Planet Libervis

Thomas Jollans (free-zombie): On the evolution of snakes.

2010-06-06T17:28:00+00:00

It's been a number of years since I first learned programming in Python with Mark Pilgrim's excellent, but now somewhat outdated, book, Dive Into Python. It has managed to become outdated because the Python language is being developed and improved all the time and new features are being added. One of the best features of Python is, beside the standard libraries, arguably, the documentation, which is good enough to include What's New documents for every release.

I've decided to have a look at the backlog of new features, and consider how I use Python today in ways that simply didn't exist when I originally came across the language.

Read about my findings after the break. (Technical language is used. Knowledge of Python and its features is presumed.)

Gustavo Narea (gustavo): Web Site Security With repoze.who and repoze.what

2010-06-01T14:41:13+00:00

This article first appeared in the May 2009 issue of Python Magazine and has been slightly updated. The contents of the article are only applicable to repoze.who 1.0 and repoze.what 1.0, not repoze.who 2 and repoze.what 1.1 which are under development as of this writing.

Have you ever created a Web application? If so, it’s very likely that you have at one time or another faced “the security problem”; whether to create and maintain a homegrown security sub-system, or to learn to use framework-specific security mechanisms (which may not be as flexible as you wish).

Securing Web applications shouldn’t be a problem. This article explores a highly extensible alternative which you can learn once and use in arbitrary applications, regardless of the Web framework used (if any!).

Application security is a broad field within software development, covering topics ranging from low-level network transmission security and encryption, up to application-level data security and input validation. In this article, we will focus on two of the most basic elements of application security: authentication and authorization.

Authentication vs. Authorization

Even experienced software developers often confuse these two related but not equivalent terms, so we’ll start by explaining what they are.

Authentication, often shortened as “authn”, is what you do when you check the credentials provided by the user to verify that he’s really who he claims to be. The most widely-used credentials are a set made up of a user identifier (like user name, or email address) and a password.

Authorization, often shortened as “authz”, is what you do when you check whether the user has permission to make the request or perform the transaction he’s currently making. Most of the time this depends on who the subject is, but it may also depend on what is requested, when it is requested, and/or how it is requested.

A common shortening for “authentication and authorization” is “auth”.

And there’s one more related term that comes into play: Identification, which is to check whether he was successfully authenticated previously to avoid challenging him again unnecessarily.

Authentication, identification and authorization in Python Web applications

Web applications powered by Python may take advantage of repoze.who to handle authentication and identification, and repoze.what to handle authorization. Both are security frameworks that can be used on top of your application, or integrated with your application’s Web framework if you are using one.

You can use them as long as your application is WSGI-compliant. WSGI is a Python standard which defines an interface between HTTP servers and Python applications, similar to CGI, which eases the writing of cross Web server libraries (which can be framework-independent) and applications.

The WSGI standard mandates the availability of a Python dictionary, referred to as the “WSGI environment”. This dictionary stores CGI environment variables, as well as others specific to the WSGI standard; other components used by your application may also use the WSGI environment to store data.

Any framework or raw application that exposes the WSGI environment dictionary can use both repoze.who and repoze.what. The popular WSGI-compliant frameworks CherryPy, Django, Pylons, TurboGears and Werkzeug expose this variable.

How repoze.who and repoze.what work

Figure 1 illustrates how a typical request is processed in WSGI and when repoze.who comes into play.

Figure 1

repoze.who is a WSGI middleware. A WSGI middleware is a layer that wraps your application, processing each request before your application does. WSGI middleware can also post-process your application’s response. WSGI applications can have zero or more of these middleware layers.

As shown in Figure 2, when a request is made and before it reaches your application, repoze.who will try to check if the user is already logged in or if he’s currently trying to log in. If the user is trying to log in and has supplied the right credentials, authentication will succeed and the user will be “remembered” in future requests by default. The request is then passed to the next WSGI middleware, if any, and eventually on to your WSGI application.

Figure 2

The following fully customizable components can be used at this stage:

The request classifier: It matters if the agent is a browser, a Subversion client or a library which access a Web Service; you wouldn’t want to display a login form if the agent is a Subversion client, for example. Thus, this component classifies the current request so that only the appropriate plugins (out of your pre-selected ones) are used.
Identifier plugins: These are the components that “identify” the user. That is, they are able to tell if the user is already logged from in a previous request, or if he is trying to log in in the current request. When authentication succeeds, these plugins are in charge of “remembering” the user for future requests (e.g., by defining a session cookie). Likewise, when a challenge is required, they “forget” the user (discarding a session cookie).
Authenticator plugins: When the user is trying to log in in the current request, these components verify the user-supplied credentials (such as username and password) against a database, LDAP server, .htaccess file, etc.
Metadata provider plugins: If the user was authenticated, metadata providers can load data about the current user (email address, full name, etc.) so that such data is ready to be used by your application.

After your application issues a response and before it reaches the HTTP server, as shown in Figure 3, repoze.who will check if a challenge is necessary; that is, ask the user in some way to identify himself. If so and the user was previously authenticated, the previous authentication will be forgotten, and the related session cookie will be discarded. After the challenge is complete, your application’s response will be replaced with a new response which will allow the user to log in (for example, sending a “WWW-Authenticate” header or displaying a login form).

repoze.who’s response-handling functionality is also driven by customizable components:

The challenge decider: This is the component which will determine whether a challenge is required. The default challenge decider will order a challenge if and only if the response’s HTTP status code is 401.
Challenger plugins: When a challenge is required, those challenger plugins which support the current request type will be run until the first of them returns a valid response.

repoze.who may seem hard to use at first sight, with all its components and terminology; so much flexibility comes at the cost of being a little hard to understand. But one of the goals of this article is to help people who had never heard of repoze.who to deal with basic and advanced authentication settings.

And how does repoze.what work?

repoze.what is mostly used inside of your application, where you define the access rules that must be met for a given routine to be performed.

Access rules in repoze.what are made of atomic units called “predicate checkers”, re-usable objects that check whether a given condition is met. Predicate checkers can be single or compound to form complex access rules. For example, a single condition (or predicate) might be “The user is not anonymous”, while a compound predicate could be “The user is not anonymous and their IP address is X.X.X.X”. You can write your own predicate checkers, usually in just a few lines of code.

repoze.what has built-in support for the widely-used authorization pattern whereby you assign groups to your users and then grant permissions to such groups; it ships with a comprehensive set of checkers for the relevant predicates (e.g., “The current user belongs to the ‘directors’ group”, “The current user is allowed to edit user accounts”). If you use this authorization pattern, the groups and permissions for the authenticated user will be loaded by a repoze.who metadata provider; in repoze.what 1.1, they’ll be loaded on demand by repoze.what itself, so you wouldn’t need repoze.who. Nevertheless, it is entirely optional and you can use any authorization pattern that best suits your needs.

Predicate checkers allow you to control access based not only on who makes the request, but also on how the request is made and what exactly is requested. For example, if you have a blog application, you might use the simple predicate “The user is allowed to remove posts”, focusing on who the user is to control access to the post edition routine. Or you can have the more specific compound predicate “The user is allowed to remove posts, as long as the user is the post’s author”. This predicate focuses on both who makes the request and what is requested. You can have an even more complex access rule for the article edition routine, such as “The user is allowed to remove posts, as long as the user is the post’s author — except post #1 which nobody can remove”.

repoze.what 1.0.X supports only blacklist-based authorization, that is, authorization is granted unless explicitly denied. Whitelist-based authorization, in which authorization is denied unless explicitly granted, will be supported as of version 1.1 (under development as of this writing).

Creating a Web application protected with repoze.who and repoze.what

It’s time to go practical! We’re going to create a WSGI application powered by repoze.who and repoze.what.

I’ll use the TurboGears 2 Web Application framework to make this simple application, but after reading the article you should be able to put what you just learned into practice in other frameworks, or standalone applications.

(For the sake of demonstration, we will skip typical overhead features such as input validation, so we can focus the examples on the repoze.who and repose.what’s integration of authentication and authorization.)

Let’s get started!

We’re going to develop this application using an isolated Python environment using a rather famous utility called “virtualenv”. This is very handy because everything you install or remove won’t affect your system-wide Python environment. To install it, run:

easy_install virtualenv

You may need administration rights to install it, depending on where you install it.

Next, create an environment for our application and activate it; on Unix systems, the commands for this are:

virtualenv --no-site-packages appenv source appenv/bin/activate

On Windows systems, enter the following in a directory whose path doesn’t contain spaces:

C:\Python25\python.exe "C:\Path-to-VE\virtualenv.py" appenv C:\Path-to-newly-created-environment\Scripts\activate.bat

When you’re done and want to deactivate it, you should run the command “deactivate” on Unix systems. For Windows, use “C:\Path-to-newly-created-environment\Scripts\deactivate.bat”.

I’ve called my virtual environment “appenv”, but you can use any name you like.

For help installing virtualenv, you can check its documentation at http://pypi.python.org/pypi/virtualenv.

Now to install TurboGears 2:

easy_install -i http://www.turbogears.org/2.0/downloads/current/index tg.devtools

Generating an application

TurboGears allows you to start coding using a minimal application, so that you don’t have to start from scratch (unless you really want to). We’ll use just that minimal application so that we can get off to a quick start, which you can optionally download.

The Web application we’re going to create is a classifieds service, like craiglist.org or gumtree.com; for lack of imagination, I’ll call it “classifieds”. To start coding it from a minimal application, we’ll ask TurboGears to generate it with the following command:

paster quickstart classifieds

Then you’ll be asked a couple of questions. The first will ask you for the package name to be generated in this project; hit ENTER to accept “classifieds” as the default package name. The second question will ask if you need authentication and authorization features for this project, hit ENTER to accept the default answer of “yes”. By answering “yes” to the second question, repoze.who and repoze.what will be used in the application by default. Now switch to the application’s directory, install it in development mode and set it up:

cd classifieds python setup.py develop paster setup-app development.ini

We’re not going to start coding yet — I’d like you to try the generated application, so that you can see repoze.who and repoze.what in action. So, start the application (the “reload” switch will restart the application whenever one of its files is modified):

paster serve --reload development.ini

and then open the following URL in your browser: http://localhost:8080/.

You should keep this simple procedure in mind because we’ll use it very often. Then, when you need to stop the development server, you have to hit Ctrl+C.

Now try, at least, the following (in order):

Log in: Visit http://localhost:8080/login or click on the “Login” link in the upper-right side of any Web page of our application. Enter “manager” and “managepass” in the login and password fields. You’ll get redirected to the main page and a welcome message will be displayed.
Visit a page you shouldn’t see: Like http://localhost:8080/editor_user_only; you should get a 403 page and a message which reads “Only for the editor”.
Log out: Visit http://localhost:8080/logout_handler or click on the “Logout” link in the upper-right side of any Web page of our application. You’ll get redirected to the main page and a goodbye message will be displayed.
Visit a private page as anonymous: If you’re currently logged in, log out first. Then visit http://localhost:8080/manage_permission_only; you should be redirected to the login form, where also the message “Only for managers” is displayed. Log in with the previous credentials (“manager”/”managepass”) and you’ll be redirected to the page you requested initially.

What you’ve seen is repoze.who, repoze.what and some of their official plugins in action; those notification messages are TurboGears-specific, though, but it shouldn’t be hard to port them to other frameworks or raw applications.

Before moving forward, I’ll describe some of the files and directories that the “paster quickstart” command above generated:

devdata.db: The sqlite database file used for development.
classifieds/: Your application’s package itself.
classifieds/config/middleware.py: The file where the extra WSGI middleware for your application is added.
classifieds/controllers/root.py: Your application’s root controller. Sub-controllers should be attached to the one defined in this file; below I’ll explain how.
classifieds/model/: The application’s model definitions powered by SQLAlchemy.
classifieds/model/auth.py: The model definitions specific to authentication, identification and authorization.
classifieds/templates/: The application’s XHTML templates powered by Genshi.
classifieds/websetup.py: Contains the function which will get run when the application is set up (used by the paster setup-app command). By default it just adds rows to the database.

On the other hand, this is how authentication, identification and authorization is configured right now:

We have a table for our application’s users (tg_user), which contains the self-explanatory fields user_name and password, among others. repoze.who is configured to authenticate by using these two fields.
repoze.what is configured to use its groups/permission-based pattern. The groups and permissions are stored in the database, in the tg_group and tg_permission tables.
One user can belong to zero or more groups; one group can be granted zero or more permissions.
Right now we have two users, “manager” and “editor” (with passwords “managepass” and “editpass”). “manager” belongs to the only group defined so far, “managers”. The group “managers” is granted the only permission defined so far, “manage”.

Let’s start coding

“At last!”, I heard you say.

While implementing repoze.who and repoze.what in an application which doesn’t come with them enabled out-of-the-box, the first thing you have to do is add their middleware to your application.

However, we’ll skip that part and keep the default settings for now, so that we can go to fun part right away: Learning how to protect areas in your Web application. The setup will be addressed later on, where you’ll learn how to configure repoze.who and repoze.what the TurboGears-independent way.

This is what we’re going to implement in our classifieds application:

A simple user registration system.
A classified visualization mechanism, for any user (anonymous or authenticated).
A classified addition mechanism, for registered users.
A classified edition mechanism, for registered users to edit their own classifieds.

So it’s finally time to fire up your Python editor, a terminal and a window of your browser!

First of all, let’s add groups and permissions for authorization in our application, instead of sticking to the ones created by default. We’re going to add one more group called “posters” and the “add-classifieds” permission to be granted to posters. (Before continuing, you should stop the server running in the terminal — With Ctrl+C).

To add the posters group, add this code to the setup_app() function, defined in classifieds/websetup.py:

posters = model.Group(group_name=u'posters', display_name=u'Classified posters') model.DBSession.add(posters)

The addclassifieds permission is created with this code:

addclassifieds = model.Permission(permission_name=u'add-classifieds', description=u'Allowed to add classifieds') addclassifieds.groups.append(posters) model.DBSession.add(addclassifieds)

Add these sections right before the following lines:

model.DBSession.flush() transaction.commit()

Now, since we have a classifieds application, we have to define the SQLAlchemy model for the classifieds. To keep things simple, we’ll define just four columns:

classified_id: The classified’s identifier.
poster_id: The poster’s user id.
classified_title: The classified title.
classified_contents: The classified contents.

Listing 1 implements this model definition. You have to create classifieds/model/posts.py and store that definition in there. Then you have to import that model at the end of classifieds/model/__init__.py:

from classifieds.model.posts import Classified

To apply the changes, let’s remove the development database, re-create it with our new model and rows, and finally start the server again:

rm devdata.db paster setup-app development.ini paster serve --reload development.ini

That’s it, now we have the model definition for the classifieds. Let the fun part begin!

Creating a user registration system

We’re going to create a simple registration system made up of two controller actions: One to display the registration form and another to process the submitted form.

We’re going to implement them in the root controller for our application, the class RootController found in the source file classifieds/controllers/root.py.

To define the action for the registration form, first import the repoze.what predicate checker that verifies that the current user is anonymous:

from repoze.what.predicates import is_anonymous

Next, add the following method in RootController:

@expose('classifieds.templates.register') @require(is_anonymous(msg='Only one account per user is allowed')) def register(self): """Display the user registration form""" return {'page': 'user registration'}

What the two decorators above do is specify that the template for the “register” action is classifieds/templates/register.html and that access is granted to users who don’t have an account, respectively.

@require is a TurboGears-specific decorator that evaluates a repoze.what predicate before calling the action in question. When such a predicate is not met, the action is not called and a 401 response is returned (403 if the user is already logged in). Then repoze.who’s default challenge decider will find the 401 response and will replace it with the challenge.

Internally, the predicate is evaluated by calling its check_authorization() method (which raises the repoze.what.predicates.NotAuthorizedError exception if the predicate isn’t met, whose message is the user-friendly explanation) or is_met() (which returns a boolean). Listing 2 illustrates a fictitious implementation, using the decorator package; you’d find it useful if you want to use repoze.what in another framework or raw application (Pylons users may want to check repoze.what-pylons).

Going back to the creation of the action, you’ll have to create the template that will display the form: Create classifieds/templates/register.html with the contents of Listing 3.

Now it’s time to create the action which will process the contents of the submitted form by adding the user to the database, including them in the “posters” group and finally redirecting them to the login form so that they can use the newly created account. For that, you have to define the add_user method shown in Listing 4 (in RootController).

That’s it! Our registration system is done. Now you can try it by visiting http://localhost:8080/register.

The classifieds visualization mechanism

We’re going to write the part of the interface which will allow us to see the classifieds hosted by our service. This will be accomplished by means of two controller actions: One to see all the classifieds available, in the main page of the application, and another to see individual classifieds.

For the first, we have to re-write the “index” action of the root controller, to make it look like this:

@expose('classifieds.templates.index') def index(self): query = DBSession.query(model.Classified) all_classifieds = query.all() return dict(page='index', classifieds=all_classifieds)

Then its template, classifieds/templates/index.html, should be replaced with the contents of Listing 5, which lists the available classifieds with a link to their individual pages.

The second action, the one to show the classifieds individually, will be implemented as “view” and will be defined in the root controller too:

@expose('classifieds.templates.view') def view(self, classified): query = DBSession.query(model.Classified) classified_obj = query.get(classified) # Is the user allowed to edit the classified? checker = user_is_poster() can_edit = checker.is_met(request.environ) return {'page': 'Classified page', 'classified': classified_obj, 'classified_id': classified, 'can_edit': can_edit}

Note that in the “view” action we do something new: Handle a predicate checker directly. Sometimes it is necessary to evaluate them directly and get a boolean result to know whether it’s met or not thanks to the is_met() method of the predicate checker. For example, right now we use it to display a link to edit that predicate, if and only if the current user is allowed to edit it.

Then the template for “view”, classifieds/templates/index.html, is defined as shown in Listing 6.

Implementing the classified submission mechanism

To allow users publish classifieds, we’ll write two controller actions (once again, one to display the form and the other to process it).

The action that will display the form should first check that the user is allowed to add a classified; this is, we should use repoze.what’s has_permission predicate so that it checks whether they are granted the “add-classified” permission. You have to import it at the top of classifieds/controllers/root.py:

from repoze.what.predicates import has_permission

And then write the action as shown below:

@expose('classifieds.templates.add') @require(has_permission('add-classifieds')) def add(self): return {'page': 'Classified submission'}

This action uses the template classifieds/templates/add.html, which we have to create with the contents of Listing 7.

Finally, Listing 8 shows how the action that processes the submitted form is implemented. There we use something we hadn’t used before: The repoze.who identity dictionary. Do you remember that I said that repoze.who optionally uses so-called “metadata providers”, which are plugins that load data about the current user into the request? Well, that data is kept in the WSGI environment dictionary, under the repoze.who.identity key.

Then we use one of the items of that dictionary, “user”, which contains the database object for the current user. It is loaded by the metadata provider defined in the repoze.who SQLAlchemy plugin (repoze.who.plugins.sa), a component that is enabled by default in TurboGears.

Implementing the classified edition mechanism with custom predicate checkers

So far we’ve used a few repoze.what predicate checkers, which are all very basic. Very often you have to write your own checkers. For example, if the URL where classifieds are edited looks like http://localhost:8080/edit/X (where “X” represents the classified identifier), and we want that classifieds can only be edited by their posters, we’ll need a predicate checker that finds the poster of the “X” classified and checks if it is the current user.

This predicate checker is implemented in Listing 9, which should be stored in classifieds/lib/authz.py (a file you should create). That’s a good sample checker, which helps us to understand how a predicate checker is defined:

It must extend the repoze.what.predicates.Predicate class.
It must define a user-friendly explanation in the message attribute, which may be shown to the user when the predicate is not met.
Its logic is defined in the evaluate() instance method, which must call the unmet() method when the predicate is not met; keyword arguments passed to this method will replace the placeholders defined in message (if any), although that message can be replaced on-the-fly with a string passed as the first positional argument. evaluate() receives the WSGI environment and the repoze.what credentials dictionaries as arguments.
If the checker relies on arguments such as GET or POST variables, or other arguments available in the URL, the parse_variables() method should be used to retrieve them. It will return a dictionary whose items are: “get” for variables in the query string and “post” for POST variables, plus “named_args” and “positional_args” for named and positional arguments in the URL (which must be set by a routing software like Selector or Routes).

Because this predicate relies on a named argument in the URL (“classified”), we have to use a URL router software compliant with the wsgiorg.routing_args standard; we’ll use Routes. To configure Routes in TurboGears 2, you have to insert the following contents in classifieds/config/app_cfg.py (right after the imports) and then replace the line base_config = AppConfig() with base_config = ClassifiedsConfig():

class ClassifiedsConfig(AppConfig): def setup_routes(self): """Customize routing""" from tg import config from routes import Mapper dir = config['pylons.paths']['controllers'] map = Mapper(directory=dir, always_scan=config['debug']) # Defining our custom routes: map.connect('/{action}/{classified:\d+}', controller='root') # Required by TurboGears: map.connect('*url', controller='root', action='routes_placeholder') config['routes.map'] = map

At this point we’re ready to use the user_is_poster checker.

Now import the custom checker into classifieds/controllers/root.py:

from classifieds.lib.authz import user_is_poster

Next, use the following contents to define the “edit” action and the contents of Listing 10 for its template (classifieds/templates/edit.html):

@expose('classifieds.templates.edit') @require(user_is_poster()) def edit(self, classified): query = DBSession.query(model.Classified) classified_obj = query.get(classified) return {'page': 'Classified edition page', 'classified': classified_obj, 'classified_id': classified}

Finally, for the action that processes the submitted form, we can use:

@expose() @require(user_is_poster()) def edit_classified(self, classified, title, contents): # Fetching and updating the classified object: query = DBSession.query(model.Classified) classified_obj = query.get(classified) classified_obj.classified_title = title classified_obj.classified_contents = contents DBSession.update(classified_obj) # Notifying the user: flash('Classified "%s" updated!' % title) redirect(url('/view/%s' % classified))

You can now play with the classifieds edition mechanism, to see by yourself how authorization is denied when somebody tries to edit somebody else’s classified, thanks to our “user_is_poster” checker.

Configuring it all by ourselves

At this point you’re able to deal with identification (using the repoze.who identity dictionary, which contains user data) and control authorization in your application with repoze.what predicate checkers (even how to write your own!), and you should also be able to put this knowledge to the test in frameworks other than TurboGears.

What we’re missing now is to know how to configure repoze.who and repoze.what by ourselves, since we skipped that part initially because TurboGears configures them for us. But you have to know this to use both packages with other frameworks or even to continue with TurboGears in a more advanced setup.

Therefore we’re going to stop TurboGears from configuring repoze.who and repoze.what, so that we have full control on how they are configured and learn how to do it in other frameworks.

To disable the automatic setup of repoze.who and repoze.what, go to classifieds/config/app_cfg.py and set the variable base_config.auth_backend to None. Then all those variables that start by base_config.sa_auth will be ignored, so you can remove them if you want.

Now let’s handle the configuration by adding the middleware to our WSGI application. I’ll use a function called add_auth() (defined in classifieds/config/auth.py) which receives the WSGI application as the only argument and returns it with the middleware added, as shown in Listing 11.

Because add_auth() configures repoze.who and repoze.what the same way we’ve been using them, but with the hidden details revealed, we’ll be able to identify their components.

In this function we see that repoze.who is configured with the following plugins:

AuthTktCookiePlugin, an identifier which remembers and forgets authenticated users using cookies (using the string “secret” as the encryption key and “authtkt” as the cookie name).
FriendlyFormPlugin, the component that handles our login form and logouts. As an identifier, when the user is logging in it extracts the “login” and “password” from the request so that the authenticator(s) can use such data, and when the user tries to log out, it asks AuthTktCookiePlugin to forget the user. As a challenger, it redirects the user to the login form (at “/login”).
SQLAlchemyAuthenticatorPlugin, as the only authenticator used. It connects to the “tg_user” table to check if there’s a match for the supplied “login” and “password”.
SQLAlchemyUserMDPlugin, the metadata provider that loads the current user’s SQLAlchemy object into the repoze.who identity item “user”.
Because we didn’t specified request classifiers or challenge deciders, the default ones will be used.

Meanwhile, repoze.what is configured using the groups/permissions-based authorization pattern, where the groups and permissions are retrieved thanks to the following adapters:

SqlGroupsAdapter, which loads the groups from the “tg_group” table.
SqlPermissionsAdapter, which loads the groups from the “tg_permission” table.

If we don’t use this authorization pattern, our app_with_mw variable would have been defined without passing groups/permission adapters:

app_with_mw = setup_auth(app, **who_args)

And what about using repoze.who but not repoze.what? Listing 12 shows how to configure repoze.who just like we did above, but without repoze.what. Note that this time we had to pass the request classifier and challenge decider explicitly.

The opposite, using repoze.what without repoze.who, is not yet possible as of this writing because repoze.what 1.0’s credentials are loaded through a repoze.who metadata provider. repoze.what 1.1 will be completely repoze.who-independent, optionally.

Finally, it’s time to use add_auth(). It can be used like any other WSGI middleware, so in the case of this TurboGears 2 application, it is in classifieds/config/middleware.py; if using another framework, consult the relevant documentation to find the equivalent. First, you should import the function:

from classifieds.config.auth import add_auth

And then use it inside the make_app() function, under the specified line:

# Wrap your base TurboGears 2 application with custom (...) app = add_auth(app)

And voila! Now our classifieds service behaves the same way as before, with its authentication, identification and authorization settings now being controlled by our own code instead of the generated defaults.

Going beyond with repoze.who and repoze.what

The topics covered in this article are just the tip of the iceberg. Both Repoze packages are created with extensibility in mind; their core is minimalist but they already have many ready-to-use plugins, not only the repoze.who and repoze.what SQLAlchemy plugins we used here.

There are repoze.who plugins for OpenId, LDAP, .htaccess and RADIUS authentication, as well as a built-in challenger plugin for HTTP authentication — just to name some of the available plugins. And you can easily create your own plugins, following the patterns described in this article.

Although repoze.what is a relatively new piece of software as of this writing, it has several ready-to-use plugins as well. It has plugins to store the groups and permissions in XML files or .ini files, not only in databases, as well as a plugin called repoze.what-quickstart which allows us to have repoze.who and repoze.what working quickly (that’s what TurboGears uses to set them up).

Although they were not used in our classifieds service, just mentioned in the beginning, you can have so-called compound predicates. Access rules aren’t always as simple as “The user must be logged in” or “The user belongs to the ‘posters’ group”. For example, in our classified edition mechanism we way want to allow administrators to edit classifieds, even those not posted by themselves; to do so, instead of using our user_is_poster checker alone, we could use it along with the Any and in_group checkers:

from repoze.what.predicates import Any, in_group p = Any(in_group('manager'), user_is_poster())

In this article we didn’t even use half of the built-in repoze.what predicate checkers. A full list is available in the repoze.what manual.

Settings are very flexible. It is even possible to configure repoze.who and repoze.what through .ini files, so that those settings can be adjusted while deploying the application (which would be a replacement for our add_auth() function defined above).

It is also worth noting that both projects are actively developed, well documented, well tested and supported by the Repoze community. As a result, it is most likely that you’ll have a good experience using them.

repoze.who and repoze.what aim to solve “the security problem” we Web developers face so often, and they have proved to be the right choice in many scenarios. The likelihood of them being the right choice for your next Web application is strong, specially now that you’re familiar with them!

To ask questions about repoze.who and/or repoze.what, please use the repoze-dev mailing list. For everything else that is related to this article, please leave a comment below.

Olivier Cleynen: What did the sea say to the penguin?

2010-05-28T19:54:12+00:00

Nothing, it just waved…

Thomas Jollans (free-zombie): Auto-poweroff that server in your cellar

2010-05-28T13:56:00+00:00

Our cellar houses an old grey box that acts as a home server for the family. It's quite useful in a number of ways, as a file server, web server, database server, and so on. It also, traditionally, had a habit of wasting power—it's so much nicer to just have the machine running when you use it. But, with the wonders of Wake on LAN, even the “I'm too lazy to run into the cellar” argument has lost any validity it might have had.

So much for turning the box on, how about turning it off? Figuring out when nobody is using the machine and then remembering to turn it off as well is hardly a task for a mere mortal. So I wrote a script that does it for me. is_anyone_here.py checks whether anyone is logged in, and looks for any evidence of recent usage. It was written on/for a Debian GNU/Linux (lenny) system with vsftpd and samba, and may require some modifications to work properly in your environment.

