Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

matduggan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 418 posts

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#81

Post by vrganj »

slopinthebag wrote: post #71
vrganj wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a democratic society, government is the representative of the people. It is also the only entity powerful enough to stand up to other monopolies, businesses, which are dictatorships without any democratic control. There will always be a power structure. I'd prefer one I can vote out. The fundamental flaw in any type of libertarian / anarchist thinking is denying the reality that power will always be concentrated s…

> In a democratic society, government is the representative of the people. Representative of who exactly? Generally governments around the world win with The rest have a government who are not representative of them in power over them. Hardly representative of the people.

That might be a problem of the specific state you live in. Some systems are better at representing the people than others.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#82

Post by pibaker »

spinningslate wrote: post #40
tempaccount5050 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought that the hippie environmental types wanting data (music) stored as plastic was ironic. "I prefer my music to be made of petrochemicals and trees, the way it ought to be." I get it, but I still think it's funny.

Instead of what - vast data centres full of electronics, consuming huge quantities of electricity, controlled by techno-feudalistic megacorps who keep almost all of the money and supply a pittance to the artists? Everything has a cost but those records, CDs and cassettes look like a good deal from here. I still have LPs I inherited from my parents. They still play on my 20 year old turntable.

Do you think DVDs were manufactured in mom and pop workshops untainted by corporate influence? Quite the opposite actually. Every DVD and DVD drive legally sold had to pay licensing fees! So is blueray!

https://www.cnet.com/culture/blu-ray-victory-means-royalties...

https://blu-raydisc.info/flla-faq.php

> Instead of what - vast data centres full of electronics, consuming huge quantities of electricity, controlled by techno-feudalistic megacorps who keep almost all of the money and supply a pittance to the artists?

So what's your alternative, stocking every single video store in the country with plastic discs with DRMs transported by diesel trucks? Do you seriously think the material cost of manufacturing and transporting a disc is less than what it takes to send its contents over the internet?

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#83

Post by spinningslate »

tempaccount5050 wrote: post #62
spinningslate wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of what - vast data centres full of electronics, consuming huge quantities of electricity, controlled by techno-feudalistic megacorps who keep almost all of the money and supply a pittance to the artists? Everything has a cost but those records, CDs and cassettes look like a good deal from here. I still have LPs I inherited from my parents. They still play on my 20 year old turntable.

No, store it on your computer/phone/iPod. But honestly data centers are probably very efficient for this. I'm not going to do the math, but storing data on flash and serving it to billions of people probably is efficient if I had to guess.

I would like to see a full cost comparison. Centralised storage - replicated, distributed and maintained online as necessary - vs media that, once manufactured and distributed, essentially costs nothing to maintain. iPods/phones get replaced much more frequently than LPs/casettes/CDs. And that’s just the resource consumption comparison. There’s then the economic polarisation of wealth to the small handful of online music renters vs distributed ownership (of copies: the original work of art remains with the artist, at least in theory).

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#84

Post by nothinkjustai »

mikem170 wrote: post #37
nothinkjustai wrote: post #26

> The cyberlibertarians wanted you to believe that radical individualism plus deregulated capitalism plus inevitable technology would produce communitarian utopia. This is, on its face, insane. It is the economic equivalent of claiming that if everyone punches each other really hard, eventually we'll all be hugging. The alternative, of course, is that a nanny state + highly regulated tech + inevitable technology lead…

What about radical individualism + regulated tech - inevitable technology? I don't see anything wrong with individuals who by consensus choose to regulate "inevitable" technology. Technology is not a person, and we don't need to make ourselves subservient to it. I'm thinking of things like liability as a publisher for algorithmic feeds, anti-trust enforcement against companies competing unfairly, mandates for inter-o…

“Individuals by consensus” feels oxymoronic to me. If that’s a description of the outcome, it’s possible today! Individuals can chose not to use a technology and if enough do so to form a consensus, they may be able to impose constraints on the technology akin to regulation.

However anything else would require coercive power structures which go against the idea of radical individualism.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#86

Post by spinningslate »

pibaker wrote: post #82
spinningslate wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of what - vast data centres full of electronics, consuming huge quantities of electricity, controlled by techno-feudalistic megacorps who keep almost all of the money and supply a pittance to the artists? Everything has a cost but those records, CDs and cassettes look like a good deal from here. I still have LPs I inherited from my parents. They still play on my 20 year old turntable.

