“Due to vast disparities in power and wealth, people will be aggressively clamoring for any moment of time or spare dollar from the wallet of the elites — [Tyler Cowen] uses the analogy of a billionaire rolling in a limousine through the streets of Calcutta, and anyone who has stepped off the plane in a poor country and been immediately inundated with salesmen and con artists can relate (except those people will now be us).”—escapefromwisconsin
“When soldiers go to die in Iraq and say ‘We are going there to defend our freedoms’, this doesn’t mean that Iraq is threatening their freedom of speech or [of] conscience directly. It means that they are fulfilling their part of the bargain where the state guarantees them these freedoms and they are prepared to die when the state needs it.”—Clarissa
“Try reading some of John Young’s correspondence, particularly his exchanges with journalists. There you will learn how to be more concise and pack a lot more meaning into a lot less words…He has left me open-mouthed at times, … ”—Todd Judge
“I think I will coin a phrase. It is an historical fact that gov’t embrace of ‘pro-market’ policies always means (1) more bureaucrats, (2) more complex regulations, (3) larger zones of human life that fall under rubric of state regulations, and hence, violence. I propose to call this ‘the libertarian paradox.’ Or should I call it ‘the liberal paradox’? Is that too antiquated a usage now?”—David Graeber
“Indeed, more money is being poured into AI research by Goldman-Sachs alone than by the top five academic centers, put together, and all of it helping to engender systems with a central ethos of predatory opportunism and parasitic amorality.”—David Brin
“Any time someone sets up a ‘heads I win, tails I-don’t-lose’ arrangement, there’s a good bet that someone else is losing.”—Michael O. Church
“I believe that this is because, for some inexplicable reason, we treat economy like a ‘force’ (like gravity or electromagnetism) instead of as a ‘creation’ (like a government). I don’t really see why, since all economies are ultimately made up of people, some of whom have a lot more power than others…just like government.”—m1sterlurk
“Still, as I say, the only criteria that should be a constant is human health and happiness, not the noise we often engage in when discussing business models and theories. Leave the disruption to the likes of Snowden, so that Snowden’s form of disruption performs a salutary check on government overreach and empire…”—Mitchell J. Freedman
“Volunteering for community: Yes! Working for tech company for free for work dudes get paid for: No! #lwtsummit”—Robyn O.
“So, we sell the stuff we catch overseas, and then import our stuff from China. Of course I’m sure economists will beat us over the head with Ricardian Equivalence to explain how this shipping of seafood thousands of miles across the globe every day is economically ‘efficient,’ and that our silly little common sense it totally wrong. After all, economics is ‘science!’ But does anyone think this energy efficient? How much fossil fuels are used in this system?”—escapefromwisconsin
“The ‘promise’ of automation has historically been ‘freeing workers from drudgery’ — that’s code for ‘unemployment.’ Benefits accrue upwards.”—LibrarianShipwreck
“Forcing people to ‘verify their identity’ via utility bills is thinly veiled classism. They want homeowners and master tenants.”—I really like bears.
“The everyday experiences of most people should attest to the fact that consumer sovereignty is a myth and that the voluntary nature of employment is a myth.”—Brainpolice2
HAT (Hub of All Things) incorporates sombunall (some but not all) aspects of pubwan. Basically, they’re working with rather than against the idea of ownership of data, but at least they encourage an active rather than passive role for individuals in the datascape. There’s also the detail of HUB being something that actually exists, unlike pubwan. Perhaps this is yet another data point in support of the utterly depressing conclusion that monetization is a pre-requisite for activity. Unschoolers notwithstanding, I see the fact that it’s run by academics as a definite positive, although these, sadly, are on the entreprenoorial end of the academic spectrum:
Q: How is the HAT different form other home hub projects? A: Are there other technologies, hubs or platforms out there? Of course! But there are very few teams of researchers out there who can deliver a real live working market platform as an outcome of a research project. Most will deliver a technology demonstrator or basic proof of concept, but to build a market requires real people, real money, real businesses and real products/services; that’s why we’re different, and as a bonus we also hope to change the world while doing it! Check this post on how we are different.
And of course they have to rub in the necessity of the business model by talking about changing the wooooorld! as if HAT is yet another social entreprenoorship fad.
commitment to freed markets, private property, and laissez-faire; b) an orientation toward class analysis and a rejection of hierarchical workplaces, corporate dominance, and gross economic inequality as evils both akin to and largely enabled by statism (especially by regulations that allow favoured corporations to reap the benefits of economies of scale while socialising the costs of diseconomies of scale), in favour of horizontal organisation and worker self-management; and c) a concern with combating forms of social privilege such as patriarchy and misogyny, white supremacy, heteronormativity and homophobia, cissexism, and ableism, again as evils both akin to statism and standing in relationships of mutual support with it. Opposition to militarism and nationalism, and support for environmentalism and open borders, are also part of the mix.
