Richard Stallman on his experience in Cuba
blogs.computerworld.com
blogs.computerworld.com
I think Stallman's views tend towards the extreme but I have to agree with this one.
It's called Regulatory Capture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
It happens all the time. The vast majority of regulation ends up doing nothing more than giving the existing large competitors in a space a tool to keep out new entrants and smaller, scrappier competitors.
One of the reasons that the software industry is do dynamic is because it's not regulated.
The point is, is that the regulations actually keep the income evenly disbursed. Essentially everyone is earning between £60,000 and £100,000 a year depending on what you do and how well you do it. However, when you work for a company (companies seem to exclusively do large businesses like factories and the few that don't have very bad reps) you earn much less, some get paid between £40,000 and £60,000. You, of course, get you tools paid for but they're a one time purchase, I mean our most expensive piece of equipment was a £1,000 tester and it has a 10 year warranty on it, so there is literally no incentive to go with one of those companies.
The companies actually run a scam, they hire people who aren't certified electricians, which is perfectly acceptable and legal. However they'll never train them to be certified, they just use already-certified electricians to certify everyone's work is done correctly. Again this is unfair on the certified electricians because if anyone screws up and he doesn't catch it, he's liable and that can include a prison sentence if someone dies from shoddy work.
My point is that regulation can be used in many ways. Big business takes over the regulators, but when used effectively a regulator can actually promote smaller business and stop economic pyramid schemes forming (AKA big business, people work for minimum wage so that the people at the top can earn over a million a year).
The fact that software isn't regulated is a good thing right now. There's lots of competition and there's self-regulation going on. There's lots of virus' out there, but if you stick to the sites certified by Microsoft and don't go on any sites that google suggests may be harmful to your computer, then you're largely to be fine. However, if companies like Google and Microsoft weren't providing some form of assistance to users, then I believe the software industry would need regulation, which would probably kill millions of blogs and social websites.
You may not like the choice that those certified electricians are making, but they clearly prefer it to their alternatives (such as running a two person shop).
Me - I see a significant cost savings. I don't care about certificates. I care about output and cost.
Note that regulatory capture actually isn't specific to big biz. It's often implemented by mobs of small biz trying to reduce competition. In the US you can see this in hair cutting and interior design. It sounds like electricians have done the same in the UK.
On a tangent, the story behind SuperCuts is quite fascinating. A 6'8" former truck driver who had a mid-life crisis and enrolled in beautician school. Page 182/250
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4870487/Conversations-withMilliona...
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Supercuts-I...
I mean this is quite an ironic example of regulation in big business. I mean look at the Big Three in automobile manufacturing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Three_(automobile_manufactu.... Now which one did I mean?
Look at what happened in the UK, the companies were making an inferior product (not many British car enthusiasts would agree, but I've managed to have a look in a few of the old cars and motorbikes and they're shoddy. Some old British bikes had the serious problem that they'd drip oil in front of the driving wheel). What happened? Well all three became one, that one became nationalized, that one ended up getting handed between multiple companies before being renamed to the Rover brand and ultimately ended up as part of Ford. Who won out in the UK for vehicles? All the more efficient foreign ones.
What's happening in the US? Well Ford seems pretty stable despite the crisis. Chrysler says they seriously doubted they'd make it past 2009 without outside help. GM was planning to merge with Chrysler, however now GM is up shit creek without a paddle and are hoping subsidies will help them survive. If Chrysler and GM get significantly weakened, well Ford will likely buy them out. Can anyone see where this could potentially go?
I think the serious problem with big biz, is that when there's problems an entire industry can move to a different country. The only US owned car manufacturer in 10-20 years could be Tesla motors probably only because a bunch of silicone valley guys understand the importance of competition.
Except in practice this form merely creates inefficiency that the rest of us get to pay for.
Regulatory capture works to the advantage of the incumbents vs the rest of us, independent of the characteristics of the incumbents.
Me - I don't care about the incumbents, big or small. I see no reason why they should get govt's thumb on the scale.
"DT: I've editorialized that U.S. companies should be allowed to compete in Cuba. What's your position on that?
RMS: I really don't care. From my point of view, business issues are minor in comparison with issues of human rights and general well-being. "
A very good argument can be easily made that a fiat currency is a necessary but not sufficient element in modern well-being.
Prior to fiat currencies there was a fixed amount of gold, and every coin in your pocket was a coin out of someone else's pocket.
Imagine a fixed number of software copies, a gold based currency is a lot like DRM for money.
Further more you can easily argue that making health care part of employer compensation (as is common in the US) leads to less well-being then making it a separate (in Europe often nationalized) good.