Have a look at the whole script after the break.

Gustavo Narea (gustavo): “WSGI from Start to Finish” at EuroPython 2010

2010-05-25T23:03:49+00:00

If you’re a Web Application Developer using Python, you may be very interested in the tutorial I am presenting at EuroPython 2010: “WSGI from Start to Finish: How to use the power of WSGI to solve problems your framework cannot solve”.

Your favorite Web framework is not able to meet all your needs, all the time; some problems cannot even be solved at the framework level. In such situations, the Python Web Server Gateway Interface may save you a lot of time and trouble, giving you the opportunity to implement an elegant solution or integrate existing framework-independent third party solutions.

And chances are, a better WSGI-based alternative exists for something your framework is apparently good at. WSGI is a very powerful technology, and the kind of things you can do with it may surprise you.

It doesn’t matter if you know little about WSGI or nothing at all, because when I say “from start to finish” I really mean it. In this half-day tutorial, I’ll try to cover both simple and complex real-world situations solved with WSGI. The tutorial is relevant for Django/Pylons/TurboGears/etc users, and for those who don’t use a Web framework at all!

Thomas Jollans (free-zombie): Happy draw Mohammed day!

2010-05-20T15:12:00+00:00

       ___      __________________________________
      /===\    /                                  \
      =====    | Thou shalt not draw me           |
      |0 0|    |  for thou hast no pencils.       |
      \ > /  -<  When thou hast acquired pencils, |
       \ /     |  it's all fun and games.         |
    __/|||\__  \__________________________________/
   |   |||   |
   ||       ||  \
   ||       ||  |\____________________________________
    |       |   |                                     \
    |       |   | Oh, and don't kill. It's not nice.  |
    |_______|   \_____________________________________/
     _|| ||_  
    /__| |__\ 
                                                     
                    (c) 2010 jollybox.de // CC-BY

More info after the break.

Thomas Jollans (free-zombie): RELEASE: Roxoptr 0.2

2010-05-15T13:10:00+00:00

The next version of ROXOPTR2 has landed! Version 0.2 brings with it a new look, with completely new levels, and much, much more.

Roxoptr2 is a simple platformer-style helicopter game in which you pilot a small helicopter around obstacles of different shapes and sized. Don't hit anything!

Download:

Wii Homebrew version: roxoptr2-0.2_wii.zip

Windows installer: roxoptr2-0.2_win32_setup.exe

Source code (any platform): roxoptr2-0.2.tar.gz

More info on the game's home page and the WiiBrew page.

The stunning new artwork is all thanks to Mr_Nick666.

Roxoptr2 is free software. You may play, copy, and modify it under the terms of the MIT license.

Olivier Cleynen: Magnatune, music pirates can’t match

2010-05-09T02:35:35+00:00

This month’s worthwhile spending is in a yearly subscription to Magnatune, a music label company that’s got all my sympathy. What you have here is a record company with a business model for this century: listen to full albums on-line for free, purchase albums on DRM–free files in the format of your choice, re-download as many times as you want, and share with friends. 15 dollars a month will get you full access to the catalog. And the share with the artists? 50%. The PirateBay cannot match this.

I’ve known Magnatune for a while and own a handful of good albums — Shira Kammen’s Music of Waters (joyful, simple Irish folk) or Brad Sucks’ Out of It (full-sounded, punchy Indie with a noir touch) come to mind. As a heavyweight-but-picky listener, I find the catalog (now broad and rather rich) to match that of most traditionnal labels in terms of signal-to-noise ratio.

If you happen to use Ubuntu, the whole Magnatune catalog is waiting, ready to be streamed, right within the Rhythmbox player. I enjoy randomly playing tracks of every genre and then press the download button when my head starts to move.

Thomas Jollans (free-zombie): And, no, I don't live there.

2010-04-30T15:23:00+00:00

Yesterday evening, I tuned into BBC 1 to watch the last of the “Prime Ministerial Debates” before the General Election that the UK is, apparently, going to have next week. I won't be saying a lot about policy here – instead, I will concentrate on my (outside) view of the whole process.

First and foremost, one thing surprised me, and, I expect, many other viewers as well: As the BBC analyst put it, smiling ear to ear, after the show: “It was a debate!”, and this is, as far as I can tell, far from the norm when it comes to this kind of programme. I must admit that I had never before watched a “debate” like this in full, but what little I did see of the equivalent German and American shows, “debate” is usually more of a euphemism than a description. Gordon Brown at least not only attacked David Cameron at every occasion, but followed the arguments of his opponents and reacted to them without switching to a completely different question the answer to which he happened to have memorized — one of Cameron's favourite tactic. He, the Conservative leader, was less interested in civil debate: Cameron systematically ignored nearly everything that came from the left just to regularly and skillfully switch to blurting memorized P/R bla at the camera.

Between Brown's constant attacks in the vague direction of Margaret Thatcher and Cameron's occasional snide remark about the current government, Nick Clegg really ended up looking rather useless, almost only responding to anything on the rare occasion that someone attacked Liberal policy for a change. This – the slightly disadvantaged position of the new kid in town – is hardly surprising: the emergence of a new force in parliament always takes some adjusting. It certainly looks like British politics are morphing from a two-party system to a three-party system, and a change like that always means a certain amount of turbulence; if you live in Germany, you probably won't have forgotten the growth of the Left party, creating a five-party system, not so long ago.

But what will the results be like? Of course, we can't know. But let's assume we did know what the population, as a whole, wanted: It wouldn't happen. In the UK's bizarrely distorted majority-based system, perfectly normal election results produce bizarre parliaments, sometimes involving MPs being chosen by dice instead of voters. (I think this happened 2005, but I can't find a source) It's perfectly plausible that the party that gets the most seats might not have the most votes. Small parties, of course, don't stand a chance. Even if 10%25 of votes went to the Greens, or even the Pirates, there's a fair chance that they wouldn't win a single seat.

Anyway, let's say we do end up getting the hung parliament that would have suited the Britons' votes for decades; what happens then? In a three-party system, every coalition would be possible: Conservative-Liberal, Labour-Liberal, or, of course, the grand coalition. The way Gordon Brown presented it yesterday, there would either be a majority Labour government, or a Conservative-Liberal coalition. But what do the Liberal Democrats think? What are the chances of a Labour-Liberal coalition? Or maybe Gordon and David will band together with the words "screw you, Nick", and create a compromise that the whole country hates? Who knows.

Back to the debate: what influence does it have on people? Our friends at the BBC, in a desperate attempt to find out something and put it on television, decided to run some tests on “a specially selected group of undecided voters” by sticking them into a studio and letting them push buttons while watching the debate on the telly. Okay, makes sense. What they found out, or what they said yesterday, is this: “They don't like it when they're having a go at each other.” Let me repeat that for you: “They don't like it when they're having a go at each other.” To put this a bit more bluntly: The public doesn't like the so-called debate being a debate. This is quite a big fish to swallow. I myself was delighted to see some debating. The BBC analyst was delighted to see some debating. @spwhitton was delighted to see some debating. That's the way politics work. The part of the electorate the BBC runs its tests on, however, doesn't like politics: they prefer Nick Clegg's “Let's all have a beer and work this out” approach.

Whoever wins this, I just hope they don't do anything really stupid, like pretty much everything I heard David Cameron proposing.

Olivier Cleynen: Nice and clean

2010-04-27T20:01:07+00:00

We and our parents have made the net so filthy and dangerous that I’m glad to see someone stand up to clean it up. It is with great joy that I look forward to hand my children a safer, cleaner, purer Internet : the Cleanternet.

Thomas Jollans (free-zombie): RELEASE: roxoptr2-0.2~a1

2010-04-09T13:47:00+00:00

Today, I release the first wrapped-up public version of roxopter2, v0.2~a1, second in the video game franchise nobody has ever heard of "rockopter". Roxoptr2 is a simple 2D side-scrolling game in which you pilot a helicopter around things. It is written in POSIX C using the SDL library (also SDL_image, SDL_ttf and zlib) and runs on UNIX systems such as GNU/Linux and FreeBSD (and probably Mac OS X) as well as the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Windows.

Wiki page: Software/Roxoptr

Source tarball: roxoptr2-0.2~a1.tar.gz
Wii homebrew binaries: roxoptr2-0.2~a1_wii.zip
Win32 binaries: roxoptr2-0.2~a1_win32.zip

Mercurial repository:http://code.jollybox.de/hg/roxoptr2

Gustavo Narea (gustavo): WSGI and Repoze on identi.ca

2010-02-15T21:56:51+00:00

A few weeks ago I started the Repoze and WSGI groups on identi.ca. Please feel free to join us if you have something to share! Or just keep an eye on those groups to receive updates.

Olivier Cleynen: Thermodynamique de l’ingénieur

2010-02-07T18:53:06+00:00

J’ai conclu il y a deux semaines une série de cours nommés “Thermodynamique de l’ingénieur”.

Il s’agit d’une étude pragmatique de la thermodynamique: le but est avant tout de mettre en place les principes fondamentaux des moteurs et des thermopompes. Le cours est abordable avec un niveau de Terminale et nécessite une quarantaine d’heures de couverture en classe. Le premier document contient sommaire et résumé éxécutif.

Les documents sont diffusés sous licence CC-by-sa, qui en autorise pratiquement n’importe quel usage, y inclus commercial. Les fichiers source des schémas et figures ne sont pas encore publiés mais cela viendra. J’espère que les cours serviront autant que leur cousine, la série Introduction au Vol Spatial, qui attire un dizaine de curieux chaque jour.

En ce qui concerne la qualité, il y aura encore des choses à ré-organiser, mais les erreurs les plus évidentes dans chaque chapitre ont été corrigées en une ou deux itérations. Ces cours ont été soutenus devant, lus, étudiés et utilisés par des étudiants pour qui j’ai beaucoup d’estime — je ne connais pas d’épreuve plus difficile ou plus intéressante.

Olivier Cleynen: Still not read-only

2010-02-07T18:51:57+00:00

Lifesnotreadonly.net received an update this evening.

Almost four years on and I still like its wandering, thinking-a-little-too-quickly style. Train travel is unmatched in this respect.

Dennis Wronka (reptiler): EasyLFS is moving

2010-01-10T08:21:00+00:00

Thank you libervisco for the free hosting provided to EasyLFS! Thanks a lot!
But for two reasons I am now moving my project away:

GNU/Linux Matters Blog: Quite a blank

2009-12-28T13:50:46+00:00

We haven’t uttered a sound for the last fifteen months and in the software world this never is a good sign. For many reasons, not the least of which is lack of funding, GNU/Linux Matters went silent and the last radio signals were received in November 08. Both Gustavo and Olivier have been off pursuing different careers. Numerous apologies are due for the lack of updates and answers to e-mails (due to profound exhaustion).

Operations have been on stand-by since then. We have just paid all outstanding bills; and some of our websites which had been cracked are clear again.

In February 2010, the organisation will be either dis-mantled or profoundly re-structured. We are toying with various prospects for a lighter, more maintainable structure, though a complete fade-out still is the most likely option. If you are a non-profit organisation and are interested in taking over some or all of our websites or activities, now is a good time to contact us. Otherwise please check back in a couple of months.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): Updates and Memeverse Media consolidation

2009-12-09T17:50:17+00:00

Time flies and it’s been a while of it since the last Memeverse update. Even though it may sometimes seem like it I almost never sit idle. And even if I’m sitting idle chances are my mind is racing… I think too much, but I don’t act as much on my thoughts - yet.

Notable things I did do since last time was the following:

Wrote 7 technologies that can help you weather the crisis on Libervis.com AKA “good uses of technology”.
Did Haiku OS Alpha 1 Screenshots on Nuxified.org
Wrote “Again, Linux is not an OS” and just this morning Linux for “DoublePlusHuman” (more on the context for that below) on Nuxified.org
Redid advertising.libervis.com, a site officially registered with 2CheckOut.com which is the retailer for my services online and made sure it passes their policy with flying colors (I checked it all with them to make sure I’m fully compliant).
Sold VideoWorldSearch.com for 30 bucks
Restarted music production by making a draft of a new track and meeting with former co-producer to make a half of a new track for his new album.
Thought a lot about my approach to my work, that is, my purpose, what I want to be and how to arrange my projects.

I’m still in a pretty bad financial shape though, just barely covering the costs. I guess I’m not much of a business person yet (too much thinking, too little acting like I said), but I’m getting there and I’m far from giving up. In fact the shiniest things are yet to come and this is what I wanna dedicate the rest of my post.

I was for a long while on and off pretty obsessed with just getting things right with regards to my attitude towards work, life and success. Even after being fairly confident I properly answered the question “what I love to do” over this year alone I’ve revisited it again at least twice always coming roughly to the same answer, but perhaps expressed a little differently. Lately I went and rounded it all up with other tough questions like “what my purpose is” and “what I want to be” after reading excellent stuff from Jonathan Mead and this little book called Curly’s Law. Part of the reason why I revisited those questions is the big issue I have with typical advice on focus as means to success. Somehow “do one thing” never ever could sit well with me, at least if it means what it seems to mean on its face.

I couldn’t drop my other projects. I tried for a while to make DoublePlusHuman.com my “One Thing” and focus primarily if not ONLY on it and while it is most resonant with what I want to accomplish I feel technology in general and Linux specifically and even music are too big parts of my interests, of who I am, to just let go. Focusing on “One Thing” among them felt like peeling away a part of myself. How can I succeed the right way if I have to cut out a part of myself to do it? Something’s fishy about that. Besides, I wrote myself: “If it doesn’t feel natural don’t force it” and I believe that.

Jonathan Mead seems to agree with that kind of philosophy. A lot of what he writes resonates quite deeply with the way I think. His slogan is “live on your own terms”. Imagine that. He wrote an article which was of special interest to me: ADD Is Your Friend or Why Distractions Are The Key To Your Success. Albeit he doesn’t necessarily depart from the “focus on one thing” advice he does very much acknowledge the need to be a little distracted and allow yourself to pursue other things. Then in the comments came a guy who linked to Curly’s Law, a little book I mentioned before, which lays out an idea which in some form I’ve already reached in my thinking, but really needed someone else to confirm as something that makes sense.

The idea is that “One Thing” doesn’t have to mean “One Project” or “One Activity”. What IS the “thing”? It could merely be one thing that is in common to everything you’re interested in and everything you love to do. Find that one commonality and even when you do multiple things (projects, activities), you’ll still be focusing on one thing plus you’ll know how to predict when a particular project or activity wont fulfill you too long. If it doesn’t have that “thing” (thang?) of yours.. it probably wont last. And I was already at a point where all the right puzzles were with me.. when this confirmation came I think it pretty much clicked or is starting to click. I know my one thing.

My one thing is what I already made up a word for: DoublePlusHuman. I can literally speak for hours about what we should be and since the human world is built of human individuals what the world should be as a result. I ultimately managed to define DoublePlusHuman as an individual who is free of all self-contradiction, coercion and superstition. Promotion of, becoming of and building a world of DoublePlusHuman is what my purpose in life is and this is merely an upgrade of everything I ever thought my purpose was before (like being a socially aware entrepreneur). What I want to become is a successful, personally powerful entrepreneur that can influence individuals and thus the world towards that, DoublePlusHuman vision.

Interestingly, Libervis.com and Nuxified.org, my other main projects (and in relation to Nuxified even the possibly upcoming LinuxNN.com) all fit this vision because technology fits it. Since DoublePlusHuman is about getting rid of self-contradiction it is about getting rid of self-sacrifice (what people commonly call a sacrifice isn’t always a sacrifice if you did it of your own values) and so called “selflessness”. Instead a DoublePlusHuman will without guilt admit to his or her nature as a being that wishes to flourish and grow, to achieve his or her dreams no matter how wild. Technology is just something we create in pursuit of many of such dreams. It is the extension of who we are and a direct effect of our continued evolution.

DoublePlusHumans without technology aren’t DoublePlusHumans. Luddites might disagree with me, but maybe not once they understand how exactly I view technology. People who fear technology are people who’ve been burned by its negative uses. I promote positive uses as the outcome of being DoublePlusHuman - uses of technology which are not self-contradictory, but self-fulfilling, not coercive upon yourself and others, but empowering of yourself and others and not in pursuit of superstition based causes (like flying airplanes, a great example of technology, against people of a different religion). Luddites, fear not technology. Fear the human beings who suffer from a severe infection of bad memes that put them at war with themselves and others.

This purpose is the ultimate purpose of nearly everything I do online or everything I do period. And these activities and projects is what I branded as “Memeverse Media”. It’s good to put a name on it because it’s like putting a dot at the end of a sentence, a variable that refers to something real and meaningful. I am me and Memeverse Media is what I do. What exactly is it?

It’s a conglomeration of projects and activities meant to promote the memes of DoublePlusHumans through writing, multimedia production and everything that underpins and feeds such efforts. I will be writing about it. I’ll make music and videos in the name of these ideas. I will be creating financially profitable projects to pay for its expansion. I eventually want to get to the point where Memeverse Media will spawn whole drama and science fiction movies that inspire people to think in this way and share this vision and its pursuit with me.

The ultimate outcome I hope for is that it will become big enough to not only serve as a way of promoting these ideas and such a vision of the world, but in practical terms build it. This is partly why I’ve already registered SpaceStead.com which will be in the relatively near future home a blog and a community about spacesteading, a natural future outcome of seasteading. Just in case we cannot free this world from self-defeating attitudes, we will plan to venture into space, build our homes there.

I want to be a part of such a project one day.

But back to the present.. the next thing up is further consolidation of Memeverse Media. I need to finish the upgrade and redesign of Nuxified.org (which was blocked by a severe technical issue I couldn’t resolve yet) so that it can be brought to the fold in new light, with a new slogan and a revitalized focus. These three projects will be the focal point, but I will also be trying to produce additional material, such as an ebook and eventually a membership site that I will charge for which are likely to be a part of DoublePlusHuman.com. I will also be making music and then music videos that promote the DoublePlusHuman vision, specific sites and Memeverse Media. I might also start writing science fiction which might provide the basis for future movies.

I will also be engaged part of the time in what I call “site flipping”, that is, letting myself experiment with various interesting project ideas and see if I can make them either financially or memetically complement the Memeverse Media purpose and otherwise “flip them” (sell them to a better owner) which can generate a little bit of extra cashflow while essentially serving as a Research & Development portion of my activities.

All in all, I want to inspire you, motivate you, make you shake with excitement of possibilities that exist for the future if we should only adopt the right memeverse in our minds.

Gustavo Narea (gustavo): Getting back on track

2009-11-17T23:38:59+00:00

Yes, I’m alive.

Since the second half of last summer I’ve been inactive in the Free Software arena. No commits, no emails from me in the last few months which may indicate that the projects are dead. So I wanted to write to let you know that I have no plans to stop maintaining any of my projects. I will start to catch up with all the things I’ve missed in the projects I normally contribute to and the projects I develop alone.

The reason why you’d heard nothing from me is that I left Spain to move to Oxford, in order to work at the cool company behind 2degreesnetwork.com. The removal was the most time-consuming and stressful thing I’d ever done, but after one month working here, I’m happy to say that it was worth it. The atmosphere is just like I thought Web 2.0 companies were, and I am surrounded by nice and talented people. I can’t be happier.

Well, back to the projects, I had to wait a lot to get access to the Internet at home, but I got it a couple of weeks ago and have been catching up (slowly) with the pending stuff. I still have a huge stack of unanswered emails, for example.

For the last couple of weeks I was working fulltime on repoze.what 1.1 and repoze.what-django. I hope to finish the documentation and get the first alpha releases out very soon; the code itself is pretty much ready and, as usual, fully tested. I didn’t have plans to do a repoze.what 1.1 release anytime soon, but while developing repoze.what-django I found myself implementing something which would be useful outside Django (i.e., ACLs) and thus I decided to move it to repoze.what.

After that, I want to improve the auth documentation in TurboGears 2. repoze.what-pylons is the crucial part of the repoze.what integration in TG2 and it’s fully documented, but duplicating part of those docs won’t do any harm and adding some tips and tricks would be nice. I started doing that some months ago but never committed it; I have to finish it this time.

Then I’d like to make repoze.what-pylons take advantage of the new features in repoze.what 1.1, like repoze.what-django already does.

That’s it for the foreseeable future. Next year I really want to get serious with Booleano and PyACL.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): New articles on Libervis.com and DoublePlusHuman.com

2009-11-17T14:27:10+00:00

Yesterday I finished writing a follow up to my last article against “intellectual property” (“Intellectual Property” a Violation of Real Property) in an attempt to clarify some things and answer some objections brought about in discussions of the last article. You can read it here: Implications of rejecting “intellectual property”.

This time I have not submit it to LXer.com where most of the objections originated. I do not wish to participate on that site anymore because of what I believe is the intellectually smothering culture that tends to develop there partly as a result of intellectual dishonesty of certain incumbents and partly due to a flawed and problematic “terms of use” policy which bans political and religious discussion in a one-liner failing to clearly define the boundaries of what they are. Thus some people use this condition in terms of service whenever they cannot properly address the arguments that don’t go in their favor. They arbitrarily make their own definition of “political discussion” (even when it contradicts to what they themselves express elsewhere) and claim a “TOS violation” that would have the discussion locked or deleted.

This is BS and I will not stand for it. In fact, this sort of thing may just well see the rise of a competing service.

I’ve written two other articles on unrelated topics on my new site, DoublePlusHuman.com:

* Justice is not about vengeance, punishment or obedience and

* Your children ARE DoublePlusHuman

I was less analytical in them than I usually am, but then again being too analytical can sometimes be a pretty dry and long read. So I think it might be a good idea to sometimes just let out some opinions and some basic argumentation behind them in between the more analytical pieces.

When writing the last one about children, I became fairly emotional by the end. This is the sort of thing which really strikes the note in two ways at the same time, personal and in general pertaining to the state of the world as it is. I really think a lot rests in how we treat our children and what kinds of personal relationships, especially in family, do we foster.

That’s that for this update.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): About the controversial Modern Warfare 2 “No Russian” scene

2009-11-13T00:46:20+00:00

This morning I checked out an interesting thread on Freedomain Radio forums and followed a link to video showing “Call of duty Modern Warfare 2 Terrorist mission” (NSFW, pretty stomach turning material). I was shocked. It was enough to inspire some thinking and searching for more info about the scene and as it turned out it was already causing quite a bit of controversy.

Since the topic seems fitting for the purpose of Libervis.com I thought it would be a good idea to turn some of these thoughts into an article. Here is it: “Modern Warfare 2 jolts the player awake with a question: what kind of a world is this?”

It’s basically a commentary on the “No Russian” scene from the newly released “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ and some speculative exploration of implications of this kind of entertainment with regards to our culture.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): Two new Libervis articles.

2009-11-10T17:35:34+00:00

After nearly a year of pause (at least in terms of new articles as I’ve still been publishing some references/links), I’ve published two new articles on Libervis.com. This follows after a redesign and a revision that was done recently which is meant to revive this long standing project as one of the key components in my web publishing “agenda”.

Here are the new articles:

1. How phishing scams show the need to evolve with technology

2. “Intellectual Property” a Violation of Real Property

The first reflects one of the basic issues that the site’s content is and will be tackling, which is the issue of our mental, cultural and social preparedness for the power of new technologies. Since it gives power to its user which can be both negative and positive technology changes the potential of certain mental, cultural and social norms to affect the society.

Second article is more philosophical, but mainly pertains to the issue we’ve been addressing since the founding of Libervis.com, which is the issue of proprietary software and Free Software and the currently believed paradigm that copyright law operates on. Software is a type of technology whereas copyright law and this “intellectual property” paradigm reflects some social and cultural norms. This has consequences some of which have been outlined in that article.

Libervis.com will continue to actively be used to address issues all across the spectrum that lies between society and culture as we know it and the technology that we use from such a perspective. I think it’s a set of issues which is going to tremendously increase in importance as the accelerating technological evolution continue in face of all the social, cultural and economic turmoil and shifting.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): The ills of socialism, with or without the state

2009-11-08T17:48:37+00:00

I just exited a thread I titled Anarcho socialism worse than statism? started on July 27 and currently eight pages long. Before and during that time I’ve had a number of on and off discussions with people whom could probably most precisely be described as anarchists which oppose property ownership at least to some extent and in some forms. From a perspective of what I believe to be most voluntaryists and all anarcho-capitalists they’re typically dubbed anarcho-socialists.

During that time I have occasionally doubted my assessments as my understanding of their positions changed. After all they are different individuals possibly holding somewhat differing variation of the general idea. However at this point I remain generally disappointed and even frustrated with it. Here are some of the core arguments which from my understanding represent various anarcho-socialist positions, and my responses to them.

1. “Property is theft” (represented by multiple arguments leading to that conclusion).

This is a famous statement by Proudhon which according to what I’ve been explained is also commonly misinterpreted. In any case however it is the ultimate conclusion of a number of anarcho-socialist arguments. I’ll start with the one least problematic to me.

“Property stolen by means of state is theft.”

According to this argument Proudhon was referring to “property” in terms of the state rather than in terms of the free market, that is, property which was essentially stolen by means of the state such as the institution of a corporation. Since the means of the state typically involve force and fraud rather than voluntary trade a lot of what is currently considered as legal property (in state’s language) is actually stolen property - thus enforcement of this property is enforcement of theft.

Any instance where the law assigns supposed “property rights” where none would be acquired by voluntary trade would be an example of that. One example are eminent domain laws which can sometimes be used to essentially steal from one to give to the other and then proclaim it as legal property of the other.

Because of this it is rather hard to discern genuine from stolen property since the state is so deeply involved in the market. For example some argue that any and all property acquired by corporations is illegitimate because the corporation actually is not a real person, but rather just a conceptual or institutional puppet of a real person, with privileges assigned to it by the state. Thus it acts with powers that a real person otherwise wouldn’t have, powers assigned to it by the state at the expense of other market actors. Anything that a corporation could not acquire without these powers yet acquired with them is therefore considered as stolen property.

It isn’t surprising then that some would take this to the extreme and argue that all property must be stolen property quickly assuming the position that property ownership is impossible to enforce without the state, which is the second argument I’ll address. Indeed, that is the current popular belief and a claim by state actors themselves. What the state says is legal property is considered to be the legitimate property, as if it has nothing to do with individual and voluntary trade in the market itself, and everything to do with arbitrary decrees of state actors (even if elected through a democratic process).

I am inclined to agree with Proudhon if this argument is the correct interpretation of what he said, but only when it refers to property which truly was stolen by means of the state. It I however act independently of the state to produce or acquire something it is reasonable to assume my property was earned, not stolen.

“Property is theft because it cannot be enforced without the state.”

As mentioned above this is what the extreme extension of the above argument leads some towards. Since the state steals and yet it is the one defining property and most people believe it, property and theft are conflated. It is then enough to observe someone’s house being taken from them by law only to be teared down and the land transfered to a corporation who is to build a mall there to put an emotional seal to this reasoning. Since the state does this in the name of property and the land is proclaimed as the property of the corporation yet the scene clearly depicts an act of theft, property and theft seem like the same thing.

In that instance the concept of property is so out of shape that it is hard to imagine how property could even exist without the state. It no longer refers to the control of that which you produced or acquired by your own efforts or through trade, but rather to a mere arbitrary entitlement by people with the guns, regardless of effort and voluntary trade.

Thus the argument that property cannot exist without state enforcement takes shape which also provides the seeds for the argument that any defense of private property is itself immoral initiation of force.

Unfortunately, this is all based on terrible fallacies. It is as if in the process of being maimed and pillaged the people lost sight of who their tyrant was and what his actions were. It’s as if they begun believing their masters lies and are now using those lies as arguments against those who would otherwise be their friends against the tyrant (typical affront between anarcho-socialists and anarcho-capitalists). It is as if they forgot what ownership used to mean, because it was just the opposite of theft.

In any case, ownership as defined by voluntaryists and anarcho-capitalists indeed has nothing to do with what the state decrees it is. It has nothing to do with arbitrary expropriation by force. It has to do with earning what you have by your own effort and being responsible for your actions. For my more specific exposition on property please see here

Thus how is it possible that the ones who are the biggest violators of property could be the only ones that can enforce it (the state)? This is a question I think every anarcho-socialist ought to honestly try to answer because it directly challenges their assumption that property requires the state.