same principles, reversed priorities: (a) commitment to class consciousness and zero tolerance for hierarchy, dominance, inequality, privilege, militarism and nationalism as evils of comparable magnitude to the problem of statism and (b) orientation toward non-coercion, rights of personal property owners and live-and-let-live; and (c) zero tolerance for social privilege in the form of patriarchy, misogyny, white supremacy, heteronormativity, etc., and an interest in anti-statism to the extent that it is useful as a means to the end of destroying hierarchy in the abstract
left-libertarians are closest to the pro-free-market, anti-capitalist, anti-privilege position of such 19th-century individualist anarchists as Stephen Pearl Andrews, Voltairine de Cleyre, William B. Greene, Ezra Heywood, Thomas Hodgskin, Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and Josiah Warren.
The 19th century heroes of anagorism tend to include more Europeans (Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Rocker) than Americans, but include such Americans as Goldman, Spies, Parsons.
left-libertarians would agree with BHLs that banning sweatshops would harm workers, but rather than praising sweatshops would favour striving to undermine the social and political structures that systematically deprive impoverished workers of better options than sweatshops.
I believe that “banning” can be effected without statecraft, and my attitude toward the “sweating system” is termination with extreme prejudice.
Left-libertarians tend to see existing economic institutions as far more deformed in the direction of inequality and privilege by government intervention than the majority of BHL proponents do.
Anagorists tend to see deformation as primarily something that economic institutions exert upon government (which is generally a weaker social force), although both politics and economics need to be abolished, or at least obviated.
Relatedly, left-libertarians tend to look with greater favour on the labour movement and on unions.
I’m pro-union without reservations.
One might say that if the dominant BHL aim is to fuse Hayek with Rawls, the dominant left-libertarian aim is to fuse Murray Rothbard with David Graeber.
Hmm, haven’t thought about that one enough. I say for now I’m trying to fuse Michael Albert with Paul Goodman.
One concept often associated with left-libertarianism is that of “thick libertarianism”7 – the idea that there are certain value commitments which, while not logically entailed by libertarian principles, are nevertheless bound up either conceptually or causally with those principles in such a way as to make them part of reasonable libertarian advocacy. For example, some of these additional commitments may be part of, or implied by, the most reasonable defense of libertarianism, or may be needed in order to choose between alternative ways of applying libertarian principles, or in order to make a libertarian social order achievable or sustainable. For most thick-libertarian advocates, this does not mean that those who reject such commitments do not count as libertarians; but it does mean that their libertarianism is less than fully realised.
This has come up in C4SS, referencing a post in anti-libertarian blog Anti-Libertarian Criticism. Simpy put, the difference between left-libertarians and anarcho-capitalists is one of style, not substance. The left-libertarian definition of capitalism is exactly equal to the anarcho-capitalist (and also, increasingly, tea party) definition of corporatism, and the left-libertarian definition of free market is exactly equal to the anarcho-capitalist definition of capitalism. They both hold the so-called non-aggression principle not only as non-negotiable, but as the central feature of their ideology; the necessary and sufficient condition from which the rest of either left-libertarian or anarcho-capitalist theory can be derived.
“How do you reconcile a right to resources based on making them ‘productive’ with the need for places on this earth that are not cultivated?”—Mel
“In 2002, I stood up to question law professor Larry Lessig at an American Library Assn. meeting about copyright issues where I said large corporations are the gorilla in the room because, if, as he was saying, we strengthen or expand ‘fair use’ exceptions for copyright, large corporations will very quickly expose and exploit loopholes that will undermine the rights of smaller copyright holders. If, however, we limit ‘fair use,’ we get the Mickey Mouse Police and abusive ‘cease and desist’ orders that also undermine ‘free speech.’ Lessig, at the time, belittled my concern, but a few years later, recognized the validity of the concern. He finally saw the gorilla in the room.”—Mitchell J. Freedman
“Is there such a thing as the ‘sharing economy,’ or are some people more interested in sharing, while others are interested in the economy?”—Tom Slee
“This unwavering faith in ‘bootstrapping’ often leads to a sort of perverse entrepreneurialism.”—Matt Cole
“I’ve always feared that if humans became technologically immortal, but if we did not succeed in ending scarcity, the first thing that an elite would do would be to create a “zombie” class of people who (like us mortals) lose most or all memory every hundred years or so, lest they acquire the knowledge that enable them to compete with the existing elite. They would continue to die (in effect) but be biologically maintained as peak-of-their-prime adults (to perform work, for others’ behalf) and probably conceive of themselves as immortal.”—Michael O. Church
“Anarchists on the right want a nation of guns, not laws. Anarchists on the left see a nation of guns, not laws.”—Dale Carrico
This post is based on Guaranteed Income & Choose Your Boss (the market based safety-net) by (I think) Morgan Warstler. Like Jeff Graubart’s AFFEERCE, it is a variant on the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) idea, of the “Faustian bargain” variety. The tone of the essay is considerably more politically conservative than Graubert’s, and the attempt (I’m assuming for now there’s a sincere attempt) to appeal to the left is more along the lines of “the leftists would be fools not to love this” than “the left inspired parts of this.” In the article, the plan is referred to as “GI,” and so that convention is reproduced here. The expression “30M” is used to denote the (supposedly) 30 million people whose market value is assumed to be below minimum wage. The proposal is explicitly market-based:
Herein, I’ll explain the way it works. There’s only one way it works. Deviations on the idea without the requirement to choose a job offer priced by someone else’s ROI… ruin it immediately.
