[11657] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The EFF and Universal Access -- and Andrew Carnegie
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frezza (via RadioMail))
Tue Apr 12 22:17:41 1994
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 1994 13:10:14 PDT
From: Bill Frezza (via RadioMail) <frezza@radiomail.net>
Cc: brodsky@radiomail.net, ggilder@mcimail.com, interesting-people@eff.org,
farber@central.cis.upenn.edu, opfer@radiomail.net,
media15@radiomail.net, stahlman@radiomail.net, com-priv@psi.com,
barlow@eff.org, jswatz@well.sf.ca.us, kgs@panix.com
To: rothman@netcom.com
David,
Thank you for your snide and unctuous response. It is so much more
productive to deal with innuendo, sarcasm, straw men and red herrings
rather than have to wrestle with fundamental issues of moral
philosophy :-) Nonetheless, I will give it a try for your continued
edification and amusement.
Disinterested readers can delete this message now.
You state: <I'm worried. Are you implying that EFF might also approve of
entitlements like public schools and free public libraries? My own
theory is that EFF is the product of a secret cabal organized by the
Carnegie Foundation. Andrew Carnegie was a cunning Marxist then, and his
spiritual brethern today are equally subversive. Think about it.
Carnegie would give away money for the construction of public libraries,
but he would not fund their operation. He believed that the taxpayers
had that responsibility. Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin would all have
approved of this Communistic redistribution of income. :-)>
You are essentially correct, except there is nothing secret about
this cabal. It goes by the common
name of "altruism" and has been accepted as the prevailing
moral code. The failure of the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Fords,
and other great entrepreneurs of the second industrial revolution
is not that they became rich "off the labor of their workers" but
that they ceded their enemies the moral high ground. They accepted an
unearned guilt about their wealth and tried to prove their "worthiness"
by giving it away. What they lacked was a basic moral defense of
capitalism, someone to defend the fact that their wealth was for
the most part theirs to do with as they pleased BY RIGHT. (I am
specifically excepting any wealth obtained from receiving
government favors or perpetrating acts of force or fraud.) I hope the
Bill Gates and the other entrepreneurs of the information revolution
don't make the same mistake.
<Without free libraries and public schools, just how much does the vote
mean?>
How much does it mean now? Were you happy with the last set of
choices presented?
<Would you like a society in which people's exact voting power
reflected the sizes of their bank accounts?>
Isn't that where power lies now, in the ability of the well heeled and
well connected to work the corridors of power behind the scenes using
an army of well paid lobbyists seeking further government favors
and handouts? Has voting protected us from this?
<Or how about just a good, old-fashioned
government without frills, except a program to make the trains run on
time?>
This sentence started out fine, but show me where in the constitution
it says that the government should be in the railroad business, or
the insurance business, or the health care business, or the
"information highway" business.
<Why squander tax money on civics classes or on gophers with
government information?>
Well, you finally got something right.
<Clearly, then, government has a role in making it *possible* for
*individuals* to improve themselves and vote sensibly.>
Huh? Did you make an argument supporting this "clear" conclusion
somewhere? I must have missed it. Or maybe you believe that this
is self evident.
"We hold these truths to be self evident ... that all men are
endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are
the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the right
to have the government teach them how to vote "sensibly"?
<I myself,
just me speaking, no group, do not think we all have a right to free HBO
or even free CNN. But we certainly are all entitled to free public
schools and libraries, and their digital equivalents.>
Let me ask again, what gives you this "right" at my expense? Suppose
I go on strike? Who is going to pay for your "right"?
<I would love to know
your general philosophy of government.>
I could do this standing on one foot as it has all been said before
by others more articulate than I.
The most moral form of government is a stricly limited constitutional
democracy that concerns itself ONLY with protecting its citizens
from acts of force or fraud. In order to achieve this end, thereby
securing the blessings of liberty, the government is granted a
monopoly on the use of force to be used ONLY in the service of
the above mandate.
We got very close last time around but made one fatal mistake. Separation
of church and state was a radical innovation but it was not enough.
We also need separation of the economy and state. For the government
to use its coercive powers to advance the economic agenda of any
group, be it a minority or a majority, is a pernicous evil destined
to trample our liberties and enslave us not to foreign powers but to
our neighbors.
The information revolution is going to finally achieve this end
because it is already OUT OF ANYONE'S CONTROL. The government can
sieze coal mines and steel mills but it is impotent to sieze ideas.
Is this clear enough? Do you think you can come back and state your
own moral code in a straightforward manner so that it could be
critically examined? I have not been able to get the EFF to do this.
Bill Frezza
frezza@radiomail.net
(201) 890-3643
(215) 321-0929
