“politics”

In record turnouts, 40% of eligible voters don’t vote. In other words, 60% of Americans don’t vote (because they can’t or won’t). Was thinking of something cool and snarky to answer that excellent celebrity video that’s making the ‘Tube rounds, but really, what need is there?

A lot of people, most on at least one count, aren’t wasting their time already. Some of the best propaganda in the world (the envy of any dictator), none for the cases against voting (1, 2, 3... just imagine if a true don’t vote ad went national—child porn would cause less mayhem), and yet so many still do what makes sense. Can’t really do anything for the rest. What I’ll do is humor the naive we all carry inside, do the simplest thing that could have some impact, this post, and move over to more productive stuff.

And please, please, were you a democra-zealot (good-natured pun, crazy, get it? :), take this not as a challenge to double your efforts, I’m truly saddened by all the misspent electoral effort as it is. Instead, why not make something you want happen that doesn’t need to (attempt to) change everyone else? As I’ll try doing now, over and out.

David Friedman ^ELZR introduces a fascinating classification of human cooperation in The Machinery of Freedom ^ELZR. There’s
    force (imposing my end on you),
    trade (“I’ll help you achieve your end if you help me achieve mine”),
    and love (“making my end your end”).
 
The definition of love alone is, I think, a great achievement. It surely doesn’t include everything we mean by that impossibly burdened word (it doesn’t mention romance, liking or sex) but it does reveal one of love’s most important yet often implicit threads. It is abstract yet the more likely we are to call a love pure, the more likely it is about A caring about B for B’s sake alone.

An interesting exercise came to mind after reading the classification: What human activity/field corresponds to each kind of human cooperation?

The first two kinds are straightforward loosening words up a bit: Politics is the exercise of force. Economics is the exercise of trade. With love, I stumbled for the longest time. I have an answer now.

The exercise of love is… technology. A tool is the purest embodiment of love, of making someone else’s end your end. That’s why technology is so ambiguous, its ends are its users’ ends. Giving you a tool is the ultimate act of love, the more so the more control of it I give you, because by doing that I make my end your end, whatever your end may be—defending your life or stealing. Think of the geeks that cobbled up the internet, ignoring wtf the thing would be used for, coding only so that it would allow for it.

Don’t dismiss this as one geek’s techno-euphoria. There’s something deep in here. Technology is the exercise of love. “If you want to do good, work on the technology, not on getting power.” Nothing less than the meaning of our lives could be here.

Transhumanist transgender Martine Rothblatt proposes the most original solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I’ve ever conceived: Two Stars for Peace—the incorporation of Palestine and Israel into the U.S. as the 51st and 52nd states. She has wrote a book making the detailed case and has spoken about it on Sirius satellite radio:

This is so far out our ordinary could I’m still shocked. My rather unusual Mexican high school put an odd emphasis on the Middle East and this is by far the best idea I know of. Just imagine, fighting war with peace. Hope. Freedom.

And enjoy it you should. If you’re not a thief or a politician you earned it, which, being clear about it, is just a handy way of saying that you did stuff that Other People voluntarily value enough that Apple is willing to exchange an iPhone for your stuff (confident that it can then exchange it with Other People for what it itself really wants). The iPhone is yours and yours alone to enjoy. You earned it. You owe nothing to anyone—not, particularly, guilt.

What is more, both you and Apple, by freely exchanging only for how much each could get from each other, are subtly but importantly cementing the worldwide enterprise that has made it possible for the output of 4 Hindu villagers to seem tiny by comparison.

What would you give up first, capitalism or democracy?

Which is quite amazing, I must say. Always thought the English colony would have English at the top, by far.

Check the US Census press release where this was reported for definitions and more context.

I’m so set in my (fetishy) ways. Again, I feel compelled to say that I’m not on the look out for such pictures. They come my way. Though come on, maybe I should be…

The responsible for the baci saffici is the most talented Alessandro Pautasso.

Is an essay posted by Steve Jobs two days ago [link] proposing to do away with DRM protection in digital songs. It’s a brilliant, persuasive pamphlet and easily one of the most surprising recent turns in Intellectual Property’s (IP) unfolding evolution—and with IP soon becoming the only property that matters, we are talking about a civilization-defining process here.

Now of course Jobs’s letter is self-serving, as The Economist clearly explains, but is he right? Is a DRM-free world better? With thousands of pirated songs in my library I could hardly make for a devil’s advocate now but I still wonder. If we renounce technological solutions, how will we reward creators? Will policing and empathy be enough? (Don’t be so quick to answer, we will all be creators soon.)

A technological arms-race between pirates and anti-pirates was bound to end in senseless wastage, but that doesn’t mean new structures are not hardly needed—economical structures (based on trade) not political ones (based on force)—if IP will prove ultimately viable.

Let’s see what we can think of—the problem just got a whole more interesting.

Ayn Rand’s^{WP, ELZR} Atlas Shrugged^AM is on the wishlist. I’ve read a sketch of the plot and as soon as I get my hands on it, it’ll be the first book I read. It was a tortuous decision though. I tend to anguish over negative criticism and she’s a woman with her fair share of it. People talk jadedly about “growing out of Rand’s idealism.” They compare her with Herman Hesse, good for rebel-without-a-cause teenagers but pity the adult that still believes them. And so on.

The thing is her radical capitalism and love for America are exactly where I am at.

Of late (and not a minute too late, some will say), I’ve been studying tact. Here are two nice anecdotes I’ve stumbled on.

Do you know more?