I can’t decide if “Neolibertarians” are cynical libertarians, sane libertarians, or simply opportunistic conservatives.
That definition I linked to posits a false dichotomy, though. There’s more to any given political group than the inneffective utopian idealists and the pragmatic, compromising realists. Inability to get elected does not automatically render one a loser in the great political game.
Some time ago, a guy named Linus wrote a new operating system because he didn’t care for the existing alternatives. A decade or so later, it’s challanging and in some cases beating Windows and all the commercial Unixes in every market segment they compete in. This was accomplished largely without hype, without campaigning, and without great quantities of money. It happened because the people that mattered, the people working in the trenches of the IT industry, saw something they needed and used it. It was a battle won without fighting. A quintessentially Taoist victory. Ubiquity through natural osmosis.
I’m not much interested in winning elections, or passing or repealing laws, or acquiring majorities. I’m interested in making all those things irrelevent. To mangle an old hippie slogan, what if they threw a government, and nobody cared?
Practicaly every revolutionary ideologue in history has gotten it backwards. You can’t change the nature of a people by changing their government. In order to change the government, you must first transform the people.
….interested in making all those things irrelevant…
Agreed.
I thought the whole point to a federal republic was to eliminate government, unless all or some of the people have need for a governing body to aid them in attaining a specific goal or protect them from a specific threat. Even then, those governmental entities should only exist until the specific issue at hand has been addressed or until it is determined that the specific issue cannot be properly addressed by such an institution.
The people don’t understand that the government needs to change. They seem to believe that ‘the government’ is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent single entity.
….interested in making all those things irrelevant…
Agreed.
I thought the whole point to a federal republic was to eliminate government, unless all or some of the people have need for a governing body to aid them in attaining a specific goal or protect them from a specific threat. Even then, those governmental entities should only exist until the specific issue at hand has been addressed or until it is determined that the specific issue cannot be properly addressed by such an institution.
The people don’t understand that the government needs to change. They seem to believe that ‘the government’ is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent single entity.
Devil’s advocate on your analogy…
as you note.. Linux is kicking ass in “every market segment they compete in..”.. but are they competing in all market segments??
I am not particularly convinced that linux is kicking but in the home pc market–nor on the desks of most data-entry/marketing/office drones… Which I would wager, makes up at least 95% of the total pc market…
Are there any stats on total operating system usages across the globe?? I’m betting windows is still way dominant and isn’t actually losing that much market share if you look at absolute numbers of computers running…
I could be wrong.. I long to be wrong… Please find stats that prove me wrong!
thus.. perhaps your analogy is good.. and the problem is just that this is also the problem with libertarianism for me.. while a bunch of fairly hip individuals espouse it like they do their linux–overall, they are not actually making that much of a dent in the affairs of the vast herds of sheople grazing around the planet… :\\
Re: Devil’s advocate on your analogy…
Evidence here…
linux is booming on server side–but client side (which I’m sure outnumer the total number of servers by at least 20-1) is still dominant Microsquish–and doesn’t appear to be changing that much…
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-243527.html?legacy=cnet
Re: Devil’s advocate on your analogy…
Evidence here…
linux is booming on server side–but client side (which I’m sure outnumer the total number of servers by at least 20-1) is still dominant Microsquish–and doesn’t appear to be changing that much…
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-243527.html?legacy=cnet
Re: Devil’s advocate on your analogy…
First, I didn’t say it was kicking ass in all markets. And second, I realized after I wrote that that my meaning was unclear. Linux is competing in literally all markets which Windows and/or Unix also serve. In some of those markets (including markets that most people don’t ordinarily think about, like embedded systems), it is coming out the victor.
As a software engineer, I have a somewhat different perspective than perhaps the average consumer. Most people think desktops when they think computers. I think of desktops as a relatively small piece of the computer market (which they are, really). Linux is kicking ass in the fields which “run the world”, so to speak – embedded systems, servers, supercomputers. As such, it is changing people’s lives even if they aren’t aware of it. Desktop domination doesn’t strike me as a particularly urgent goal. Eventually Windows will be replaced… by what, I don’t know. GNU/Linux is still a pretty shitty desktop OS in many ways. The important thing is that the people who need an alternative have an alternative.
I’m hesitant to stretch the analogy too far… but if I were to chance it, I’d note that the places where Linux is taking over are the centralized servers and the ubiquitous devices… things that the average person doesn’t really have a choice about. Where Windows remains is dominant is in the home, where people remain content enough with it not to change. Which is kind of the way I would like to see liberty spread… if people want to be moralistic authoritarians in their homes, or in their little communities, fine. I don’t care. That doesn’t keep the services they depend on from moving to a new model.
Like I said, it’s a stretched analogy, so don’t make it try to hold too much weight.
Oh.. I didn’t mean…
to say that you did… (the markets thing..)… but that’s kinda the point I was making…
I agree with you that linux is better.. but I am not nearly so sure that Windows will be replaced… at least, that is not a given with me… for a couple of reasons… for one thing.. it is often a very big leap between the systems and beliefs that experts hold and the systems and beliefs that the masses are given/taught/hold…
My example is close to my home–i.e. scholarship..
