[aklug] Re: OFFTOPIC: Re: Re: ACS Google Gateway

Richard, who do you think wrote most of the OS code that you now make
your living off of and who paid to develop the network that you now
profit from? Just wondering. Seems there is some irony involved unless I
missed the point of your screed. --greg

On 10/22/2013 01:07 AM, Szechuan Death wrote:
> Sorry, I just can't resist. This post *calls* to me, demanding
> response. The blood of slaughtered memes cries to me from the parched
> earth...
>
> On 10/21/13 11:38 PM, Greg Schmitz wrote:
>
>> First of, I want to apologize to Arthur, in particular, and the readers
>> of this list for the manner in which I composed my comment. I have only
>> been on this list for a short time, joining after I started using Linux
>> again after a long hiatus. I wrote my comment after a night out with
>> friends, eating and drinking and should have waited until the next day
>> (Saturday) to hit the send button
> I might have suggested waiting even longer.
>
>> Efficiency? Do you think a private entity, with profit as a motive, can
>> be more efficient than a host of other models for accomplishing work and
>> goals - including models that historically have been used by our
>> governments? I think not, and I think history is on my side.
> That would be an erroneous thought, and I use the term generously.
> (<Larry the Cable Guy> That was wrong of me. Lord, I apologize for
> that... </LtCG>) Coercive agency (i.e. "government") operates *counter*
> to market forces (i.e. "the expressed real preferences of everybody else
> in the world"). If what they did was such a great idea, they wouldn't
> have to force everybody else to do it; it would already be happening,
> QED. Government therefore *starts* from a position where THE ABSOLUTE
> BEST it can accomplish is adding some nonzero complexity and cost to a
> process that would already be occurring. That is the best-case
> scenario. It all goes downhill from there.
>
> Government is efficient at exactly one thing: "doing what *some people*
> (i.e. the ones in charge) want". It is *not* efficient at satisfying
> general human wants. If you would like an example of how this works in
> the real world, then pan south to Venezuela, where the Glorious Vanguard
> of the Bolivarian Proletariat has won the people a great victory over
> the easy availability of toilet paper. (Presumably we can agree that "a
> clean anus" is, more-or-less, a universal human desire? I imagine that
> we can also, then, agree that it appears to be a need best served by
> market forces, the alternative appearing to be less effective at
> actually providing bogwipe to the masses? Consider this particular case
> an exemplar of the general principle.)
>
>> As examples of failure in the world of
>> profit, from private endeavours, one need only look at the cost and the
>> many failed attempts by private enterprise (with regard to computing
>> systems) at DOD, the FBI, the IRS, DOJ, FAA or perhaps the Municipality
>> of Anchorage
>> <http://www.adn.com/2013/04/12/2862627/software-to-automate-anchorage.html>.
> The chief problem with these is that they are paid for via non-market
> funding mechanisms. One can produce all kinds of nonsense when there is
> no profitability test involved to weed stupid ideas or poor execution
> out of existence. It is said that in government, nothing succeeds like
> failure; now, delete everything you just wrote in response to that
> statement and go ask someone who works for it. (I have, at varying
> removes, and it's true.)
>
>> Are you referring to the collusion of Public officials with private
>> entrepreneurs?
> This is called 'regulatory capture', and it is a known and predictable
> pathology of coercive agencies, i.e. the State (or "the government", or
> whatever you want to call it). There are a lot of these. (It's
> pretty-well scriptable for anybody with basic powers of observation:
> regulation-capture-cartel-corruption, price
> caps-shortages-rationing-black market-corruption, you name the starting
> point and I'll give you the next step. It'll happen, too. That's
> because there's some things that just don't change, and some truths
> about the type of creatures we are and the way the Universe works that
> one ignores at one's peril.) Five thousand years ago, Pharaoh got to do
> whatever the hell he wanted, and so did anybody who convinced Pharaoh
> that his idea was really awesome. Today, the government and its agents
> at a certain level (loosely defined) gets to do whatever the hell *it
> wants/they want*, and so does anybody who convinces enough of the right
> people in the power structure currently squatting in the heart of
> Moscow-on-the-Potomac. This differs in fundamental ways - in
> sustainability, productivity, efficiency, tolerability, etc. - from a
> system where doing whatever you want requires convincing enough people
> of your idea's intrinsic excellence that they will voluntarily fork over
> cash for it.
>
>> I grew up in Wisconsin, which has, as far as I know,
>> only 2 stands of virgin timber remaining - everything else was clear cut
>> (twice) by "lumber barons" and paper makers with help from government.
>> Lots of jobs way back when - very few now.
> Wasn't it great that there was a government in charge of that instead
> of, I dunno, a bunch of individual property owners?
>
> Besides - what's more valuable, virgin forest or paper? Who makes that
> decision? (That's the crux of the problem: *WHO DECIDES*. Every
> answer to that question has consequences, and the consequences for some
> of those choices are nasty indeed.)
>
>> I'll go with the government any day over commerce, or the even worse
>> combination of commerce that controls government (call it what you will).
>>
>> Live Free or Die! --greg
> This pair of statements is so flamboyantly self-contradicting that the
> combination possesses the power to dissolve human flesh. You, sir, win
> one Internet.
>
> But I'm glad that you're happy about it. Apparently "the government"
> has decided that you are both an enemy to be subjected to the Eye of
> Sauron, and a slave to be mulcted more or less at will to whatever
> extent is deemed appropriate by the Politburo. I imagine that your
> happiness with that arrangement makes it *so* much more tolerable.
>
>> "Totalitarian society, especially in its more extreme versions, tends
>> to abolish the boundary between the public and the private; power, as
>> it grows ever more opaque, requires the lives of citizens to be
>> entirely transparent."
>>
>> Milan Kundera
> I think you misunderstand the meaning of this quote.
>
> But, I digress. This isn't really a good topic for AKLUG. So I'll do
> you a favor; I'll provide you some places where you CAN discuss this and
> it'll fit right in.
>
> So my favorite pool to micturate in is dc-stuff@dc-stuff.org[1]. This
> is a Mailman list, in operation for the last 20 years,
> quasi-affiliated-but-not-really-any-more with the Def Con convention.
> (Yes, THAT Def Con.) There's lots of fun with politics on that list.
> (Go figure. That, and recipes. It's been a long and strange
> evolution.) I heartily recommend it for anybody who wants to lose their
> political religion. Bring your A-game, some butthurt salve and a
> bandolier of really sharp rhetorical knives, because you'll need 'em.
>
> If you would like to get together with a group of like-minded folks and
> lame about how much capitalism sucks and how much more awesome a
> People's Republic with a STRONG AND GLORIOUS FUHRER^WFIRST
> SECRETARY^W^WDEAR LEADER would be, then lbo-talk[2] and marxism[3] are
> really swell places. The reciprocal grooming-rituals there are very
> calming to the list inhabitants.
>
> If you would like to test your assumptions - on the theory that the
> unexamined life is lacking, perhaps? - then I recommend browsing at
> mises.org. (There may be fora here on which they can be discussed, too;
> I've never checked. It would surprise me if there weren't.) You will
> discover that there are effectively irrefutable arguments against every
> economic position whose stigmata are visible in your post. If you
> choose that route, you might discover new perspectives that you had not
> considered before, always a worthwhile exercise.
>

-- 
Greg Schmitz
Alaska Moving Image Preservation Association (AMIPA)
Anchorage, Alaska
v: 907.786.4983
f: 907.786.1834
e: greg at amipa dot org
The Alaska Moving Image Preservation Association is a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to media preservation and education to ensure long-term access to Alaska’s moving image heritage.
www.amipa.org
---------
To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.