So if property does not in fact require the state, the question that pops up is who will enforce it? The answer is relatively simple. Property owners or their agents. Today the state seemingly plays a role of an agent, but it actually is not. Since it is a coercive monopoly on the service of property protection (which is actually just a form of self defense) it does not so much provide that service as much as it forcefully imposes it. You don’t hire a state agent to protect your property. The state agent never gives you that option. Instead they take your money as supposed payment for this “service” through taxation against your will which is exactly the opposite of protecting property. It is its violation.

In fact real property protection today doesn’t really exist. If it did it would protect you from the state itself. So it’s not only that property protection does not depend on the state. It is actually supposed to remove the state altogether to function.

“Property is theft because its enforcement depends on initiation of force.”

This is just the evolution of the above and as I’ve shown it is thus based on really shallow grounds. It stems from conflating state violence in the name of protecting property with actual protection of actual property. The state’s actors often claim to do their work in the name of noble ideals such as freedom, even when they invade foreign countries and homes of innocent people. Are we supposed to then dismiss the idea of freedom because this is what they do in its name?

It’s the same thing with property. They violate property in the name of defending property. Are we supposed to dismiss true defense of property then as violation of property as well? Because that’s what this argument essentially boils down to.

However, while this argument may have evolved from the conflation of statist inversions of property with actual property it does have a life on its own, which isn’t surprising since most people who use this argument probably don’t typically make a connection between their animosity against property and their animosity towards the way state acts about it yet they need to defend their position and then try to find the best arguments to back it up.

Unfortunately even these arguments rehash the statist thinking. For instance, they provide examples of poor or homeless people taking the property of others in order to sustain themselves and the property owners purported attempts to defend from such theft as initiation of force. Such arguments attempt to use human tendency to empathize with the poor and unfortunate to trick one into reversing the defense of property into initiation of force, thus becoming consistent with the “property is theft” ethos. This reverses the roles of the poor thief and a richer property owner defending from such theft so as for the property owner to be the one who stole (by denying the poor to take) and the poor thief as the one who is stolen from.

What is easily missed here is that the fact that the property owner by virtue of his ownership may rightfully defend his property does not mean that he has to. It only means that the decisions pertaining to the way his property is to be used belongs to him.

Since it is the human tendency to empathize which this argument uses it is reasonable to assume that this argument assumes that empathy IS important and even common enough. If it wasn’t then why appeal to it in the first place? Yet if empathy is common enough for an empathy based argument to be worth using isn’t it reasonable to assume that most property owners confronted with a poor thief wouldn’t just force him out, but instead try to help and even let him use some of their property?

And as a final straw for this argument there is the fact that it sets a dangerous precedent in that it puts ownership to the subjective whims of those who claim a need that is supposedly large and immediate enough to override it. Suddenly anyone who can present his wants as severe enough needs can justify their theft. This of course can backfire at the very those whom this reversion of property is supposed to benefit: the poor.

Fundamentally, a claim that defense of property or property enforcement is *initiation* of force rather than defensive force leaves very little room for self defense, or at least makes it dependent on subjective whims as mentioned above. Unfortunately this relativization of property and thus self defense makes self-defense always a potential crime because the extent to which your self and your property extends is constantly at the whim of a society or social norms rather than a verifiable facts of your just effort and trade. That is, whether you have acquired something by honest action and trade no longer matters if someone can claim a “higher need” and still steal it from you.

I mentioned that these kinds of arguments rehash the statist thinking and here is how. Statist socialists use the same “think of the poor” kind of arguments appealing to the same human empathy to justify theft in form of taxes. The only way in which anarcho-socialist argument differs is that they outright redefine theft so as to reverse its meaning, but the outcome is the same.

This makes the anarcho-socialist position which uses this argument no better at all than the statist socialist position.

2. Pure capitalism leads to the state.

Above I’ve addressed the idea that property ownership, which is fundamental to capitalism, requires the state. In other words it was the idea that capitalism cannot exist without the state.

This argument is a little different in that it implicitly presupposes the existence of pure capitalism without the state first and then an inevitable devolution of it to state capitalism. The way this is supposed to happen is by the greed and selfishness of the capitalists going beyond voluntary trade and into the realm of force and fraud thus establishing conglomerates which ultimately become the state. There are probably many ways to be thought of exactly how this may happen, but addressing all of them isn’t my point.

In fact I wouldn’t even argue that this cannot happen. I would argue instead that if it does happen all it means that capitalists who started perpetrating force and fraud failed to be capitalists, or rather they weren’t capitalists, and that the system that resulted wasn’t capitalism at all, but the statism that we all know and love (NOT). Essentially it is corporatism. Even minimal state overseeing a free market has the seeds of corporatism and becomes real corporatism as soon as it establishes the limited liability and “legal person” institution called the “corporation” (LLC, LTD, Inc., Gmbh etc.)

In other words it is not pure capitalism that leads to statism, but rather the lack of capitalism. This boils down to my old argument about not blaming peace for war. If we are living in peace, meaning that everybody respects everybody and there is no violence and then after some time someone comes out and starts inciting conflict and initiating violence what will we blame for this state of violence? Will it be the fact that we had peace? Of course not. We will blame the fact that this individual started using violence.

In the same sense, if we have pure capitalism it means we have individuals respecting individuals and their work (their property) and trading voluntarily and peacefully. If someone then comes out and starts cheating people and initiating force to get more business, will we blame capitalism or will we blame the person who violated the very principles of capitalism?

This is also why it is extremely unintelligent to blame recessions, including the current crisis, on capitalism and the free market. It is precisely like blaming peace for war. People cheat and steal and we blame those who propagate against cheating and stealing for it. Government bails out corporations and we blame the free market? Those kinds of things boil my mind.

Imagine a brother hitting his sister who was just playing in peace and the mother shouting at the peaceful sister because she is just playing in peace and “causing” the brother to hit her. It’s truly a WTF moment, but tell that to the millions upon millions of people out there, including Michael Moore, currently spitting at capitalism and free markets. They have no sane idea what they’re doing.

So this argument doesn’t really make sense. The only resort it has is to claim that capitalism itself is flawed which would probably come down to the arguments against property which I’ve addressed and hopefully debunked above.

3. No authority should be admitted, thus no authority derived from property ownership.

This was pointed out by my friend when he described briefly the position of mutualists he has had some discussions with. According to him they actually believe in self-ownership, but instead of as seeing it as a base of property ownership they see it as the very reason why property ownership (beyond the self) should not exist. To quote: “I own myself and therefore others have no authority over me, and as a result, no authority over others is acceptable. From this principle, property rights MUST conflict with self-ownership.“

However this position is self-contradictory and ultimately leads to the same issues pointed out with the above addressed reversal of property ownership into “theft”. If nobody should have any authority over you then the poor people taking something you believe belongs to you don’t either. Their needs, no matter how basic, do not establish their authority over your desire to keep what they’re taking.

Then it might be argued that your authority ends where their authority begins, but since this position espouses no-authority that would clearly be a contradiction. In fact a no-authority position transmutes into a no-liberty position because your liberty ends where someone’s liberty begins which inevitably implies some kind of an authority. Thus denying all authority is denying all liberty. This just doesn’t work, at least if your goal is liberty to begin with.

Thus the no authority position seems to overspill each individual’s “jurisdiction” (for lack of a better word) all over each other rather than establishing a balance. The area of overlap is the area of conflict. By saying nobody has any authority over you under any circumstances whatsoever you’re essentially taking an absolute authority position over everyone else. If everyone makes this assumption and acts on it this is essentially anarchy as chaos, that is, everyone against everyone according to their own whims.

4. Property vs. Possession

From all that I’ve heard about the concept of possession so far I am compelled to conclude that possession actually is nothing more than a crippled, relativized and subjectivized version of property. The concept is essentially designed to give way to socialized defining and redefining of what may a person possess and keep, basically submitting the individual to some extent to the established social norms. This is because the main reasons that possession is even admitted to the individual are subjective, namely, the “basic needs” of the individual - what he needs to live.

One person may feel his basic needs to be quite different from another so one person may claim more possessions than another. If one person believes the needs of another person to be lower than that person believes himself this leads to conflict. There is no one size fits all objective model of needs. Not only do they to a large extent depend on personal evaluations, but even to the physical and mental capacities of each person which cannot as easily be evaluated by another on sight. Some people are more efficient in their consumption of life giving resources than others depending on their physical build up, skills, experience and so on. It also isn’t uncommon for people today to claim needs which a lot of other people would feel are luxuries.

Who then is the final arbiter of this? Apparently nobody and everybody which is just another way of saying “the society” in reference to popular social norms. Since it is precisely on this determination on which the difference between self-defense and initiation of violence may be determined it is clear how this could leave a lot of people with an experience of being tyrannized by the majority. This is essentially mob rule, even with less pretense than the idea of democracy.

Conclusion

I have very little respect for socialism, both with or without the state. As a voluntaryist I clearly have no respect for statism so it goes without saying that I find socialist statism unacceptable.

Anarcho-socialists tend to say that they are the “real anarchists” and that the label “anarcho-socialists” is superfluous. They also say that anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron. This comes from their understanding of anarchy as “no-authority” rather than “no coercive rule” or their reversal of “coercive rule” through denial of property ownership in which the defense of property which would otherwise be considered self defense, becomes itself coercion.

Unfortunately this reversal tactic is what’s most disgusting about all socialism in general. Socialism as the name implies is ultimately never really about the individual, but rather about the abstract “society”, something that does not exist without individuals to begin with. Socialist positions and arguments sometimes pretend to defend the individual, yet the outcome is paving the way to socialized control. An affront to property ownership is used to cut into the individual by infecting the objective realm that underpins property ownership, causality, with subjective whims the aggregate of which is represented in form of social norms that are accepted as the “common sense” and thus “the truth” (provided this is even believed in anymore).

Anarcho-socialists however are a particularly sad case since they seem like a traumatized version of a socialist. They’ve recognized the ills of mainstream social (dis)organization yet they’re still pretty severely infected by the memes which make such social organization possible. They’ve learned to oppose the state yet they still operate on the memetical paradigm that the state itself operates on which makes them into excellent treadmill runners, going absolutely nowhere. Besides, when have ever the anti-globalist and anarchist protest resulted in any kind of real change other than to parade violent rioting as the de-facto image of “anarchism” and thus taint the perception of enlightened and intellectual anarchists with it.

Anarcho-socialism is socialized control without the state. They may passionately deny this, but the consistence of ideas they typically advocate inevitably lead to this. Why else restrict or relativize property ownership, bringing some extent of it to the whim of society?

The trouble is, the state itself to a very large extent exists precisely because the stateless socialized control is already established. It is ultimately the ideas, the memes, which run the world. State is just the ultimate reflection of prevalent social norms. If the masses didn’t believe that it is right to steal in some limited instances taxes would not exist. If the masses didn’t believe that violence is acceptable in enforcing “good ideas” a coercive monopoly on law would not exist. If the masses didn’t believe that violence is an acceptable way of solving some social problems war against citizens either in other countries or “at home” (”war on drugs”, “war on terror” etc.) wouldn’t exist. And so on.

Violence of course is the ultimate result of any “socialization” of the individual, any part of the individual. It may be renamed and redefined, but still exists. Socialization by definition means absorption of one individual into another, which is exactly what conflict is. Metaphorically speaking, it is the collision of individuals in terms of their values. This is because a society does not really exist as any one thing in reality. Only individuals do. So sacrificing any individual for the society is in reality sacrificing one individual for another, or absorbing a part of one individual into another.

Socialism, in any form, thus inadvertently promotes conflict in the name of harmony.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): Problems and Proposed Solutions in Defining and Defending Property Ownership

2009-11-07T11:50:36+00:00

In my discussions with anarcho-socialists and others who question the idea of property ownership I’ve been thinking quite a bit about property, what it is, where it comes from and how to prove it. I am somewhat disappointed by the typical libertarian and even anarcho-capitalist explanations because I feel that they don’t do well enough to address certain concerns.

The typical reasoning goes like this. Ownership is defined as exclusive control and since “I control my body” proven by the fact I’m writing this I own myself. Therefore by extension I own the products of my actions or labor. Yet at the same time it seems that some libertarians, voluntaryists or anarcho-capitalists consider property to be a mere concept, something not derived from reality, but rather just a nice idea that is successful at creating harmony between people, so long as property is actually respected (unlike with the state).

So there are four problems I see here:

1. If ownership is solely defined as “exclusive control” and property as “that which is exclusively controlled” then if someone steals something he becomes the owner since at that point he’s the only one who controls it (exclusive control). This completely removes the possibility of theft occurring.

2. “I control my body” and subsequent “I own my body” and even “I own me” doesn’t satisfy anarcho-socialists because in a statement “I own me”, “I” and “me” refer to the same thing yet they tend to insist that property must be external to its owner. I think we have to do better than what we typically do (from my experience) to resolve this.

3. Why exactly does self ownership extend to ownership of things other than self? What is the logic behind that? Also, what happens if we stop being human-centric about this and look for evidence of property outside of the human sphere? This is important if such evidence exists because it provides a significant additional proof for property beyond the disputed “I own me” reasoning.

4. How can you at the same time say that self-ownership arises from a physical objective fact that you control your body and then go about speaking of property as if it doesn’t have roots in the physical and objective world and is rather just an abstract, but useful concept that we can dismiss once we have abundance and infinite resources?? Do infinite resources suddenly change the fact you control your body?

My responses to these issues, albeit they are to some extent a work in progress, follow.

PROBLEM 1. If ownership is solely defined as “exclusive control” and property as “that which is exclusively controlled” then if someone steals something he becomes the owner since at that point he’s the only one who controls it (exclusive control). This completely removes the possibility of theft occurring.

Apparently defining ownership as “exclusive control” makes violation of property, that is theft, impossible. Regardless whether you take by trade or just steal something, ownership is just transfered, as physical control over an object is transfered. I don’t think any supporter of property ownership actually means it like this so this definition fails to communicate the actual meaning properly.

The most simple alternative definition would be “the right to exclusive control”. However, I’m becoming quite vary of references to rights, something I’ve realized in a discussion I had yesterday with another anarchist (socialist type). To illustrate consider the moral of non-coercion which basically says that “to coerce is wrong”. On this basis we typically describe “not coercing” as right, yet it isn’t right, but rather just the absence of “wrong”, an unmodified natural state. In that sense “right” doesn’t even exist. Whenever it is thus invoked it actually involves a positive entitlement or a positive obligation. If we’re speaking of negative moral statements (”you should not coerce” or “coercion is wrong”), rights don’t exist.

Thus defining ownership as “right to exclusive control” seems faulty because it implies a positive obligation where none exists. All we’re then left with is a negative moral statement, but we don’t quite know what it is yet because we haven’t yet defined ownership. We have a scaffolding of a statement, which is basically “do not act as if you own what you do not own”, but we haven’t yet defined what “own” is.

So I would take another approach. Let’s define ownership by including every condition necessary for it to be in effect. We will then know exactly which conditions need to be met before we can proclaim someone an owner and before we can classify any particular action as a violation of someone’s ownership, or theft.

The definition I thus propose is the following:

“Ownership is exclusive control of object B by object A where object A caused the object B’s current form and position or existence in time and space”.

This definition of ownership rests not only on exclusive control, but on causality and a principle of priority which I will explain below. Therefore exclusive control is no longer the only thing necessary for something to be owned, but rather we also need there to be the closest causal relationship between an owner and the object’s current form and position or existence in time and space. In other words, you only own what you caused into existence as such by your own actions (or labor).

Problems with this definition?

There is one thing about this definition which may seem problematic at first. It’s the fact that action and reaction is a continuous process to which we know of no beginning (except the big bang perhaps) and no end. It could thus be said that a thief who moves a thing from your garage to his own garage now owns this thing by virtue of causing it to exist at a different point in time and space and if he modified it, in a different form as well.

Principle of Priority

The antidote to this problem however is implicit in the very definition of ownership put forward above and it is what I might call a “principle of priority”. In simplistic terms it is about asking the question: who owned it first? If someone already owns something then it is only that someone who can cease that ownership before another can take over. Overriding that would be theft as I explain below.

This isn’t any more silly than the fact that action causes a reaction. The fact that a thief moved a thing from my garage to his own and modified it doesn’t change the fact that for him to be able to do that I had to be the one to acquire it and put it in my own garage first. Thus his subsequent possession is completely dependent upon and predicated by my prior actions which is precisely what makes me into an owner.

What makes him into a thief, however, isn’t just the fact that his possession depended on my prior actions, but the fact that my action wasn’t the one that caused him to come to possession of it, such as the act of trade or giveaway. My exclusive control of an object ends where my stream of actions is terminated by the final act of disposal yet he terminated that control before me, taking advantage of the fruits of my actions or my control without acknowledging those actions and this control.

To take an example from fundamental process of the universe, the process of causality or action-reaction, it is as if a reaction happens without absorbing the energy of an effect of a prior action that caused it. It is like removing an “effect” from a domino effect while still observing the dominoes falling. Obviously, this is impossible as causality cannot function without both cause and effect. Every action essentially “pays” for the effects of prior actions the costs imposed by a prior actor in the same sense as a force that pushes in one direction pushes equally in another.

Thieves try to override that on a macro scale of human interaction by absorbing the effect without absorbing the energy costs of it. When this happens a natural imbalance occurs. The non-paid actor is diminished (which humans express as a sense of loss and injustice and frustration that comes with it) whereas the thief is enriched. But just like everything else in the universe seeks a state of equilibrium, so will the violated person seek reparations or even revenge, causing violence in a society.

Another issue that might be raised against this way of defining ownership is that it seemingly makes parents into owners of their kids because parents caused their kids into existence at some point in time and space. However to stop at that conclusion would be to fail to acknowledge the nature of an “object” that is a human being. Namely, it cannot be externally controlled exclusively and if you somehow created beings who could by some technological means (The Borg drones bred in an incubator?) they wouldn’t really be humans anymore. The nature that makes them into humans would not be developed.

Since this is obviously not the case with pretty much all babies born it is safe to assume that to the extent to which a child exercises self control it cannot be owned by its parent. Instead it is self-owned. It directs itself to its own form and position in time and space. This ties to the established ideas about sentience, sapience and self awareness as differentiators necessary to discern between external ownership of animals and external ownership of humans whereas former becomes acceptable and latter not.

More could be said about the innards of animal ownership however which would reveal more about these extents or degrees of ownership which is oppositely proportional to the objects capacity to exclusively self-control. I will just say that every object does possess some extent of self-control which factors into its nature as itself. A rock for instance exhibits enough self-control to merely sit in place and keep itself together until outside forces break it down or move it. Given the huge gap between control that humans can exercise over a rock and control that rock can exercise over itself it is clear why humans have no qualms about owning rocks and other inanimate matter yet have huge qualms about owning other humans and some qualms about owning animals.

PROBLEM 2. Statments like “I control my body” and subsequent “I own my body” and even “I own me” don’t satisfy anarcho-socialists because in a statement “I own me”, “I” and “me” refer to the same thing yet they tend to insist that property must be external to its owner. I think a defender of property ownership has to do better than what we typically do (from my experience) to resolve this.

The basic issue here is the assumption that if I AM me then I cannot own me that comes from the assumption that what is owned must be separate or external from the owner itself. From my experience defenders of property ownership don’t do a very good job at tackling this issue because most of the time they don’t even try. They generally take self-ownership as an axiom and then call everyone who denies it as crazy because they evidently use ownership of their bodies to deny it.

I do largely agree with this, however, but I don’t think stating this is enough if you really want to have an anti-property person understand property. Sometimes even seemingly self-evident “axioms” need explaining. What use is an axiom if a person fails to see it due to his pre-conceived notions. If many religions prove anything it’s that preconceived notions can make people utterly blind even to the most obvious self-evident realities.

That said, there are two questions to be asked here.

1. Does the definition of ownership require the owner to be separate from what is owned?

Let’s take a look at the definition stated previously.

“Ownership is exclusive control of object B by object A where object A caused the object B’s current form and position or existence in time and space”.

Identifiers A and B imply a separation between objects, but it is not explicitly stated. So if we would favor the explicit over implicit we could say that the requirement for separation doesn’t exist in this definition. Otherwise it would.

But there is another thing that is more explicit in this definition and that is the statement of a causal relationship. It could be worth asking if causality itself requires two objects in a causal relationship to be separate? Can an object have a causal relationship with itself? Can an action of an object cause a reaction of that same object? To answer that question we have to define the object itself. In other words, we have to answer the second question, since the object in reference here is the “self”:

2. What is “self” or what is “me”?

There can be varying ways to define the “self”. In psychological terms the focus may be solely on the brain and its chemistry, the headquarters of who you are as a person, mentally speaking. Physically however we may need to refer to an entire body as this is the vessel which you travel in and by which you are to a large extent identified and discerned from other selves. We cannot however refer to anything that is outside of a body, that is, which refers neither to the brain nor any other part of the body nor the entire body since we simply do not have any evidence that this is where “self” resides. Indeed, such claims are in the realm of the mystical and religious.

The typical argument by property ownership advocates does however involve “control over my body” so I think it would be reasonable to take that as the definition of the “self” here. We can now return to questions asked above:

“Can an object have a causal relationship with itself? Can an action of an object cause a reaction of that same object?”

The object referred to here is the “self” and it is above defined as “the body” and a body is actually consisted of a multitude of organs which are further consisted of a multitude of cells and then finally molecules and atoms. For this body to be alive and animated many processes must be ongoing within it which essentially represent action and reaction between organs, between cells and between molecules. In other words if we define the object as a consistence of many other objects then that object can have a causal relationship with itself by means of one part of an object having a causal relationship with another to in turn make the entire object be what it naturally is.

In other words, self consistence (the state of being formed by structure of smaller parts which harmoniously interact with each other) allows self-ownership. It’s of course worth pointing out that the same is true of all objects in the macro universe we are living in. Rocks are self consistent as well and thus self-owned. Trees are self-consistent and thus self-owned. We sometimes describe certain object by what we say to be its “properties”. This is quite interesting because as we’ve established here, it indeed has properties within the very context of ownership. It owns its properties.

We may for instance describe the properties of a flower to be its shape, composition, color, smell etc. Incidentally, the causal processes within a flower allow it to have these properties. These processes and smaller parts that it’s consisted of define the flower’s “self”. The flower thus owns itself and these properties as what it caused into being, consistent with the definition of ownership expressed above.

The objection that might be put forward at this point is that if flowers own themselves, how come we can own flowers. To respond I would refer to what I’ve said when I addressed the issue of parents owning their children which is the reference to the nature of the object itself. It changes everything. A flower may be self owned, but its ownership cannot include the capacity to consciously say no to a man cutting it down. So it has exclusive self-control only to the extent to which it by its nature CAN have exclusive self-control. This is also precisely why cutting it down is not a violation of its property. Its ownership extends only as far as its capacity to control does.

As an interesting side not, if there were beings so superior to humans that they would look at us the way we look at flowers, according to this they would be right in considering us their property because our capacity to own doesn’t extend as far as theirs. However the existence of such beings is currently limited only to the realm of pure fantasy. In any case, we are evolving and just like flowers we can strive to the maximum capacity that we can muster, but no further.

PROBLEM 3. Why exactly does self ownership extend to ownership of things other than self? What is the logic behind that? Also, what happens if we stop being human-centric about this and look for evidence of property outside of the human sphere? This is important if such evidence exists because it provides a significant additional proof for property beyond the disputed “I own me” reasoning.

I think that my answer to the resolution of this problem is dispersed in my answers to the above two problems. My definition of ownership is completely agnostic to humans and simply applies to “objects”, whatever they may be. The definition rests solely on exclusive control, causality and an implied principle of priority. When either of these conditions isn’t met ownership ceases. Control itself has a built-in limitation to ownership in that it only extends as far as the object in question is capable of controlling another object or itself. Human beings are capable of controlling more than just themselves and to the extent to which this is so they can thus own objects external to themselves.

There is also no fundamental distinction between the self and other objects in terms relevant to this definition of ownership. Both involve exclusive control of objects whose existence in time/space and form is caused such as they currently are. This fits a libertarian explanation of homesteading as means of acquiring the most disputed kind of property; ownership of land. The homesteading principle involves “mixing your labor” with the land which is just another way of referring to actions which cause the land in question to change some of its properties. A simple enclosure of the land typically does the trick and the more is done with the land the stronger the ownership case for it.

PROBLEM 4. How can you at the same time say that self-ownership arises from a physical objective fact that you control your body and then go about speaking of property as if it doesn’t have roots in the physical and objective world and is rather just an abstract, but useful concept that we can dismiss once we have abundance and infinite resources?? Do infinite resources suddenly change the fact you control your body?

This problem is expressed in form of the above rhetorical questions which by themselves illustrate the contradiction and my point which is the gist of my answer to such a contradictory practice.

Ownership as defined above relies on processes which are fundamental to everything in reality. Control is a stream of actions and causality is the relationship between an action and a reaction whereas an action is a cause and a reaction is an effect. The principle of priority which I derived from it also directly derives from a chronological nature of causality as we can observe it. Denial of priority would essentially be akin to the denial of time. So all of the components of ownership as defined here are completely fundamental to the functioning of the universe as we know it.

Ownership is essentially about the relationship between the cause and the effect whereas cause owns the effect. While causality refers to cause and effect themselves and the fact that they form an ongoing process, ownership refers to the very relationship between that which causes and that which is caused. To fully understand ownership would be to fully understand how a particular effect relates to any act within the causality chain it is a part of and to which extent can that act be credited for it.

It’s not too difficult to see how this applies to humans. We are after all a part of the same universe, the same ocean of causality chains. We have our specific natures which gives us specific capacities and therefore specific potentials to cause and therefore control and therefore own. To fully understand ownership as it pertains to humans is to understand how exactly does the effect (a particular piece of property) relate to all of the acts in the action-reaction chain that was necessary to put that object in the form it is, at the time it is in and in the place that it is at. Who was the first cause? Did he or she act to dispose of it? Who was the next controller? Did he act to dispose of it or was it stolen against his will? Etc. etc.

Infinite resources or infinite amount of desired objects never changes the fact that ownership exists any more than it changes the fact that the process of cause and effect continues. It merely changes the amount of value assign to the exclusive control of any given object and the likelihood that a dispute over its ownership will arise. Just because prosperity removes the distinction between haves and have nots doesn’t mean that what made them prosperous to begin with ceased to exist - the capacity to act in order to cause what is needed or desired, control the resulting effect and trade it in for effects caused by others - the free market of caused properties.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): My KDE usability article on dot.kde.org

2009-10-23T00:36:22+00:00

After writing an article for the Nuxified blog about KDE4 possibly overtaking GNOME in terms of usability and getting over 6000 views of it I’ve been contacted by a “marketing guy” of dot.kde.org interested in rewriting the article for them.

I thought it was a good opportunity and pretty much the same day (or more technically, next night), I wrote a piece and it was after minor editing and approval published by the KDE promo team here: KDE4 Demonstrates Choice Is Not A Usability Problem.

Feel free to check it out.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): Upgrading the purpose of Memeverse.com

2009-10-23T00:27:24+00:00

So far this site has been nothing more than a personal blog that served as a bin for anything I want to express that didn’t specifically fit any other sites. While I will continue to use it for that purpose, albeit erring towards more professionalism, I am expanding its purpose into a wider presentation of myself and my projects.

“Daniel Memenode” is the alias that I have adopted some time ago for my online identity across multiple venues. It is a kind of personal brand that I am more comfortable with using than my real name.

“Memeverse Media” is a name for all of the projects that I am doing online. While that may seem a little superfluous it has multiple purposes. It’s a brand that I can use to represent all of my work online in an unified manner, such as through this site. It is a convenient shorthand for all my projects. And it has personal meaning to me. Not only does it represent an “universe of ideas”, but it helps me think of my projects not as a necessarily disparate collection, but something with a particular direction to pull towards. It’s basically like the name of any other business or company which has multiple products, but a single brand associated with all of them.

I’ve done something similar before with “Libervis Network”, but the difference is that I assigned a rather limited set of meanings to that brand. It was meant to represent projects related to “digital freedom”, mainly free open source software, creative commons and such. Another difference is that I treated it as if it was an entity in some manner separate from me, but owned my me, which is a common but silly fiction.

With “Memeverse Media” I’m being open ended and more individualistic. I don’t consider it a fictional entity, just a name for all of my projects online, not something pretended to be separate. “Memeverse” seemed like a logical name since it has a great meaning and ring to it and has served as the name of my personal blog for quite a while.

