[extropy-chat] Agreement on principles. (was Microsoft)

[KAZ]

----- Original Message ----
From: Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org>
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2006 4:18:38 AM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Agreement on principles. (was Microsoft)


On Sat, May 20, 2006 at 11:53:38AM -0700, KAZ wrote:

> Surely when posting such nonsense you know how the IETF 
> and the RFC process work. No? Then look it up.
  
I know...I've been doing this stuff since the eighties.
 
But it's irrelevent. YOU can buy into the myth that they have some kind of real authority, but that's your own problem. Worship authority, but don't foist it off onto other people. 
 
Like W3C, ECMA, and pretty much everyone else, the "standards" the IETC develop are NOTHING but advice.  Just as first Netscape and now MS through IE have implemented improvements on HTML/JavaScript/CSS which violated standards but became accepted by everyone, so anyone can do for any other protocal. IETC are no more perfect, as central planners, than a Soviet shoe planning board, sitting around deciding how many of what kind of shoe should be produced. It's probably helpful as an advisory system, but would be disastrous if given the authority to force their way. 
 
The premise that email should remain purely text-based forever is an example of that.
 
And the idea that an /extropian/ would be sounding so technophobic as to be saying "this should remain the old way, forever" is quite ironic.
 
Embedded HTML is bad? Perhaps we should all go back to ridding horse and buggie and building barns by hand. The Amish had it right, eh?
 
Now I, personally, only use text. Every email I write...unless Yahoo slips one past me because it picks the standard used by the email to which I reply and I forget to over-ride it...is something I could read on pine. But there is a CLEAR advantage, for those who wish to use it, to being able to use rich text in email. /I/ use slashes to represent italics, but frankly that looks pathetic compared to the real thing. 

> > A majority of the "standards" developed by such bodies has gone by 
> > the way-side, for the same reason that central planning can NEVER 
> > work better than a free market in the long run.

> A majority of the "laws" developed by democracies has gone by the way-side, for the same reason
> that democracy can NEVER work better than a free market in the long run.
  
You say that as if it were not obviously also true.
 
If you're thinking of majority rule as "democracy", then democracy is actually a bad thing, which is why the founders of the US opposed it and set up a constitutional republic, INSTEAD of a democracy. Saying "you want democracy" was slander, in 1776. 
 
The majority of laws ever passed have gone by the way-side precisely because they were bad.
 
But, unfortunately, /governments/, unlike voluntary standards organizations, have authority to force people to comply with their bad laws.
 
Fortunately, the IETF does not.
 
TRUE democracy, each individual ruling himself, works far better than majority rule. Government's proper role is to protect his decision-making power, not to over-ride it.

> > It is always best for the standards-setters to be nothing but suggestors, 
> > and for the free individuals of the society to always, in each case 
> > subsequently, decide the value of their musings.

> It is always best for the law-makers to be nothing but suggestors, 
> and for the free individuals of the society to always, 
> in each case subsequently, decide the value of each individual law.
  
Yes, and that's precisely what Common Law allowed us to do in the US, until our corrupt judiciary undermined jury powers, like nullification. Until the 20th century, any time a jury found a law to be unjust, they could choose to rule in favor of a defendant even though he had actually broken the law. This was used, for example, to bypass laws requiring the return of runaway slaves.
 
Part of the reason we've had such a massive outgrowth of bad and unjust laws in the US, starting in the 20th century, is the crippling of jury powers. Just as, during alcohol prohibition, OVER HALF of all alcohol cases were overturned by juries simply because they disagreed with the ban, so we'd be seeing with drug cases today, if only juries understood their powers.
 
But even aside from jury nullification, even if we accept the authoritarian-government-worshipping myth that laws are absolute, that is a case of a /government/ agency. The ONLY legitimate source of coercion in any society...if we accept that there are any at all...is government. 
 
But even for government, and this is one thing that jury nullification used to enforce, the only truly legitimate powers are those which prevent violation. In other words, government exists only to protect our natural rights. To secure our rights of life and liberty...the RFC against robbery, rape, fraud, and murder come back pretty much unanimous.
 
When a government oversteps this, and starts trying to /violate/ our natural rights with laws which initiate, rather than prevent, coercion, then you get a snowballing trend toward tyrannical, totalitarian government. The RFC for low-flow toilets, banning tanks large enough to actually flush without clogging except under extreme conditions, is one we should all laugh at and reject. And then maybe we wouldn't even get TO the much larger, more budensome ones which are crushing our society under their weight, now.

> > I shudder to imagine the world where we submitted to each standard the "experts" expounded at us.

> I shudder to image the world where we submitted to each law the law-makers expounded on us.

Absolutely. I'm glad we're in agreement.
 
It'd take an utterly obtuse government-school victim to think that all laws should be obeyed, treated as if they were what defined right and wrong.
 
Imagine...Schindler turning all the Jews over to the democratically elected Nazi government, instead of smuggling them out. Abolitionists shutting down the Underground Railroad because the Supreme Court had ruled them in violation of laws. Juries enforcing the alcohol prohibition, which alone probably would have prevented the constitutional amendment from being overturned...hopefully you're aware that much of the reason for its removal was that so few people submitted to the prohibition laws.
 
Think of it; Martin Luther King, Jr, Henry David Thoreau, and Ghandi all submitting to each law expounded upon us, instead of clearly explaining why it is UP TO US to decide which laws are moral and just, and which should be specifically violated, ignored, worked around, or overturned. If Bush were to announce that he'd written an Executive Order requiring us to round up all Muslims to be kept in concentration camps, would you submit to that law? Personally, I wouldn't even turn in a neighbor who had an illegal three gallon toilet tank, not even a contractor who was running around installing them willy-nilly.
 
Whose side are you on...Thomas Paine and Rosa Parks, or the "it's illegal to advocate the breaking of laws" crowd?
 
Even government must be second-guessed, not blindly accepted. And the IETC doesn't even have a shred of the coercive authority which we temporarily lend governments in order to protect ourselves from violence, murder, robbery, and fraud. It's just a set of ivory-tower what-iffers, a central planning committee sitting around coming up with what they guess MIGHT be a useful standard. And they're often right, to some degree. Rarely, they might even be correct from start to finish. So it's up to us to choose for ourselves, to use the marketplace of ideas and vote with our /individual/ decisions.
 
This is how TRUE democracy works, by the way. Not majority rule, but actual "rule by the people", where each of us rules his own life, and decides every day, with every decision, what is best for society, with our "vote" encompassing ourself and whatever we happen to effect with our choices.
 
http://www.ButNowYouKnow.com/democracy.html I wrote an article about that very thing, a decade ago.
 
--
Words of the Sentient:
Love, the stongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of
joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the
freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an
all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and
Church-begotten weed, marriage? -- Emma Goldman
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