Why do libertarian types like Oligarchy & Corporate rule?

I consider myself libertarian. A guaranteed income would not be my preferred policy preference if I were starting from scratch, but I would trade the current system we have with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, unemployment benefits, farm subsidies, etc. for a guaranteed minimum income for all adult citizens in a heartbeat.

 

I'll just give you one example. There are thousands of others. People like that are being counted upon to be the main creative and innovative drive for society right now, creating whole new industries, and disrupting others.

http://www.apache.org/
The Apache Software Foundation
provides support for the Apache community of open-source software projects, which provide software products for the public good.

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html

http://strata.oreilly.com/2012/02/what-is-apache-hadoop.html

 

Splitting hairs as I'm a tech geek, but Hadoop isn't a great example that fits your premise. It's really MapReduce that's been driving big data.

A better example would be Linux.

 

splitting hairs upon your hairs as I'm also a tech geek, but Hadoop is the most common way to democratize access to MapReduce, and is the implementation solution that has gained the most viability as a way to build on the original proprietary Google code---so I think it's a really good example, personally.

Google's original search algorithm was built on public research, so we all come full circle eventually.

Linux works too, Github projects as well.

I'd be curious as to what you work in.

i guess to bring this side tangent to something everyone here can relate to---there are a lot of mission-driven makers out there, and a lot of money-driven takers.

 

Sure and that's fine and admirable but it's a pipe dream to expect that most people who have a great idea that is going to advance civilization is going to do so just out of altruism and idealism. Edison made a lot of money, the Wright brothers did too, Elon Musk made a lot of money and Tesla and Space X are for profit ventures, Craig Venter has started a private company to continue his genomics research. In my own field Frank Gehry makes millions off of his projects. He certainly could just donate his services but chooses not to.

 

Honestly this is just ideological driven rhetoric that debases the discussion.

Do you consider Elon Musk a money-driven taker? There are lot of people who are both interested in doing something that is unique and advances society but also want to make a lot of money doing so. Maybe you see something wrong with someone wanting to make some money off of a great idea that they are willing to put the work and effort into developing but I don't.

 

I'm sure you can make money off the side. Good examples are Red Hat for Linux, and Cloudera for Hadoop. We all have to live with the system given us, and if you're building something great you should get a slice.

That said, the balance is ridiculous. The OpenSSL guy was getting paid $20,000 a year for helping to secure about 15% of the Internet---and nobody cared until Heartbleed. Meanwhile, the accounting-consulting-legal-banking complex get innumerable riches for playing with the rules to stash trillions away offshore, and to defray social costs for private individuals.

A libertarian has to live with the fact that this is the default system they embrace if they turn away from using any power to balance this injustice: the overriding and unfair use of corporate power to tilt humanity towards ill-thought short-term gain at the cost of long-term disaster.

 

I have no problem with Elon Musk---as he's a mission-driven maker. I'm not averse to people making profits. I very much like the fact that his capital needs are secondary to the fact that he is driving impact towards sustainable energy and space exploration, two capital-intensive pursuits, but necessary ones. This of course, puzzles the people who play with numbers in the stock market, because his mission draws in more capital than an irrational market hiding behind a facade of respectability is deemed "able to provide".

Huge fan of using the current system to build bigger and better things.

However, I have a problem with those who profess the myth of "makers and takers"---and don't realize that they're the money-driven takers working off society's builders. I could name names, but it doesn't take too much thought to feel who I'm talking about.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/21/global-elite-tax-offshore-economy

 

Yeah, it's common. Cassandra and Hbase are also top tier apache projects too. There's also mongodb, riak or even postgres for big data implementation. Different flavors for different needs...

Original hairsplitting point is that the apache foundation is a greater overarching example of non-profit interests driving the tech sector (like Linux or Git).

I suppose tech has a high concentration of these examples, but the culture is slowly spreading to other things. I'd look towards Internet of things and 3d printing for physical catalysts.

Ironically, given the bloated market cap of tech industries, it also looks like an oligarchy at the top, which is why it's good for google to open source things or support their competitors on the browser front. They're more or less a monopoly in many things.

 

Tim O'Reilly has a lot of really interesting thoughts with this regards.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/04/ioth-the-internet-of-things-and-humans.html

Arguing that IoT, at least in the emerging stages, will fundamentally shape human perception and workflow.

Stressing the importance of open-source to that process (The Thing System is a great example of this) will spread the culture. Embedded devices will be so ubiquitous and process so much information that I can't see a proprietary monopoly on data flow even working---and it is surely advantageous to be bottom-up rather than top-down. http://thethingsystem.com/

not to tip my hand too much, but I'm working in IoT, and seeing what can be done data-wise. it's not gonna be easy :/

 

On another tangent, I'm a bit loathe to see everything abstracted and thought less after reading the mention about Nest. The tv remote killed our attention spans more than the extra channels itself. It'll be interesting to see how society adjusts, as I don't think 80% of the population out there is so busy that they need these gadgets to think everything up for them...

I work in IT consulting and am currently stationed in SF, dabbled a little bit with mongo and learned some good info about other noSQL db frameworks from teammates.

 

Of course and it is just as foolish to say that we should do away with all taxes. It ignores the issue of the commons. That said citing open source software and Jonas Salk as an argument for advancing society without the profit motive is naive.

Yes there are a lot of people who do things because of idealism and altruism but there are more who do so because they want some materialistic gain.

 

80/20 rule, give me one Erdos and 10 million bankers, and I can very easily point to you which has made more beneficial societal impact.

 

Anyways, you can have the profit motive as a secondary consideration---no problem. But I wish society was more oriented to those who built first, rather than those who exploited builders. (conveying this in the same ridiculous makers and takers rhetoric is somewhat liberating I must say).

 

Liberals want governments to control corporations.

Last person to try that was Hitler.

 

Sounds like you agree.

There is nothing liberals like more than having the government "in cahoots" with corporations so that politicans can a) make a lot of money and b) commit genocide when needed to stay in power.