So in addition to being my personal blog this site now also serves information about my projects and services, which is after all still fitting for a personal blog. There is a page outlining my current projects and a page with the services I am currently offering and examples of prior work (yet to be finished). I will also, in addition to typical blog entries, post references to articles and other material I create elsewhere on the web. So if I publish a new article on Nuxified.org I will post a reference to it from here. Same for any other of my sites.

This way the memeverse feed truly becomes a feed that represents me on the web, the way I see fit, which should help build better relationships with my readers and customers. In other words I’m unifying my web presence under one identity and one brand.

Olivier Cleynen: Fire in a crowded theatre

2009-10-18T18:11:49+00:00

Vehement, unapologetic, and, I believe, profoundly relevant (even if I don’t share all of his beliefs), here is my second-favourite speaker, Christopher Hitchens, in a twenty-minute talk in Toronto in 2006.

To view this video in this page, you need a modern browser, such as Chrome, or better, Firefox 3.5.

Download the video (25 Mo)

There is a carefully reviewed transcript [PDF] to help if the lovely accent isn’t enough.

Olivier Cleynen: Pinkish-red facetiousness

2009-10-18T18:01:38+00:00

It all happens like this.

The contractual paperwork required by your new customer had been sitting in your inbox, painted red, for two weeks.

Because neither lecturing the customer about the merits of open file formats, nor delivering a not-exactly-perfect paperwork are an option, the Microsoft computer has been fired up.
And the printer driver CDs located.
And the bloatware installation avoided, and the thirty-minute, seventeen-step wishful plug-and-play procedure completed.

And said contractual paperwork, duly printed, filled and attached to a kind letter offering sincere excuses —it’s been a busy school return—, sits in an un-stamped envelope in your hand, behind three customers at the local post office.

The post office dates from the 70s and the two-counter room must have been rather classy. These days, a bunch of second-rate posters for insurance plans taped on the wall try to take your attention away from all the details of the current transaction taking place through the reinforced glass. In a disturbing way, contemplating the décor is exactly as irritating as mentally checking that the postal employee is not skipping a 50 euro bill —La Poste sells bank accounts without credit cards— on his count up to eight hundred.

But now, your turn has come at the counter, and since the envelope is two grams overweight, it receives two of the little red stickers.
Only after the employee’s dated stamp has vigorously come down twice on the envelope do you, curiously, pay attention to the colour and the pattern. And, only as the transaction comes to an end and the eight other stamps arrive in your hands, do you irrevocably lose faith in your national postal system.

What stamping could better suit an all-important, late contract letter to your second best customer, than two large pinkish red rectangles shouting ‘VACATION’ in an all-caps 70’s font?
At this point, two rational options for action spring up. The first is to have the envelope given back to you, at the cost of difficult explanations, two hard-earned stamps, and the search for a new envelope (not an item sold here).
The second option is to indulge into clenched-teeth swearing and cursing, with complimentary thoughts about the upcoming privatisation demise of the governmental monopoly.
You, of course, opt for the third option, surrendering to an irresistible, half-nervous laugh, and blaming it all on the same facetious destiny that brought you to find that one euro coin right in the middle of that grass field, the previous week.

Some comfort inevitably comes after you acknowledge that the chicken head picture didn’t make it to the sacred envelope; but your mind races to imagine the other other pinkish-red, cheap stock photography that did: a juicy steak? A bra? You’ll never know now, and your customer will, and that is what you call the Greater Sense of Humour of life.

Pascal Klein (klepas): Interviewed by Gary Barber

2009-10-12T13:00:00+00:00

As a prelude to the upcoming November Australian Edge of the Web conference I’ve kindly been interviewed by Gary Barber. I’ve cross-published the interview below.

Raena Jackson-Armitage from SitePoint also interviewed me on the same note. The interview touches on similar web typography and web fonts topics but focuses more on uptake, usage, licensing, and some recent inspirational sites I’ve stumbled across.

Interview with Gary

Gary It’s nothing new to most web designers that typography on the web just sucks. With the cripplingly limited number of cross platform typefaces available and the different ways font render on the browsers, it’s enough to just make a designer give up in frustration. Discounting the use of the CSS property “font-face” that only leaves the hacks from Cufón and sIFR to allow some alternative relief. Would you recommend these as solutions to overcome this problem or do you have some secret designer “Foo” hidden up your sleeve?

Pascal

With no intention of being controversial right off the bat, I guess I would have to say I reject the premise of the question. I don’t really accept that web typography sucks; sure, it could certainly be a lot better, and I have good hopes for the future, however a lot can be done with what is available to us currently, even as a web standards-devoted designer. We have a number CSS Fonts options available to us, e.g. font-weight, font-style, font-variant, which combined with line-height, sizing, widths, and the actual font declared offer a lot of variety. Remember Jeff Croft’s words: “[t]ypography is not picking a ‘cool’ font”, or any font for that matter.

Gary Personally I’m not a fan of the pre-rolled CSS grids that are now all the rage in some circles. Sure I know that they help people layout a web page, and they assist with getting the rhythm on a page right. But still I suspect that they maybe allowing some designers to be lazy and not think outside the square of the CSS grid. What’s your view on the use of CSS grids especially from a typography slant?

Pascal

A grid exists to help provide structure and rhythm, and so directly relates to typography. Figuring out a good grid and then turning it into versatile, good CSS is effort, and in that regard I like the pre-rolled grid — they are great for those of us who want a grid but have time constraints, or just don’t want to worry too much about them. I personally don’t use them — I use my own grids. This comes down to my enjoyment in actual coming up with one and building it (yes, I probably ought to be clinical tested for some sort of mental ailment) and finding that the pre-rolled ones don’t do things the way I want them to (usually they are over-kills for the projects I’ve worked on).

Gary The debate on property font-face and the resultant licensing issues over EOT and OTF has divided the typography community, especially the Type Foundries. Recent upgrades of FireFox has allow for the use of @font-face, and with a few CSS tweak’s its has now effectively remove the browser incompatibility. Personally I wasn’t a fan of the use of @font-face but I have learned to love it. As a typeface guru how do you see this state of play?

Pascal

Good generally. I see it as a step forward that we’ll have access to a larger range of fonts, but I am worried about their usage — again this reflects off Jeff’s earlier quote I noted. Many of the typefaces currently available for licensing from foundries are designed for print use, and differ from fonts that are designed and optimised for screen usage. There are a lot of fonts out there, and in relation only a small number of really good ones, and of that an even smaller number that have been optimised for screen use. Screen-optimised fonts need to cater for the lower resolutions of screens (apposed to printed material) and as such may feature thicker strokes and serifs (e.g. see Georgia) and good hinting tables to ensure readability at small sizes.

I am aware that Typotheque are investing in creating screen-optimised versions of some of their typefaces. I believe this may be less of a problem in fonts available for web font licensing from foundries as they will be aware of this issue and more of freely-licensed or unlicensed, lower-quality fonts that are used directly via @font-face.

Gary Are the days of Type Foundries numbered for web industry (I’m excluding Print, here, ok)? Do we really have to put up with the same old tired, font centralised ordering-distribution system? What do you think of typographers that are shaking of shackles of the Type Foundries and marketing their works directly with designers via the likes of Typekit and League of Moveable Type?

Pascal

I wrote on this topic in November last year and echoed my belief in the rise of hosting and licensing service. I think non-foundry controlled services like Typekit and Fontdeck who sub-license web fonts for foundries may distribute some of the centralised control that foundries historically possess. That said, I think the best way to give the foundries a run for their money and up the quality of type design all-round is for more high quality open source, freely-licensed typefaces to become available which may be freely distributed and hosted. Some in the type community see this venture as futile or even misguided but I believe it’s the best way to ‘democratise’ type and typography and educate folks about it — ‘Hey, have you heard about typography? Check out this awesome example website of good typography that features a really well-done font’ is a saying amongst non-designers I can’t imagine if ‘well-done font’ is preceded by a dollar sign and figures ranging in three digits before the decimal point (if not more).

Gary Moving on further with groups like The League of Moveable Type popping up all over the place, what’s your take on the matter? Are they providing for the service that designers need? Do you see their product as a general benefit to fellow designers or are they simply ripping the bread and butter from the mouths of the typographers?

Pascal

Yes, absolutely. Time to get a bit progressive and perhaps transgressive. Continuing on from the topics and organisations raised in the last question, I hold organisations, communities, and single type designers who provide considerable and usable parts of their work at no cost (gratis) and under licensing terms (libre) that make distribution and improvements viable in high regard. I think a simple comparison may be drawn here to the personal computer. The personal computer is largely responsible for many technological and general societal advancements due arguably to its increasing affordability. Likewise, the more affordable, or rather the more accessible typefaces and good typography becomes the better the state of typography will be — the more accessible something is the more attainable are the positives (and negatives) that that something provides. People, either individually, in commercial corporations or as self-structured communities who provide fonts, the means of making them, and educational material on the first two and their use for free will better the state of type, type design, and typography.

There is a common argument by critics who suggest that there is a lack of people to do this task or to do it well. I disagree; where there is a will there is a way — look at the many successful free and open source software (FOSS) projects that have bettered the world in one way or another. I think to suggest that type designers are in some fundamental economic way different to programmers, web developers or other smart people who render their time and knowledge in some form to create or better free software to be false. For proof look at organisations like the League of Movable Type and the type designers behind it or working individually: Linux Libertine by Philipp H. Poll, Gentium by Victor Gaultney, and a lot more. It is true that the number of skilled type designers who release freely-licensed works is limited; there are less FOSS type designers than FOSS programmers or web developers, yet compared to software development or web development, type design is a relative niche industry.

Continuing and concluding with economics, of course free typefaces, freely-licensed written material, and type design software will compete in quality and price with commercially available equivalents. The better the quality and variety of these free things, the cheaper and/or higher in quality the equivalent or related commercial products will be need to be. Who benefits? ‘Consumers’ — we do.

Gary Thanks Pascal, see you in few weeks.

Thanks Gary!

The interview is licensed under show otherwise is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia license — take, share and be merry.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): Staring into the abyss, tempted to doom humanity

2009-09-13T20:44:10+00:00

Would you believe me if I said that even the most staunch rationalists, like me, are sometimes tempted to jump off a bridge of empiricism and logic and into the abyss of nihilism and post modernism. Consider the benefits. As a rationalists you have to acknowledge that there will always be at least 1% possibility that everything you know is wrong meaning that you’ll never reach 100%, yet at the same time you will always unabashedly strive to reach 100% and you know that 100% true truth exists because your senses give you the evidence of objective reality.

You also know that any of the conclusions you make, or rather milestones, could be a part of that 1%. In other words while there is at least 1% probability that you’re wrong, 100% of what you think you know is a candidate for what you’re wrong about.

Now consider post modernism. As a post modernist you give up this fight, you throw in the towel and just “admit” to yourself: “Meh, nothing is certain. Frak this constant struggle. Even the theory that objective reality exists is a candidate for this 1% probability of being wrong. Everything is, including the thinking that the probability of being wrong is only so low. What if the probability is 50%? I might as well pretend truth doesn’t exist and live from moment to moment. I know I wont change the world this way because I really don’t have a “one true way”, but at least I’ll live a life of adventure. Believe in nothing and nobody, throw yourself against the momentarily perceived reality and see what you get. Enjoy the exhilarating experience of a free fall to nowhere! Weee!”

Yep you are hearing these hypothetical words uttered by a rationalist, a guy who believes even morality can be determined empirically and logically and who believes that the non-coercion principle passes the test and remains a fundamental moral premise, a guy who despises post modernists and hates contradictions. How in the world is someone like me capable of uttering the above words without acting? Because of all contradictions the ones I hate the most are the ones I don’t yet know about! And it drives me nuts sometimes. Nuts, like all you post modernist frauds.

But there is something so devious and evil about this. I can smell it like the bad breath of a hypothetical devil lurking in the shadow waiting to reap your soul. If I let go, if I throw myself into the abyss of nihilism and post modernist thought. Me, the rationalist, me the despiser of nihilism. What hope is there for anybody else? If everyone gives up like this, if everyone throws themselves off this bridge, if everyone gives up on truth and begins accepting contradictions - we’ll contradict ourselves - we will destroy ourselves. Self contradiction is self destruction. That much would be certain. Because a sentient species which cannot resist the temptation of this nihilist abyss is the species whose days are numbered.

Nihilism is an ideological suicide. Suicide follows.

Ben Webb: Results, (Young) RewiredState, and Revolutionary Webapps

2009-08-30T15:55:45+00:00

There’ve been quite a few interesting things that have happened me over the last week. Firstly, last Thursday, I finally (after 2 months of waiting), received my A-Level results – AAAA, in Maths, Chemistry, Physics and General Studies – so, I will definitely be going to Cambridge University in about a month’s time. Also, well done to everyone else who got their results, A-Level and GCSE, and good luck with your new colleges/universities.

Secondly, last weekend, I went with the rest of DFEY, to Young Rewired State - an event to get young (~15-18) coders doing cool stuff with government data. Me, Joe and Richard worked on creating something to give bloggers opinions on the various bills currently going through parliment – Blog-o-tics. This uses Google blog search, and then does a manual count of predefined positive and negative words – as a result, it is heavily inaccurate, as our word lists were limited and language can be used in confusing ways (this is not *good* at all). I do plan on reworking blogotics to use a different, more reliable source of sentiment data at some point, but I’ve not got round to it yet.

The event it self rather good, and accommodation and travel costs were kindly provided. The venue used was Google’s UK offices, which was quite cool. The food was okay, not amazing, but much better than at 2morro (the other event DFEY attended this summer). The whole thing seemed quite well structured, each group had a mentor to help them along. I would very much like to thank Prem (who also blogged the event) for being our mentor. I don’t think our group would have managed to pull it all together without him.

Finally, this week I’ve be coding the innovative new Web2.0 app, pokebook. Which has just as much importance and relevance for the future web as its ad campaign suggests.

Pascal Klein (klepas): IE Voodoo Doll

2009-08-19T14:00:00+00:00

About a month now ago I began a podcast with the esteemed Andy White, focusing on the developments and whatnot of the web and tech scene from a web developer, designer and entrepreneurial perspective. The show, titled A Capital Duo Talk Tech now needs renaming as we bring on our third panellist, Teresa Watts.

Rather than going into further detail on the show and previous episodes, I’ll let the fourth episode do the talking.

IE voodoo doll

Show synopsis

We bring you episode four, where we welcome our third panellist, who shall be joining us in the future! After discussing Teresa’s awesome hand-made IE voodoo doll we move onto a good chat about our business endeavours and employment experiences. We cover Andy’s business and his lessons learned since closing it end 2008 (focus, cash-flow and buffer savings, the pros and cons of outsourcing, dedicated working positions) before moving onto Teresa’s and Pascal’s experiences in in-house and freelance positions. Issues here include focus and structure but restrictive and limiting in manner, becoming bored by working on the same thing long-term, though however how it was a good experience — we both learned what we did and didn’t like doing.

Finally we all shed our wisdom on the lifestyle that is freelancing. Here we go over the ability to vet clients (yay!), communicating with clients, the importance of networking and being actively involved in your industry’s community (Twitter, LinkedIn, SIGs, conferences, speaking, …), pricing, separating work environment from the rest of your living space, and having an active web presence. Oh, and as usual Pascal makes a fool of himself, but nicely gets a stab back at Andy.

We’ve got interviews confirmed with Donna Benjamin on open education and Ian Cairns of Development Seed on Open Atrium — stay tuned. On that note actually, Pascal has set up Open Atrium on open.klepas.org and has a guest testing group set up. Email or @ him on Twitter to get an account and have a play.

Recorded post-show, this week’s ‘fuck you of the week’ goes to Apple for it’s failings in saving and syncing voice recordings via the Voice Memo app properly and ‘the tip of the cap’ goes to Teresa for her IE voodoo doll — seriously, check it out!

Links in order of appearance

Again, for ease of reference (in order of appearance):

Teresa’s website
Teresa’s IE voodoo doll tutorial
Teresa’s blog
WSG announce mailing list, to stay up-to-date with web-related events
Nick Fink’s list of user experience events (world-wide)
Open Source Developers’ Conference — Brisbane 25–27 Nov.
UX Australia — Canberra, 26–28 August (registrations still open till the day!)
AusTender gov’t website
Australian Web Industry Association
Port 80 — informal meeting of web industry folk
Moo.com — custom business cards and stationery
bicubic.com — wholesale print service

Closing notes

The intro theme is the opening of track 26 of Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts III. It is licensed under a Creative Commons license and available from the NIN website and in full on various peer-to-peer networks (legally of course given its license). The show otherwise is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia license — take, share and be merry. That’s all this week. Stay tuned!

Ben Webb: Web Apps, Revisited

2009-08-17T14:46:44+00:00

Over the past few years, Web 2.0 has become all the rage. Closed web apps and social networking services, however have a serious problem – the user’s lack of control over their data, and their inability to interact well with other services. However, it is good to see that the “free software community” (for want of a better term), are increasingly starting to compete offering open Web Apps. Laconica/identi.ca, for micro blogging, libre.fm for music “scrobbling”, and most recently daisychain, which should soon be a facebook competitor.

However, the one thing I have not yet managed to find a good replacement for, is Google Mail (Gmail). To this end I have resurrected my long dormant libreapps project. I’ve got the site back up and running, and my two “Apps” functional – mail and rss. Anyone interested in testing/evaluating these as they are should ask me for an alpha account (this is only to make sure no-one expects stuff to Just Work, and so I can keep track of resources), or if you’re adventurous, check out the source code (bit of a mess atm). The site is still in a very alpha, or even pre-alpha type state, but any feedback would be appreciated.

The RSS code on libreapps is TT-RSS (GPLv2) but the Mail code I have written myself, and had previously released as AGPLMail. Now, however, I have released it under the MIT license (the most permissive commonly used license there is). Why? Well, firstly, I’m no longer happy with using the governmental force of copyright to affect what people do with my code (see this blog post). Yes, I disagree with people not sharing the source to code they write, but I am not willing to threaten/hurt them to make them change their mind. This is a very contentious and political issue, but, there are other reasons why I think the AGPL is not as great as some claim.

Firstly, compatibility – this is the killer with any copyleft license. Because I am using TT-RSS, my core libreapps code needs to be at least as permissive as GPLv2. Since I plan to add other apps, most likely under other licenses, my core code needs to be permissive so it is compatible with all.

Next, how much “protection” of a Web App does the AGPL actually provide? It is supposed to force the release of the code of a hosted modified version. But, what defines modification? Or, rather, where. Obviously, changing one of the files of the application is modifying, but the (A)GPL is supposed to also cover linked works. But, with webapps, it is possible to make a site that behaves differently with out technically linking (eg. php include). One example I can see is an ajax script added to the main app (and source released) could pull data from closed app, and the user experience would be the same. Also closed software could read/write to the db of the AGPLed software without technically being linked.

So, whatever the license of a web app, there are ways to change it and not return source. And, it is hard to prove anything, all that is returned to the user is html and js files – they can not be sure how they are generated. Returning source for AGPL apps relies partly on good will, something that also benefits an MIT app.

However, there is a more important point here. I would argue that it is not really the software that is the biggest issue in webapps – it is the data. Writing a twitter, facebook or other webapp clone is perfectly possible, and compared to some tasks, not that difficult. However, what really sets open web apps apart is primarily the availability of source, its the fact you can run your own copy and, crucially, communicate with the original site. The AGPL can do nothing to stop someone creating a large laconica instance with the federation turned off. A federatable twitter is many times better than one with source code released. (Interestingly, facebook actually releases some of their source code, but, for the reasons above, it is useless).

Finally, one of my other personal reasons for choosing MIT it means I get more users of my software I write (people can reuse snippets/functions in whatever they are writing, for example). True, someone could create a non-free fork, but, they would be silly to do so. For those who “hate freedom” there is Goole Mail/Apps. The main thing that makes libreapps mail valuable, is not the code itself, but the fact it is open/free.

So, that’s why I use MIT, even for Web Apps. However, it does really mostly boil down to my dislike for the governmental copyright system – the above are just reasons why I don’t feel like I’m missing much. I know many people don’t come from that angle, so AGPL makes sense to them. That’s fine. I’m happy to support any web app that federates and gives me access to source. I’m an identi.ca user, and am looking forward to trying daisychain. Hopefully though, people will now understand why I personally use MIT, and respect that.

Pascal Klein (klepas): Write for your readers

2009-08-12T14:00:00+00:00

Jeffrey Zeldman just published a brief article on writing that is well worth a read. Although its prime focus is doing it well by realising that you write best whilst inspired, ensuring you give yourself apt breaks — “write when inspired; rest when tired” is his mnemonic — I particularly took a liking to his second last closing paragraph:

Never mind the bollocks. You are not writing for Amazon, or to fit a staff proofreader’s vacation schedule, as important and real as those considerations may be. You are writing for readers, a duty as sacred, in its way, as parenting. If you don’t believe the previous sentence, if you think writing is mainly about getting paid, I’m sorry you wasted your time reading this page, and I hope you find another way to earn a living soon. The world is already choking on half-considered, squeezed-out shit. There’s no need to add to the pile.

Perfectly sums up my feelings on the matter.

Dennis Wronka (reptiler): Why FTP sucks

2009-08-12T12:23:26+00:00

First of all I want to make clear that I always liked FTP. And I still prefer it over uploading my files through a web-interface, but I now have found quite a big reason why FTP really really sucks.

Pascal Klein (klepas): A critical examination of gender relations within goth subculture

2009-08-10T14:00:00+00:00

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Winter 2009, chrome, Canberra, Australia, a blend of ‘darkwave’ EBM (electronic body music) resounds from the club’s speaker system. Black-clad dark outlines have formed on the dance floor beside the bar, gently fluctuating, writhing, and drifting to the industrial reverberations. The mysterious entourage flaunt a mixture of bulky leather boots, tight -fitting bondage wear, kilts, silky flowing evening gowns, capes, corsetry, and the odd fetish gear. The sheer volume of identities on display seems overwhelming: of the gender binaries both extremes of hyper-masculinities and -femininities are represented with a vast variation of graded representations between them. However apparent also is small curious overlap that seems neither distinctly masculine nor feminine. What could appear to outsiders as an odd, clandestine group of adolescent misfits is the monthly popular goth event of Canberra city, a type of gathering that occurs in commonality weekly across the world.

The eccentric diversity and representation of gender within the Goth or Gothic subculture, is often described by its participants as an “open”, “liberating” (Brill, 2008, pp. 9–10; Wilkins, 2004, p. 328) environment of possible gender egalitarianism, or at the least tolerance (Holmes, 1997) in contrast to a larger heteronormative mainstream society. While heterosexuality is prevalent, this promise provides a tolerant space for sexual minorities to ‘come out’. Although heterosexual, Goths that define themselves as such are also deviant through their gender performativity (Butler, 1990) from the greater heteronormative. This is displayed insofar by the prized subcultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984) in flamboyant styling — as epitomised by Goth androgyny — in not only women but also men, which permits and even encourages men to ‘feminise’ themselves. Meanwhile this emphasis on style provides a liberation to women who shed the negative stigma associated in expressing a form of hyper-femininity that is oft met with degradation in mainstream society. However, this progressive outlook has its limitations whose foundation lie with the gendered rules of subcultural capital. Gender relations within the subculture are both progressive and reactionary — and at times even transgressive — however this imbalance permits elements of heteronormativity to be replicated within Goth, and thus the merits of the promise of liberation remain deeply rooted in these relations and the use of subcultural capital.

Macdonald (2001) and Leblanc (2002), among others, have performed numerous studies on the punk and graffiti subcultures pronouncing them as ‘heterosexualist’. Similarly Anderson’s (1999) analysis of the construction of gender within the subculture of the emerging sport of snowboarding further illustrated the process of legitimised male dominance within ‘emphasised heterosexuality’. Conversely Brill notes “Goth as more gender-balanced subculture” that “promotes an ideology or fantasy of genderlessness, cherishing femininity and male androgyny” (Brill, 2008, p. 99). This is permeated by the strong focus on aestheticisation of both sexes, particularly in fashion and style. Participants of Goth are renown for their eroticised black clothing, long dark hair, piercings, tattoos and strongly defined white complexions. Goth dress styles draw heavily from Elizabethan and Victorian periods and modern adaptions thereof are commonly combined with fetish, BDSM, steampunk, and cyber fashions and related paraphernalia (Grunenberg, 1997). Further, the use of elaborate makeup by female and male members is common and widely accepted (fig. 1). Goth styles nevertheless differ across gendered lines, with the curious fusion that is neither, androgyny. Hyper-masculine attires often feature leather pants, kilts or skirts, large metal-plated boots, band t-shirts or combat shirts all often adorned with iconic buckles, chains and other ‘masculine’ paraphernalia (fig. 2). Representative hyper-feminine garments include high-heel or platform shoes, stockings, petticoats, dresses, gowns, corsetry, often combined and adorned with matching chokers, rings, gloves, arm-warmers, and further accessories — all indicative of the the classic femme fatale, with a dark spin (fig. 3). There are adaptions and alterations to this style, notably the goth lolita which draws heavily on the Victorian and Rococo period and its children’s wear and has gained particular prominence in Japan (fig. 4). These and the many gradations of style between hyper-masculine and -feminine extremes (fig. 5), as well as the styles of androgyny all serve to deliver a form of corporeal capital (Skeggs, 1997) which is utilised within the heterosexual courtship arena and as a form of status attainment.

This weight and attention to style offers up a progressive form of corporeal capital. Both women and men can and are admired for their stylistic exuberance which could be received as either negatively ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’ as in the case of feminine or androgynous males (fig. 6) under the gaze of male (and to some extent female) of the mainstream heteronormative society, whilst hyper-feminine women report feelings of safety and ease within the Goth scene whereas they may be perceived as slovenly and promiscuous (e.g. ‘slut’, ‘whore’, ‘tramp’) by the mainstream and its gaze. Active, self-determined female sexuality is celebrated insofar as a ‘natural entitlement by most women’ such that “the widespread double standards of male and female sexual behaviour do not seem to apply”. Brill goes on to highlight that sexual promiscuity does not tarnish women, that a “a ‘slutty’ reputation can in fact work to enhance rather than lessen the status of the female Goth” (Brill, 2008, p. 102). Within Goth the open ability for men to feminise themselves and women to hyper-feminise themselves through dress offer safe avenues for personal gender experimentation and identification whilst challenging many gender norms that are institutionalised in greater mainstream society.

However the ‘fantasy of genderlessness, cherishing femininity and male androgyny’ encounters limitations within Goth. Brill aptly observes Goth as a “heterosexually gendered space” wherein “traditional masculine poses like macho bearing and physical violence are normally outlawed” and frowned upon, yet the Goth space replicates the heteronormative “turf where men ‘fight’ for territory and women”, although more subtly (ibid., p. 100). Through interviews she indicates the existence competition in courtship, and to a lesser extent social status attainment. Her interviewees — one male, one female respectively — both commented on the difficulty in entering a foreign Goth scene, as male and female, raising common concerns of isolation by the same-sex; both saw same-sex new arrivals as potential competition. This was further highlighted by a later interview conducted by Brill with a lesbian couple who described the relations as “totally heterosexual” in regards to which party makes the opening advances and typify the scene as “resolutely heterosexual” that “promote very traditional gender roles regarding eroticism and seduction” (ibid., p. 100).

Not unlike that of mainstream society, a different form of capital may also be called upon for status attainment and exploitation in the courtship arena. Within the scene organisers of events, DJs, scene bar staff, or even long upstanding members are received with respect and admiration. This social capital (Bourdieu, 1984) can be enacted as a form of desirability and is often used by male elder individuals of the scene who may lack youthful aspects of idealised Goth beauty, particularly to attract a cohort of younger and/or newcomer females. Brill coins these ‘Übergoths’ and notes the strange lack of female Übergoths who utilise the social capital. It seems again not unlike mainstream society — even though Goth does feature a larger female participation in production and organisation in contrast to other music-based subcultures (Brill, 2008, p. 108) — that most of the power in Goth is held by males. Females may see elder Goths in their higher social standing as a form of enhancing their status — akin to ‘marrying up’. This ability is however thus reserved for the most part to men — referred to by Brill as ‘sugardaddies’ — and consequently solidifies the prime means of status attainment of women heterosexually to traditionally defined feminine qualities of youthfulness and physical beauty.

As a heterosexually defined courtship arena whose females celebrate male androgyny, androgyny remains principally a male endeavour and hyper-femininisation is coaxed and normalised by heteronormative essentialism. This results in a form of beauty contest in which the highest level of corporeal capital is assigned the objective amongst women who then compete amongst one another for this (heteronormatively-defined) status. Men, with their dominant access to social capital can appear “somehow ‘beyond the competition’ … above mundane things like competition” (ibid., p. 111).

It would be a generalist view to hold that all women or men conform to the strictly heteronormative gender relations described, as this is simply not the case. Some women may for instance not feel obligated to endlessly compete for corporeal capital for use within the heterosexual courtship arena, discovering means of attaining social capital — do women locate power by other means? Similarly cliqués and individuals of other or more complex sexualities may negate or transgress the heteronormative interactions of the courtship arena — enter LGBT (e.g. queer theory) and BDSM. (e.g. interactions with Goth male submissives or Goth female dommes) — but as such the imbalance to participate, recognise, and draw upon gained social capital between men and women within Goth continues to permeate an albeit black-clad heteronormative courting arena and possibly other spaces within Goth.

References

Anderson, K. L. 1999, Snowboarding: The Construction of Gender in an Emerging Sport, Journal of Sport & Social Issues, SAGE Publications, Inc., Vol. 23, No 1, 55–79.
Bourdieu, P. 1984, Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste, Routledge, London.
Brill, D. 2008, Goth Culture: Gender, Sexuality and Style, Berg Publishers, Oxford (UK).
Butler, J. 1990, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, New York.
Grunenberg, C. 1997, Unsolved Mysteries: Gothic Tales from Frankenstein to the Hair Eating Doll, MIT Press, Boston.
Holmes, T. 1997, Coming out of the Coffin: Gay Males and Queer Goths in Contemporary Vampire Fiction, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Leblanc, N. 2002, Sexuality and Gender, pp. 167–173) Blackwell, Oxford (UK).
Macdonald, N. 2001, The Graffiti subculture. Youth masculinity, and identity in London and New York, Palgrave, Basingstoke.
Skeggs, B. 1997, Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable, SAGE, London.
Wilkins, A. C. 2004, “So Full of Myself as a Chick”: Goth Women, Sexual Independence, and Gender Egalitarianism, Gender & Society, SAGE Publications, Inc., Vol. 18, No. 3, 328–349.

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Pascal Klein (klepas): Overcoming hurdles in designing for yourself

2009-08-08T14:00:00+00:00

A little over eight months back I was sitting on the head of a bed in the living room of a tiny flat on level four of this old apartment complex in Kreuzberg, Berlin skipping back and forth between Coda and my browser. I had just waved off a fellow Aussie friend who I had been exploring Berlin with onto her train and returned to amuse myself for another two days before I continued travelling myself. I spent the time hacking on a simple plain-markup template for a new version of this site: version 3.

There were a number of things that irked me about the previous version, from the content, to the aesthetics, and later even the technical:

the new design was just, a new design — I applied it on top of the existing content without much consideration or attention to copy;
the calendar to the side served more to remind me and I think others of how much I neglected putting my thoughts into digestible, attractive posts on a regular basis;
my columns were too compact, particularly the main body column at a width of 450 pixels and font size of 14 — it felt far too much like throw-away copy from a newspaper;
many ‘little things’ bothered me, ranging from anchor (link) colours and various hovers, to the ubiquitous leafy fleuron I used to mark my dates that overall left me with a feeling after a few months of ‘just yet another blog’;
I couldn’t easily tie in a portfolio;
my header and sidebar were fixed with static, pixel-defined heights that occasionally broke, mangling the page depending on the length of dynamic content;
upon wanting to make a number of quick yet sweeping changes I was frustrated with WordPress and the use of dynamic (ugly) PHP hooks.

For a glimpse, see a screenshot of version 2.

All these ultimately left me with a feeling of annoyance: I felt like I could do better.

By this time also I had left my position with Looking Glass, commenced working as a freelance web designer and presented a few times on the subject of typography. With the points above in mind not long after I got to the point where I felt discouraged to link people to the site particularly as my new beta continued to take shape. I ceased adding new content to the site by the end of March; no new content until version 3 was live was my mantra.

Designing for yourself

How timely that as I write this the current A List Apart Issue (Issue No. 289) features an article by Lea Alcantara on exactly this topic: designing for yourself and redesigning your own web presence. I can personally echo most of the feelings she had concerning a redesign, and importantly came to a similar conclusion: while the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach usually holds firm, stagnation in an arena of technologies and approaches that constantly shift requires constant attention if you want to be taken seriously in that discipline.

I ran however into one problem right off that bat: you are your own worst client when designing for yourself. I in fact had exactly the same problem as Lea did, substituting Photoshop with Inkscape (paragraphs condensed):

I opened up Photoshop and promptly froze. It wasn’t the computer or the software stalling, it was me, fingers clutching the mouse and eyes staring blankly at a 1024 × 768 canvas. I filled the screen with color. I wiggled the mouse around. Nothing happened. No, it still wasn’t the computer or the software stalling. It was me. I had to rethink my approach.

It’s a pathetic feeling. You feel like this should just be flowing from your head directly into your hands and into the computer (or onto the paper if that is your starting medium) — I mean, hey, you are designing for yourself, right? This should be simple; you know what your want. Not really. I put forth that designing for yourself is perhaps the hardest thing you can do, and being a perfectionist certainly doesn’t help. There is this obligation to prove yourself; to show your best, and why not — it is your personal web presence by which you intend to sell yourself.

The next hitch I ran into were details. I got bogged down by them, playing with countless variations in styles. There was so much to think about: information architecture, content hierarchies, copy, branding, the back-end CMS and whatnot else. But all these elements are important yet thinking about them in an unstructured way leaves an impression that the job at hand is quite daunting.

The solution? I think the best way of overcoming these problems in designing for yourself is twofold. First assume Cameron Moll’s approach, “Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign” and secondly treat the project as if it were a client project.

Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign

With the advent of the now hundreds of web design/CSS galleries and the web-wide trend in annual complete redesigns Cameron Moll predicted mid-2004 among other forecasts that “Incessant redesigning becomes cessant” (point 5.). Although he wasn’t quite correct in his prediction (incessant redesigning continued after that year) he hit on an interesting idea here which he expanded upon a bit over a year later with his A List Apart article Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign. He argued that the “redesigner” approach is aesthetically driven (paragraphs condensed):

“It’s been 2 years since our last redesign. Our current stuff just looks old. A redesign would bring new traffic to the site.”

Whereas the “realigner” approach is purpose-driven, by content, users, trends or otherwise (paragraphs condensed):

“Market trends have shifted. Should our website be adjusted accordingly? Our users’ needs have changed. Do we need to adapt? We’ve added 3 new sections and a slew of new content to the site over the last 12 months. Are we presenting content as effectively as we can? Our current website does little to convey the strength of our product offering. Does our online presence enhance or devalue our overall brand perception?”

Summarising (bold his):

Thus, the differences between Redesigners and Realigners might be summarized as follows: The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven. One approach seeks merely to refresh, the other aims to fully reposition and may or may not include a full refresh. (Note that by “reposition,” I mean strategy and not physical location or dimensions.)

If you shift the mindset from throwing everything out and starting anew to adopting changes in responsive manner according to the ‘realignist’ approach you can cut down on the amount of work you perceive you need to do. Rather than designing an entire new site and potentially branding, ensure a need exists in the first place before committing to a realign and determine what changes or additions are required.

Treat the work as a client project

The original title for this article was going to be “Eight months later… designing for yourself”. That figure is right: it was eight months back that I first sat down to work on version 3, and in retrospect treating this work instead as client project should have been a no-brainer. Numerous writers have written on this topic, and incidentally it arose again in the other article of A list Apart Issue No. 289, Erskine design redesign. The author and co-founder of Erskine Design, Simon Collison covers in-depth the process of (I believe) ‘realigning’ their website, and touches also on treating personal work as a client project:

Internal projects drift — we all know it. Client deadlines take precedence, so we ran this as a client project. We designated a proven project manager, a design lead, development assistants, and someone who ensured we covered the legal angle. We ran everything in Basecamp and Backpack. The project was on the agenda for our weekly meetings. The core team reported to the whole team, and took the flack for project slippage.

So, version 3…

Articles

Besides a fresh, and importantly better design, I also decided to ditch most of the existing content. I spent one afternoon going through the 280 blog entries and articles I had written over the last four years and cherry-picked 20 that I felt would continue to be useful and exemplify the style I wanted to pursue in future articles.

I then re-read and edited where necessary all 20 and up-sized their images and diagrams. Examples include Whose Garamond is it anyway?, Tango to go public domain?, and Versal letters on the web.

Comments…

…or lack thereof. As you may have noticed there is no commenting functionality. This is in part due to the use of Jekyll (see further below) as a static site generator that would require me to use a third-party or similar commenting service, and in part due to my personal preference to remove them. Besides not having to deal with them at all (code-wise, styling-wise, spam-wise — yay!) the best ‘comments’ I have ever received were those via email. I echo some of the sentiments raised by Alex Payne in his article Why I Don’t Allow Comments, and More on Everything Buckets in regards to fostering a higher quality discussion. As always feel free to email me.

Typography

The website is built on a base unit of 16, with eleven columns, each spanning 64 pixels with 16 pixel wide gutters, and 48 pixel wide left and right hand margins to hug the page giving a total width of 960 pixels, in absolute terms — the entire design is elastic.

The main body copy column is 544 pixels wide which accommodates for an average of around seventy characters or circa 14–18 words per line per line for the body (at a font size of 16 pixels). The body copy is set in Georgia as designed by Matthew Carter with heading hierarchies and figure captions set in Jos Buivenga’s Museo Sans.

The technical scaffolding

I felt it was time to start from scratch, an not only with the design. I ditched WordPress and upon suggestion from a friend and opted for Jekyll, a Ruby-based static site generator. That sucked at first but proved to be awesome. It gave me the chance to start from a clean slate, meaning new markup and new styling. This allowed me to apply some of the new things I’d learnt in the past year, namely elastic layouts, some new CSS techniques, and weaving microformats into the markup. No WordPress meant no database — all posts reside in plain text files as Markdown.

Code-wise, my aim was to write clean, valid, strict, and semantic xHTML, styled with CSS2.1, with some minor use of CSS3 (everything but the CSS3 validates).

Inspiration & thanks

Since discovering the inherent beauty that seems to emanate from ‘plain’ type, and stumbling across the elegance that is Jon Tan’s website, I decided to rethink version 3 of this site. I fell in love with his type folly (see his header and my footer respectively) and wanted to bring the rustic yet clear grace of well-set type to the web. Naturally I drew heavily on various pieces from the print world but again, Jon Tan, and then John Boardley of I Love Typography.com fame deserve mention in inspiring me in the shaping the visual aspect of this website.

The portfolio slider is a little bit of jQuery magic, using an adapted version of EasySlider.js, which I owe thanks to Ashley Kyd (he writes at ash.ms). Finally I should pass thanks onto Tate Johnson for all the help with Jekyll.

Dennis Wronka (reptiler): Dear distributors...

2009-08-05T16:26:43+00:00

... please wake up!

Ben Webb: Compromise

2009-08-02T21:37:05+00:00

I’m a voluntaryist, this means that I believe all human interactions should be voluntary – I don’t think that the initiation of force is an acceptable means to any end. As a result, I don’t support the fundamental basis of current governments – I consider the way they forcefully gather money and forcefully change people’s behaviour to be immoral.

So, the most “purist” thing to do would be to take a moral stance and refuse to participate in this system that I found immoral. This is an idea that does have some legs, if enough people made a clear, peaceful decision to do this, it would have a massive effect. This is why I’m so excited about what the Free State Project is trying to do. However, the truth is, if I tried it as a single individual, it would end up with me most probably in jail, alone, and looking to everyone like a crazy nutcase.

For this reason, and partly because I have little other choice, I am still part of the system. If I want to have the ability and the means to maybe be part of the Free State Project one way, I can not cause too much fuss here.

For example, for my education, I’m going to go through the government managed university system, just as I have gone through the state education system. This is because there is little viable alternative way for me to learn in the area I do best in – pure sciences. Whereas more vocational skills would have ways of recognising achievement with little government involvement, it is near impossible to get a job involving pure science without a degree from a (state managed) university.

However, there are some parts that I feel are less clear. I’ve also applied for a government grant, as I’m from a lower income family. I don’t feel great about this, but if I didn’t get it, it would probably be my parents being strained, and they’ve had much of their money go into the system, so I don’t feel I’m leeching. Its not ideal, but there’s little I can do. I believe that a voluntary system could easily match this government grant, but since the government exists, no-one else feels they need to be there to provide it, or where they do, expect me to be already receiving this grant.

Another, less obvious way I’m still involved in the government system is through the software I release. Since I object to the government force that copyleft relies on, all my software is now permissively licensed. However, a permissive copyright license is still a copyright license. Permissive licenses use the threat of force to make people retain attribution – and, this force has been made real through the legal system, on at least one occasion. However, I am in favour of giving attribution to the source of a work – and a free markets would have systems like ostracism to support this. But, since we don’t have a free market, I use the “magic words” of copyright legalease show my intent in a way other people understand.

Finally, I have a current example. I am currently working as a coder on a project that is funded by a government agency. Although this seems contrary to my ideas, at first, its not that simple. I’m working as a contractor, for a contractor, and both my, and my direct employer’s services are market ones that exist already in the market. Also, my employer are an research/monitoring company, so they at least will help avoid some of the inefficiencies in our current government system. Lastly, the project I work on mostly is about getting certain government information into a more open format so that more people can do to this. Encouraging this openness is a good idea whilst we still have this system. A more open state is still bad, but preferable to a closed one.

In conclusion, although a fully voluntary society is my ideal, we are an awful long way off. Whilst I still live in a country with a largely socialist mindset it makes sense for me to just “go along” some of the time. That way, more people are likely to listen to me, since I won’t be looked at as a lone crazy weirdo. However, the rules change completely once liberty minded people get together in larger numbers, and to this end I hope to one day participate in the Free State Project.

Gustavo Narea (gustavo): Koren’s SVD++ Python Implementation

2009-07-29T12:01:30+00:00

I recently had to implement a recommender system for the Netflix Prize. Out of the best known models, I chose Yehuda Koren’s SVD++ model as published on the paper entitled “Factorization Meets the Neighborhood: a Multifaceted Collaborative Filtering Model” (the version that doesn’t take into account temporal effects; I’d have implemented the complete model, but couldn’t due to time constraints).

I named this Python-based project “wooflix” and you can download it from code.gustavonarea.net. It ships with a command-line interface and basic documentation, including the design document.

It’s the first project, as far as I know, that uses Booleano. With it, you can get random movie recommendations and filter them, like this:

# Get 5 movie recommendations for user #7, at least those published after 2001 wooflix recommendations 7 --max="5" --filter="movie:year > 2001"

Keep in mind that I won’t offer support for it; I’m publishing because I thought it might be useful for some people, but I have no intentions to work on it in the future.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): 7 ways government screws up the economy

2009-07-28T10:21:54+00:00

Few would deny that the market is an integral part of every economy. The market involves all of the processes necessary for the economy to function, from the efficient management of resources to the setting of prices by means of differences between supply and demand and subsequent economic growth that results from a tendency to produce more value than is consumed.

Wikipedia defines the market as follows:

A market is any one of a variety of different systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby persons trade, and goods and services are exchanged, forming part of the economy.

So the essence of every market is in trade, which is also defined as a voluntary exchange of goods, services, or both” and “voluntary” is defined as “a word meaning “done, given, or acting of one’s own free will“. Since what is being voluntarily exchanged can be both goods and services every act by a trader can be considered a service so everything an individual does for another individual, for it to be a part of the market as hereby defined, must be completely voluntary, of one’s own free will rather than by compulsion or coercion. Thus the essence of a market is voluntary interaction.

It seems obvious then that any form of compulsion or coercion is incompatible with the market and is exactly opposite of the kinds of interactions that happen within the market. Since the market is a crucial part of the economy then voluntary interaction is crucial to the workings of a healthy economy. Any economic management that involves coercion therefore harms the market. One would argue that such coercive intervention on the economic activity brings more good than harm, but the harm can hardly be dismissed while the good remains to be proven.

The argument that coercive intervention on the market brings more good than harm (since it is fundamentally anti-market) generally stems from the assumption that the one coercing knows better what is good for the economy than the one being coerced and thus implements his “better knowledge” or wisdom by means of force. However, in addition to arising an obvious question of trust into the coercers wisdom, this also gives rise to flawed logic.

The purpose of the economy is the management of value or wealth. Natural resources, products of human labor (such as technology) and human labor itself (or services) all have certain values. However value is subjective since one person may value something to be worth far more than another depending on their individual needs, desires and personal value systems. Yet nothing in the universe and natural world by itself has a specific inherent price tag on it. Nothing in the universe inherently values itself relative to human beings. It simply is the way it is and human individuals are the ones who mentally assign value to it.

So when it is claimed that the one has higher wisdom and thus the right to force another to act against his will, it is in fact claimed that one’s values trump another’s without leaving any further objective justification of why that is so, because such justification is impossible. It is one essentially forcing another to do his bidding. The “higher wisdom” is a thus a fallacy, because it merely matches one’s personal values, no matter how many people agree with such values (majority doesn’t make coercion right).

Government is based on compulsion or coercion. It is founded on the assumption that a group of people chosen by means of a particular process or ritual is justified in forcing others to do another’s bidding. They want to help the poor by stealing from those a little more well off (not even necessarily the rich). They say the price of security can only be paid by money which is taken against your will and so on. All laws include punitive laws as threats of incarceration, extraction of money or worse for disobedience, which is what qualifies each and every instruction in these laws as coercive.

So how does this government harm the economy?

1. It is a coercive monopoly.

Even the most minimal governments outright monopolize at least a few markets, by threatening force against competition and thus essentially denying even the existence of these markets since markets are about voluntary interaction not compulsion. The typical examples of these markets are defense (police monopoly) and arbitration (court monopoly), but very often includes far more such as the monopoly on provision of roads, telecommunications monopoly, healthcare monopoly and so on.

Every industry monopolized by a government is one less opportunity for an individual to use in order to achieve greater economic success. An individual either has to work for the government or he can’t work at all or in limited cases can work only if licensed by the government and still under their rules, which hardly in any way allows any real competition. This lack of competition in these industries thus ensures that certain people who would have otherwise prospered in them don’t, that advances in quality of service in these industries are not made or are made very slowly and that prices remain static or even increasing (essentially determined by an arbitrary tax rate).

It’s not only that these industries are monopolized in the sense that you have nobody else to turn to if you need these services, but in most cases you are not even allowed to refuse them. You must pay for it whether you’d like to use it or not. The only way to escape this is by exile, leaving the country only to enter a jurisdiction of another monopolizing group (another government).

2. Fiat money currency

In theory some say it is possible to trade with currencies other than those government provides, yet history (even recent history in cases of certain electronic currencies like e-gold) is filled with examples of governments clamping down or trying to control currencies that are alternative to their own. Yet their own currency is in modern world backed by absolutely nothing except the largely unfounded faith of the people using it. The government or agencies which it has exclusive partnership with, such as Federal Reserve in the US can arbitrarily print more or less of the currency or just create it by typing a number in the computer. This gives them the unearned power to manipulate the value of every dollar you hold on a nearly daily basis.

When using such a currency for trade individuals are using a measure of value which by itself has no value whatsoever. It is just paper or numbers in a computer. It means nothing and is worth nothing and you cannot exchange it for anything other than more worthless paper or worthless numbers. You can buy things with it so long as enough people have unfounded faith in it, but if you are foolish enough to hold it as a storage of value you in reality have nothing. You are gambling.

This faith never can and never does last forever. Currencies not backed by something of actual tangible and measurable value not determined by arbitrary whims of a certain central government agency (or even a non-government agency doing its bidding like Federal Reserve) but rather by actual supply and demand in the market always do and always will collapse. That day is coming for the US dollar just as it is eventually for the Euro and every other fiat currency in existence.

This creates a ridiculous situation in which every economy is essentially pre-destined for a monetary collapse because its lifeblood, the currency, is in fact poison - a fraud, a lie everybody believes in, unreal and subject to malicious manipulation. Yet the government with all its force stands behind it and tends to look very unfavorably to more solid alternatives such as gold - usually banning its use for currency once it is most needed and thus once its popularity rises more than the government can tolerate. The government wants you to use their monopoly money, not real money, because that’s what gives it power over your wealth.

3. The Corporation

If you think corporations are the product of a free market you have been living under a rock, but don’t feel bad because most people have too. Corporations have very little to do with the free market. The power of a corporation is largely the extension of government power. Corporations are “legal entities” not individual human beings nor groups of them. They are fictional and exist merely as a set of promises, permissions and restrictions provided by the government. They are analogous to sock puppets pulled by actual human beings which is why you can see business people talking about their corporations as if they were persons separate from them, even when said business people seem to run the said corporation and all its dealings.

The problem with this arrangement is that it basically shields said corporations from the effects of the market (the voluntary interactions described earlier) since instead of being subject solely to the natural laws of supply and demand based on individuals pursuing their values through voluntary trade they are subjected to not only restrictions, but also powers and benefits they have not earned through the market. This is evident from the very separation of the corporation and the individual actually running and owning it. This separation makes it possible for the corporation to be ran as if IT and not its owner was the one doing the jobs, so if IT uses bad business practices or perpetrates fraud, IT is to blame, not the actual individual running it, yet IT doesn’t exist in reality - it’s just a fictional entity based on said promises, permissions and restrictions to the said individual, all of which can be arbitrarily manipulated by their provider, the government.

So there is no real liability and no real accountability to the market. Corporations are thus such a great tool for business people to gain unearned power. It is hard for a smaller business to sue them without being in an unfavorable position, because the power of government favors the corporation.

Of course, there are not only unearned promises and permissions, but also restrictions which gives people the illusion that government actually doesn’t empower these corporations, but merely “keeps them in check”. However these restrictions often end up merely scrubbing off the part of the whole of power they already gave to the corporation and often end up in merely shifting the power from one to the other corporation. For instance, antitrust laws punishing one corporation only means that another corporation just gained a free unearned boost. A particular new regulation prohibiting a particular way of doing business will punish one set of corporations depending on such a business practice thus effectively giving a free boost to those who don’t.

Therefore no restriction and no government regulation can actually ensure that all corporations are “kept in check” at once. All of it has “unintended” consequences which beat the whole supposed purpose of regulation.

Finally, the whole concept of regulation even if idealized in some manner is completely flawed because whatever the powers the institution of a corporation as a legal entity provides the business owners or whatever restrictions it imposes on them are both artificial because they are unearned through the market. Thus the whole scheme completely routes around the market, removing YOU from the power of affecting the value and wealth of the corporation, removing your power to vote with your wallet. Even boycotts become ineffective. No wonder some people end up feeling quite futile in their attempts to thwart the big corporations. The problem is they are blaming corporations themselves and then the free market for this instead for the source of their empowerment: the government. People shout at the “free” market (which we don’t have) saying it gives free reign to corporations yet it is government, the supposed savior, which by itself has free reign and empowers corporations with it.

Needless to say, omitting market forces has generally bad effects on the economy. Corporations get bigger, competition is stifled and when the compound of all the ways in which government harms the economy collide creating a huge economic crisis, government fails the last test of their credibility as those keeping the bad corporations in check: they don’t let them fail, instead they use the money they took from you with taxes or created out of nothing (devaluing, again YOUR money) to BAIL THEM OUT, claiming this will save the economy, when in fact they merely expand the very practice that caused economic failure in the first place - coercion = involuntary interaction - anti-market activity - forcing you to pay for something you don’t want to pay for thus perpetuating win-lose relationships rather than win-win relationships upon which the health of the economy and continued growth depends.

4. Taxes and bureaucracy

This may be somewhat redundant given point number 1 about the government monopolies since I already pointed out that people don’t have a choice but pay for government services regardless of whether they want them while being denied the right to form competing ones. However it bears special mention in one aspect: it makes getting into business as well as maintaining it harder, thus making a larger amount of the population into what some call “wage slaves” rather than innovative entrepreneurs that create competition and push the economy forward.

Taxes serve as a disincentive to doing business since they rob you of a good chunk of what you’ve earned by application of your own mental and physical effort. Bureaucracy ties well into this motivation crushing effect as, unlike being a simple employee, as an entrepreneur you become obligated (forced by government) to deal with tax filing, various registrations, licenses, keeping up with latest regulations etc. all of which obviously increases your costs of time and effort even further. Government thus makes doing business as an entrepreneur much harder than it otherwise would be which means less entrepreneurs, less competition, less innovation, less economic growth, worse economic conditions for too many people and lower level of satisfaction and happiness.

It then feeds into the self-reinforcing chain of poverty, which is often the reason cited as justification of poverty, that someone must feed the poor. Continuous free hand outs of band aid charity to the poor without provision of education and motivation only prolongs their poverty, and when an inevitably economic collapse occurs, even these hand outs stop and the poor become even poorer if they can even survive. Thus instead of actually fighting poverty, taxes act as a double edged sword against the solution to poverty: free handouts without entrepreneurial education keep people poor continuously while the bureaucratic and tax costs make it that much harder for them to actually become entrepreneurs and thus rise out of poverty.

Taxes create poverty rather than solve them. People have been using the same old justification for taxes for decades and centuries, yet poor still get poorer while rich (the corporations above) get richer. And you still keep pretending.

5. Perpetuation of personal irresponsibility

The government and the ideas which justify it are surrounded by myths of its far reaching power, wisdom and ability, even as people continue to view its talking heads make fools of themselves on TV on an almost daily basis. It is as if people believe that government is something beyond the group of people actually calling themselves the government, as if it’s some sort of an all powerful entity that has the ability to protect them from all harm, like a father extending his strong arms around you or a mother keeping you in her arms.

This submission to coercive authority that can punish the “bad” and reward the “good” despite a lack of an apparent definition of the two out and keep all harms away indeed very much fits the typical family setting. Parents are seldom well practiced in philosophy and science to the point to which they can with great true authority actually define good from bad, and besides they never really try. They simply tell you what you can or can’t do regardless of their definitions and justifications. You are treated as if you don’t need to know why something is “bad” and another thing “good”. You simply learn that those things which are prohibited and for which you get punished are “bad” and those for which you aren’t or are rewarder are “good” and that sits with you on an emotional level till adulthood and becomes the way your persona operates, completely bypassing the rational examination of the empirical world around you.

The government then merely replaces the parents. Their justifications for punishment are filled with contradiction you’re incapable of seeing because you’ve never been taught to think critically about them and you simply end up accepting everything on the basis of them being a government, having all the power and thus they must be right. What they say is “legal” and everything they prohibit is “illegal”. If you do “illegal” things you are bad and so you must always obey, always do the legal, always “be clean under the law”, even when such law contradicts reality and human nature.

How does this affect the economy? The inhibition of critical reasoning as well as the learned adherence to coercive authority rids the individual of much of the sense of personal responsibility. Instead (s)he outsources much of it to said government. Let them take care of the big issues, of the ills in the world, let them cure the economy, let them cure violence and poverty - they should do everything and you the individual are supposed to simply vote for the right people. Whenever something bad happens, like the current economic crisis, everyone turns to the daddy/mommy government and tells it how bad it is, how it failed, how it sucks and how it should change immediately, like a child shouting in frustration at his or her parent. It’s not a sign of a child being less submissive to the parent, it’s just another protest “you’re supposed to protect me from this, so do it!”.

Personal responsibility is dead. Instead when such people talk of personal responsibility they talk of fraud that took its place, mere personal allegiance to the government and the mythical “nation” or “country” it represents. How can such a mentality help create a prosperous economy if it is fundamentally based on submission of the individual creative power and critical thought to the one entity which by nature exists as an anti-market force? It can’t.

6. War

I have never understood the justification of war except on an emotional level which I would describe more in terms of mental illness than in terms of healthy reasoning. The reason people support war is because they are emotionally manipulated into hating the mere image of an enemy. They never see the people branded as the enemy, they don’t imagine them as human beings just like them, they don’t imagine their suffering and their struggles in life nor their honest successes and achievements. They merely imagine them as evil drones bent on destroying them. This is what war brainwashing does. In an attempt to defeat this terrible image of an enemy, they are willing to support or actually perpetrate even the worst of atrocities.