Those are two business issues with a direct impact on general well-being, and that's just off the top of my head.
But for me, I interpreted the statement as "When business issues and quality of life issues are in conflict and you have to choose one over the other, I choose quality of life issues". Maybe I misread.
Pure fiat money has been functioning in the West since only 1971 when Nixon suspended the dollar's conversion to gold as a prelude to a rather shitty decade in terms of economic performance. Fiat currency has been tried plenty of times over the last few centuries; it was never a stable monetary regime. Our experiment with fiat is new and bold, and as yet unproven. If it turns out to be successful, it would be the first time.
Perhaps I've just discovered a cure for the common cold. The same amount of money is now chasing a bigger pot.
Suppose lots of people pay me for my cure, and I just save all the money, what happens to the restaurant down the road?
Also fiat currencies predate Nixon, the paper contracts between members of the Hanseatic League can be thought of as a form of fiat currency.
Deflation was paired with economic growth in the United States under the gold standard for about 30 years at the end of the 19th century.
This was a good recent article on a related topic. Selgin is a well-known monetary economist:
When it's cheaper and easier to pull MORE gold out of the ground, that's not strictly speaking a fixed money supply.
When Rome (the empire) dumped a whole bunch of new found (stolen) gold on Rome (the city) that caused inflation too.
If your money supply is growing - it's growing.
Now if you have far too lose a monetary policy and you're inflating the money supply way too much and way too fast, that can be disastrous.
But if Alan Greenspan had found a way to convert led into gold, we would have gotten the real estate bubble even with a gold standard.
Under the gold standard, there is a feedback loop allowing the market to control inflation (that is, people can invest more or less in mining technologies/companies).
To some extent, this feedback loop also exists in a central banking system; it's far from being as efficient.
Why would one want to control inflation? Inflation does not have anything to do with economic health, does it? http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/jubi2000.htm
below 40% inflation per year, 'there is no evidence that inflation is costly'. Furthermore, there is no evidence of a 'slippery slope' there is no evidence that one increase in inflation causes further increases. Thus 'the focus on inflation ... has led to macroeconomic policies which may not be the most conducive for long-term economic growth.'
In practice, gold supplies tend to be more predictable than central banks.
I think using a fiat currency is probably a good idea, though.
The money supply and interest rates being econ 101.
And thinking of hyper inflation, where does that usually happen?
Zimbabwe, Yugoslavia, the Weimar Republic - if a bad government wants to screw you, a gold backed currency won't save you. Does anyone think someone like Mugabe wouldn't just change the rules to do what ever he wants?
Besides, even that Money as Debt movie explains that gold is easily manipulated and thus volatile, so not good as a currency.
I believe there's been at least one major stock market crash that has not led to a recession.
Why?
Usually people just flee to the most convenient hard currency, like the US dollar, then every pay check is a race to convert it before its value drops.
But a lot of those paychecks are not inflation indexed.
Basically hyper inflation makes it impossibly hard to preserve any kind of liquid or semi-liquid wealth.
You can only hope to have all our wealth in things like real estate or perhaps gold. Although dry beans, rice and salted bacon are probably better then gold. You can't eat gold, and I'm not sure you can trade it for food in some of the worst parts of Zimbabwe.
Let us not forget the legions of Cubans who have risked their lives on makeshift rafts to find a better life in the United States.
Business freedoms are also a consequence of other rights, like the right to property. They are nice, but not required.
Current examples of some of these tendencies might include Dubai, Singapore, and some parts of mainland China. Examples in the past include Chile under Pinochet, Nazi Germany, and at times, ancient Rome. Places at risk include London.
Singapore was a third-world country when the current ruling party took over in the mid-60s. Today, it has a higher per capita GDP than the United States, and three times that of neighboring Malaysia.
In the dark days of the 60s, Singapore was threatened by the communist plague sweeping over Southeast Asia, racial tensions and riots, and hostile neighbor states. The fact that it survives and thrives today is remarkable.
Yes, its government violated "human rights" along the way. In the 60s it aggressively persecuted communists, forbid their literature, and drove communist labor movements out of the country. This offends our Western sensibilities, but it did allow Singapore to avoid the fate of Vietnam and Cambodia. Was it worth it? I think the citizens of Singapore, both then and now, would say "yes".
In most circumstances I am a Western liberal. But I refuse to follow any ideology blindly to the point that it leads me to advocating catastrophe.
