Brian Densmore wrote:
Open source is about freedom, but not all government regulation is bad.
Freedom "to" or freedom "from"?
That's a kind of empty statement. I for one think government regulations limiting government regulations are a good thing ;) The government which governs best governs least, and all that. But what's government? What we're really talking about is the centralization of coercive power. Parents govern their children. A handful of Rockefellers govern international monetary policy. Where should the control lie? IMHO, coercive power should be as decentralized as is feasible.
I like knowing that not any Joe Schmoe can get a license to practice medicine,
In Kansas, a chiropractor can do a physical. Not to knock chiropractors, but they aren't general physicians. They are going to miss things a MD or DO would catch. Yet English physicians who have hands down better clinical skills than your average American MD or DO can not do a physical in Kansas.
Why not let the consumers and the doctor's employer decide which accreditations are viable? Why is the big stick of national government necessary here?
or that vehicles have to meet a minimum standard of to be considered road worthy
Have you been outside lately? Cars only have to have _once_ been considered road worthy. And look at the barrier to entry in the automotive market. There aren't any "new" players. Just slow and steady consolidation heading toward stagnation...
Look what's happened to the aerospace industry. How many American manufacturers of planes are left? I wonder whether Scaled Composites and Armadillo Aerospace will be beaten into regulatory submission if they refuse to sell out to the established players?
or that daycare facilities need to check for criminal records before hiring. I like the idea of my children being cared for by people who haven't been convicted of being a pedophile. Call me crazy.
Do they really? Can you cite the statute? How effective has it been?
The problem is some times there's too much and other times there's not enough.
No. The problem is that sometimes it is coercive and sometimes it isn't.
People love to talk about how the FDA protects us from bad drugs. Ask them to show you some measurable proof and they'll grow quite. How does the body count add up? How many lives are saved versus lives lost? Go look for the answers and you'll find quite a different story: http://www.fdareview.org/harm.shtml. Did you know that most hospital patients are given drugs that aren't even FDA approved for their proscribe use?
What are the detrimental effects of the FDA? How about the excessive costs required to get drugs through the process? So much for the yearly updates to vaccines for children and the elderly. And you can also count out drugs for people suffering from rare diseases. The return on investment doesn't match the cost.
What about the time it takes to work the process? Prior to 1962 it took around 7 months from the filing of an IND to approval. In the 80's and 90's it took 8 years on average. Recently it has averaged around 7.3 years. How many people die waiting for the FDA to approve drugs? How many people suffer needlessly?
I also like knowing that not just any Joe Shmoe can contribute to the official Linux kernel. There are regulations in place to prevent that.
Huh? I assume by official, you're talking about Linus' kernel and not the NSA's. Anybody _can_ contribute to Linus' kernel. There aren't regulations in place to prevent that. There are self-governing processes in place to prevent people submitting code encumbered by coercive licenses and patents. There's a big difference. You can always opt out of the process by forking the kernel. You can't opt to be seen by the visiting foreign doctor or drive an unlicensed and unregistered car you built yourself...
I like the idea that any Joe Schmoe has the freedom to qualify under the existing fair regulations to be able to contribute to the Linux kernel. Freedom is great but without some form of control there is chaos and chaos is not always a good thing.
I hate it when people use the word fair. It rarely means what it is supposed to mean. Is it fair for Microsoft to allow the "fair" use of patents by standards organizations? When fair means at a fair and equal cost? I.e. available to everyone except their chief competitor in standards compliant infrastructure building blocks... the OSS community?
By control, what you're really saying is that one group of people know better than another, and that it is alright for them to force others to adhere to their standards. I think that is a dangerous statement. Especially when there's no telling which group of people you're standing with on each toss of the coin.
Freedom is the flipside of coercion. And coercion is rarely a good thing. The only valid example I can think of, is to counteract the coercive efforts of others.
There's a difference between a self-regulating OSS community and government. You opt-in to an OSS community. You can only opt-out of local, city, and state government by moving. It is a little harder to opt out of national regulations.
-- Garrett Goebel IS Development Specialist
ScriptPro Direct: 913.403.5261 5828 Reeds Road Main: 913.384.1008 Mission, KS 66202 Fax: 913.384.2180 www.scriptpro.com garrett at scriptpro dot com
On Wednesday 26 January 2005 02:09 pm, Garrett Goebel wrote:
The government which governs best governs least, and all that. But what's government? What we're really talking about is the centralization of coercive power. Parents govern their children. A handful of Rockefellers govern international monetary policy. Where should the control lie? IMHO, coercive power should be as decentralized as is feasible.
[lots of interesting anecdotes]
By control, what you're really saying is that one group of people know better than another, and that it is alright for them to force others to adhere to their standards. I think that is a dangerous statement. Especially when there's no telling which group of people you're standing with on each toss of the coin.
I had the pleasure of taking a class last year called "Introduction to Social Science" taught by Preston Corn at UMKC. The class was a phenomenal survey of the different fields of social science including 1/3 of the semester dedicated to looking at political science. The text we used is called _Power_and_Choice_ by W. Phillips Shively and can be had for under $20 off the internet. I have included the ISBN[1] at the bottom of this email for your reference; I hope you'll get it or check it out of a library and read the first through third chapters. Since that's probably not very likely, I have included some choice quotes from the first chapter below for your education:
"First [politics] involve[s] the making of a common decision for a group of people, that is, a uniform decision applying in the same way to all members of the group. Second, [politics] involve[s] the use of power by one person or a group of people to affect the behavior of another person or group of people." ... "Those actions that contribute to the making of a common policy for a group of people constitute politics."... "Power may be exercised as coercion when we force a person to do something he or she did not want to do, as persuasion when we convince someone that that is what she or he really wishes to do, or as the construction of incentives when we make the alternative so unattractive that only one reasonable option remains." ... "Any act of politics may be viewed from either of two perspectives, either as a cooperative search for an answer to common problems or as an act by which some members of a group impose their will on other members of the group. It is important to remember that generally both viewpoints are valid." "Over the last few centuries, people have focused increasingly on the state of which they are citizens, and the state has determined more of what goes on in their lives. Several centuries ago, most people were almost unaware of the state in which they lived; they noticed it only if the king's soldiers marched through their fields. At that time, many large geographic areas could hardly be said to have been organized as states at all. Gradually states have become more thoroughly organized and have demanded more from us."[2]
So, in summary: it can be dangerous but also beneficial. Without control the advances made in civilization would not exist as they do today. I think that the things that you pointed out in your anecdotes are not flawed because they are control; they are flawed because they are illogical control or ill-applied control -- a problem that can be corrected through your participation in the republic's political process.
Freedom is the flipside of coercion. And coercion is rarely a good thing. The only valid example I can think of, is to counteract the coercive efforts of others.
Based on all the benefits that organized forms of government have brought to the human race over the past 30,000 years, I would have to conclude that coercion or at least the threat of coercion has had a net-positive effect.
Quite frankly, your comments make me conclude you're either an extremist libertarian or an anarchist -- neither of which are healthy political persuasions.
As an aside to the other threads, political scientists widely consider American liberalism and American conservatism to both be variants of classical liberalism.
[1] ISBN 0-07-232252-7 [2] pp. 3-13
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Garrett Goebel -
Jason Clinton