Thus the government uses such support to commit billions if not trillions of funds from taxes and money created out of thin air into massive war efforts which by their very nature are impossible to be defined as mere defense of any kind. Defense is an immediate reaction to an attack or an individual’s increase in his own security measures. It most certainly is not an increase in the likelihood of getting shot by a police officer or a clamp down on your privacy (the “security measures” of the post 9/11 USA) nor is it a vengeful destruction of almost an entire country followed by years of chaos and violence on its streets. Vengeance is not defense. It is merely a blood thirsty destructor of both the perceived enemy and the self.

This self destruction is the effect of war on economy as its efforts tend to drain the economy to the limits and beyond, albeit the actual effect on individuals is postponed by the governments arrogant and arbitrary ability to create money out of nothing. The resulting devaluation of currency takes time to make its way through the economy, but such a process is absolutely inevitable. In case of the current economic crisis, it has in fact slowed down the process by countering said inflation with deflation, but given government’s absolutely stupid and malicious moves to respond with 10 trillion fold inflation, the corrective power of said deflation was effectively cut and hyperinflation is to follow sooner or later. USD’s days are being numbered.

Another way in which it affects the economy is the rise of the threat level. If you have an enemy designated as such and one you bully on a regular basis you’re seldom to expect safety from his retaliation and this would go on forever if you take every sign of his potential or actual retaliation as only further justification for continued violence. Violence breeds violence and it is only destructive of value and thus completely and diametrically opposed to economic growth. It’s more expensive to do business if fear is pumped up and pretty much impossible if bombs are whizzing over your heads.

7. The inevitable diminishing of liberty

Since it is based on coercion the nature of government is by itself anti-liberty for the same reason it is anti-market. Liberty is the ability to choose for yourself how to think and act without fear. Coercion, however, depends on fear. Thus all of the 6 previous points are already examples of particular ways in which liberty is diminished to the detriment of economy, which is to say, the detriment of well being of nearly all individuals in a country.

However this particular point is primarily about the inevitability of diminishing of liberties, something that is impossible to avoid so long as the very idea of government continues to be believed and pursued, regardless of what illusions to the contrary you may hold. Needless to say that less liberty, the ability to choose for yourself without fear, also means less economic activity - since economic activity directly depends on you choosing to act upon your values. If you are afraid to do a particular kind of business, produce a particular kind of good, offer a particular kind of service or just generally afraid to make money to begin with out of fear of misstepping in your tax obligations you are that much more likely to simply not bother, thus robbing yourself and others of the wealth you could’ve created.

The reason diminishing of liberty is inevitable is simple. Just as violence breeds more violence government breeds more government. It feeds in on itself in order to justify its very existence. If government starts very small, monopolizing solely the arbitration and protection industries, it wouldn’t be too long before people would question the necessity of it being a monopoly in these areas. Why can’t people establish other agencies to offer the service of arbitration (private courts) or protection (private defense)? Thus in order to continue being a government (a coercive monopoly) it must continuously keep active, it’s not enough to simply sit in place and keep things just right as they are. Instead it must keep raising issues and fuss and campaign for new legislation and yet more legislation eventually monopolizing new industries and as it keeps biting into more and more of the market and thus inevitably more and more of individual liberties, there is more and more fuss, more and more issues to keep addressing, more and more laws to pass to supposedly address said issues.

People end up being duped into believing that every problem can be solved by a yet another law being oblivious to the fact that law merely increases the government power at the expense of their liberty and consequently their own power to solve said problems so the circle of hell continues until the government effectively eats up the whole market, and so little of civil liberty is left that people are essentially boxed. Just holding the wrong views may get you kidnapped (jailed) or murdered (executed) by the government for whom now more than half of the entire country works.

In such conditions the economy is effectively at a stand still since people are literally afraid to be themselves and thus liberate their own creative potential that is necessary to innovate and create more value in the market. In fact the market barely even exists. All production is centrally coordinated and only produces what is necessary for basic subsistence of what was already achieved when the country was still relatively free.

This totalitarian nightmare thus keeps living on the brink of total collapse just waiting for an event to trigger it, whether it is a yet another “glorious” war with the nightmare inspiring image of an enemy or the few brave martyrs inciting general rioting that leads to the violent implosion of the regime.

This, my american and european friends is where we are inevitably heading if you continue believing that a group of people willing to use threats of violence or actual violence , no matter how you elected them to such a position, are the ones who should solve your economic and societal problems. Government is not a magic bullet that you may believe it to be. It is not an answer to everything. There is no magic bullet in fact, not even anarchy.

Anarchy is not an answer. Anarchy - as the admission that violence is not the way, but rather exclusively voluntary interaction, a free market - is merely the recognition of the fact that there is no single answer and that solutions are best found when individuals are let free to apply their unique creative abilities, without compulsion, to find solutions to the problems that we face. And that’s the only way we stand a chance at building a stable and perpetually prosperous and accelerating economy which can last for not merely decades before the collapses or years between recessions, but centuries and millenia.

Ben Webb: Intellectual “Property”?

2009-07-26T16:50:54+00:00

It’s a bit since my blog post. In that time I’ve been on holiday, upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.8.2 and myself to 18 (ie. years old ).

So, intellectual property. A good recent example to use to discuss this would be the recent Orwellian Kindle case. The irony in this case that it was actually 1984 animal Farm that Amazon chose to delete from users machine. (Yes, really. I almost didn’t believe it myself). The obvious question is, this this action right, or not.

I don’t think it is particularly productive to attack Amazon for actions in this case. Amazon was acting on behalf of the copyright holder, in order to comply with copyright laws. It could be argued that they should not have implemented the DRM in the first place, but many of the book publishers pressured them to do so. And, more importantly, DRM would not have the (partial/percieved) effectiveness it has, if it were not for copyright and laws against cracking DRM (eg. the DMCA).

So, instead lets look at the laws, and whether they are right or not. The laws here, covering copyrights and patents (trademarks are not such an issue), are often referred to as “intellectual property”. This leads to much confusion when trying to discuss whether these laws are moral. Some people claim that creative works are effectively property, and unauthorised copying is akin to stealing, so should be stopped. (This stealing analogy is even used by publishers organisations, that should really know better that the law does not link copyright and theft at all). Others don’t go quite this far, but say simply that the authors of creative works have a right to be able to benefit from their work. (There are example after example in the free software and free culture movements as to why “IP” laws aren’t necessary to make money).

As a voluntaryist believing in the basic natural rights to life, liberty and property. Its a black and white choice, and has nothing to do with existing laws. Either “intellectual property” is real property, subject to the same type of ownership, or it should not be controlled at all. The issue of whether “IP” is moral, for me, hinges on whether it is property. And, I do not think it is.

First of all, lets look at the concept of property in the first place. Why does the idea exist, and why is it better than alternatives. As far as I know, property exists as a way to manage resources. The exact same meal can not be eaten by both me and and the person next to me. So, property is about exclusivity. Something is mine because I am the only one who uses it (or more accurately, the one who decides how it is used).

Does this kind of exclusivity exhibit itself in the information world? Yes and no. Digital content can be copied very easily which blurs the line of what belongs to who. If I create an image, and send a copy to someone, who owns that copy? If we’re talking about property, if someone creates an object similar to mine, with their own materials, it obviously belongs to them. So, similarly, if someone recreates on their own machine, a file like I have on mine, their copy belongs to them. This means, if you want property like protections, that kind of exclusivity, there is a way – just keep your file to yourself!
(Of course, this issue of server side, or “cloud” software comes up here, but thats an issue I’ll look into in depth in another blog post.)

Of course, my way of thinking about property isn’t the only one. Objectivists maintain that property is created as a result of man’s mind. Raw materials are useless without the cleverness to transform them. Since property comes from the mind, then thoughts, ideas can also be property – intellectual property. The problem I see with this is, where do you draw the line?

Owning property means being able to morally use force to protect it. If someone copies my idea or creative work without permission, Objectivists presumably would argue the same is the case. But what if my idea is simple, or obvious. How do you manage fair decisions on what belongs to who, who has been influenced, and who has been “stolen” from. How do you be sure who the original creator is? And, ultimately, to whom do you want to give the power to make these decisions. Trust not to make decisions that limit creativity, that are in there own interests?
(The current patent system is a woefull example of this. The running of the system is influenced by lawyers who want as much paperwork and as many lawsuits as possible, in order to benefit themselves.)

Another argument is that intellectual property can be seen as an extension of contracts. I could contractually lend or give an object to someone (for example, to pay in installments). That object is used by them, but I still retain ownership. In the same way, I could also contractually lend a digital work to someone, on the condition that the don’t copy it. Breaking such a contract would, in my eyes, be immoral. But, if you are given the digital work by someone else, without my permission, you are not breaking any contract! Only the person who originally got the work from me is.
(In this way EULAs would also be pointless without copyright. It only takes one person to break it, and people can choose not to be bound by them.)

In conclusion, I think the idea of “Intellectual Property” is frankly silly. We would be a lot better off without copyright or patent law (despite what even stallman might say). As for DRM, without copyright laws, and DMCA-like laws, these measures would make no business sense. Even if a company were to try it, a mass boycott would be much easier without this government-perpetuated myth that copying is theft.

Olivier Cleynen: A book

2009-07-25T17:45:28+00:00

I have just published a book.

A set of thirty-three photos assembled with patience and love,
Gulls is a book which celebrates the joy of looking at seagulls.

The book has taken many months to complete (the first printing occurred a year ago) and, since I put a lot of heart into it, inevitably gives me pride and happiness. All along the past months I have had the great joy and privilege to share it with relatives; now anyone can get a copy thanks to the wonders of on-demand printing.

Naturally enough, the contents are available are available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license, and source files are published for everyone’s enjoyment and re-use. In a burst of half-amused anticipation I also wrote up answers to frequently asked questions about the book.

I complain often about how things are and how they change but expressing what I see in this way is an extraordinary privilege. Flight, or war, or both: the world is here for us to witness.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): DoublePlusHuman finally starts publishing

2009-07-17T22:10:47+00:00

Almost one and a half years ago, on January 23rd 2008, I have finished reading George Orwell’s legendary book “1984″. Immediately after finishing it I was inspired and I had an idea and I wrote it down into a note I still keep to this day:

A website called “DoublePlusHuman.com” - based on the notion that by being real self thinking, inquisitive, exploratory humans we can overt any threat of dystopian future. The name is a reference to 1984’s Newspeak and translates as Super Human. The intended message is “Be as human as possible and you’ll be free.”

“1984″ was a bit of a mind chow (or mind f*ck for a more technical term), but what was obvious to me was that the whole point of the totalitarian regime that ruled the fictional Oceania in the book was dehumanization. It occurred to me that the root cause of all tyranny in the real world, all loss of liberty and all oppression is dehumanization. It is the idea that a human individual must repress his or her urges, must sacrifice himself for the society, the so called greater good. It is this idea that has humans in constant fear of each other and consequential constant desire to control each other, as absolutely as possible.

I felt defiant as I was reading through the end of the book, as the tyranny of illusion and repression of humanity was winning. Being enamored by the book’s “NewSpeak” a hack of its own language came to my mind as a pronouncement of protest: DoublePlusHuman!. DoublePlusHuman, not the compromised, self repressed and self sacrificed human, but a human in all its glory, in its “full bloom”, pursuing the maximum of potential and letting nobody, NOBODY, control him or her against his or her will.

I immediately registered a domain name, DoublePlusHuman.com, and put it aside. Year and a half passed as I was exploring myself and evolving my ideas. I became a staunch support of voluntary interaction as opposed to coercive governance. I strived to rediscover myself, to find what I truly love to do, what I can do that would make me happiest and provide most value.

I went through this process twice. First time I seemed to have reached wrong conclusions. I went through it too fast and too keenly and as a consequence I ended up trying to jumpstart two projects that went nowhere (Site2Review.com and Gamelapse.com) all the while knowing somewhere in the back of my head that it was really DoublePlusHuman.com which I was supposed to be doing.

So I redid the process, but this time I used a whole book on the topic, “How To Finally Find What You Love To Do And Get Paid For Doing It” by Brian Kim (long title, short but brilliant book). I gave myself weeks of almost aimless floating about, doing only what I had to do and otherwise just exploring, reading what I want, doing what I want and trying to answer the dozens of questions I was supposed to answer and wanted to answer about my talents and interests. I deliberately, prior to finishing this process, read Stefan Molynex’ “Real Time Relationships”, another brilliant book which helped deepen my introspection and further enticed me to trust my feelings and senses.

And prior to all that I was already armed with ideas and encouragement from Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” as well as the simplified “The Hidden Secret in Think and Grow Rich” by Brian Kim.

And I ultimately, and not to a too big surprise found my way. It wasn’t so far off from prior conclusions in that I again concluded that what I really love to do is web publishing, but doing it my way, as a one man show envisioning something in its entirety and then creating it from the beginning to the end. I do the conceptualization, web design and finally write most of the content. As I was approaching this conclusion it became more and more obvious that what most embodied what I love to do at this point in time was exactly everything I hoped DoublePlusHuman.com could be.

And so I ditched everything else, put the more important projects (Nuxified.org and Libervis.com) into a maintenance mode (in which they were for some time anyway), and made DoublePlusHuman my main project. Couple of months passed and here she is.

I personally believe that it is the best web site I ever made and the best project I ever started. It most perfectly fits who I am and it fits a grander plan that I now finally have for my life. I’ve never felt the kind of sense of direction I do now. My puzzles are finally being put together. DoublePlusHuman.com is a start of a new era for me.

The site is made to be accessible to the widest possible audiences, complies with standards, is compatible with screen reading devices, has a mobile version and allows people to switch width to short or wide depending on the size of their screens. It will contain original content and links to content published elsewhere categorized in the same way. Forms of content are articles and media (video, audio and images) and main categories are “philosophy”, “technology” and “culture” representing the means to the ends that are the goal of the site: self improvement, personal freedom and social change.

I plan, for the first time, to be producing original inspiring and moving video infotainment on a semi-regular basis to attract and inspire the readers and build a community. And of course there is a business aspect to it that is also better worked out from the beginning than with any project I did before. Hence the unobtrusive neatly positioned sidebar ad and the amazon store. I am not ashamed of this. I will be able to monetize this site only if I provide enough people with enough value! I aim to provide value, not to make money! Money must be a mere side effect. And since I love what I’m doing here this shouldn’t be a problem. I no longer see failure as failure, but useful information for success. (And needless to say, money will be necessary for the achievement of the mentioned grander plan. )

All this said, there is no official launch announcement. I simply start with publishing articles and the first is a series of articles defining the key terms of the site: “self improvement”, “personal freedom” and “social change”. The first one is already published: “Defining Self Improvement”.

This seems like a good beginning, defining the key terms, setting up the basic paradigm.

Gustavo Narea (gustavo): Announcing Booleano

2009-07-17T21:26:27+00:00

I am proud to announce the first alpha release of Booleano, a Python-based interpreter of boolean expressions:

Booleano is an interpreter of boolean expressions, a library to define and run filters available as text (e.g., in a natural language) or in Python code.

In order to handle text-based filters, Booleano ships with a fully-featured parser whose grammar is adaptive: Its properties can be overridden using simple configuration directives.

On the other hand, the library exposes a pythonic API for filters written in pure Python. These filters are particularly useful to build reusable conditions from objects provided by a third party library.

It’s been designed to address the following use cases:

Convert text-based conditions: When you need to turn a condition available as plain text into something else (i.e., another filter).
Evaluate text-based conditions: When you have a condition available as plain text and need to iterate over items in order to filter out those for which the evaluation of the condition is not successful.
Evaluate Python-based conditions: When you have a condition represented by a Python object (nothing to be parsed) and need to iterate over items in order to filter out those for which the evaluation of the condition is not successful.

It is a project I found necessary while working on repoze.what 2, which I’ve been developing for the last few months in my spare time. This release is absolutely usable, but lacks documentation because I needed this release out for a (small) project I need to work on ASAP (it will depend on Booleano). The next release will ship with a nice documentation, I promise.

Olivier Cleynen: The Blonde and the Scruffy Coder: Postscript

2009-07-15T12:33:34+00:00

Four months ago I gave a talk titled the Blonde and the Scruffy Coder at the Chemnitzer Linux Tage in Germany. A video recording has just been released, so here are twenty-seven minutes of your host talking with a bigger-than-usual accent:

To view this video in this page, you need a modern browser, such as Chrome, or better, Firefox 3.5.

Download the video (219 Mo)

License: Creative Commons BY-SA.

It has been an enormous pleasure being there in Chemnitz. The organisers of the CLT have a precisely and neatly-run event set-up, and have all my admiration and gratitude. Very fast diesel trains, icy wind gusts, a startlingly inexpensive luxury hotel, and long deserted housing buildings all also add-up to the memory.

Giving the talk has been furthering and joyful. I am indebted to Meike Reichle, whose talk preceded mine, for some thoughtful remarks during and after the talk. Some of these are online and I heartedly accept the criticism:

The talk itself, in my impression, left a few open issues though. It was rather brief and focussed mainly on stating the usual numbers, asserting that the Women in FLOSS movement wasn’t about affirmative action or discriminating men[,] explaining how women feel discriminated by sexist behaviour and advertising[,] and how objection to such things should not be mistaken as prudery. […]
What I missed most was practical advice to projects wishing to attract more female contributors, such as mentoring programs or low-threshold entry points.

Already a veteran both on that topic and in FLOSS communities, she comments:

[…] Instead of talking about how there should be more women in Free Software I’d rather just be one and try to encourage others with my example. The usual quota of female speakers at [Linux] events is somewhere between 2–4% and I just don’t like the idea of having a conference with n men talking about Free Software and 1 woman talking about women.

Nothing I’ve read or heard cuts it so well.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): FDR Controversy Part 5: Response to The Promise and Failure of UPB

2009-07-11T03:31:18+00:00

At last, this is the final part of this series. I am responding to the two part series called “The Promise and Failure of UPB - The Inside Story” from my own perspective on the issues. I am gonna try to summarily address both parts in this article.

In the first section of the first part the author begins by describing what is referred to as the “crowning achievement” of Stefan Molyneux, the “definitive answer to ‘what is moral behavior?’” and “the world’s first top-to-bottom system of philosophy, something philosophers have been unable to even attempt for the last 6,000 years” and goes on to point out how Molyneux’ “plan” apparently failed to materialize.

Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly in the context of his other articles, the author makes suppositions about Molyneux’ motives as part of what appears to be an attempt at exaggeration. In the process of describing the alleged failure he charges Molyneux’ of himself being unable to “respond in writing to inquiries on the subject” citing Molyneux’ as saying: “I have never seen a UPB discussion work out well on a Board, the concepts are too slippery for this format, and everyone always just ends up frustrated. I invite the OP to call into the Sunday show, 4pm EST, to ask these questions directly…

I do not, however, see how this inference follows from what Molyneux said. It simply appears to be an account of past experiences with discussing UPB on a forum followed by an invitation to discuss them in a live call in show. It may also be worth noting that the quoted response is to a thread which was started by a Liberating Minds member “ReIgNoFrAdNeSs” who by his own admission, pretended to be someone else, as pointed out in part 4. This of course doesn’t invalidate the quote, but it sheds some light on the tactics used by the author’s associates (as an active participant LM).

The author continues with an analysis of Molyneux’ motives pointing out his pursuit of originality, a desire to influence the world and a purported roadblock he stumbled on in that path when he was “not accepted as a PhD candidate”. This is characterized as the “bitter parting of the ways between himself and the academic career he sought” with reference to a quote from the podcast #1019 as containing the first glimpse of such disappointment, albeit the quote is inconclusive about whether the resentment was result of being rejected more than of the company being ripped out, sold and undervalued.

Author proceeds to quote from another podcast, #1039 titled “Intellectual Entrapment”, which criticizes the academia for essentially being set in their ways and insufficiently open to ideas which do not carry certain predetermined assumptions resulting in the perpetuation of the same old things. Specifically the ideas in question seem to refer to the necessity of government in certain areas. He also implies a form of impartiality by referring to different reactions depending on whether they “like” him or not.

The author infers from this that Stefan Molyneux was rejected for two reasons; in terms of his ideas and because they didn’t like him, pointing out that this is still an issue for him even after 20 years and that UPB was supposed to be “the ultimate weapon” in this purported war with the academia. The rest of the first part of this article focuses on the nature of the Molyneux’ ideas with respect to the development of UPB, the emergence of skepticism by an academic student of philosophy Danny Shahar and the great importance that Stefan Molyneux assigned to UPB.

In a nutshell the idea was that a rational proof of secular ethics and the necessity to win the argument from morality is absolutely crucial to the advancement of the libertarian movement and the advancement of human thinking on morality beyond the realm of superstition. He was discussing these ideas before the publishing of UPB when Danny Shahar first became involved by expressing skepticism towards the idea that such a proof of morality is even possible.

Danny is also credited for pointing out a ’semantic problem with the word “Preferred” as opposed to “Preferable”‘ which I assume refers to this post. However Stefan already used the term “preferable” earlier in the thread in this post to which Danny dramatically replied here. So it is in fact Stefan who used the modified term earlier and it is thus not as clear as the author makes it appear to be that it was Danny who realized this distinction first, and in any case this really is a fairly trivial issue.

But it is taken as, in author’s words, “the beginning of a series of errors that Shahar found with Molyneux’s work on UPB that began with correcting Molyneux on a single word and ended less than a year-and-a-half later with Molyneux declaring all of academia, with respect to philosophy, invalid” which is quite a dramatic statement to make.

In the rest of the part 1 the author emphasizes Molyneux’ alleged past failures in contrast to what he hoped to achieve with UPB and proceeds to illustrate the importance which Molyneux assigned to his work on the UPB by referring to the podcast #1019 titled “We Are Full of Treasure”.

What was quoted from that podcast are certain things Molyneux said which reflect a pretty big deal of confidence and enthusiasm. Indeed it does seem like they are full of treasure that they just discovered and wish to share with the world. I personally do not find much to be objectionable about these kinds of statements, even if they are rather grandiose. Regardless of what one might say, if I felt and really believed that I’ve accomplished, after years of work, something so exceptional and historic in a certain area, I might in some instances make similar expressions of enthusiasm.

The author portrays this account with a rather hyperbolic remark, that Molyneux knew he replaced God with himself as the final authority on morality. As someone who readily accuses Molyneux of making grandiose statements, he just made one himself. Hyperbolic statements aside, it may be worth putting the word “god” here into perspective.

In the last century technological evolution has repeatedly given human beings powers which would have earlier been considered as godly. From airplanes, rockets and atomic bombs to such “magical” devices as modern touchscreen smartphones, laptops and instantaneous communication networks that bind them. Technology wasn’t the only area where gods were consistently replaced. Science in its advances has been explaining more and more of what was previously considered as inexplicable and thus evidence for gods intervention.

One only needs to think of certain onward looking thinkers such as the inventor Raymond Kurzweil to observe the emergence of a trend which is, sometimes even quite explicitly, about the evolution of human beings and human understanding to even more “god-like” proportions. And this should not be shocking, at least not to the atheists as those who wont be offended by such notions, for this whole concept of a “god” from a secular perspective appears to be nothing more than a constantly evolving metaphor occasionally applied to the unimaginably great things that humans have the potential of achieving.

My point is that metaphorically putting god into the picture the way the author did in his hyperbole, is in fact far more common than the author and many seem to think. Human beings have been replacing god for a great deal of time now, as a matter of natural course of our evolution. Revolutionary breakthroughs in the field of ethics, as in any field, are thus to be expected, and even if Molyneux didn’t quite achieve it, there is always the next Nth chance for him or somebody else to finally make it. If proof of secular ethics specifically isn’t possible, as Danny seems to think, that still does not mean further revolutionary advances in the field can’t be made.

Let’s move to the part 2 of the article.

“The rise and fall of Danny Shahar”

First of all I will upfront state that I do not have completely sufficient understanding of UPB to be able to make any conclusive and final judgments of it nor to pick a side between Danny Shahar and Stefan Molyneux over it. As Molyneux says himself, UPB is tricky and thus not easy to get at first. I would assume this would increase the chances of people falling into various interpretive traps and whatnot. I’ve read the book once, it made a lot of sense, but I don’t have even close to as much experience with philosophy as Stefan Molyneux and Danny Shahar to quickly judge such a work.

In this part Danny Shahar is venerated as a gracious graduate student in philosophy, “well trained in the language of philosophy, schools of thought, and academic criticism” who has written more than anyone about Molyneux’ work. A contrast is portrayed between Shahar as someone who represents the academic world and has set out to provide a thorough critique of UPB and Molyneux as an independent philosopher convinced that he has made a seminal achievement with UPB.

The article explains the whole chronology from the first thread where Stefan Molyneux posts a link to Shahar’s Molyneux Project to the last thread where Shahar was asked to stop posting. The story is of course (unsurprisingly given the context of other FDRLiberated articles) spiced up with expressions of slanted attitude against Stefan which seems bent on discrediting him as an able philosopher.

I have read through a large part of the conversations in question which go deep into the terminology and concepts regarding UPB which I don’t want to get into here. Large part of the matter of disagreement seems to have revolved around the application of UPB to fringe cases known as flagpole and lifeboat scenarios, effectively involving the moral characterizations of acts of a person who has to violate somebody elses moral right in order to save his own life.

A particular theme of the Shahar’s critiques was that given Molyneux’ big claims about UPB its (purported) inability to cover such fringe cases is unimpressive, but that otherwise it may be a useful theory in the same sense that Rothbards Ethics of Liberty is. Stefan Molyneux apparently disagrees and maintains the original claims for UPB probably dismissing the criticisms as lack of understanding while continuing to be open to live conversations about it where questions, critiques and requests for clarifications can be made.

As I said I cannot conclusively weigh into this disagreement to defend either of the two, however I do wish to express my tendency to agree with the points Stefan Molyneux made in an article, that largely seems to have came out of this controversial discourse, called “Hanging by a thread”.

I have a distinct feeling that most people in fact do know the very basic moral principles, possibly even as a matter of their nature. I am under the impression and even conviction that if one was to ask anyone on this planet if it is as a matter of norm and principle moral to kill, steal or coerce in any way, clearly explaining what such coercion entails, that if they were truly honest they would answer no.

So when philosophers rack their minds and endlessly debate the moral questions it really does sometimes seem like they’re asking for a why to a what they already know. In general, everybody knows it is wrong to kill, we’re just trying to discover why exactly this is so. And as we do this there is a fair point to be made sometimes; why do we spend so much time and effort bickering over the one in a million fringe cases which a moral theory or framework X imperfectly applies to while millions of people die every year from coercion and violence because nobody reached out to them in order to give them too the opportunity to participate in this debate by getting THEM up to speed to the things we have already beyond much doubt concluded as reasonable?

The biggest problem I see in the world is not so much that people do not know what is moral, but that people are not brought to terms with the inconsistent application of their morality. If everyone would only start consistently living as they preach, opening their eyes to the support they have so far been lending to things which are in fact against their morality, whatever bad morality is left in the world, I would think, would be neutralized by itself. Then the only theory really necessary could generally be summed up in a sentence: Be consistent in your application of your moral principles.. Even more generally, however, would in my view pretty much solve all of the worlds problems: “Do not tolerate contradictions. Ever. EVER.”.

If people could only brush up on their logic skills and taken away from such destructive ideas as those espoused under the umbrella of post-modernism (which see contradictions as acceptable), ultimate harmony would emerge by itself, just like a free market tends towards greater value for everyone, because each individual strives to achieve integrity - the state of complete non-contradiction in every aspect of their lives.

Incidentally, this is what UPB seems to be about, but Danny Shahar would state that as a philosophical theory it does not stand up to academic scrutiny, that it falls short on closer inspection etc. yet most people do not give a damn about the exact specifics of relatively obscure moral theories (and even the more famous ones, aside from those based in mythology, are indeed pretty obscure to the general public). What they do understand, however, is common language, the same language Stefan Molyneux, by incident or not, chose to convey his ideas.

That said, I am not in a position to neither agree nor disagree whether UPB truly stands up to academic scrutiny. I am open to both possibilities. I am however, inclined to agree that the realm of academy is not an end all be all of philosophy. While I am not necessarily interested in somehow corrupting the thorough, exact and rigorous nature of philosophy, I think it is about time for the dam to burst. One does not need to be an academic philosopher to think philosophically. By definition, philosophy is about pursuit of wisdom and truth. Every single human being with a healthy mind on this planet is capable of it.