Today, Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world. It is regularly ranked by international organizations as one of the 10 least corrupt, often beating the United States. Maybe its people are lacking "human rights", but their quality of life is matched by few peoples of the world, and none in Southeast Asia. The fact that it appears to be an example for the China "communists" gives me hope for the future of that country.
Have you moved to Singapore yet? You seem to be pretty enthusiastic about it. I did not mean to say that it is an example of all of the bad things that can coexist with business freedom, just some of them.
As far as per-capita GDP goes, Singapore has the major advantage that it's 100% urban. I suspect that Malaysia's per-capita GDP would be a lot closer to Singapore's if you only considered downtown Kuala Lumpur.
I think the major problem in Vietnam and Cambodia was that they had a civil war, and as usual, the people who had power after the war were military leaders. In Vietnam things got a lot better after the war; in Cambodia, things got a lot worse, as they often do. (In fact, Cambodia is almost uniquely bad in the history of the world, as far as I know; there are lots of instances of conquering armies killing 50% or 100% of a conquered people, but I don't know of any others where they killed more than 50% of their own population.)
In both Cambodia and Vietnam, the civil war was made much worse by a US invasion. Maybe you think the same thing would have happened to Singapore? I suspect that they had an equal chance of ending up like Thailand, or urban Malaysia, or other countries in the area; and it's not clear to me that aggressively persecuting Communists made a civil war less rather than more likely.
The Thais and Maylays were with Singapore in taking aggressive anti-communist actions in the 1960s. None of the countries that escaped communism approached the Western liberal ideal of political freedom. They were bare-knuckled pragmatists. They were all scared of what happened in China and wary of the imperial ambitions of the Soviets.
However, only Singapore pursued a transparent, capitalistic society with strong property rights and rule of law. The difference in outcomes is telling.
>"Have you moved to Singapore yet? You seem to be pretty enthusiastic about it."
If I were a resident of Southeast Asia, Singapore would be my #1 place to live. As is, I like the United States just fine.
>"As far as per-capita GDP goes, Singapore has the major advantage that it's 100% urban."
This was a huge disadvantage in the early years. Singapore had no raw materials, little farmland, and a per capita GDP of about $500. They had to import everything and often ran into hostility from neighboring countries that tried to prevent them from using trade routes, or even accessing water supplies.
A unique combination of shrewd leadership and aggressive capitalism grew their economy to the point that they had leverage in negotiations with their neighbors. Their destiny as the business hub of Southeast Asia was never a given.
>"From the quotes you put around the phrase 'human rights', am I to understand that you don't think human rights really exist, or that they aren't rights, or something?"
I put quotes around "human rights" because I don't think they are as easily defined as some people assume. I also don't think they are the end-all of politics, as Western liberals often suppose. I would certainly be willing to trade small infringements on human rights for large increases in the standard of living.
This is the point where many people would call me a "fascist" and run away.
I would be willing to bet that the average Singaporean is happy that their government made the choice to restrict press freedoms and prevent a communist revolution in the early years, considering how things have turned out.
What do you think about the pre-civil-war human-rights records of Vietnam and Cambodia? Do you think they were more protective of political freedom before the wars than Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia?
> "If I were a resident of Southeast Asia, Singapore would be my #1 place to live. As is, I like the United States just fine."
I think infringements on human rights are less unpleasant in theory than in practice; maybe if you spend some time living there, you might have a more nuanced point of view about it.
> [Urbanity] "was a huge disadvantage in the early years." [economically]
Nearly all of world economic development during the 20th century was urban, if you measure by GDP. In industrialized countries, cities have been richer than the country for centuries — as long as there have been industrialized countries. It's true that cities can't be self-sustaining, but that seems to be an advantage when it comes to economic development.
> "I would be willing to bet that the average Singaporean is happy that their government..."
The average inhabitant of almost any country is happy about almost everything their government has done, especially a while back, and they would have been happy about their government doing the opposite if it had done the opposite.
I'm still interested in your answers to my questions.
People should not have to live in fear of criticizing their government.
> Currently, Chile is one of South America's most stable and prosperous nations.[5] Within the greater Latin American context it leads in terms of human development, competitiveness, quality of life, political stability, globalization, economic freedom, low perception of corruption and comparatively low poverty rates.[7] It also ranks high regionally in freedom of the press and democratic development.
During the Pinochet era the economy grew and created a stable base for the current day Chile. The economic policies of Chile has not changed course from the Pinochet era.
> and some parts of mainland China
China is screwed up and has many problems. When you compare China now with China pre-1978 you will see that people are a lot richer and more well off than they were then.
> Singapore
Compare Singapore with its neighbour Malaysia. Singapore has a high GDI and a lot less social problems than most other countries.