Do you think DVDs were manufactured in mom and pop workshops untainted by corporate influence? Quite the opposite actually. Every DVD and DVD drive legally sold had to pay licensing fees! So is blueray! https://www.cnet.com/culture/blu-ray-victory-means-royalties... https://blu-raydisc.info/flla-faq.php > Instead of what - vast data centres full of electronics, consuming huge quantities of electricity, controlled by…

Yes, I would like to see a full cost comparison. Transferring one time digitally will no doubt cost (a lot) less than physical manufacture and distribution. But it’s not one time transfer: it’s streaming on demand, every time each person listens to each track, because the economic model is rental not purchase.

I use streaming services. I like the flexibility and ubiquity of access. But my favourite music I still buy on cd or vinyl. Why? Because it means I’m not subject to the whims of a megacorp removing access and it means more goes to the artist. I’ve been buying music for 40 years and still listen to some of stuff I bought then. I hope to live long enough to do the same for the music I buy now.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#87

Post by pdonis »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #7
pdonis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never had the problems with tapes that the author describes--but I still preferred CDs when they came out, and I greatly prefer having my entire music library on a single USB stick that I can just plug into my car. I was able to find my way around okay with paper maps--but I still prefer having GPS in my phone. My issue with those passages is that the author is conflating "digital" or "computers are involved" with…

I’m not saying the newer alternatives are not convenient! Just saying the old ones were OK; not the garment-rending disaster TFA purports them to be.

It would appear that they were a "garment-rending disaster" at least to some, like the author of the article.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#88

Post by icegreentea2 »

georgehotz wrote: post #29

Maybe it's just my contrarian nature, but this sells me on cyberlibertarianism. There's nothing preventing you from setting up a web server, downloading free software to run it, getting your friends to view it, building encrypted communication apps that no government can crack, pirating any piece of content in the world, etc... A libertarian society won't coddle you, and there's psychopaths like Meta who show up in t…

A libertarian society doesn't coddle you, but it still accepts that the state has monopoly of force, and it accepts that the state needs to be fair and predictable.

I think the author's fear would be that we currently live in an informational vortex that threatens to destabilize and consume our democracies and societies, and remove even the possibility of a fair and predictable state.

And I would argue that that is hardly an outlandish fear. It's barely an extrapolation at all.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#89

Post by pdonis »

ajross wrote: post #12
pdonis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never had the problems with tapes that the author describes--but I still preferred CDs when they came out, and I greatly prefer having my entire music library on a single USB stick that I can just plug into my car. I was able to find my way around okay with paper maps--but I still prefer having GPS in my phone. My issue with those passages is that the author is conflating "digital" or "computers are involved" with…

> having my entire music library on a single USB stick Worth pointing out how this too is an example of somewhat mistaken value analysis based on libertarian ideals. The market winning solution, of course, is to put THE entire music library, all of it, everyone's, in the cloud and get to it from any device anywhere. Obviously you perceive value in the local storage that the rest of the market does not. Which was one…

> The market winning solution, of course, is to put THE entire music library, all of it, everyone's, in the cloud and get to it from any device anywhere.

Not in a free market (which is part of "libertarian ideals", or at least it's supposed to be). In a free market, there is no single "solution"--there are whatever solutions people are willing to pay more than they cost for. If you want your music in the cloud, and you pay for that, and I want my music locally, and I pay for that, that is the libertarian ideal.

Trying to own the entire market and force your "solution" on everyone, just because you happen to have enough users to be able to get away with such bullying, at least for a time, is not a free market. But that's what the tech giants are trying to do.

> Obviously you perceive value in the local storage that the rest of the market does not.

That the majority of the market does not, yes. But I don't think I'm even close to being the only person that doesn't want to depend on "the cloud" for everything I do.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#90

Post by mystraline »

Libertarianism sounded great. Its all about freedom, and the right to do with yourself what you want. And who doesnt want that?

But they also wanted that freedom for their property and money.

And if youre willing to skirt or plainly violate the laws, you can make bank. And then as a company, you can basically bribe politicians and do all these horrible things.

The end result of libertarianism is simple: He who has the gold makes the rule.

Dont like your pay? Fuck you. Quit.

Dont like the conditions? Fuck you. Die.

Dont like political manipulation? Too fucking bad. You have no choice.

Dont like policies at mega-internet corp (meta, alphabet, microsoft)? Too bad, we'll erase you.

Libertarianism creates semi-autonomous enclaves of technofeudalism. And their power is enforced by non-internet mundane government laws, like the DMCA.

You violate a company, and they delete you. You violate government law, and they arrest or kill you. Of course its in line of duty, or defense of officer - all the eupamisms.

But long story short, I do not trust libertarians in any way. They do indeed want freedom to control everyone else.

Post reply on HN