Yet the great majority of them are effectively sitting idle, thinking small talk and small thoughts, jumping from routine to routine, entertainment to entertainment and so on. Philosophy is in popular culture still too often associated with distant introverted bearded and very old men whom utter weird and complicated statements. It is seen as something meant only for a special class of people, as if thinking critically, logically and empirically for yourself was not supposed to be something every human should do. That has to change and I think that regardless of all the accusations, Stefan Molyneux is taking an important step towards that.

To get back to the article, it brings out accounts of some angry sounding statements made by Stefan Molyneux in chatroom and podcasts which apparently refer to Danny. I originally thought of addressing each of them briefly, but then realized there’s no real point to that. What I’m gonna say is that Stefan did seem angry at Shahar and that it was obvious he perceived Shahar as condescending and overall unpleasant, so he expressed that. I can even understand why when I consider Stefan’s obviously negative opinion of the academy (with which I to an extent and for reasons explained above actually agree) and Stefan’s high hopes and confidence over UPB, which Danny boldly criticized.

As for author’s implications regarding Molyneux’ psychological state, if we’re gonna psychoanalyze him and given that I know the author has the negative version, I might as well provide a positive version. Yet both of these are merely speculation and conjecture. If Molyneux isn’t a therapist, me or FDRLiberated author certainly are not. So, the positive possibility is that Molyneux obviously spent a huge deal of time (decades even) essentially trying to accomplish something world changing and that upon rejection by academy and at the outset of formative ideas behind UPB he put a huge amount of hope and conviction behind it, perhaps even too much. Thus this book is “his baby” so to speak and he feels personal about it. Is there any sin in that? Certainly not.

I realize that one might say that this doesn’t become a professional philosopher, but that really depends on what you mean by “professional”. Few would deny that Molyneux is a brilliant philosopher, atypical, controversial, temperamental, but still brilliant and that he has created, at least as far as I know, tremendous value for me and I would argue the libertarian and voluntaryist movement. I think he plays a great role in popularizing philosophy and critical thinking, promoting consistent application of moral principles and spreading and explaining the voluntaryist and anarcho-capitalist ideas. When everything is put into perspective, the controversies are just an imperfection in an otherwise incredible thing.

Finally, all this said, I would be interested in an eventual thorough response to this UPB critique in one convenient article, albeit I realize some of these issues might have already been addressed in various podcasts, conversations, debates and forum threads. If I ever find one I’ll try to remember to link it here.

Thank you

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): FDR Controversy Part 4: “I would like to ask you to stop posting here”.

2009-07-10T19:52:28+00:00

Aside from the whole concept of breaking out of unpleasant or abusive relationships this is the biggest issue FDR’s “critics” (as if that’s all they were..) have a problem with.

The claim is that Stefan Molyneux consistently bans dissenting opinion from FDR and that this represents a form of hypocrisy because he otherwise promotes freedom so much. People say such things as, “this is a forum about freedom and anarchy yet it is one of the most tightly controlled boards on the internet” or “Stefan Molyneux repeatedly says he is open to criticism, yet when somebody even politely disagrees he asks them to stop posting”.

I can play the devils advocate all day, but I’m not the devil though I’m sure some dissenters, excuse the pun, will see me as such once I’m done with this piece.

So let’s see what we’ve got here.

1. Private property is not the state

The reason people often passionately decry a particular forum administrator’s tendency to, as they say, “ban dissent” is an obvious connotation with tyrannical, totalitarian and anti-free-speech leadership (or dictatorship if you will). However this simply conflates private property with the state. Whereas the state coercively prohibit you from speaking out even when you use your own property or voluntarily acquired means to do so, somebody in his house, hall or online forum can at best prohibit you from speaking up in his own place. These are two completely different things in that the former is a true clamp down on free speech and the latter is an exercise of property rights.

To claim that those who deny their visitors to say certain things or express certain opinions represent oppressive state leaders if they were given a chance is complete and pure fantasy. If this was so then every christian whom prohibits people to spit on his religion in his house or even every homeowner who prohibits swearing in his home is a would be totalitarian dictator. This is pretty ridiculous.

So this connotation between a private property owner enforcing certain speech related “house rules” with coercive banishment of free speech by certain governments simply needs to be destroyed. It has completely no basis whatsoever and only reflects poor understanding of both the state coercion and property rights. Libertarians should by far be the last ones to carry such connotations.

2. Am *I* a cult?

I own myself (prove me wrong!). Therefore I totally decide with whom I wish to speak, associate with and have relationships with. Thus I totally decide whom will I allow to use my property and what they are allowed to do with it. Thus it can easily be claimed that if I choose to disassociate with people whom I disagree with, whom I personally find unpleasant and whom bring up topics I don’t like and ban them from using my property (no you cannot borrow my bike, now beat it), I am a “cult”. Just me, my own cult of one.

Or.. I am just a freaking human individual!

Conversely, FDR (in terms of server, bandwidth etc. he is paying for) is owned by Stefan Molyneux, an individual that is, just as I am, totally free to decide whom will he allow to use it and what will he allow them to do with it. Does that alone make him a cult leader? Obviously not. Far more is required for that to be true.

This cannot be emphasized enough! Self ownership and consequential property rights consistently applied can only lead to voluntaryism which consistently applied can only lead to every person being a little “dictator”, if you will, over his own self and property. To decry such a rightful dictator of dictating is just funny and ridiculous. Of course I know there are countless of statists (including our friends minarchists) who would have all sorts of qualms about the above equation, but they know where they’re coming from and they know how “complicated” they feel these issues are, given how difficult it is to keep all those self-contradictions jammed into one brain. Have fun with that guys (and gals)!

3. Let’s agree to agree or stop talking!

There is a very popular, but as I am finding out actually quite peculiar notion called the “agreement to disagree”. The reason it is peculiar is that it really makes most sense for those who think there is no such thing as objective truth and reality, the post modernist types, and biggest fans of performative contradictions who essentially thus lost all real motivation to speak truthfully and may as well make up stuff as they go along and write “scientific” papers about it using such smart and juicy terms as “the subpatriarchial paradigm of expression and the neotextual paradigm of consensus” as titles of those papers.

Clearly, to them the “agreement to disagreement” presents no problem whatsoever. For all they know they could both be right even if they state two completely, utterly and directly contradictory statements. “That circle has a diameter of 10 centimeters. - No it has the diameter of 20 centimeters. - Let’s agree to disagree. - Okay.”. Oh I know I am being derogatory about it and I know few (I hope) post modernist relativists, nihilists and other such performative contradictions licking freaks would agree to disagree in an instance where a simple measuring could prove what’s actually true.

The problem is that they would, even upon taking such a measure, claim that what they just found as true might actually be false, or true.. or who cares anyway. Most importantly, in cases where possibility of such an easy determination of what is “actually true” is not obviously available, as if assuming it doesn’t even exist, they all to readily agree to disagree on completely contradictory statements. This really reminds of the “god of the gaps” theory, except instead of putting god in the gaps of their understanding they put “impossibility of uncertainty”.

Anyway, for the rest of us, who believe there is such a thing as an objective truth and reality that can be measured, sensed and felt, because we do measure, sense and feel it with all of the devices that we’ve got at our disposal capable of such detection, “agreement to disagree” really is quite peculiar. We know that either one of the two disagreeing parties is most likely right and we thus know that “agreement to disagree” is in fact no agreement whatsoever. It is in fact an obvious contradiction in terms and unlike post modernists we do give a damn about contradictions!

Agreement to disagree is thus a very cheap shot, a lie and a sign that you do not really care about getting to the bottom of what is true. Did you agree or did you disagree, it can hardly be both at once.

Now this can be seen as an attempt to justify some form of intolerance of differences in opinion, but I am not saying that not agreeing to disagree must immediately mean not tolerating disagreement. You can certainly let someone disagree with you, but that can be done without pretending to be in any kind of agreement. You can simply agree to stop talking to each other, which ties well into the previous two points I have made in an attempt to show that such an act does not represent some draconian kind of intolerance or persecution of dissent, as is often hyperbolically claimed.

4. So what if Molyneux asks you to stop posting on his forum?

Nothing more than it states. He would like you to stop posting. This in no way means he somehow wants to force you to stop talking about it in your own venues, that he is a burgeoning cult leader or on the same level as some dictator. All it means that he doesn’t want you to post anymore, on his forum for the exact reason that he states. Everything else is pure conjecture, framing, projection, straw manning etc.

So you can build that case of yours that supposedly proves his “banning of dissenting opinion”, and even if you succeed you still don’t really have much to stand on. All you’ve proved is that Stefan Molyneux exercises rights he ascribes to every other individual in a way in which you find particularly unpleasant and distasteful. That’s all you proved. And not everybody cares what what you think. Those who have a problem with this are perfectly free to not use his property and if Molyneux really does that and it results in too many people leaving his forum, he may very well have an incentive to change a tactic. In any case this is absolutely his choice.

That said, a lot of such claims have only a selection of controversial forum threads to show for it for which they often tend to portray a rather one sided picture of what happened usually following a pattern like “someone comes in and politely states his disagreement and promptly gets swarmed with irrelevant questions that stonewall him into a defensive position that gets him banned”.

I realize something that resembles this did seem to happen in certain instances, however when examining purported examples of this behaviors it is still worth asking if such stated disagreement really was all about mere expression of disagreement and curiosity or contained something more that could cause the discussion to take a more inflamed route.

It may also be worth to note that certain people can easily be exposed as effectively trolling FDR with questions supposedly meant as “simple expressions of disagreement and curiosity” when in fact they were former FDR members from Liberated Minds posing as someone else to put on a “good show” and produce supposed evidence for Molyneux’ banning policies.

For example, a Liberated Minds member nicked “ReIgNoFrAdNeSs” (Reign of Radness), posted this topic as “katietron” and later in Liberated Minds topic said:

“Recently, when someone asked for clarification on his forum, he gave the curt reply, ‘I have never seen a UPB discussion work out well on a Board, the concepts are too slippery for this format, and everyone always just ends up frustrated. I invite the OP to call into the Sunday show, 4pm EST, to ask these questions directly…’”

That ’someone’ was me (masquerading as a female named katietron)

Another member, QuestEon, who happens to be the author of FDRLiberated to whose articles I was responding in my last two parts, applauded this tactic by saying: “Good show on that!”.

Molyneux’ response to that topic however seemed fairly polite and did not in fact reflect an unwillingness to address the poster’s concerns, but invited the poster to pose it in a call in show (which of course accusers claim are manipulative, which I’ve already addressed in previous parts, they will claim anything). This is his common response to critiques or requests for clarification on the boards. As the response clearly indicates, he does not consider boards to be a good medium to discuss that particular topic.

5. “But he threatened LM with violence?”

Consistent with the whole “purging of dissent” line of accusations it was actually claimed that Molyneux threatened LM with violence, which is a claim of actual authoritarian-style attempt to purge dissent even by dissenters own venues. I wish to put this claim to rest once and for all.

The sole basis of this claim is Molyneux’ plea in this video where he says that “using these words without detailed and specific evidence is actionable legal slander” and where he also states:

“You can call me all of these things, but you can’t call me an embezzler. You can call me names and that’s fine, but you cannot call me a thief, you cannot say I kidnap people and lock them in because that’s where you’re starting to talk about facts and as we’ve seen there are very specific facts which need to be presented with objective evidence in order to support the charges of cult. Cult is a very specific legal term that is different from “jerk”, you can call me a jerk, I’m never gonna get bothered by it fundamentally, but when you’re gonna use words like brainwashing, cult, cult leader and so on, that is specific, that is associated with criminal activity and you need to provide evidence or you need to withdraw those claims. If you call my show a cult, or me a cult leader, and do not provide objective evidence from standardized definitions, you and I will have a problem. Don’t do it, let’s not go down that road. That’s silly, let’s keep the debate on principles

The terms “actionable legal slander” is taken as to mean that he can take legal action against those using terms in question to portray his show. What accusers infer from this is that he effectively threatened to sue them and since it is impossible to sue someone today without state courts and since state is the one enforcing laws against slander, this is seen as threatening to use state violence against them.

But this simply does not follow. As is seen in the quote above, he clearly states that the accusations in question are associated with criminal activity given that many cults foster certain acts which are not only illegal (by laws of state), but morally illegitimate (natural law referred to by libertarians for the principle of non-aggression). Therefore accusing FDR a cult without real basis not only presents potential harm to the value of FDR and its brand and reputation, but puts FDR in a legally vulnerable situation to others who may in fact initiate legal action against him.

Even in a free society which Stefan Molyneux, libertarians and voluntaryists promote, filing disputes for arbitration on the basis of baseless slander is not inconceivable. In market anarchy there would be a severe plurality of private courts with various terms of service. If Liberated Minds, for instance, was a group registered with court A and that court had provisions against slanderous activity, one can certainly sue Liberated Minds if they break such a contract. If they however went with the service without provisions against slander, Molyneux could still claim a dispute with it by means of a different arbitration agency which could have some sort of a contract with the agency representing LM which would allow a way of settling inter-agency disputes.

Whichever route was pursued the bottom line is that Molyneux could claim that his business was damaged by what were deliberately slanderous and untrue statements against potential customers of his business, claiming that these slanderers are perpetrating fraud. If he could prove that he is at a loss as a direct consequences of said slander, and the arbiter determines that the claims they have been making truly were without basis and deliberate attempts at smear, with conclusive evidence, LM could conceivably be forced to pay damages.

But given that we do not live in such a society and are all subject to the same coerced set of rules, appealing to the vulnerable legal state seems entirely reasonable.

In any case, quite a bit of misrepresentation is necessary for this to be understood as a threat that flies in the face of Molyneux’ own philosophy.

Addendum: One thing which was not explicitly stated above, albeit it ties well into the explanation of possibility of filing a dispute against LM even in a free society, is that threatening legal action is not the same thing as threatening violence since initiation of legal action is merely an initiation of dispute. The fact that state has a monopoly on dispute resolution changes that only in so far as neither FDR nor LM agreed to the terms prohibiting slander of any kind (since state coerces its rules), but it is worth pointing out that this makes both FDR and LM vulnerable, not just LM. Thus if FDR would indeed continue to be associated with criminal activity it could as well end up in some sort of a lawsuit by some parent, something that was even mentioned (if not suggested) as a future possibility at LM. Going “down that road” certainly constitutes a problem between FDR and LM that Molyneux suggested. In any case to treat Molyneux’ statements here as a necessarily thin veiled threat of violence without considering the whole context is just slanted attitude talking.

This accusation thus fails and the best that they’ve got to work with, if even that, is him asking certain people to stop posting on his own board. I hope this at least offers some food for thought and an alternative perspective on this aspect of the controversy.

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): FDR Controversy Part 3: Response to the “analysis” of Molyneux’ response to the UK Guardian article

2009-07-10T11:40:36+00:00

EDIT: If you wish to skip this article due to its length please check The Times interview and consider downloading and listening to it. It contains evidence that refutes much of the assertions in the analysis hereby responded.

Continuing with my series on the FDR Controversy I wish to share certain points pertaining to the purported analysis of Stefan Molyneux’ response to the UK Guardian article.

* The UK guardian article: “You’ll never see me again”
* Stefan Molyneux’ response: “How to Escape a “Controversial Online Community!” (um - close your browser..?)
* FDRLiberated “analysis” of the response: Molyneux’s response to the UK Guardian article, analyzed .

I will do this point by point as it helps address everything that is relevant and in order to quote the article in its current edition so it’s clear what exactly is being addressed.

In the last article, however, where I addressed the “brief introduction” to FDRLiberated.com it was clear that this web site is far from unbiased. It appeared like a presentation of one particular story or picture about FDR which isn’t always backed by direct evidence and is largely constructed by conjecture.

Note that the author at the beginning of this article does not deny that he is biased as he says: “I’ll state my own biases up front, so you can interpret my assessment as you will. I do believe that FreeDomainRadio (FDR) is a therapeutic cult that is in the seminal stages of development.” While his being up front about it may be applauded this hardly inspires confidence that this site is more than an attempt to portray FDR in accordance to this particular bias regardless of what the actual truth may be.

If I have negative feelings about FDR at all, it is only because it promotes itself as a significant Libertarian voice. Given the difficulty that Libertarians in general have in helping people understand our point of view, I’m concerned that–if FDR is a significant voice–then they could be a detriment to the movement. For a large number of people, it is their first experience with Libertarianism.

As explained in my last article FDR is also the biggest if not the only project that encourages consistent application of libertarian principles in every day lives without which the libertarian movement of which the author is here concerned of remains to a large extent hypocritical, and some people do call them out on this. If we believe in the non-initiation of force and fraud as a moral principle why do we support those who support violation of or themselves violate this principle? Again, Wilton D. Alston’s article is apt: Do You Really Want Freedom, Or Are You Just Kidding Yourself? It’s a damn serious question.

The headline of the article strikes an important theme that will occur later in the response—Molyneux’s diminution of FDR as “simply a Web site.” To make his case, it is important for Molyneux to characterize FDR as a simple forum/podcast where people exchange ideas. The truth is, this is the first time I’ve heard Molyneux take such a humble view of FDR. His vision has always been grandiose.

FDR is a financial enterprise and Molyneux’s sole source of revenue. It is a complicated system of video and audio podcast outreach, on-line forum, chatroom, media library, books, and a distribution of members into a hierarchy. There is clearly a social system on display: at the highest level in the hierarchy is an inner circle that enforces behavior and thoughts posted to the site. Critics of the site or Molyneux are swiftly purged.

1. Grandiose statements can certainly be made about something that is not more than a web site.

2. Something being a sole source of revenue tells us absolutely nothing of significance. My web sites are my sole source of income, so what?

3. Podcasts, on-line forum, chatroom, media library and books are all distributed by means of a web site and can thus certainly be “escaped” by solely closing the browser window as Stefan points out. Not all of this is hosted solely on FDR web site, but that does not somehow decrease the ease with which one can get away from it.

4. The so called “social system” referred to is consistent with just about any other online community with levels of participation. The so called “inner circle” (which sounds more like mythology invented by those behind the smear campaign) is easily equivalent to moderators on other forums.

5. That “critics of the site or Molyneux are swiftly purged” sounds like a sweeping generalization. Even IF the atmosphere towards criticism of what FDR or Stef represents is not particularly encouraged on the boards, plenty of call in shows and publicly available recorded debates seem to testify to the opposite of outright purging of criticism. But hold that thought.. I am going to address this issue in the next article specifically, given how much fuss is thrown around this assertion.

FDR members have vacationed together, attended annual BBQ’s at the Molyneux home together, attended philosophy and psychology seminars conducted Molyneux and his wife, and more.

I assume this is supposed to contribute to the point that it is harder to get out of FDR community then just closing a browser because it implies certain social bounds. First of all, the idea promoted by FDR that all relationships are voluntary does not somehow exclude relationships between certain FDR members no matter how much certain accusers would want to advance such a claim. There is no evidence that anybody is coerced into such relationships or instilled unchosen positive obligations towards them. I would defer to part 1 for further examination of that (re all manipulation, control, dishonesty etc. claims).

Of course many online web sites have similar social events and meet ups and most of them are never as explicit about these relationships being without positive obligations as FDR. They’re seldom chastised for it.

But above all–more than anything else–FDR members are intellectually, psychologically, and emotionally invested in a utopian worldview based on Molyneux’s unique approach to anarcho-capitalism. Even though they understand at some level that the utopian society they hope for is at minimum generations away, their investment is powerful enough for many of them to live lives in near-isolation, each one a modern-day Diogenes, hoping to find “honest and virtuous relationships” based on Molyneux’s definition of such relationships.

This is another sweeping generalization. There are currently 3 467 members on FDR and while not all of them are active at all time what basis does the author have for claiming that all of these members or even all of the members who are currently active are without other social circles or that they haven’t even been able to build such ideal relationships which some of them may strive for?

Also, what basis is there for claiming that all of them are anarcho-capitalists? I have easily encountered people who are in fact minarchists and who have debated anarcho-capitalism and continue to participate.

The author is simply trying to arbitrarily infer or invent some supposedly hard to break tie ins to the FDR community. Yet in the case which the Guardian’s article, Stefan’s response and consequently this “analysis” is about, the guy in question didn’t have contact with Stefan Molyneux for months, never met him live and appears to be leading a rather normal life. It’s hardly a case of being trapped in FDR.

Glad? At the time of this writing, it has been discovered that those who now visit Liberating Minds (a site that contains a sub-forum where Molyneux’s ideas are discussed, often critically) and click on a link that leads to FreeDomainRadio may find themselves IP banned from FDR. Not just Liberating Minds members–anyone whose browser tells FDR that the previously visited site was Liberating Minds. This happened the day after the furor over the Guardian article began.

Somehow, this doesn’t seem like the actions of someone who is glad. More like the action of someone furiously trying to control the conversation.

Liberated Minds is by Stefan Molyneux considered a smear campaign. It was largely founded by banned or other former members some of which have made certain disturbing expressions against Stefan Molyneux. It provided the atmosphere of encouragement for mother’s advances against FDR and her sons choice in the media and it continues to serve as a place where even the extreme and unfounded accusations easily gain sympathy. The “smear campaign” characterization doesn’t seem far off.

Given such an identification of Liberated Minds one of the obvious responses would be to defend against it by any means at his disposal and Molyneux apparently believed IP bans were among such means, which given that he owns the site is perfectly within his right (whether I agree with such means is thus irrelevant unless I want to make enough fuss over it to leave a site in protest, which I don’t).

Saying that he is glad the article is out because it constitutes media attention and that he is especially pleased that the concept of voluntary relationships got out hardly means the same thing as being glad that Liberated Minds as such are the ones behind this media outing.

More important, let’s consider the apparent bias of the article.

Molyneux is correct, of course. The Guardian article is slanted. But is that good or bad? The reporter clearly wrote the article from a particular point of view and made no attempt to hide it. And so what? It’s not hard news.

The better question is what led this reporter to her bias?

My perspective is the Guardian article is a result of the reporter’s research. If she had written instead a chronology of how she researched and wrote the article, perhaps the perception of bias might have been different:

A mother calls the Guardian and complains that a Web site ate her son. The reporter is skeptical. It’s far more likely that something bad has happened in the family. She begins to research–how could a simple Web site influence kids to leave their parents? But then she’s surprised to learn from the son’s siblings that they remember a happy childhood. She talks to cult experts about the techniques of Undue Influence. She logs onto the FDR chatroom to watch Tom’s mother attacked by other FDR members. She listens to the podcasts. She reads the books. She hears the many contradictions in Molyneux’s claims (”I don’t charge anything for what it is I do”–except FDR is his sole source of revenue.). She realizes that it is much bigger than a Web site. At some point, she makes the conclusion it is a cult and it is a tragedy. She writes the article from that point of view. It is thoroughly vetted by attorneys prior to publication.

Typically, journalists are natural skeptics and I’d tend to wager skepticism is where the research from this article began.

You may not agree with her conclusions, but I am inclined to think they were indeed conclusions and not her starting point. The bias arose as a result of research.

Common elements of journalistic ethics include objectivity and impartiality as is quoted from wikipedia:

While various existing codes have some differences, most share common elements including the principles of — truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability — as these apply to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public.[3][4][5][6]

Note the emphasis. It is exactly the final product with all of its conclusions which is supposed to be objective and impartial, not just the process of acquisition and research. The fact that the author of the Guardian article did research does not excuse her bias at all, as the author of this “analysis” seems to think.

Additionally, while certain elements of the chronology of the journalist’s research may be inferred from the Guardian article, the author hardly has enough evidence to claim the above description of it as conclusive.

There is one other thing to be noted in this instance. Describing the said chronology the author notes: “She hears the many contradictions in Molyneux’s claims (”I don’t charge anything for what it is I do”–except FDR is his sole source of revenue.).

This is where he sets up a false dichotomy between not charging for what he does and depending on it as his sole source of revenue which effectively discounts the possibility of a person living solely off of donations. For him to be charging for his work he would make it available exclusively upon a payment and not regardless of whether there was a payment or not. Thus he is both not charging people and living off of the donations. Of course, he does charge for a very small portion of the content (premium podcasts), but that is openly admitted so the claims of not charging obviously do not refer to those.

Of course if he would eventually begin charging for all of it, his right to do so would be indisputable given that he is the producer of that content.

I don’t think it’s “striking” at all. One only needs to see how thoroughly Molyneux’s followers have excoriated this mother (one even found and posted her picture and other personal information on the FDR site) to see why the other parents stayed off the record. They know who they’re dealing with.

Tom’s mother is an educated woman who knew what would happen going in. I consider her decision to proceed, fully aware of what would happen, a courageous act.

1. I did not find the picture and personal information posted on the FDR.

2. Even if it was posted by that one member that hardly implies direct responsibility on Stefan Molyneux’ part.

3. Mrs. Weed already outed her personal information through the media.

4. A libertarian calling the act of public humiliation of a son by his own mother for making a voluntary choice to disengage (based on physical intimidation no less) a “courageous act” is quite ironic and hypocritical (as pointed out in part 2). The mentioned condemnation would be more consistent with the principles the author supposedly upholds as a libertarian and market anarchist.

This is complete conjecture. Molyneux has no idea who Kate talked to, so his polite sarcasm here is without merit. She simply didn’t use the quotes of everyone she talked to, most likely for space reasons. Reporters must edit their articles to fit a specific word count. Neither Molyneux, me, nor anyone else outside of the Guardian knows who Kate talked to or were privy to the choices made of what to include and what to cut.

While accusing (in this case probably rightfully) Molyneux of conjecture the author himself first makes a statement that implies certainty of that she did talk to said individuals,but simply chose not to quote them, and then claims he nor anyone else can know who Kate talked to. A little sentence to sentence consistency would help. In any case this may be a fair point, for once.

This is re-framing by Molyneux. First, he has no knowledge of the marriage and his comments on it are all conjecture. Sadly, if the relationship was already strained, one of the worst things that could have happened is losing an 18-year-old son to a cult. Talk to the family of a cult member (any cult) and you will hear tales of near unbearable grief and pain. Molyneux, who is now making conjectures about the marriage, quite possibly greatly contributed to the rift!

I would agree he was conjecturing. However that marriages don’t end over night (or in any case quickly) was a reasonable assumption considering the well known nature of such a process. As someone whose parents are divorced I can definitely testify to that. This paragraph however repeats a baseless and refuted cult claim. Tom’s break with his parents may have escalated the marital problems, but that has nothing to do with whether FDR is a cult, nor is their marriage in any way Tom’s responsibility nor was the break up Stefan’s decision made in stead of Tom.

And really, as far as all the conjecture accusations, pot calls the kettle black.

In addition, it is a common complaint among families that by the time kids reach their teen-age years, family meals are rare. It’s not a “striking fact”–it’s normal! It’s a direct result of teenagers beginning to build their own busy lives as they grow to adulthood.

That is a fair point. Of course it doesn’t change the fact that such meals were, as the mother confirmed, rare. Still, in healthy and exceptional relationships between a child and a parent, which seem quite rare, such shared meals would have probably been more common.

Furthermore, this effectively reflects a child’s readiness to alter the previous relationship arrangement with his parents and embark on his own, which would still to a large degree go in favor of Stefan’s point, especially given that the mother knew that he was well and probably happy. So her whole reason for this media circus is that this departure came with a complete termination of the relationship and thus denies her the pleasure to participate in it. These are pretty selfish reasons for such extreme initiatives as what she undertook. One would hope that if she truly loved him, she would try to understand and let him go without this exercise in humiliation.

Regarding the father’s temper, there isn’t much excusable about it. Anger management is a good thing. However, none of us outside know anything about the severity and frequency of the anger—only that he took it out on inanimate objects in his office and yelling at the family cat.

We know what his very son expressed in the call in show and it involved a little more than was mentioned in the guardian article (such as window smashing for instance, which counts as completely destructive behavior) and was enough for the guy to publicly burst into tears while talking about it. Both the author and the spouse of this angered man appear to understate the severity of the problem by ignoring certain instances of publicly available testimony (the call in show).

What I do know is that Molyneux consistently re-frames the parental actions he finds unfavorable using the most extreme terms he can get his hands on, as part of his persuasion. It is part of the dishonest technique he uses to bond with his members. “My parents were mean sometimes,” says the member. “Mean?” Molyneux replies, “they were monsters!”

So it comes as no surprise during the podcast when Molyneux refers to the Tom’s father’s “psychotic rage” and “his sick and disgusting rages.” He calls the father a “sick son-of-a-bitch,” “terrifying,” “violent,” “a bully,” “dangerous,” “psychotic,” “insane,” and, finally, “the devil.” All characterizations come from Molyneux, not Tom.