So already we’re talking workfare. The following speculation as to its outcomes is offered for small comfort:
All GI recipients are free to market themselves for whatever they prefer to do for work, but they must choose from hundreds of jobs being offered to them each week. If you don’t choose a job and work, you don’t get your GI.
In the actually-existing economy, people have (in theory) hundreds of jobs to choose from. The problem is that if you want out of one employer because they assault your dignity with piss-tests, personality tests, polygraph examinations, off-the-clock work, performance improvement plans or any of a number of other entrepreneurial strategies based on driving a harder bargain toward labor, the relevant question is not how many other employers are out there, but whether at least one exists with decidedly different business practices. Does GI mean better choices, or just more choices?
Like Bleeding Heart Libertarianism (BHL), the core tenets of GI seem to be those of laissez-faire capitalism (LFC). Also like BHL, GI is considerably more open to relaxing the “thou shalt not subsidize” tenet of LFC than the “thou shalt not distort price signals” tenet.
The underlying assumptions
Greed is assumed to be a feature, not a bug.
“The goal here is to put the greed of private bidders to work to quickly identify which of the 30M are best at the jobs they are happily put [to].”
Public sector jobs are less real than private sector ones.
Organized labor (or as I say, “the labor movement”) is assumed to be obsolete:
“Progressives should understand that having a choice of jobs profoundly changes the power structure without having to organize labor.” Note the tone, also. It could have been phrased “without labor having to organize,” but instead is phrased in a way that assumes a passive role for workers and basically implies the right wing canard about “union bosses.” “This is the neoprogressive labor moment.” If neoprogressive is to progressive as neoliberal is to liberal, I want no part in it.
The Protestant work ethic is a good thing, and idle hands are a bad thing.
European approaches to social problems are not right for America:
“It is a profoundly American way to extend the social safety net, without becoming France or pretending we’re all as innately chummy as the “you look like me” Nordics.” I try and I try to find explanations other than racism for belief that a “homogenous” society is a prerequisite for social democracy. Alternative explanations simply require too much suspension of disbelief on my part. Just sayin’
Criminal laziness is a thing
The tone of the presentation
“Good yet marginal workers now have many, many choices, where their own happiness is given much greater weight without ANY technocrat’s big agenda.”
Characterization of some workers as marginal is insulting. Look at it this way: Some blog authors are marginal. Typical symptoms are sloppy spelling and punctuation. Use of a blogging platform that is very “slick” and high-bandwidth (let alone posting at content farms such as medium.com) of course increases the level of tackiness of a blog by a marginal blogger.
“This isn’t about just the 30M. This is about how you and I become more productive when we can use the 30M to accomplish more ourselves, and what those we work for can do with our new productivity.”
Implication: The intended audience (you and I) are not the underclass, but middle class people who can suddenly have hired help at third world rates.
I think the inclusion of this graphic in the essay pretty much sums up what set of attitudes produced this dubious idea called GI:
What’s in it for left and right
What’s in it for the left
What’s in it for the right
Fortune 1000 excluded.
Employers must…establish their real identity and deposit money into system before they bid.
Employers must accurately describe the job (check boxes) and cannot add to it after winning bid or require work not checked.
Feedback will be given both ways. If you are familiar with Ebay buyer / seller feedback, you understand what this accomplishes.
“The goal is Internet transparency.”
“[The scumbag slave labor bosses] are quickly exposed. No one sells their labor to them. Your real name. Your real reputation. If you want to get “subsidized” labor, you better keep most of your hires happy.”
There are no taxes paid by employer or employee.
“Upon meeting some fair criteria, the criminally lazy [sic] can be suspended from GI program.”
“I am proposing Internet based #Distributism.”
Use of Heritage Foundation research as source for information on “welfare” spending.
“While the govt. can’t bid it can now hire low cost services organized by SMB that hire from this pool. Suddenly the cost of public goods (clean parks, subways, etc) drops dramatically – making the cost of LOCAL GOVT. cheaper. This alone likely covers the total expenditure.”
“If you are working for a boss who thinks you are worth the market rate, we’ll cover your nut. Otherwise, you are in trouble.”
States’ rights: “I don’t have an answer for I hired her to grow my pot in Colorado, nor I hired him to sleep with me in Nevada; except that states should really be the ones running this thing.”
