Copyright [LWN.net]

Copyright

Posted Dec 12, 2008 14:03 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Copyright by martinfick
Parent article: Free Software Foundation files suit against Cisco for GPL violations

I've long found anarchy curious, because it's self-evidently unstable. As
an anarchist how would you stop people from stealing the entire contents
of your house? You could hire men with guns to stop it (-> paying for
police), but how would you stop them from doing exactly the same thing?
Relying on their reputation sounds all very good until you realise that
you'd have to do that *every single day* and the first day you're unlucky,
you've lost everything.

(I had a discussion with a libertarian a while back in which it was
seriously proposed that streetlights should stay off unless you'd paid for
that specific streetlight, and that lighting away from your home should be
implemented by street-by-street reciprocal agreements. Thus we save the
huge expense of paying for public street lighting... and spend fifty times
as much on lawyers for an unreliable lighting system instead. Yay.)

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Posted Dec 12, 2008 14:50 UTC (Fri) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link]

I can't speak for anarcho-capitalism brand of libertarians (the kind that would charge you for using streetlights), but if you're really curious, proper (i.e. anti-capitalist) anarchists do have a plan or two for the problem of crime, among many others. To keep this Linux-related, just apt-get install anarchism to read that FAQ online.

Posted Dec 12, 2008 14:53 UTC (Fri) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link]

to read that FAQ online

should read as "to read that FAQ offline", of course.

Posted Dec 12, 2008 15:19 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Actually...

What happens around my town is that building corporations come in, buy up a farm on the edge of town, then build a cluster of houses. They build the streets, provide for gas/water/sewage/electricity. (The electricity is provided by another private company working under contract from the state, but the gas/water/sewage, is city provided, but not city built.)

So for things like streetlamps, garbage collection (which is another entirely private company), street cleanup and maintenance for those communities then everything is paid for by individuals who buy the houses and join the housing community.

All it all it works out quite well and even though your dealing with relatively small numbers of people the services are usually cheaper then what you pay in additional city taxes and the services are higher quality.

Dividing up street lamp into a individual ownership thing is a bit extreme, but that's one thing that can at least be taken care of fairly obviously without much need for high-levels of government.

------------------------------------------

Anarchy is a idealized society.

In a perfect society there is no need for any government or law or whatever because everybody behaves themselves. If they were to break any laws in todays society it would because they had a good and sound reason to.

Of course we both know that would never happen.

----------------------------

One thing though.... If you had a private police force that worked for the members in a community and had their paychecks come from those people directly and could be fired for pissing them off...

then they would be spending a great deal more of their time patrolling neighborhoods, investigating crimes, and protecting private property then going around and writing traffic violation tickets and essentially terrorizing motorists. (in a mild way, not a 'blow up your family' way)

It wouldn't be much different then what you have in small communities were you have a sheriffs that is elected and hired by the town to protect it, then that sheriff then selects deputies to assist him.

Of course in larger towns this sort of concept goes to shit. Stuffing millions of people into a relatively small area has always been a terrible idea, but it's just how things happen. And it destroys most of the justification for things like private police forces and whatnot.

Posted Dec 12, 2008 17:42 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link]

"What happens around my town is that building corporations come in, buy up a farm on the edge of town, then build a cluster of houses. They build the streets, provide for gas/water/sewage/electricity. (The electricity is provided by another private company working under contract from the state, but the gas/water/sewage, is city provided, but not city built.)"

In many places (like those around where I live), the infrastructure is typically built by the developer, but to specifications negotiated with the city/township/county, and ownership and operation of that infrastructure is passed to the government at completion of development (typically in phases as the development is built out).

Posted Dec 12, 2008 19:02 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Well ya. Everythings built to standards.

And usually the small communities are built with a expectation that they'll get absorbed by the city as the city extends it's boundries every decade or so.

Quite often these communities try to resist getting absorbed legally through lawsuites and whatnot once they realise the drop in quality of services and increased costs that are associated with getting absorbed into the larger city. That and the drop in quality of education with the combined increase in cost per child that you get by being tied into a larger school district is one thing that people tend to especially go to arms about.

A few places have successfully resisted, but it's a minority.

Posted Dec 12, 2008 19:11 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link]

My experience is that there are people who do resist annexation, usually strictly because of taxes. There are also typically people who want to be annexed, usually because they want the enhanced services that the city provides.

Obviously, specific circumstances will affect how people feel. I don't personally know of situations where annexation represented a downgrading of services, but I'm sure they exist. Usually the resisters claim that they don't want the enhanced services (often including better-funded schools, access to park districts and libraries, etc.).

But, again, circumstances vary...

Posted Dec 12, 2008 19:54 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Probably you have a better city government. Ours sucks.