7 ms·

And maybe they should be funded by society enough to live. It's funny because this kind of social darwinism or capitalist world view is not the only possible w

by voxl 3y ago

And maybe they should be funded by society enough to live. It's funny because this kind of social darwinism or capitalist world view is not the only possible way society could be successfully organized. Yet the (fallacious) appeal to "nature" would suggest that arbitrary monetary value is somehow the most important thing to optimize.

WalterBright 3y ago
> is not the only possible way society could be successfully organized True, if you have a rather low bar of success. Capitalism has produced wealth for average citizens inconceivable only a couple centuries ago. Even the poor in capitalist countries have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
- bheadmaster 3y ago
  > Even the poor in capitalist countries have a higher standard of living than medieval kings. That is almost completely due to technological progress, not because of capitalism itself.
  - WD40forRust 3y ago
    Capitalism is the nature in which technology got naturally selected.
    - bheadmaster 3y ago
      This sentence does not make any sense to me. Would you care to elaborate?
    - voxl 3y ago
      [citation needed] You know its funny because almost all academic advancement has not been in a capitalist system.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        What kind of academic advancement are you referring to? Marxism?
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Technological progress is enabled by capitalism.
    - bheadmaster 3y ago
      Is there any evidence of that claim available? As a counterexample, I'd like to point out the Soviet space program.
      - nickpp 3y ago
        Soviet spies were quite active and accomplished at stealing technological advancements from private firms in the West.
        bheadmaster 3y ago
        Spying is a regular part of being a government. Are you claiming that American spies didn't steal technologies from other nations?
        nickpp 3y ago
        Sure but what would they have to steal from the Soviets?! I mean the West had A/C, cars, color TV, computers and so on while USSR was struggling to feed its people. Reminds me of the old Soviet joke brilliantly included in the Chernobyl series: "What’s as big as a house, burns 20 liters of fuel every hour, puts out a shit-load of smoke and noise, and cuts an apple into three pieces? A Soviet machine made to cut apples into four pieces."
        bheadmaster 3y ago
        American memes aren't accurate history sources. Soviets have had a very strong educational system, and a large number of scientists and engineers. Even mathematics, on which all the other science rests, was actively developed by the Soviet. E.g. Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov basically invented the modern probability theory. To claim that their engineers have done nothing but wait for spies to come back with US knowledge is a little absurd.
- Iulioh 3y ago
  Capitalism describes only who gets the money from a factory according to a pice of paper with no other relation with the work performed in said factory.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Ah, the Labor Theory of Value once again.
- techno_tsar 3y ago
  The “poor” in capitalist countries have a higher standard of living than medieval kings? In so far as they have electrical heating, access to global food products, information technology, modern medical care, sure, plenty of people have a “higher standard of living” versus pre-industrialized societies. That’s a trivial statement. It’s vacuous. Actually, what’s relevant is that the “poor” in any country have to work long, difficult jobs in order to survive. Some people even die or receive brutal injuries at work. And none of them are being compensated enough, because some people — like our version of medieval kings — don’t have to work at all. In the context of this discussion, we have situations where people can’t afford to do obvious things that benefit themselves and others. I can’t point my finger and say “capitalism did this”, because the whole engine of human relations (economic, social, cultural) is incredibly vast, and capitalism is such a massive, loaded concept. But I can sincerely say that somewhere along the line in this engine of human relations that there are very glaring issues that should make us question our sense of humanity. I am not advocating for some massive, state sponsored rewriting of economic relations or technocratically calculated wealth transfers. The former was empirically a disaster in the 20th century. The latter is purely an academic debate. Nor am I saying that we ought to guilt trip people into donating more to support developers working on free projects. That feels manipulative, although making any community more self-sustaining and caring is obviously good. I don’t know how fruitful parroting one of coldest takes (capitalism made people richer) can be in light of the lived realities of billions of people, working poor, passionate developers, and everyone who isn’t a 21st century robber baron. We are capable of being kinder and more open-minded. The truth that society is constantly being reorganized every day. Even the shift from feudalism to “capitalism” happened over hundreds of years. In 300 years, people will look back at our current society and give it a name and analysis, because by then we would be living under a different paradigm. However, until then, future is what we make of it. And we could be more empathetic, and more imaginative.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > That’s a trivial statement. Isn't it amazing that the wealth generated by capitalism is so enormous that people don't even notice it? Wow!
hardcopy 3y ago
There's NLNet (funded by EU grants). It's a shame there aren't similar foundations and public funding for projects like this in other countries (afaik, correct me if I'm wrong). https://nlnet.nl/themes/ https://nlnet.nl/themes/
fatherzine 3y ago
Social darwinism is inescapable. With taxes funding the work, there will be some (aggregate) metric to decide who gets the grants, and some committee to decide said metric and apply it. Which inevitably leads to corruption, both in directly gaming the metric and in greasing the committee wheels to choose the metric that favors certain kind of projects, certain kind of credentials, and/or certain socio-ethno-economic identity markers of the authors. While the capitalist system is nakedly brutal, at least offers a skilled, determined and lucky person the opportunity to spend a part of their career earning (temporary) financial independence, and then spend it to finance their own projects.
- voxl 3y ago
  Can you not imagine a universal application? For example, what if you were guaranteed housing, food, and water for working some government job (assigned at random even) a couple of days a week? Most likely people will not want to be janitors and the like so it makes sense to tie social needs to the benefits to offset this, and the food provided does not need to have a lot of choice, as long as it meets nutrition requirements. Ambitious humans may want more, fine, allow an industry as we do now for people to grow and expand. In fact, competing with the government guaranteeing basic needs puts an easy floor on otherwise exploitative jobs. You have to at least beat the floor to attract any labor.
carlosjobim 3y ago
Exactly who is "society" here? I find it hard to imagine something that is less deserving of being funded by "society" than open source software. Maybe first the companies and individuals who use OSS could fund it? It's not like those people are the ones struggling to live in this modern world.