“The cold brutal fact is many Americans aren’t worth what social justice crusaders are forced to pretend. They have to stop pretending.” I’ll tell you what: I’ll concede your point (that the market value of workers isn’t necessarily enough to support socially just outcomes such as meeting the cost of living) if you’ll concede that it’s a cold brutal fact that a civilization which is not economically viable for essentially 100% of its population (a society in which existence/independence/solvency is a hard-to-attain privilege) is inherently unstable and deservedly so.
My take on this.
Generally speaking, I don’t like it. As an anagorist, I hold out hope for a non-market society. GI, like BHL, seems to be an attempt to put to rest forever any hopes of moving beyond the market paradigm. Would it serve my personal interests better than the status quo? If it worked as advertised, maybe. If not, I’d probably fare worse. I’m confident enough that I’d be in no danger of being branded “criminally lazy,” but based on my earnings and “career” advancement history so far, I’m far from confident that I’d be able to graduate from the 30M to the unsubsidized workforce. I’m very worried that failure in that would carry a stigma in a society in which GI is implemented. This is of course a social rather than economic question, but “physics envy” aside, I view sociology as equally important as economics. The law of sociology that says “no justice no peace” is as empirically valid a law of science (and therefore equally non-negotiable) as the law of economics that says “no such thing as a free lunch.” The bait is sombunall (some but not all) of the advertised features of BIG/UBI, such as the luxury of creative pursuits without independent wealth, the claim of a more informationally empowered workforce with more leverage and more choices, at least concerning the qualitative aspects of jobs, a lower threshold of value-added potential needed to ensure employability, etc. The hook is acceptance without question of market signals, particularly offers of other people’s money being an absolute prerequisite for employability at even the lowest pay grade. Ultimately, employers hold veto power. Supposedly it takes a much larger number of employers effectively to blackball a person from participation in the economy, and supposedly the transparency of the reputation system is enough to ensure that no one would face that fate unfairly, but still, buyers over sellers is ultimately the chain of command.
Ultimately, GI is not at peace with non-market approaches, and is proposed more as a permanent program than an incremental reform, and so I am not at peace with whatever movement or other political clout might some day form around GI. Are there things that could make GI less unpalatable to me? Yes:
Don’t make PayPal the official vendor for card operations. PayPal is a name I associate with murky and deeply authoritarian agendas such as charter cities in post-coup Honduras and Military Industrial Complex entities such as Palantir. Card operations, like reputation metrics operations, should be open source. Perhaps I misparsed the following sentence: Using Paypal and an OPEN SOURCE Monster.com style platform. I would like both to be open source, not only in the sense of running open source software, but in having open access data as a default assumption, with any exceptions to that principle being in service to personal privacy, and not to business confidentiality, or making the algorithm operate as a black box designed perhaps to produce intelligent or optimal outputs “as if by magic.” Perhaps card operations can be an open platform open to multiple vendors of consumers’ individual choices. If there is to be one official card, I’d be most at peace with the one that the #Occupy movement is working on.
Moving specifically to the open source version of monster.com—in addition to the requirements that employers provide proof of identity (hopefully not just to the system but to the users of the system and ultimately the public) and accurate job descriptions, I would lobby for a stipulation that participation in the artificially cheap (from the employer side) labor market requires ALL employment openings in a participating company be posted in the database. No “unadvertised job openings.” This, I think, would do far more to prevent nepotism (and its virtual equivalent, the disgusting necessity of “networking”) than even draconian enforcement of the proposed “no relatives/cohabitants” rule.
The idea of subsidy money as a sort of a payroll multiplier enabling some entities to obtain labor at a cost to them that is below minimum wage has a precedent in the United States in the Work Study program, in which I once participated. When I was in school eligible employers were generally either in the public or nonprofit sectors. In practice these were mostly on-campus jobs, as the college is typically by far the largest nonprofit organization in a typical college town. I helped digitize the library catalog, work which assists the work of researchers to this day. The long string of temp-agency jobs I did for numerous years after graduation were less fulfilling to me, and I would venture to say, less useful to society. For example, I don’t think of maintaining junk mail lists as a service to society—if anything it is a disservice! I understand that the underlying assumptions behind GI are basically right wing concepts such as wealth creation being a prerequisite for having the funding to implement GI in the first place, so the emphasis seems to be on small for-profit businesses, and individuals looking to hire labor. I would be more comfortable with the program if employer eligibility for subsidized labor rates were based less on business size (note that I’m already sick of the right’s “it’s really corporatism you’re against” trope) and more on, if not non-profit status, at least some kind of involvement in the “greater good,” which might be anything from the opportunity to work for a B-corporation, to the opportunity to work with open source (or better yet, nonproprietary) technology, to the opportunity to provide services which would be unprofitable in the status quo for-profit sector, such as labor intensive professional level services (basically the “cost disease” ones such as education and health care) for people who can’t actually afford them.
The employee-on-employer reputation metrics are implemented in a way that forbids “non-disparagement clauses” on the part of employers. People (and businesses) must be held accountable for statements, of course, but that is for third parties to determine, not for gag orders to prevent.
I’ll never give up my post-market dreams, but I could be a happy enough camper to commit to non-revolutionary anagorism if it turns out that GI affords me the following luxuries:
I can blog my real opinions under my real name and “get away with it,” which is to say, remain employable.
While I can be happy without achieving a high-status job or a job that requires highly developed skills, I cannot be happy with an employer who infantilizes me, who operates with the default assumption that a low-status or low-skill employee is untrustworthy, uncouth, un-sober, or otherwise clueless as to basic workplace decency, as evidenced by the execrable pre-employment “personality tests” that have become ubiquitous in the retail/restaurant employment ghetto.
Speaking of ghettos, while I appreciate that GI claims to make low-income neighborhoods more liveable (although I find the “cleaning up” phrasing of that somewhat jarring) I’d like to believe that no one will be so poor so as not to have multiple housing options, including the opportunity to move long distances on their own (as opposed to employer’s) initiative.
Social exclusion or discrimination based on GI vs. “real economy” status is largely non-existent, or at least non-consequential.
One point of skepticism: If Walmart is expected to automate its stores completely, and services to government are to be supplied by GI-participating contractors instead of civil servants, the resulting layoffs add to the 30M (30 million) possibly unable to hold their own in the unsubsidized economy.
“Merely surviving is not enough to change the world, and we must change the world — change it so far that mere survival no longer has to be the sole criterion, the sole priority of our activism ”—James Butler
“The more we can tip the scales, the less it becomes about whether or not to cooperate and the more it becomes about who or what to cooperate with. The more it becomes about the difference between cooperation amongst equals and deference to authority. And then, maybe, we can start having some real talk.”—Mel
“We don’t know when and how we’ll end up being vulnerable on the web until it’s too late. Suddenly need insurance or a job? Maybe I’m not high risk but my on-line habits have profiled me as ‘risky’ or ‘not employable.’ Being a well-educated white guy won’t help.”—Greg Taylor
“Which ethnic group ‘owns’ land by right of original settlement is beyond irrelevant. None of us will ever figure out where we should go if we start reorganizing the world on this basis.”—Clarissa
“The more money you have, the more money you make. When you’re in debt, you pay penalties. It’s that simple.”—JimBoNZ
“On a side note, in no way did the Boomers steal the future from the Xers and Millennials. That stuff about housing prices and college tuition costs and non-dischargeable student debt and health insurance premiums and adjustable-rate mortgages and the death of private-sector basic research pushing PhDs into formerly BA-level jobs is Soviet propaganda designed to make capitalism look bad. It’s all lies, I tell you, lies!”—Michael O. Church
“For example, when we try to argue in favour of public education by stressing the value of degree-holders to the economy (rather than, for example, making the Humanistic argument that quality education is a fundamental right), we are endorsing the ideology of neoliberalism: when we allow the rules of the game to be set by the Corporations, the Corporations will win.”—voxcorvegis
Bottom Up, oil on canvas, by Fabrice de Nola, CC-BY-SA 2.0
“Chances are Big Data and the Internet of Things will make it harder for us to control our own lives, as we grow increasingly transparent to powerful corporations and government institutions that are becoming more opaque to us.”—Catherine Crump and Matthew Harwood
“Maybe if the government directly caused it, it can be believed — but anyone who the market’s decided shouldn’t be in possession of a life-sustaining supply of nourishment must have failed in some inherent, moral way.”—writerJames
“When I see local appliance dealers offering 5% discounts if you ‘like’ them on Facebook you know it’s the cheapest form of scrip ever printed.”—Roadkilt
“What’s great about America is that everyone has the chance to earn a good life for themselves. All that’s needed is to get a good job to earn the money to pay for the things that make a good life. Once you get that job you can start earning your good life. America’s Catch 22, however, is that you’ve got to earn that good job before you can start earning your good life.”—J. D. Alt
Brendan Eich was recently named CEO of Mozilla Foundation, which has met with some controversy, as he is a Prop. H8 donor. As a matter of principle, I think personal opinions should never be a barrier to anyone’s career advancement. In the actual world we actually live in, people do sometimes get punished in the workplace for their opinions, such as the sales rep who was fired for having an Air America bumper sticker. Likewise there are God’s plenty of small and medium sized businesses who wear their founders’ and/or owners’ faith on their shirt sleeves. John’s Lumber in suburban Detroit, for example, has as part of their hours of operation sign the statement “Closed on Sundays so our employees may go to church and spend time with their families.” Then there are numerous examples of businesses that have been used by their (usually) conservative owners as soap boxes, from Hobby Lobby to Papa John’s to Whole Foods and many more. Now I wouldn’t necessarily expect to be treated unfairly by a Christian-identified business such as John’s Lumber, but if I were an employee, I would definitely check my opinions at the door, as I do in any employment situation. I want to believe that’s the situation Brendan Eich finds himself in at Mozilla—that not only does Brendan Eich not speak for Mozilla, but perhaps finds Mozilla to be a space somewhat hostile to some causes he’s known to support. Rank has its privileges and, as shown in numerous examples above, CEO’s don’t always check their opinions at the door. Front-line workers don’t necessarily do so, but of course they’re under far more pressure to do so. I hate it when employers will use every excuse imaginable not to hire some tattooed or pierced person or some longhair, on the grounds that employees are a reflection on their employers. I want to live in a world in which it’s widely and clearly understood that employees ARE NOT a reflection on their employers, and that their own time is NOT company time, etc. Naturally, NOT boycotting Mozilla is the course of action consistent with this viewpoint. There’s still a part of me, though, that’s somewhat tribal in its affiliations, that sees any number of businesses being used as showcases of Biblical values or some other conservative cause, and wants there to be at least a few places with a payroll that push the other direction. It would be the icing on the cake if a few of these were places in which people might feel just a little intimidated about being out of the closet on something like support for something as contemptible as Prop. H8.
My own involvement in the Mozilla community has been at the periphery. I was an unpaid volunteer AMO (addons.mozilla.org) editor, which is to say, screener of Firefox add-ons on the lookout for any code which might betray Firefox users in some way. I’ve decided to take a hiatus from that activity. I developed three add-ons for Firefox, which I temporarily “disabled” (a loaded word in this context, to be sure) at addons.mozilla.org. Since philosophically, I can’t make a clear case for an all-out boycott, I’m thinking of it as an expression of disappointment than of rejection of an organization.
Will I re-join the Mozilla community, as an editor, a developer and a Firefox user? By the way, the text you are reading was posted using Midori, an obscure, minimalist, webkit-based open-source web browser which I love, but which admittedly crashes quite frequently on my system. So there’s a sacrifice right there: If I don’t use Firefox, I will use either an unstable browser or a closed-source browser. If I take my Firefox add-ons out of circulation, that’s probably more than 50% of my code portfolio. It’s hard to estimate the opportunity cost of something like that. If we assume that the probability of someone my age breaking into programming from the outside is zero anyway, then the opportunity cost would of course be zero. Open source software is a source of income for some and a labor of love for a much larger number, but even being in that larger number is a privilege rather than a right. So far I’ve found some amount of that privilege in activities pertaining to Firefox, so there’s the question of whether throwing that away is worthwhile as a way to make a statement. But of course there’s also the question of whether my relatively soft position on Mozilla’s decision is due to needing Mozilla more than Mozilla needs me. Too many questions all around. For example, I was really looking forward to participating in the Add-ons for Australis Contest. I have something I think is actually interesting and significant in the kitchen. I’m torn. I guess I have until April 15 to decide on that, although of course I won’t finish what I’m doing at all if I #UninstallFirefox…
The business plan known as AFFEERCE is a simple-yet-intricate combination of propositions. There’s a method to the madness behind its design, and it’s a method of keeping the system as a whole, plausible, accountable and reasonably consistent. So far I’ve identified three features of this methodology:
A “law of threes”
“AFFEERCE kickers, is a flimsy metaphor for those who want to kick out one of the legs of a three-legged stool. Stability and prosperity is contingent on the success of all three pillars. Lose one, and the slide of society into barbarism will continue.”
Intolerance of compromise
Specifically, compromise between free markets and income equality.
Tolerance of contradiction
Limited tolerance, but tolerance nevertheless. This is based on Gödel’s proof that a formal system cannot be both complete and consistent. In case AFFEERCE isn’t a formal system, there’s also the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that applies to elementary particles and the Strong Efficiency Hypothesis that applies to financial markets.
The mechanical advantages of a three-legged stool over a two-legged stool are obvious. The latter, for all practical purposes, cannot stand unless it is either very bottom-heavy or very precisely aligned to its center of gravity (about as probable as flipping a coin and getting neither heads nor tales). The part of the book I’ve read so far doesn’t address the (considerably less severe, but certainly real) problem posed by a four-legged stool, but suffice it to say that any three points can reliably be said to be coplanar.
It may also be that author Jeff Graubart has a mental habit of bundling things in threes:
p.10
Similar ideas are cropping up elsewhere under the banner, “progressive libertarian,” but most of those philosophies suffer from three problems.
p. 16
One need look no further than the three contemporaneous milestones that arguably provide a foundational base for the new world I will describe: the women’s liberation movement, the gay liberation movement, and the invention of the microprocessor.
