Re: is Debian an anarchist organization/project?
On Wed, 30 Oct 2002 10:39, Emile van Bergen wrote:
> > No. It would be better if they clearly stated that a company is not a
> > person and does not deserve the rights of a person.
>
> That would be great, yes, but I don't really care whether a natural person
> decides to spend money to gain political influence in order to promote
> the interests of the companies he owns, or it's the companies that spend
> the money directly. Both are just as effective and just as undemocratic.
However a person has a limited life time, people don't have as much money as
companies, and people lose influence rapidly when they do something wrong.
> > Currently a company is given all the rights of a person under contract
> > and civil law. But when a company does something wrong it can't be
> > punished. In the US someone who kills a few dozen people will at best be
> > jailed for life, and probably get the death penalty. A company who kills
> > as many people will at worst get fined.
>
> I agree there, but solving that won't cure the ills of democracy. If we
> don't want to vote with our dollars, but want the people to vote, then
> we must minimize the effective power of dollars in the government. It's
> that simple.
Actually I wouldn't mind if votes were directly determined by dollars. If for
example you vote according to your taxes, someone who pays twice the tax gets
twice the vote.
However the influence that rich people and corporations have far exceeds that.
> > If "publically funded" means "government funded" then yes I agree that
> > can work (but that goes against the anarchist philosophy).
>
> That's what I meant. And yes, the difference with anarchist philosophy
> is that they /do. assume that the funding by the people that are
> interested is enough. I think they underestimate the effect of "I'll
> only pay if my neighbor pays too", which only a government can leverage.
Governments don't even leverage that. They just say "we do things you like
and we decided that your share of the payment is $X, pay now or go to jail",
then you pay.
Everyone is happy for other people to be jailed for not paying their taxes...
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