's a trivial issue.
   "Get everyone a computer" is pretty damn close to "end poverty." Have
   fun.
   (Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom goes into some of
   the problems with reputation-based systems.) (Stack Exchange/Overflow
   is one of the most hostile tech resources online. It's better now.
   "Better" is nowhere near "actually welcoming of new and inexperienced
   people." The problem with rep-based systems starts with "what community
   is assigning reputation bonuses?" because that's self-selecting for
   more of the same.)

     Jean
     Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
     [1]https://www.fsf.org/campaigns



Yu                            Informational                    [Page 39]

RFD RFDN             Email Thread for Mathematical Society       April 2022


     In support of Richard M. Stallman
     [2]https://stallmansupport.org/
     _______________________________________________
     libreplanet-discuss mailing list
     [3]libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
     [4]https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discus
     s

References

   1. https://www.fsf.org/campaigns
   2. https://stallmansupport.org/
   3. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
   4. https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss

4.1.3.  Reply from Jean Louis

* Erica Frank <e.lynn.frank@gmail.com> [2022-01-22 00:44]:
>    ...This is pretty much built into our genes, as three-year-olds who
>    decide to do what they want without paying attention to their leaders,
>    generally don't grow up to pass on those genes. Obedience to authority
>    is a survival trait.

Not built in my genes.

Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

5.  Informative References

   [THREAD]   Yu, A., "A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic,
              democratic and free system", January 2022,
              <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-
              discuss/2022-01/msg00049.html>.

Author's Address

   Andrew Yu
   The 2nd School Aff. to FDU
   Email: andrew@andrewyu.org
   URI:   https://www.andrewyu.org/





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