Perhaps the most appealing part of this three-pronged package deal* is the refusal to acknowledge, let alone negotiate, tradeoffs between free markets and income equality. In American public policy debate, this often manifests itself in the rhetorical question (i.e. rhetorical trap): “Which would you rather live in, a security society or an opportunity society?” My answer has always been: “I refuse to acknowledge an intractable tradeoff between those two things.” Graubert, it seems, refuses to acknowledge any tradeoff. This is my kind of people, even if AFFEERCE as a whole is far too authoritarian for my tastes. It seems, in a three variable system, you can max out two variables. The Iron Law of TANSTAAFL manifests in the kicker; the poison pill. In AFFEERCE, the poison pill is total capitulation, not on the part of the Wall Street subsidiary called Washington, but on the part everyone who as fought and died for reproductive freedom (which necessarily works both ways, even among borderline antinatalists like me), including (among others) the pro-choice movement, the civil liberties movement, and the wise people who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 16, section 1.
The fundamental relations. From page 36 of the book.
The flaw, the imperfection, indeed the beauty of AFFEERCE is the glaring contradiction (p. 39) between reproductive control and enlightenment. So, is defense of the Enlightenment to be another casualty among bloody trail of capitulated causes left in AFFEERCE’s wake? Well, two of the three pillars of AFFEERCE are pro-enlightenment, so the fate of the Enlightenment may yet be compromise, rather than capitulation. Big deal, right?
One question that occupies me is whether the AFFEERCE methodology can be applied to things other than AFFEERCE. Would it make sense for me to try to construct a system of central principles (pillars, one of which is a “kicker”), implications (fundamental relations) between the pillars, and an irresolvable contradiction? Could such a construction give the appearance of a shared way of life, an alternative future, maybe even a code of law?
Let’s map it out as a step-by-step process:
Identify two cherished ideals, both of which I wish we all could enjoy to the limit, without compromise.
Identify one cherished ideal for which I would fight to the death, as a “kicker,” or as I prefer to say, “Faustian bargain.”
Determine whether insistence on (2) is the roadblock to resolving the apparent intractable trade-off in (1). If not, repeat your choice of steps (2) through (3), or steps (1) through (3).
OK, now I’ll try my hand at business plan construction using what I surmise to be the AFFEERCE method of business plan construction. For my palatable pillars I choose what I’ll call inclusive production and voluntarism. For the kicker, I designate zero privacy. Here are my explanations of these pillars and what I intend them to mean:
inclusive production
This means that everyone is entitled to a job. It is a direct negation of one feature of “free enterprise” as defined by Jeff Graubart. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a particular “employer” must find a role for every applicant, but it does mean that an opening must be found somewhere in the economy. This may require the creation of an employer of last resort on a subsidized basis. This also doesn’t necessarily mean everyone is entitled to paid employment. This business plan is OK with unpaid internships, and possibly other forms of unpaid work. It is more important to avoid meeting the requirement with meaningless “make work” jobs than it is to avoid having an underpaid or even exploited workforce. In a way, this is the exact opposite of AFFEERCE: Getting a job to to is an absolute entitlement, while getting paid is an absolute non-entitlement.
voluntarism
This means all associations are voluntary associations and all transactions are voluntary transactions. Broadly speaking, it means nobody has to do anything they don’t want to. In this business plan, it might or might not be more narrowly defined to the crass “nobody’s holding a gun to your head” criterion of “anarcho”-capitalism.
zero confidentiality
This means that enterprises operating “within the system” are required to practice open-book accounting. By this I mean that every journal entry is in the public record. By public record I mean the Internet (or a future equivalent). The data are accessible not only to people working within the system, but everyone in the world. Since P&L (profit/loss) and balance sheets are derived from journals, this means the profitability and equity holdings of all enterprises are public knowledge, as well as a host of other details about each one.Of course, this also means that individuals enjoy no privacy whatsoever. For example, if you buy something from a participating retailer (one operating within the system) it is a matter of public record who you are, what you bought and for how much. The public also has access to your salary, your detailed credit history, the approximate inventory of your refrigerator, etc.
Is there a contradiction between the first two pillars? Absolutely. The right of someone to be hired means someone else may have to procure services they neither need nor want. Does the absolute denial of confidentiality resolve the contradiction? At first glance, it might appear that it would not. Let’s flesh out the details of the zero confidentiality arrangement. In the spirit of voluntarism, the “system” in which businesses and individuals are expected to operate should be a voluntary association. This means there is nothing at all wrong with operating outside the system. This being the case, the organization binding people and businesses to inclusivity, voluntarism and extreme transparency will have to offer something of value. More precisely, there must be clear (ideally decisive) advantages to both individuals and businesses from working within the system. The institution in question is roughly analogous to PIV in AFFEERCE. Like PIV, its functions would probably include:
strong authentication protocols for participants to identify themselves as within the system
an accounting system to record transactions, enter them into a database and make that database available to (queryable by) the public
this may involve doing the accounting in some novel unit of currency—I’m undecided as of yet on that detail
in addition to financial transactions, contracts involving in-system entities are a matter of public record
also, applications for employment would be submitted from applicants to prospective employers by way of the institution
businesses are encouraged but not required to post “requisitions” for labor prior to hiring any
For now, I’ll call this PIV-analogue “DOE,” as in “database of everything.” The publication of all contracts and all job applications is the main strategy for resolving the contradiction between inclusive production and voluntarism. The number of people requesting jobs is known. Their stated qualifications are known, and of course are much, much more verifiable than ever before. A deeply searchable database of job requisitions and job candidates should make for almost frictionless matchmaking. The division within DOE responsible for this matchmaking will be called Division of Labor, or “Divlab,” in honor of Ursula K. LeGuin, of course. Nevertheless, there might still not be enough jobs to go around. In that event, DOE will “create” jobs. Remember that jobs need not be paying jobs. That helps DOE stay under budget. One source of jobs within DOE would be for people to maintain the database, basically DBA’s and the like.
