'Justifiably' Proud [LWN.net]

'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 13, 2009 15:15 UTC (Thu) by Doogie (guest, #59626)
In reply to: 'Justifiably' Proud by martinfick
Parent article: Patent fun: Microsoft Word sales banned in the US

Blaming the "government" is easy and feels good, but is completely pointless. Where is the rationality in voting for people who claim to hate the government and then expecting them to do a good job running it? The idea of "drowning the government" is a naive view of how the world works. We saw much the same kind of irrational adherence to an unrealistic ideology in the soviet union and it led them nowhere.

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'Justifiably' Proud

Posted Aug 13, 2009 16:11 UTC (Thu) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

'Blaming the "government" is easy and feels good, but is completely pointless.'

You may feel so, however it is not a simple fact. Placing the blame in the right spot, large powerful institutions backed by force does not seem pointless to me. Blaming those who manipulate and take advantage of a large "legitimate" corruption tool seems silly since you provide them with the tool and label the tool legitimate in the first place. You effectively create an environment where any behavior sanctioned by your institution is legitimate, you have no standing to blame the abusers unless you yourself never use the institution to ever abuse anyone else with it. Let's call a spade a spade, and stop labeling the tool legitimate since there are very few legitimate uses of the tool (the only really legitimate uses of it are those which undermine it).

Point out that the emperor has no clothes. Just because many people pick an institution and label it legitimate does not mean it is actually any more legitimate than the mafia, especially if they use similar tactics. One just happens to be much larger and more powerful and therefore able to rule over more people and collect a lot more "protection money" while waging much larger turf wars.

If there is the possibility that one extra person is willing to attempt to rationalize (instead of blindly accepting) the difference between the two institutions, does not seem pointless to me. In fact, it would be a real step towards changing the world, a step which is likely to have much more influence than any vote in any institution that I could vote in.