by voxl 3y ago

WalterBright 3y ago

> is not the only possible way society could be successfully organized True, if you have a rather low bar of success. Capitalism has produced wealth for average citizens inconceivable only a couple centuries ago. Even the poor in capitalist countries have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.

bheadmaster 3y ago
> Even the poor in capitalist countries have a higher standard of living than medieval kings. That is almost completely due to technological progress, not because of capitalism itself.
- WD40forRust 3y ago
  Capitalism is the nature in which technology got naturally selected.
  - bheadmaster 3y ago
    This sentence does not make any sense to me. Would you care to elaborate?
  - voxl 3y ago
    [citation needed] You know its funny because almost all academic advancement has not been in a capitalist system.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      What kind of academic advancement are you referring to? Marxism?
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Technological progress is enabled by capitalism.
  - bheadmaster 3y ago
    Is there any evidence of that claim available? As a counterexample, I'd like to point out the Soviet space program.
    - nickpp 3y ago
      Soviet spies were quite active and accomplished at stealing technological advancements from private firms in the West.
      - bheadmaster 3y ago
        Spying is a regular part of being a government. Are you claiming that American spies didn't steal technologies from other nations?
        nickpp 3y ago
        Sure but what would they have to steal from the Soviets?! I mean the West had A/C, cars, color TV, computers and so on while USSR was struggling to feed its people. Reminds me of the old Soviet joke brilliantly included in the Chernobyl series: "What’s as big as a house, burns 20 liters of fuel every hour, puts out a shit-load of smoke and noise, and cuts an apple into three pieces? A Soviet machine made to cut apples into four pieces."
        bheadmaster 3y ago
        American memes aren't accurate history sources. Soviets have had a very strong educational system, and a large number of scientists and engineers. Even mathematics, on which all the other science rests, was actively developed by the Soviet. E.g. Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov basically invented the modern probability theory. To claim that their engineers have done nothing but wait for spies to come back with US knowledge is a little absurd.
Iulioh 3y ago
Capitalism describes only who gets the money from a factory according to a pice of paper with no other relation with the work performed in said factory.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Ah, the Labor Theory of Value once again.
techno_tsar 3y ago
The “poor” in capitalist countries have a higher standard of living than medieval kings? In so far as they have electrical heating, access to global food products, information technology, modern medical care, sure, plenty of people have a “higher standard of living” versus pre-industrialized societies. That’s a trivial statement. It’s vacuous. Actually, what’s relevant is that the “poor” in any country have to work long, difficult jobs in order to survive. Some people even die or receive brutal injuries at work. And none of them are being compensated enough, because some people — like our version of medieval kings — don’t have to work at all. In the context of this discussion, we have situations where people can’t afford to do obvious things that benefit themselves and others. I can’t point my finger and say “capitalism did this”, because the whole engine of human relations (economic, social, cultural) is incredibly vast, and capitalism is such a massive, loaded concept. But I can sincerely say that somewhere along the line in this engine of human relations that there are very glaring issues that should make us question our sense of humanity. I am not advocating for some massive, state sponsored rewriting of economic relations or technocratically calculated wealth transfers. The former was empirically a disaster in the 20th century. The latter is purely an academic debate. Nor am I saying that we ought to guilt trip people into donating more to support developers working on free projects. That feels manipulative, although making any community more self-sustaining and caring is obviously good. I don’t know how fruitful parroting one of coldest takes (capitalism made people richer) can be in light of the lived realities of billions of people, working poor, passionate developers, and everyone who isn’t a 21st century robber baron. We are capable of being kinder and more open-minded. The truth that society is constantly being reorganized every day. Even the shift from feudalism to “capitalism” happened over hundreds of years. In 300 years, people will look back at our current society and give it a name and analysis, because by then we would be living under a different paradigm. However, until then, future is what we make of it. And we could be more empathetic, and more imaginative.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > That’s a trivial statement. Isn't it amazing that the wealth generated by capitalism is so enormous that people don't even notice it? Wow!

hardcopy 3y ago

There's NLNet (funded by EU grants). It's a shame there aren't similar foundations and public funding for projects like this in other countries (afaik, correct me if I'm wrong). https://nlnet.nl/themes/ https://nlnet.nl/themes/

fatherzine 3y ago

Social darwinism is inescapable. With taxes funding the work, there will be some (aggregate) metric to decide who gets the grants, and some committee to decide said metric and apply it. Which inevitably leads to corruption, both in directly gaming the metric and in greasing the committee wheels to choose the metric that favors certain kind of projects, certain kind of credentials, and/or certain socio-ethno-economic identity markers of the authors. While the capitalist system is nakedly brutal, at least offers a skilled, determined and lucky person the opportunity to spend a part of their career earning (temporary) financial independence, and then spend it to finance their own projects.

voxl 3y ago
Can you not imagine a universal application? For example, what if you were guaranteed housing, food, and water for working some government job (assigned at random even) a couple of days a week? Most likely people will not want to be janitors and the like so it makes sense to tie social needs to the benefits to offset this, and the food provided does not need to have a lot of choice, as long as it meets nutrition requirements. Ambitious humans may want more, fine, allow an industry as we do now for people to grow and expand. In fact, competing with the government guaranteeing basic needs puts an easy floor on otherwise exploitative jobs. You have to at least beat the floor to attract any labor.

carlosjobim 3y ago

Exactly who is "society" here? I find it hard to imagine something that is less deserving of being funded by "society" than open source software. Maybe first the companies and individuals who use OSS could fund it? It's not like those people are the ones struggling to live in this modern world.