Re: attacking FSF [Re: Paid trolls

[Barak Zalstein]

Russ Allbery wrote:
> The depressing part is that I certainly count myself as a member of that
> wealthy class with more money than I actually need, but because social
> support in the US is so inherently unstable, I feel a strong need to make
> sure that I'll be economically secure in the event of a breakdown of
> social support structures when it comes time for me to retire.  As a
> result, I ineffeciently hoard resources that I could be donating to other
> causes in order to make sure that I'll be self-sufficient in the long
> term, whereas if we had a reliable and dependable social support structure
> that guaranteed everyone basic health care, shelter, and food, I'd feel
> much more comfortable donating a significantly higher percentage of my
> resources to charities.
The same would go for most employed middle-class people in developed 
countries.
You realize that a certain amount of your income is
disposable, but you'd rather accumulate it rather than invest
in the long-term well being of your community because you know
how fragile your current status really is, and then who will
pay for that unexpected critical expense?

> The question, though, is how to fix those sorts of problems with the
> capitalist economic system without losing the efficiencies it *does* have;
> just going over in the opposite direction isn't really an improvement
> (although I do think that Canada's approach is a significant improvement
> over the United States).
Since economic systems are very much different from software
projects (unstable branch, anyone?), we would expect current
system to continue as it is for a very long time.
If we continued and eliminated the good vs. evil from the equation,
you will find out that you cannot expect the majority of the
people to march, demonstrate, and boycott until they see a very 
immediate threat to their current lives (there is no reason
to find shared interests and conflicts when life is ok).

Barak