I never said that the oppression during Pinochet's term was right. What I said was that Chile's macro-economic policy was right. The economic growth under Chile was better than the inflation under Allende. Even critical things such as infancy mortality rate was a 4th under Pinochet as it was under Allende.
“And there HAS been socialist change since Pinochet. “
From WP:
The implemented economic model had three main objectives: economic liberalization, privatization of state owned companies, and stabilization of inflation. These market-oriented economic policies were continued and strengthened after Pinochet stepped down.[1] Successive governments have continued these policies for a quarter century.
Chile has the 8th highest economic freedom in the world – this shows that a lot of policies are still the same.
So I said, "Cuba has an important resource - lots of people who have never learned to use Windows. And here you are, destroying that resource, gratuitously. If you are not ready yet to switch these clubs so that they teach people free software, at least you should shut them down until they can."
Does he say this seriously? I've seen people using this kind of hyperbole when in a partisan environment to have a laughs. But I have no clue from the article that this is humorous.
He even talks about regime change in Cuba to open up.
Stallman declared he'd rather see computer clubs closed than using Windows. He wants to convert (I'm quoting the article) the "important resource" (read: people 'unspoiled' by Windows) to free software (just like Che Guevara who went to Africa to convert people unspoiled by capitalism to the ideal of communism).
So I rest my case: as far as software is concerned, he is a totalitarian.
Yes, you are.
> Stallman declared he'd rather see computer clubs closed than using Windows.
Your paraphrasing is out of context and switches meanings. I am not going to even quote as you conveniently didn't quote that paragraph.
> He wants to convert (I'm quoting the article) the "important resource" (read: people 'unspoiled' by Windows) to free software
Yeah, so? He wants Free Software. Nothing new.
> (just like Che Guevara who went to Africa to convert people unspoiled by capitalism to the ideal of communism).
This is a very pathetic and childish hyperbole. You are the equivalent of the Fox News crowd for software.
(That's a hyperbole pun.)
Choose the right tool for the job.
We're talking about Cuba here. Buying Microsoft software is simply not an option anytime in the next few years; it's illegal under US law for Microsoft to sell to them. Or are you talking about the $1 needed to burn a CD with an unlicensed copy of the Microsoft software on it?
In the case of proprietary software from other countries, from companies that are willing to risk US trade sanctions, Cuba still has to pay for the licenses from its very limited foreign exchange reserves, acquired from its very limited exports of about US$220 per capita per year.
Cuba has about 11 million people, 20% under 14, which means 160 000 of them graduate from high school every year. If its leadership thought software was a priority, they could train the top 3% of each graduating class in software development, roughly the same fraction as programmers in the US work force, about 5000 people. If they were at all successful in this, then starting in 2013 or so, Cuba would have at least a few hundred good hackers every year.
Let's say that one average software developer can replace US$150 000 per year of software consulting services or licensing costs from abroad. (Outside of Cuba, they're paid US$50 000 and billed out to clients at twice that, but aren't as efficient as somebody local who already has both the hacking skills and the domain knowledge.) Under those assumptions, each graduating class provides software that would have cost US$750 million per year to purchase from abroad, if purchasing it from abroad is even possible.
Cuba's total imports are about US$7 billion per year. So in 2022, the value produced by these programmers each year would exceed Cuba's entire current imports. And that's with only 50 000 programmers out of 11 million people. A more aggressive program would convert 3% of the entire population to software development, or 300 000 people.
So it's quite likely that, for Cuba, developing software internally would be far cheaper than trying to buy it abroad.
Of course, the value produced by programming is very hard to predict, as is the success of an educational initiative, as are international politics.
But why bother?
The consequence that it is better to close down the clubs than to let them encourage proprietary software usage is almost inescapable given the above premise.
(by the way, the case against using BASIC is certainly stronger than the case against using proprietary software.)
1) cuban boys discovering hacking in computer clubs
2) something I'm too stupid to understand
3) clubs should be shut
Good work!
Just imagine the amount of wealth that has been created in the past couple of decades by using proprietary software.
Though one could argue the same could have been done with free software, he's saying (as you paraphrase) that it's better to have no progress at all than to have progress at the cost of using proprietary.
Notice the religious terminology. The Church of Emacs, eh.
edit: Is it possible to use bold here?
Italics are allowed because they allow you to annotate emphasis without making the text stand out more than normal -- you only notice it inline. Allowing bold would lead to asshats writing like Jeff Atwood.
I think it's pretty ridiculous not to support useful features just because 1% of people might misuse it.