Freedom is not free. It has an economic cost that depends on the material conditions that enable it. The same is true for Democracy. At the same time Freedom and Democracy are fundamental human rights. Without exceptions, all must afford those rights. Thus, any proposed social system must create mechanisms that provide those rights to its participants.
My exposition will start by analyzing previous movements on freedom and Democracy and possibly discuss their limitations.
Thus , one could say that FSF supports the right of the users to change the digital system, rather than simply picking among the actions that are possible within the provided software. In this sense, FSF is consistent with revolutionary thought.
From a materialistic point of view though, this is not possible. Users almost never change the software to suit their needs. In fact, proprietary software might even be more perceptive of its users needs, because the users are also the customers. Free Software provides freedom as long as you are a hacker, and even then , it is very difficult to perform a change. Only the writer of the software and a select few that maintain it are able to make changes. As software becomes more and more complicated, developers only understand parts of the software and only together can they support it.
In order to have actual democracy and freedom, we need to create a welfare service that is free for all to use, that allows users to vote on changes about the software (or fork it and create alternatives) and provide funding so that the developers of the software will perform them.
In conclusion, digital freedom requires the existence of a welfare service.
The revolutionary Left had always had Democracy and Freedom as the goal. For the RL , social relations and the economy should be determined by the will of the people. But similarly to the digital case, there is an intermediary between the citizens and the execution of actions. The interface here is the rules that each community , group or society has demanded to be respected.
The type of rules can depend greatly on the context. In production, there is a specific workflow that must be respected. The use of machinery requires specific handling to avoid damaging it. Coordination in a community about social issues requires specific methods of decision making and types of actions to choose among.
It is in this context that the RL supports the right of the citizens to change the rules, the interface that each user will need to respect. Here though, we have the same problem, the citizens know what they want , but they have no knowledge how to acquire it. Can citizens change the rules themselves?
Consider the case of a nuclear plant. A community might decide that it wants to reduce the nuclear waste that goes to the environment. The community perceives the externalities of the nuclear plant. For the change to happen, it must interact with a group of nuclear scientists that will provide the new rules about the functioning of the nuclear plant.
Similarly, assuming that you eat at a restaurant, the customers can vote on changes of the food quality or provide directions on what type of food they prefer. Only a trained chef will be able to turn those directions into rules of cook-making that the cooks must abide by.
In conclusion, material freedom does not only require the right to vote but also the support of trained professionals that will provide the solutions, and will create the new rules that certain members of society must follow to have the desired results.
Since freedom and democracy is a universal right, this service must be provided to everyone, thus it must be a welfare service.
I have discussed digital and material freedom and the need for the existence of a welfare service that enables them. Digital freedom has been proposed by the FSF, material freedom by the Revolutionary Left. The interesting thing is that the cyber-physical barrier is starting to collapse. (And one of the goals of my work is its collapse.) The examples are many. ERP systems had been used in production for many years. Our interaction with the State has been digitized. New p2p systems start to emerge, such as airbnb and Uber, that use software to determine the interactions between the customers and the providers of a service. Blockchain and smart contructs promise to digitize part of the interactions we have as a society.
Software starts to determine our social relations and the economy. The interface that citizens use start to increasingly become digital.
The rules are written in software.
It is in this context, that the notion of Digital Freedom and Material Freedom start to blur and start to become the same thing. The RL has to start thinking about Free Software and Digital Freedom and translate its ideas to this new world.
My exposition will start by analyzing previous movements on freedom and Democracy and possibly discuss their limitations.
Digital Freedom and FSF
One cannot discuss Freedom without talking about the Free Software Foundation. FSF supports the freedom of the users of Software It believes that the users have the right to understand how the software works and to modify it to better support their needs. It is important to understand software as an intermediary between the hardware and the user. It gives the user an interface to interact with the machine. It enables the user to perform certain actions or it restricts him. In this sense, the interface that the software provides is similar to a legal system that allows or disallows certain actions.
Thus , one could say that FSF supports the right of the users to change the digital system, rather than simply picking among the actions that are possible within the provided software. In this sense, FSF is consistent with revolutionary thought.
From a materialistic point of view though, this is not possible. Users almost never change the software to suit their needs. In fact, proprietary software might even be more perceptive of its users needs, because the users are also the customers. Free Software provides freedom as long as you are a hacker, and even then , it is very difficult to perform a change. Only the writer of the software and a select few that maintain it are able to make changes. As software becomes more and more complicated, developers only understand parts of the software and only together can they support it.
In order to have actual democracy and freedom, we need to create a welfare service that is free for all to use, that allows users to vote on changes about the software (or fork it and create alternatives) and provide funding so that the developers of the software will perform them.
In conclusion, digital freedom requires the existence of a welfare service.
Material D&F : Democracy and Freedom viewed from the Revolutionary Left.
The type of rules can depend greatly on the context. In production, there is a specific workflow that must be respected. The use of machinery requires specific handling to avoid damaging it. Coordination in a community about social issues requires specific methods of decision making and types of actions to choose among.
It is in this context that the RL supports the right of the citizens to change the rules, the interface that each user will need to respect. Here though, we have the same problem, the citizens know what they want , but they have no knowledge how to acquire it. Can citizens change the rules themselves?
Consider the case of a nuclear plant. A community might decide that it wants to reduce the nuclear waste that goes to the environment. The community perceives the externalities of the nuclear plant. For the change to happen, it must interact with a group of nuclear scientists that will provide the new rules about the functioning of the nuclear plant.
Similarly, assuming that you eat at a restaurant, the customers can vote on changes of the food quality or provide directions on what type of food they prefer. Only a trained chef will be able to turn those directions into rules of cook-making that the cooks must abide by.
In conclusion, material freedom does not only require the right to vote but also the support of trained professionals that will provide the solutions, and will create the new rules that certain members of society must follow to have the desired results.
Since freedom and democracy is a universal right, this service must be provided to everyone, thus it must be a welfare service.
Cyber-physical systems : The elimination of the cyber physical barrier.
I have discussed digital and material freedom and the need for the existence of a welfare service that enables them. Digital freedom has been proposed by the FSF, material freedom by the Revolutionary Left. The interesting thing is that the cyber-physical barrier is starting to collapse. (And one of the goals of my work is its collapse.) The examples are many. ERP systems had been used in production for many years. Our interaction with the State has been digitized. New p2p systems start to emerge, such as airbnb and Uber, that use software to determine the interactions between the customers and the providers of a service. Blockchain and smart contructs promise to digitize part of the interactions we have as a society.
Software starts to determine our social relations and the economy. The interface that citizens use start to increasingly become digital.
The rules are written in software.
It is in this context, that the notion of Digital Freedom and Material Freedom start to blur and start to become the same thing. The RL has to start thinking about Free Software and Digital Freedom and translate its ideas to this new world.
Freedom as a welfare service
Any group that supports freedom as a universal right needs to understand that freedom requires maintainers. It requires a service that takes user input and produces changes to the rules and the software that create that user interface. That service needs to be free and it needs to be productive.
We need to measure the productivity of the service in order to determine the degree of freedom that it provides. If users propose changes, the service needs to interact with the users, provide guidance and actually perform the changes that the users want.
The group must find ways to support such a welfare service. In order to understand the magnitude of the cost, Research for new products or production methods need to be part of this welfare service, thus the cost is greater than the current cost on Research. This amounts to 2% of the GDP.
Freedom is not free but it must be free for everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment