Again the 'slavery' non-sense.

Again the 'slavery' non-sense.

Posted Jan 24, 2012 20:21 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
In reply to: Again the 'slavery' non-sense. by fb
Parent article: LCA: Addressing the failure of open source

The concept of man as a slave of his tools might originate in the philosophy of Herbert Marcuse or perhaps I need to dig even deeper. I first encountered a different version of it it in Glory Season, a novel by David Brin. Marcuse's use of it is that man is the slave of the economic means of production, in both the systems of capitalism and communism, Marcuse thus felt that one wasn't an improvement over the other. The use in Brin's novel was that one was a slave of one's tools if one could not understand their internal operations and thus not fully control them.

Surely our situation is not as bad as a person who is entirely a chattel. There have been many such sad souls and continue to be many. But I submit that most of us are to some extent held in bondage through economic means if not otherwise. Many Americans seem to be in some form of debt slavery. The kiting of home prices through the provision of almost-infinite credit for their purchase has resulted in many people working for their entire lives to pay for their homes, and of course the rest of the story is in the news.

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