Implementation of this business plan will entail creation of a second institution, which we’ll call the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps, or “Reeks and Wrecks,” in honor of Kurt Vonnegut, of course. This institution will do the heavy lifting when it comes to absorbing surplus labor from Divlab, and will also function as the Department of Public Works of our alternative society. It will specialize in placement of people in 3D work assignments.
Now that we have our three pillars, let’s identify two voluntary consequences:
Explain how each of the three pillars either implies the another, or prevents it some unspeakable catastrophe or atrocity.
Identify two voluntary consequences, or opportunities that the three pillars open up to those (a) who live by them and (b) want to pursue them
Connect the remaining dots. If u don’t spot the contradiction, ur not doin it right.
Here is an illustration of the relationships between the three pillars:
The linkages between inclusion (inclusive production), voluntarism and radical transparency (zero privacy) in this new business plan correspond to Graubart’s fundamental relations. Consider these first six:
First, let’s establish what I mean by “thickens.” Basically, it translates to “adds fairness to.” I got this idea from the “thick libertarianism” concept: The topic is the relation between “thin” libertarianism (i.e., libertarianism understood as a narrowly political doctrine) and “thick” libertarianism (i.e., libertarianism understood as essentially integrated into some broader set of social or cultural values). I generalized this “thick” concept from libertarianism to individualism, voluntarism and contractarianism—and now I suppose there is thick transparency.
I say that transparency helps make inclusion possible because I believe that if the entire body of transactions is in the public record, discrimination and other patterns of exclusion will “come out in the wash.”
Similarly, radical transparency makes it likely that people and institutions that practice nepotism and other forms of favoritism will face some pressure from the public, and those that don’t will enjoy public support.
Voluntarism, meaning no unwilling participants in the scheme, should mean people are less inclined to try to feed disinformation into the database.
Of course inclusion thickens voluntarism.
Inclusion in a voluntarist economy is more meaningful than having a “make work” job, although admittedly the latter are a feature of this business plan.
Now to identify two voluntary consequences. There are two voluntary consequences of AFFEERCE society; alternative families and enlightenment (see page 37). For my proposed business model, I’m proposing collegiality and meritocracy as voluntary consequences. Since we have Voluntary Association, Collegiality, Inclusion, Meritocracy and Extreme Transparency, we have something that can be called VACIMET. The following diagram illustrates the additional fundamental relations between these two voluntary consequences and the three pillars of VACIMET.
The VACIMET fundamental relations.
Job security thanks to guaranteed inclusion in economic production frees workers to think of their co-workers less as competitors and more as colleagues.
Collegiality fostered by job security and less competitive relationships between colleagues means less incentive to guard trade secrets.
Transparency (open knowledge, open data, etc.) facilitates collaboration, especially interdisciplinary collaboration.
Transparency facilitates meritocracy because when skills, credentials and experience are easily verified and errors in the recording of the same are fairly quicly corrected (many eyes, shallow bugs) it should be more likely for the cream to rise to the top, and less likely for the self-promotion to do so.
Voluntarism means that people (at least outside the Reeks and Wrecks) are among people of their own choosing, meaning fewer barriers to collegiality.
People’s can have more confidence in their choice of colleagues if they can have more confidence in their competence.
There is a contradiction between meritocracy and inclusion. It never occurred to me until recently that this is the case, but I was convinced of this by Felix Stadler:The openness in open source is often misunderstood as egalitarian collaboration. However, FOSS is primarily open in the sense that anyone can appropriate the results, and do with them whatever he or she wants (within the legal/normative framework set out by the license). This is what the commons, a shared resource, is about. Free appropriation. Not everyone can contribute. Everyone is free, indeed, to propose a contribution, but the people who run the project are equally free to reject the contribution outright. Open source projects, in their actual organization, are not egalitarian and not everyone is welcome. The core task of managing a commons is to ensure not just the production of resources, but also to prevent its degradation from the addition of low quality material. We can only hope that the meritorious can find it in their hearts to find, if not merit, at least investment potential in the R&R “charity hires.”
