Asklemmy

I'm a libertarian, leftist, socialist, and I'm strongly against digital copyright, politics and patents. I believe in freedom and free competition, and government investment in education, technology, and quality of life.

Libertarian: People are overwhelmingly good, and freedom allows the good people to reliability outmenuver the bad. People should have every freedom in so far as they are not encroaching on the equal or greater freedoms of anyone else. No technology is inherently bad, tech in the hands all results in the victory of the good. A notable acception is weapons of mass destruction, as any use against any population is very bad morally. In general when tech is outlawed the good loose the ability to use it against the bad or for the betterment of humanity, and the bad maintain access and use it against the good. When only the bad guys have Drugs, Encryption, Guns, The internet, etc ... the society is much worse off for it.

Leftist: When governments invest tax money into the common good of the people, via things like education, technology, and quality of life, then societies are healther, wealthier, more innovative, and the people are happier for it. No one wants to be homeless, sick, or stupid, or to be surrounded by people who are. Government investment stimulates the economy, and if money is spent domestically it lands right back in the pockets of working tax payers.

Socialist: When workers own stake in the companiess they work for, companies act in the interest of the workers (socialism). When companies are owned by investors, they act in the interst of the investors, usually against the interest of workers (capitalism). When companies act in the interst of the workers, wages are higher, workers are more free, and cost of living is lower. The people are happier. Governments does not need to be so big to keep the peace like they do today.

Digital copyright: the belief in the lie that copying and or improving upon an ethereal digital resource constitutes theft, is a massive detriment to society. It is clearly false because no one looses anything. It is defended by perpetuating the fear that it it would be harder to profit if information was free. It would be a different world, but you can still make a profit through art on a physical medium, and in other ways. The lie is used to justify unjust control of software vendors over their customers, and to justify fake sales in which the physical computer hardware is sold but the ability to actually control it is not part of the sale. And sales where a book or movie is sold, but the user is never given the copy they purchased. It is also used to deprive the poor access to educational material, and to justify the destruction of cultural archives for future generations.

Politics: Politicians are lower quality than ordinary people, because they are the people who wanted to rule, not the people who understand the impact of positive and negative of every singe decision. A monarchy has better chances of honest leadership because the quality if the monarch is random, instead of picked by might of advertising dollars out of a list of the worst people. The way to make a real good government involves a little lotocracy and a little meritocracy. My vision in short: a console, selected at random from the population, chooses qualification criteria for voting on a proposition, and a console is selected at random from the qualified public to make a decision.

Pattents: A temporary government issued monopoly on a process or mechanism. Patents were the single worst lapse in logic of our society, they are anticompetitive and slow innovation (the incredibly successful free software community, operating on very little time and money, is a glimpse of what a patenless society could be). A free market cannot coexist with patents. Arguments for pattens boil down to, if i invest as though i have patent protection from competition and i don't have it, my investment won't pan out. In a society without patents, companies build and improve on each others work, making R&D cheaper and faster. Sure, billion dollar research investments would not pan out, but they would also be completely unnecessary, because starting from scratch or waiting a decade would not be required to participate in innovation.