
Free as in Health Care - akkartik
http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2016/08/29/free-as-in-health-care
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micahbright
The entire argument here seems to hinge on the idea that government regulation
makes it easier to show liability, thus making an industry safer.

I think this is totally off base. It assumes that safety innovation is only
achieved via regulation, and cannot be achieved in any other way.

It never ceases to amaze me that people still think roads wouldn't be built
without the government, or that they would be sub-par. People think that
without government, the world would be in complete anarchy, when the only
examples we have close to that show the
opposite([http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=80...](http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=803)).

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dmoy
I have a hard time reconciling this opinion with the horror stories friends
who grew up in Mogadishu (and subsequently fled to Minneapolis) tell me.

I'm not sure that the wild west examples given in that article scale well to
large cities.

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dmix
The "Somalia is a comparable form of anarchy" argument is even worse than the
"roads would not have been built" argument the OP was dismissing. This hardly
needs a rebuttal because it's based on a false pretense that the goal is some
form of stateless 'anarchy' without rule of law/courts rather than a
minimalist government, particularly in the economic sense.

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mikeash
The original comment literally presented "without government, the world would
be in complete anarchy" as a false belief. If "without government" is a false
pretense and the actual case being explored is "minimalist government" then
maybe they should have said so, but it hardly seems fair to blame the
responder for replying to what was written.

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aminok
Those places have governments, just ones that, relative to the governments of
advanced economies, are extremely small and barbaric.

If we define a government as a party with a localized monopoly on force, even
an armed robber is a government.

And if one doesn't define government this broadly, that still doesn't
invalidate the libertarian argument, since it hinges on opposition to the
initiation of force (aggression), as opposed to initiation of strictly
government force.

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legulere
So basically this article makes a Kant-ian argument that we need rules to
actually get freedom. I think that there's nothing wrong with that argument,
but the whole story to make open source about freedom is not the right way at
all. I think if you release source code for other people to use is more akin
to a present you make for the whole society of the world, which may be able to
advance itself with it. Presents shouldn't be bound to conditions. We
certainly need rules for our societies, but they need to be part of the law,
not part of some conditions of presents. That's why I release the stuff I
write under public domain/CC0.

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belorn
When individuals given donations to disasters funds and hospitals, is it not
reasonable that it has the condition that the organizer don't pocket the money
themselves? One obvious condition to me is that the money should end up as
advertised, and if not, I would claim fraud and hope that the justice system
handles it.

Other forms of presents are public services "gifted" by the government to its
citizens, like parks. A condition to that gift is that people don't vandalize
the park, destroying it for everyone. Shouldn't presents like those should be
bound to conditions, both informal and official.

I find that most gifts are given under an implicit or explicit condition, and
it seems the norm rather than the exception.

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utternerd
It's not a "present" if you're forced to pay for it via coercion as we do when
it comes to a public park. It is however a "present" when one spends their
time and energy making, and then giving away something to others as was the
example. Very different scenarios; one is a gift, one is coerced.

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natmaster
The problem with the concept of additive rights, is that they require unequal
application to a populace. You cannot have an additive right that everyone
gets. For every addition there must be a subtraction. If you think you have
'right' to a private jet; someone has to make that jet - and you don't have to
give them anything back. This is the logic of the thugs that use their threats
to take the apple in your hand.

Sorry, you are not better than any other human.

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stcredzero
_I think the critical insight here is that Stallman’s vision of software
freedom dates to a time when software was contained. You could walk away from
that PDP-11 and the choices you made there didn’t follow you home in your
pocket or give a world full of bored assholes an attack surface for your
entire life._

How practical could it be to have laws against trolling? There are online
groups who have rules against doxxing, who seem to be able to enforce them. I
don't think it would unduly contravene free speech, if public spaces on the
internet assumed consent to communication between individuals, with the option
of individuals revoking consent. This would be analogous to what people do in
public spaces. Then the act of creating a throwaway account on Twitter to
continue harassment would be analogous to continue to harass someone in real
life. There would be exceptions, but generally, this would be definable and
enforceable. (And I would also say, it would be more constructive than picking
a figurehead like Milo Yiannopoulos and banning him as a scapegoat. Even if
enforcement could only catch a few people.)

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jasonkostempski
Name 1 technology law that actually fixed a problem.

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Frondo
Seatbelts?

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jasonkostempski
Touché, I should have been more specific, I meant digital technology.

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ilaksh
Security standards should be better but software is not like roads or cars.
And thank the stars for that. Filling up books full of laws just freezes
systems or makes it so you need to be a large company to participate.

If anything, roads and cars should be more like software. Which is not to say
no laws. But the laws should not be so many volumes as to be unapproachable
and prescriptive and there should be automated systems for testing and
validation. This is certainly doable for software.

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camtarn
Can anyone enlighten me: why is the article called "Free as in Health Care",
but the word 'health' is never again mentioned in the article? I feel like I'm
missing something...

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jbmorgado
Seriously, this is the XXI century. You are _free_ to put those awful colors
in your website if you choose so, but those white letters on a black
background just burned my retinas and stopped me from reading the full text.

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Sir_Substance
I've always found white letters on black background way easier to read. Isn't
diversity wonderful?