If you look at academics–despite what a few claim–there is a lot of academic liberty… i.e. you are allowed to study/research what you want and most ideas–although some places are more ideological than others–will eventually get tested enough so that we end up with are reasonable knowledge structures that I think are pretty accurate…
however–I can tell you for a fact that 99% of the scholarship going on in academia never makes it in to high school or grade school curricula… Perfect example–People in the Middle Ages did not think the earth was flat. This lie–perpetrated by Washington Irving in the 19th century–is still taught today.. yet within the scholarly community–it has been known as bogus for nearly 40 years…
Where I’m going with this is that even if open-source stuff will tend to take over the expert realms… this does not guarantee that it will spread further… The traits that make it so good there are not necessarily the traits that would allow it–or something like it–to impinge upon the far larger markets (in terms of absolute numbers) of desktop computers… and here is where the problem really resides for me…
if this liberty merely extends to the expert elites… then it really doesn’t matter all that much..since until it also extends to the masses–they will form a latent weapon that can be used by crafty people to replace the elites with other elites…
and now I’m getting all abstract–and I know that the situation isn’t quite analogous–since academics don’t function in society the same way that servers function in the it network–but I do still think that assuming that crap-ass windows will eventually “just go away” or that desktop users don’t also “need” an alternative to windows is not necessarily a given…
Oh.. I didn’t mean…
to say that you did… (the markets thing..)… but that’s kinda the point I was making…
I agree with you that linux is better.. but I am not nearly so sure that Windows will be replaced… at least, that is not a given with me… for a couple of reasons… for one thing.. it is often a very big leap between the systems and beliefs that experts hold and the systems and beliefs that the masses are given/taught/hold…
My example is close to my home–i.e. scholarship..
If you look at academics–despite what a few claim–there is a lot of academic liberty… i.e. you are allowed to study/research what you want and most ideas–although some places are more ideological than others–will eventually get tested enough so that we end up with are reasonable knowledge structures that I think are pretty accurate…
however–I can tell you for a fact that 99% of the scholarship going on in academia never makes it in to high school or grade school curricula… Perfect example–People in the Middle Ages did not think the earth was flat. This lie–perpetrated by Washington Irving in the 19th century–is still taught today.. yet within the scholarly community–it has been known as bogus for nearly 40 years…
Where I’m going with this is that even if open-source stuff will tend to take over the expert realms… this does not guarantee that it will spread further… The traits that make it so good there are not necessarily the traits that would allow it–or something like it–to impinge upon the far larger markets (in terms of absolute numbers) of desktop computers… and here is where the problem really resides for me…
if this liberty merely extends to the expert elites… then it really doesn’t matter all that much..since until it also extends to the masses–they will form a latent weapon that can be used by crafty people to replace the elites with other elites…
and now I’m getting all abstract–and I know that the situation isn’t quite analogous–since academics don’t function in society the same way that servers function in the it network–but I do still think that assuming that crap-ass windows will eventually “just go away” or that desktop users don’t also “need” an alternative to windows is not necessarily a given…
Re: Devil’s advocate on your analogy…
First, I didn’t say it was kicking ass in all markets. And second, I realized after I wrote that that my meaning was unclear. Linux is competing in literally all markets which Windows and/or Unix also serve. In some of those markets (including markets that most people don’t ordinarily think about, like embedded systems), it is coming out the victor.
As a software engineer, I have a somewhat different perspective than perhaps the average consumer. Most people think desktops when they think computers. I think of desktops as a relatively small piece of the computer market (which they are, really). Linux is kicking ass in the fields which “run the world”, so to speak – embedded systems, servers, supercomputers. As such, it is changing people’s lives even if they aren’t aware of it. Desktop domination doesn’t strike me as a particularly urgent goal. Eventually Windows will be replaced… by what, I don’t know. GNU/Linux is still a pretty shitty desktop OS in many ways. The important thing is that the people who need an alternative have an alternative.
I’m hesitant to stretch the analogy too far… but if I were to chance it, I’d note that the places where Linux is taking over are the centralized servers and the ubiquitous devices… things that the average person doesn’t really have a choice about. Where Windows remains is dominant is in the home, where people remain content enough with it not to change. Which is kind of the way I would like to see liberty spread… if people want to be moralistic authoritarians in their homes, or in their little communities, fine. I don’t care. That doesn’t keep the services they depend on from moving to a new model.
Like I said, it’s a stretched analogy, so don’t make it try to hold too much weight.
Devil’s advocate on your analogy…
as you note.. Linux is kicking ass in “every market segment they compete in..”.. but are they competing in all market segments??
I am not particularly convinced that linux is kicking but in the home pc market–nor on the desks of most data-entry/marketing/office drones… Which I would wager, makes up at least 95% of the total pc market…
Are there any stats on total operating system usages across the globe?? I’m betting windows is still way dominant and isn’t actually losing that much market share if you look at absolute numbers of computers running…
I could be wrong.. I long to be wrong… Please find stats that prove me wrong!
thus.. perhaps your analogy is good.. and the problem is just that this is also the problem with libertarianism for me.. while a bunch of fairly hip individuals espouse it like they do their linux–overall, they are not actually making that much of a dent in the affairs of the vast herds of sheople grazing around the planet… :\\