Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

But yeah, altruism is typically shared by both anarchists and communists. The only remaining question seems to be: who better embodies the ideal?

If at least he was actually doing what he preaches, one could be charitable. But actually he is just a goddamn activist, endlessly arguing about why the work of others should be free while he does zero work of value himself.

Every far-left friend I have had, who always touts some form of communism or sharing of resources, has been the one who systematically shares the least. And that is true both from a material point of view and effort/labor perspective as well. Hence my conclusion that they are assholes.

It seems to have hurt the sensibilities of his followers, but that was expected, and since they are assholes, you cannot expect them to be truthful.

By the way, political ideology is identifiable in genetics, so yes, it is absolutely certain that your political ideas correlate with how you interact with peoples.

Here is a paste of a previous reply.

I strongly disagree. I don't know whether he would identify himself as a communist politically, but it doesn't matter. Furthermore, I am entitled to analyze his ideas and classify them as I please. And as far as I'm concerned, he is arguing about fruits of labor being free in the typical “comrade” idealization from communism.

If at least he was actually doing what he preaches, one could be charitable. But actually he is just a goddamn activist, endlessly arguing about why the work of others should be free while he does zero work of value himself.

Every far-left friend I have had, who always touts some form of communism or sharing of resources, has been the one who systematically shares the least. And that is true both from a material point of view and effort/labor perspective as well. Hence my conclusion that they are assholes.

It seems to have hurt the sensibilities of his followers, but that was expected, and since they are assholes, you cannot expect them to be truthful.

By the way, political ideology is identifiable in genetics, so yes, it is absolutely certain that your political ideas correlate with how you interact with peoples.

The fact is that he is just one more type of asshole who spends most of his time arguing about other people needing to work for free or requiring utopian collectivization of the work (process, output, etc.). The details are not essential because the idea is still the same: preferring the nebulous idea of collective freedom against individual freedom (and this includes moral corporations).

There is no centralizing characteristic to capitalism. It is, in fact, exactly the contrary and the main reason that what we call “capitalism” is the de facto system of exchange ever since humans evolved past primitive needs. Capitalism relies on self-interest to function, and there is no central entity. One could argue about the government and the money supply control as a central entity, but it's actually not a requirement, just a convenience. If government money becomes untrustworthy, you just switch to using something else as a medium of exchange (often other moneys or precious metals). On the other hand, communism absolutely requires centralization and violence/coercion to force people to comply. I have no idea how you can jump to the conclusion that capitalism is centralizing when it's absolutely the reverse.

As for the free software and the parallel to possessing the means of production in communism, it is very interesting because it basically disproves the whole theory without much effort.

Software development is a field where the capital requirements to get started are extremely low, yet hardly any people with access to this capital have been able to produce value, both at the individual level and group/business level. Clearly it is not enough to be able to access the capital and all the tools for free.

What's more, all of this is only possible because there are some other people working on things that allow software development to even exist. Those things are entirely dependent on the capitalist system. Thinking you can build a “free utopia” on top of a capitalist system is delusional and extremely dumb.

I can't argue all day, but at this point I really don't understand how some people who are not very young anymore can still believe in the bullshit of communism and its derivatives. I don't really care per se, but the problem is the moral posturing and constant activism of those communists. If their stuff was any good, they wouldn't need to spend all day trying to convince productive people to buy into their utopia.

2. There are psychological traits that can influence on a statistical level (very high numbers) political views. But this is just tendencies, it's not determinism.

Openness to new experiences correlates often with openness to change and experimentation on social matters. Neuroticism often correlates with sensitivity on safety matters. Agreeableness with tendencies towards egalitarian views. And all of that still matters way less than cultural background and many other things.

But extraversion or social skills, like in Stallman's case have 0 relationship with political views. In fact, by your logic and his traits, he should fall on the other end of the political spectrum.