Free Software and Society

"Natural" Forms of Government

People who have not discovered the real nature of modern society will inevitably adopt the philosophy of the ruling class, which is usually formed in such a way to present artificial societal flaws as inevitabilities that we must just ignore. The existence of poverty, social inequality and exploitation (just to name a few) is often characterized as simply natural by the forces in power. They often argue that war is a curse, whose millennia-spanning occurrence will inevitably lead to our definitive eradication. These same people will often point out events of exploitation observed in nature as living proof to justify their establishment.

What most people (including me) frequently forget however, is that capitalism as observed today was itself a product of revolution that earned its place in power after numerous clashes and victories over the previous forms of ruling. It's no secret that people of medieval Europe were brainwashed to consider monarchy as a natural state of affairs, too! Monarchy existed since the beginning of civilization, but nonetheless it was eventually widely overturned.

‘Without the whip the Negro will not work,’ said the anti-abolitionist. ‘Free from their master’s supervision the serfs will leave the fields uncultivated,’ said the Russian serf-owners. (Kropotkin) [No societal issue is natural or inevitable, we can do better]

No Return

Here's a segment from John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath"

And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live- for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

We'll definitely reach this point someday, right? We should probably fear more the time when strikes do take place but their effect on society is negligible. Proprietary computer technology is quickly leading us there, to a dystopia of no return. Take a look at "smart"-phones, "smart" watches, "smart" self-driving cars, and "smart" surveillance systems. We're perfectly capable of sacrificing our freedom for slight conveniences! We are voluntarily feeding our unconsciousness into machine learning algorithms that will, eventually, be exploited to limit some of the freedoms that we today take for granted. This all might sound like tinfoil-hat talk, but it's actually true.

What's different from the past is that the state has now normalized mandatory public schools, offering scientific-ish material poisoned with blunt propaganda. Capitalists have access to all popular, rapid and worldwide broadcasting mediums: they fund popular television stations, newspapers, websites, video-games, you name it. Capitalists fund universities, and that's partly a reason as to why students have absolutely no class consciousness. Never in the entire history of mankind had a ruler accumulated so much power.

We might be heading to a point of no return, despite our society's flaws

Free Software

Unarguably, the justified fear of a permanent dystopia has never been more apparent. We should collectively stop feeding corporations and oppressing states our data, and free software is the solution. Closed-source state software should be considered no less evil than a non-transparent government, and our constitutions/social contracts must reflect that! Closed-source corporate software is equally dangerous, considering that their owners have time and time again cooperated with non-democratic rulers and agencies (the West included) for an increase in profits.

We often make fun of authoritarian China and its supposed social credit system. Are we any better? New technologies can indeed improve our lives, but we should stop trusting their application under our current forms of government. The idea of abolishing fiat currency is attractive, but modern-day governments just can't resist the temptation and the economic benefits from tracking every single one of our purchases.

• The "nothing to hide argument" is invalid (give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man and I'll devise enough evidence to hang him). Nevertheless, this is not only a matter of personal risk management! Being indifferent towards mass data collection practices will only make governments more powerful, and increasingly more oppressing against the entirety of middle and low-class society.

• Think before hastily labeling such claims as conspiracy theories. When the source code of an application is kept behind the curtain we should, for our own safety, always assume the worst! In 2007, the Comcast ISP (an entity responsible for maintaining part of the Internet's infrastructure) was judged to be interfering with BitTorrent P2P traffic by deliberately re-configuring their routers! BitTorrent traffic detection events would trigger the broadcast of artificial TCP packets capable of fooling client software into terminating their BitTorrent connections. This was to be expected from our outdated constitutions and our lacking legislation.

Non-free government software should be illegal

List of Conclusions

I've always complained about stuff but I rarely took any action. My habits usually contradict some of the points I make. I'm planning to change that! In that spirit, here's a list of actions that are logical conclusions of the preceding statements. The free software movement is clearly not large enough to influence the government. To change that, we must first act individually ("you", below, refers to the reader, and to myself too!):

• Spread the word about Free Software. Don't be obnoxious though! You're neither the messiah nor enlightened. Don't be sentimental, apply logic and facts to convince people around you. The existence of the free software movement is rarely heard, despite its utmost importance.

• Refuse to execute anything that is not free software. Every time you yield, it usually causes an addiction anyways! Getting rid of social media is guaranteed to deal a blow on your social life, but you can recover from that eventually. Worthy friends will always accept downloading a FOSS alternative, no matter the burden.

• Consider switching to a dumbphone. Smartphones are the most effective, all-in-one tracking devices. Despite their potential, they always lead to harmful addictions that merely produce chunks of data used to identify you so that they can coax you into purchasing junk. What can be done on a smartphone, can usually be done equally effectively on a home computer running a free operating system. I've never owned a mobile phone, so I might be biased. Nevertheless, I urge you to write down a list of what you did on your smartphone today. Was it important or transformative? Could it also be done on a dumbphone or an X amount of time later on a home computer?

• Installing Linux might not be enough. Unless you cannot afford the cost, choose a librebooted thinkpad as your next laptop. It will last for life and you can find one for less than two hundred dollars. Getting a librebooted device is the only way of eliminating most backdoors found in the wild. Basically, choose a computer and an OS that is endorsed by the FSF.

• Connect with other free-software people and be open-minded. This is science, after all.