And for the coup de grâce, he tells the 18-year-old, “your mother didn’t protect you from the devil–she created you for the devil.”

It is unclear to me how the road to mental health for an 18-year-old begins by convincing him that his father is Satan and mother simply a servant who spawned him as a diabolical offering.

The first paragraph is conjecture and generalization without reference to evidence, especially the charge of dishonesty which was among many other things addressed in part 1.

That said, it is true that Stefan Molyneux used rather extreme and colorful language in this particular call in show. What is seldom stated, however, is that such terminology comes after the guy publicly burst into tears while talking about the issue he called about which coincidentally had to do with the treatment of animals, like the cat that his father consistently kicked. Tom might have not uttered those specific terms that Stefan did, but he certainly set the stage for emotional escalation in the context of which such extreme statements begin to make more sense, as emphatic expressions. And this is the context out of which such terms are usually quoted.

To better understand this consider an example which is essentially an emotional and contextual equivalent to this case. Jack tells his best friend Joe about a particular case where Fred whom he thought was a good friend bullied him with intimidation and humiliation and as he describes this to Joe he begins crying. Upon experiencing this Joe tries to comfort Jack, but also hurls certain ugly terms for Fred as a particular kind of expression of empathy towards Jack. His terms could include such things as “what an asshole he is”, “a god damn backstabber”, “a total nutcase” or even “he should go back to hell where he came from” and of course “he is obviously not your friend and you should probably not have anything to do with that guy”.

Yet in such a case seldom would people consider Joe to be manipulating Jack into breaking his supposed friendship with Fred. Instead most people would normally consider Joe’s reaction completely justified and a sign of empathy for how Jack is feeling.

Now that doesn’t mean I necessarily agree with his use of such terminology and that I would not condemn it as a little over the top. But who would take these expressions to be serious and literal portrayals of Tom’s parents the way the author here seems to imply when he speaks about Stefan “convincing [Tom] that his father is Satan and mother simply a servant who spawned him as a diabolical offering” (in his own chosen words, as this is not a literal quote of Stefan)? I would wager a bet that Tom is not living his life today in some conviction that his father is a devil that spawned from hell. Gah.

Patently untrue. You can be manipulated into that kind of emotion. Ask any qualified psychologist. I believe Molyneux consistently uses manipulation during the therapy sessions he provides for his followers. He plants suggestions, pushes emotions, and draws conclusions throughout to lead his subjects where he wants them to go. I believe he employed it in the very podcast in question. The link is below. So, please–listen to it yourself and make your own decision.

http://www.freedomainradio.com/Traffic_Jams/FDR_1037_Sunday_April_13_2008.mp3

(Tom’s therapy begins at about an hour and 25 minutes in. It starts with Tom saying, “Hi Stef, I have a yearning, burning, if that’s OK?” [I believe he means "yearning, burning question."])

I do join in the call for readers to listen to the podcast in question and draw their own conclusions.

By itself, the claim that one can be manipulated into bursting to tears and that every qualified psychologist would confirm this, cannot stand. One would have to actually refer to a psychologist’s discussion of that possibility and methods by which this can supposedly be achieved. This is my own suspicion, but a suspicion nevertheless; that what is possible is to drive a person to certain ingrained feelings which would make that particular person very emotional. But this is not an exercise of manipulation and planting of emotions which were not already there, but an archeology of emotions which WERE there all along.

If any psychologist says that a therapist can make somebody cry, but does not provide the exact methodology of doing this, then that claim alone cannot be given as evidence for the author’s assertion above. Only if methodology is explained and if it involves somehow planting of emotions which were never before present may it serve as such evidence, not that it would necessarily be completely conclusive because different psychologists may have different views on the matter.

In any case, the author simply doesn’t provide enough to back his outright “Patently not!” exclamation.

Again, minimizing (his role) and maximizing (the family problems). The actual facts so far indicate a normal family to me. It’s by no means perfect—clearly the father had problem controlling his temper. Yet, I have no doubt Kate–a highly respected journalist–thoroughly investigated this family before putting her reputation on the line. And does anyone think the Guardian would hang itself by running a negative article on Molyneux, only to discover an untenable family problem? I do not.

This paragraph is full of irony. Undisputed accounts from both Guardian and the recording of the call in show portray the father as someone with serious anger issues and someone who engaged in violence destructive and harmful to both his pet and his property (smashed windows, throwing stuff around), yet the author claims this to be a normal family.

If the author is right then we truly live in a very sad society and much of what Stefan Molyneux says about common abuse in families turns out to be true. If the author is wrong then this family is abnormally worse. If one would claim my standards for a normal family are too high, well then I suppose you’re fine with your father kicking your cat, smashing your window and throwing things while shouting with rage. Enjoy your normal family.

What’s also ironic is that Kate’s and Guardian’s credentials are emphasized in an attempt to strengthen the legitimacy of this story when the story itself accounts for throwing things and shouting at the cat, explicitly acknowledging Tom’s fear of him. It doesn’t appear like the author of this purported analysis is doing himself any favors here.

Of course Guardian does understate the issue, but given that the author himself refers to the call in show recording as valid evidence, he simply cannot discount what Tom himself says of his father in that recording, which adds to what the Guardian article acknowledged.

We’ve finally reached a point in the response where there is a glimmer of substance in this reply, but the glimmer is obscured beneath layers of Molyneux re-framing.

Here’s the glimmer. Everyone experiences their family differently because everyone experiences communication differently. Anyone who has studied personality types knows that each different personality type experiences the same interaction differently. It has been the stuff of drama and comedy for centuries and often the root cause of family dysfunction.

Amazingly enough looks like the author throws Mr. Molyneux a bone here. With respect to such differences in experiencing certain interactions it is not these differences for which one ought to be condemned, of course, but the willingness to try and understand the other’s point of view, the curiosity (which also happens to be one of the crucial things Stefan Molyneux emphasizes in his book “Real Time Relationships: Logic of Love”).

However, without details of the content of what was being discussed between Tom and his mother it is rather impossible to determine if she or he was truly open and curious or not, her one sided claims notwithstanding. This is why Stefan’s asking of those questions was completely sensible.

But Molyneux misses the opportunity for true healing when he mentions Tom’s “genuine experience.” No, it’s Tom’s personal experience. Molyneux’s use of the word “genuine” implies that only Tom’s interpretation is true. Tom’s experience is no more (nor less) “genuine” than his mother’s, father’s, or siblings.

Here the author gets mixed up by trying to make a distinction between “genuine” and “personal” and ends up attacking a straw man (since the claim he tries to address is one not raised by Molyneux). A reputable Merriam-Webster dictionary has these relevant definitions of “genuine”:

* actually produced by or proceeding from the alleged source or author
* sincerely and honestly felt or experienced
* free from hypocrisy or pretense

The author claims that by using the word “genuine” Molyneux implies that only Tom’s interpretation is true, as if “genuine” refers to objectivity rather than sincerity, honesty and lack of pretense. As can be seen from the above definition, however, the only thing that Molyneux could have been referring to here is that Tom did not seem to fake his experience (and I didn’t hear anyone accuse him of doing so). Molyneux never claimed the experience of his mother, father and siblings is less genuine.

This is the point where Molyneux’s victimization of his followers typically begins. Had Tom and his mother gone together to a qualified relationship or family counselor–one who had been educated in the personality-type disconnect I mention above, Tom would not only have found a healthy environment to discuss his issues on the family, but also he and his mother would have received the tools they needed to deepen their loving, family relationship. They would have learned how to talk.

In this video Molyneux claims to have heard from Tom that he did try to “work things out with his family, requesting protection from his father and suggesting family and/or individual counseling” and that “his pleas were all rejected”. Tom confirms this in The Times interview with Tom Whipple where he says the following:

“I tried to sort of improve the situation, improve the relationship, but it didn’t prove to be an easy thing to say the least” and “In talking with my parents, with my mother in particular, I couldn’t sort of broach the topic, (as if) it wasn’t something she wanted to get into at all. I stayed around for a bit and tried to get into it with her, but because that sort of progress wasn’t forthcoming I didn’t feel like it would be and she didn’t agree to get into therapy and my therapist said to me; this guy, your dad especially sounds like a violent one..” In that interview Tom shares a very revealing testimony on the case, shows no regret of his choice and in fact expresses that he feels happy.”

Secondly, whether one goes to counseling or not is obviously not solely up to Molyneux nor Tom himself, but up to the parents in question as well. If a blame is to be laid on the failure to communicate, both Tom and his parents are candidates. Given that these are not his relationships and that he did not make any explicit and direct suggestions (and actually emphasized that the decision was up to Tom, suggesting even some compromises such as staying with parents, but limiting contact with father), Molyneux is hardly the one responsible for failure of communication between Tom and the mother.

In fact what he has to say could largely be helpful in such instances should the parents be open to such an advice. The following would illustrate this.

The Guardian article quoted the mother describing an example of accusations she met in her attempts to persuade, negotiate and compromise as follows:

Barbara says she tried everything - persuasion, negotiation, compromise. “But Tom didn’t seem interested in communicating, merely in throwing accusations - for instance that his brother John and me were fond of laughing at him, which wasn’t true. I began to notice that he was interpreting all family interactions as abusive.

If this example is reflective of the accusations that Tom apparently made against his family it is also reflective of a response the mother had towards them, which is obviously immediately dismissive, a complete denial. Simple denial of a problem expressed by Tom is effectively akin to calling him a liar. It’s like asking “what’s wrong” and once the answer is one you did not expect or personally do not see or agree with just dismissing the answer like “oh, but that’s simply not true” rather than being curious as to why exactly would he think so.

This is exactly the kind of behavior described in “Real Time Relationships: Logic of love”. If the advice of curiosity rather than dismissal was followed, the communication that the author speaks of could have indeed been established. It would not be far off to imagine that Tom indeed tried to point this out to his mother and encourage her to be curious, given that he has read this book. It would also not surprise why would he dismiss his mother after she repeatedly dismissed what he had to say as him “interpreting all family interactions as abusive”.

That didn’t occur and could never occur in a conversation with Molyneux. Instead, he typically puts his arms around his caller and says, “I know you have the genuine understanding of your family. In fact, I’ll show that it’s even worse than you think. Are you sure staying with them is healthy?”

The reliance on the use of the word of “genuine” as somehow manipulative has been already been addressed above. Other than that the author is putting words into Molyneux’ mouth. What is here described as “showing that it’s even worse than you think” can just as well represent validating that ones emotional suspicions aren’t necessarily lying and that whatever negative emotion you do feel about a particular relationship you’re free to experience and address it rather than repress it as nothing significant.

It is easy to see how would the author and others interested in smear misrepresent one for the other.

Molyneux is probably right. I’ll suggest a scenario. The Guardian reporter, the editor, and the lawyers were talking. The lawyer said “In this article here, you refer to FDR as a ‘cult.’ You could be setting us up for a lawsuit with that claim. I know you believe you can prove it, but it would still be a costly legal battle and we’re not guaranteed a win because the legal definition is fuzzy.”

The reporter said, “That’s sick. I know it’s a cult and you know it’s a cult and we can’t say it?”

Then the editor replied, “What we can do is take out the connection but leave the paragraph about the CIC in. The readers will make the connection themselves, even if we don’t. We’ll get the message across and not open ourselves up to the liability.”

I’m suggesting that the Guardian decided to identify FDR as a cult in a way that minimized their legal liability, so on that Molyneux is probably correct. I also suspect that Molyneux hasn’t heard the last of the CIC.

This is just fictional storytelling, pure and simple. The author previously accused Stefan Molyneux of framing, yet he is here doing so much more than just framing. He is painting an entire picture all of his own and then using it as basis for his claims.

He may defend this as just trying to make a point, but in the process of doing it he relies on a few assumptions which he completely made up (that there was any kind of a conversation like this, that the reporter and the lawyer are both truly as strongly convinced this is a cult etc.). Without that story, not more could be inferred than Molyneux already did, making this entire section a superfluous attempt to hype up the association between FDR and cults, not to mention make a snide remark about this not being the first time Molyneux would hear of CIC.

The net effect is that a family has been ripped apart.

Only someone who believes holding together no matter how painful it may be to those involved would see this break up as such a tragic “ripping apart of the family”. By that same logic, divorce is something that should almost never happen, at least not on the basis of such things as shouting, throwing things around, breaking windows, kicking pets etc. Yet of course we see divorces happen for far lesser reasons involving more subtle forms of emotional pain and sometimes a simple inability to understand each other.

Why is it so incredibly hard to demand the same standards for relationships with our parents? Why this double standard? The usual reason behind such irrational inconsistencies is cultural bias and conformity. It’s simply the way it has always been done. It’s effectively tradition. Parents are supposed to be the ones relationship with whom should almost never be terminated and there is a general encouragement of nearly life long indebtedness to them (regardless of the fact that their choosing to have a child was voluntary and what they provided through the childhood was freely given rather than traded for something, or otherwise it really is a case of giving birth and raising solely to have someone to serve you later in life).

The net effect is that Molyneux has helped spread anger, sadness, and grief not only to Tom’s mother and father, but also to every relative and friend, all of whom have been discarded by Tom as a result of Molyneux’s coaching.

He here continues to make generalized and unfounded claims. How does he know that Tom broke up with all of his friends and relatives? Furthermore, how does he know that all of these mentioned relatives and friends are so grieved, angered or sad about such a break up.

Sounds like simple petty emotional sensationalism.

The net effect is that Molyneux has thrust Tom in a long-term existence of unresolved feelings about his family–his anger and his love–that will never be resolved in any healthy way as long as he remains a member of FDR. It has been nine years since Molyneux himself has spoken to any members of his own family, yet they are constantly on his mind. He speaks of his anger against them often, even while he speaks of his glorious new life of freedom.

He wishes Tom the same.

How would he resolve anything if his parents persist in being dismissive every time he expresses that he has a problem, claiming that it’s not so and he must be exaggerating, imagining etc.! How long a time should he waste, indeed with unresolved emotions with regards to these relationships, before he simply finds them to be lost causes? Given the logic that the author seems to operate with, it would probably be close to “his whole life”.

Of course, that breaking a relationship at a point of realization that the relationship was not worth it or doomed anyway simply doesn’t qualify as “having unresolved anger and love”. The whole point of exiting a relationship in such circumstances is to put it all behind and move on to striving to build something better.

And what evidence does the author possibly have to be able to so confidently claim that Molyneux’ parents are “constantly on his mind”? Merely speaking of them often hardly constitutes evidence for constant obsession, not that it actually is “often” considering that most podcasts don’t even deal with the topic of family relationships.

In any case there is a big difference between having unresolved emotions towards his parents and having unresolved issues which are a result of being exposed to particular treatment at a young and formative age. Old habits die hard and this can reasonably apply to old mentalities and emotional complexes. It doesn’t help that he is running a show that is supposed to, among other things, produce useful material on exactly these topics which would naturally remind of his parents with some frequency, as they are the only parents he had first hand early experience with.

When you listen to the podcast, you actually hear that the tears begin for Tom early on, when he is speaking in general about the violence that men do, before Molyneux steers the already distraught Tom to a discussion about his parents.

One cannot hear tears. I assume what he’s referring to are the occasional breaths through the nose (excuse me if I’m missing a proper term, I’m not native english speaker and I’ve never had to describe refer to this before in english), but those are quite ambiguous as far as determining if somebody is tearing up or not is concerned. So neither the author nor Molyneux could know for sure if he’s really crying there or just being obviously bothered by what he’s describing.

I believe if there was any surprise to Molyneux, it was a pleasant surprise. Leaders of therapeutic cults commonly tell their victims that they must experience the pain their “therapies” dish out in order to feel better. Molyneux himself once described the pain and depression you feel as your “old limbs reawakening.”

Statements of beliefs are not necessarily statements of facts. It is assuming quite a lot to so readily claim that it was a pleasant surprise, regardless of what is claimed about what therapeutic cults commonly tell their victims.

In his review of Crazy Therapies, by Margaret Thaler Singer and Janja Lalich, Bob Conrad noted, “Finally, it is quite amazing that most of the therapists discussed by Singer and Lalich seem oblivious or indifferent to their role in priming and prompting their patients. They condition their patients, prompt them, and in some cases, clearly plant notions in their patient’s minds. They give their patients books to read or videos to watch not to help the patient understand a problem but to prime the patient for belief in some crazy therapy. They plant notions during hypnosis, group sessions, etc., and then these planted notions are “recovered” and offered as validation of their therapeutic techniques and theories. Rather than provide real therapy, these “crazy” therapists indoctrinate patients into their own worldviews. This is surreal pseudoscience at its worst.”

First of all, Molyneux does not claim to be offering therapy sessions of any sort and in fact repeatedly and explicitly recommends therapy by professional therapists.

That said, describing dishonest and deliberately manipulative practices of others is hardly evidence of this being perpetrated by Molyneux. Simply offering books and podcasts to read or listen does not by itself indicate an attempt to merely prime the reader/listener towards belief in some sort of a crazy therapy session rather than a genuine desire to express or promote certain sincerely held ideas.

An activity or process A resembling an activity or process B in appearance does not make A equal to B.

Furthermore, relationship issues are only a small portion of the overall set of topics and ideas discussed.

(In the book, the authors also implore readers to immediately abandon any therapist who “requires as a condition for therapy that you cut off all relations with your spouse, children, parents and other loved ones.”

To claim that Molyneux poses such a condition is blatantly false. Most times he has conversations with people before they make any such relationship decisions.

Molyneux completely misrepresents his role as a mere “sympathizer” for Tom. As Crazy Therapies suggests, Tom was primed prior to his Molyneux “therapy” session with hundreds of podcasts and forum conversations about evil parents. In none of these do you find Molyneux simply expressing sympathy for “child over the parent”–the subject is always child as victim of the parent. Always. When the already primed Tom showed up for his podcast therapy with Molyneux (as linked above), he was then prompted throughout until the goal of demonizing his mother was reached.

Absolutely no legitimate psychologist would validate the kind of leading, guided “therapy” Molyneux conducts.

“Priming” insinuations and framing of Molyneux’ conversation’s as “therapies” were already addressed.

The focus of his two books about relationships is on what is problematic, not on what is perfectly functional so of course that the relationships portrayed largely exhibit the “abuser and victim” dynamic. That said expressing sympathy for a child as a victim obviously does not contradict the expression of sympathy for a child over the parent. If this was supposed to pose a contradiction, it is clearly a false dichotomy.

Also, given that Molyneux never claims to conduct actual therapy (and himself refers people to professional therapy), no psychologists validation of therapies is sought nor necessary.

Correct. There is no therapist who would fundamentally disagree with that statement. However, all but the most lunatic among them would disagree with Molyneux’s recipe for “improving the quality of those relationships.” So let’s talk about that.

Let’s say you want to have relationship (including a parental one) with someone who believes in a religion or in some form of government. Here’s Molyneux’s response:
“I do think that it is important to talk to a statist patiently and with curiosity, and help him to understand that when he wishes to use government to achieve his ends, he is advocating the initiation of force against you.

In the same way, a Christian or Jew or Muslim all worship the morals in a holy book that commands death to unbelievers, promotes slavery and rape and other heinous crimes.

If people are willing to reject the use of violence in dealing with others, I think that is wonderful!

I don’t think that it is particularly honorable to remain ‘friends’ with someone who is unwilling to renounce the use of violence against you, but that is everyone’s decision to make of course…”

It’s slippery, but it’s definitive. He maintains that if you believe in either religion or government, then you therefore must believe in violence against him. Resultantly, the only way you can reject the use of violence is to renounce religion and statism completely. As he defines these two belief-sets, there is absolutely no middle ground.

In other words, to “improve the quality” of your relationship with one of his members, you must become an atheist anarcho-capitalist. And–as the atheist anarcho-capitalists who have been banned by FDR have discovered–you must actually believe in Molyneux’s own particular brand of it.

As his books such as “On Truth” demonstrate, this claim of “improving the quality of relationships” is all a fuzzy smokescreen. When you follow all the arguments to their end conclusion, you’re either in FDR or you are not. Period.

When you line all his arguments up and follow the arguments to the end, it is inescapable that FDR has never been about improving the quality of relationships. It is about deFOOing family and friends and replacing them with FDR relationships.

I have largely addressed this issue in my last article. It demonstrates the author’s hypocrisy as a market anarchist libertarian himself.

With the kind of criteria that are set forth by him anyone who practices his own moral beliefs completely and consistently is a burgeoning cultist because such a person would disassociate from those whom support the things which he finds immoral. So in order for you to not be a cultist you must be inconsistent in the application of your own moral beliefs.

It’s really hard to imagine then what exactly should FDR become for the accusers like him to be satisfied, other than for Stefan Molyneux to effectively stop practicing what he is promoting and just “chill a little” and sway into the realm of shallowness and compromise of principles.

Replace “FDR” in his last paragraph above with “consistent application of my principles” and you may get a semblance of actual truth. I am not saying that only FDR members are the ones with whom you can have relationships that are consistent with your principles, since such relationships can be made elsewhere without any reference to FDR and since your principles may conceivably differ from those promoted at FDR. But that is the inference which the author is trying to make.

FDR is a business and Molyneux’s sole source of income. He accepts donations because if he charged people for the therapy he provides, he would be committing a criminal act. Each month he makes a post hawking for donations and he grants rights and privileges to those who pay the most.

If he really were providing professional therapy it still doesn’t mean he would have to charge for it. That he doesn’t charge solely because he may not provide professional therapy without some state permit (which is what I assume “criminal act” is referring to) is complete conjecture that relies on a false assumption that he either claims to provide therapy or does provide real therapy.

To destroy any notion that FDR is anything other than a business, you may be interested in hearing this podcast I found during my internet searches where he happily talks about the revenue he earns from his internet business:

(Click on the lengthy article title, and when that page opens, click on the words “Episode 10″ to hear the podcast.)

http://www.profitablepodcasting.com/2007/08/

This interview was apparently conducted over a year ago, prior to the current monthly subscription model he employs now. I would guess his income is much higher now.

I don’t understand why is it at all significant to destroy the notion that FDR is not a business. In many ways it clearly and absolutely is a business. He is tirelessly providing value on a consistent basis and in return gaining significant returns. Its business model is simply one where nobody is charged for immediate access to content, but instead offered a chance to disseminate it and then pay as a sign of support and to gain certain vanity titles on the forum (like many other online communities).

I could not download the podcast in question as the direct link to an mp3 seems broken. However, judging from the description I don’t see anything objectionable. It appears to emphasize providing of good and useful content as one way to create a successful podcasting business based solely on donations where the sheer value of the podcasts themselves is enough to generate significant profits without directly charging for it.

That said, this talk about FDR being a business obviously in no way contradicts what Molyneux’ says about not charging people, so it’s entirely superfluous. I suppose the author believes this would be a negative point against FDR (it is not).

Molyneux’s humorous coinage of the term “argument from adjective,” is again extraordinarily ironic. Nothing is more prevalent on Molyneux’s site and in his conversations than the way he reframes everything he is against in the most extreme language possible.

Perhaps the larger question is if there is anything more to the argument than the adjective.

But that’s not the most important thing one learns in this passage. No–here we come to the sad realization that he is the most ardent believer in his own theories. He has no idea that the therapy he practices is the utmost quackery.

You may want to listen to the podcast and come to your own conclusions, but if you have time and money to spare you would find it far more revealing to ask a legitimate, reputable therapist to listen to it and critique Moyneux’s methods.

Competent therapists always ask open-ended questions. They do not guide patients to a conclusion they have already reached. They never plant. They never create connections between your feelings and events and convince you to accept them. They never use the technique of saying obvious truths in the beginning, followed by “Right? Right?” until you fall into the resultant pattern of saying “yes, yes” to everything they suggest later on. And when you reach the core of what you are trying to understand about your relationships, they never demonize the other party in an attempt to drive you further away.

The podcast is chilling in that it reveals a quack therapist–one of Singer’s “Crazy Therapists,”–with the kind of transparency few people ever get to witness first hand. It is only a result of Molyneux’s narcissism that he posts it with pride.

Insults are inconsequential (”quackery”). Insinuations of planting and manipulation I’ve already addressed here and in part 1. And the author continues to rely on a completely false assumption that allows him to treat Molyneux’ conversations as if they were actual therapies which again (a) he never claims them to be and (b) the author himself disputes them to be in any way comparable to professional therapies.

The goal, of course, is to portray them as some sorts of derogatory “crazy therapies” according to conditions which the author arbitrarily chose. As far as presenting facts, however, such tactics simply don’t count.

Why did Barbara approach Kate? Because she loves her son.

Barbara approached Kate knowing that she may be placing her relationship with her son at further risk, knowing that she would have to expose her private life to the world, knowing above all that she would be excoriated by Molyneux’s followers, knowing that those who do not understand cults may conclude that there “something wrong with the family” in the first place, knowing some might conclude she was the reason why Tom left, knowing that she would be scrutinized, dismissed, sneered at, or worse.

She knew all of that going in and she did it anyway. Why? Because it was her son.

The author seems to operate under the default assumption that the fact Tom was Barbara’s son, she must automatically love him and that him being her son is the only reason she went to the media, which is here portrayed as some sort of a self-sacrificial rather than a self-interested act.

This also flies in the face of the concept of love in that it essentially implies that the biological relations alone are enough for love rather than the integrity of the persons involved and their actual behavior towards each other. At best, this is pure mythology.

The basic argument comes down to “she loves you, thus you owe her” as if love implies positive obligations on the part of the loved one.

The true subject of the article is Molyneux. But the biggest danger Barbara knew she faced (and which Molyneux even quotes here) is that parental criticism of the leader is often reframed as criticism of the victim.

Molyneux has successfully inoculated himself among his followers against parental criticism through this technique. Find any thread on FDR where one of the members is complaining about a letter they have received from their parents or where the parent has foolishly tried to post directly, and you will see an instant response by Molyneux or his inner circle claiming that the child, not Molyneux, has been attacked.

And Molyneux and the inner circle gather around to electronically hug the “victim.”

And Molyneux skates away.

And the circle grows tighter.

But Molyneux’s response here also proves the CIC is correct, because while this article was a exposé of him and him alone, he feverishly spins it into something else. This entire response about his “simple Web site” and the unfairness of the Guardian is the duck gliding serenely across the lake. But underwater, his feet are paddling furiously to ensure you see it instead as an attack on Tom.

The truth is–among Kate, Barbara, and Molyneux– there is only one person using Tom.

And it is Molyneux.

In this response, as always, Tom becomes Molyneux’s shield, battering ram, and weapon to beat back the criticism and demonize Barbara, Kate, the Guardian, and beyond. Hiding behind his crocodile tears for “poor Tom,” Molyneux thrashes back against the world, against anyone who would dare criticize him.

Molyneux sees the article as an “exercise in humiliation.” I see him using Tom as a shield. And I view that as an exercise in cowardice.

Well, pot again calls kettle black. The author again uses the exact same tactic he accuses Molyneux of using, only in the opposite direction. The assumption is that there is manipulation and dishonesty going on and he certainly believes that it is not him that does the manipulating here. In any case while accusing Molyneux of portraying Tom as the sole victim in order to smear Guardian, Barbara etc. the author is portraying Tom as the victim in order to smear Molyneux.

I view that as an exercise in futility.

Again, it’s not a Web site we’re dealing with. It’s Molyneux. And what he claims above here is completely false. Consider this passage from the book The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook, by Dr. Bruce Perry:

“We know today that, just like when you open a Microsoft Word file on your computer, when you retrieve a memory from where it is stored in the brain, you automatically open it to “edit.” You may not be aware that your current mood and environment can influence the emotional tone of your recall, your interpretation of events and even your beliefs about which events actually took place. But when you “save” the memory again and place it back into storage, you can inadvertently modify it. When you discuss your memory of an experience, the interpretation you hear from a friend, family member, or a therapist can bias how and what you recall the next time you pull up that “file.” Over time, incremental changes can even lead to the creation of memories that did not take place. In the lab, researchers have been able to encourage test subjects to create memories of childhood events that didn’t happen: some as common as being lost in a mall, others as extreme as seeing someone possessed by a demon.”

What Kate says about Molyneux’s influence is completely true. Memories can be altered and a therapist wouldn’t know it, especially if they’re not looking for it in the first place. I wonder how many members of FDR disclose the full details of FDR and its leader’s therapeutic activities to their therapists?

I would again like to reiterate that something being possible is not an evidence of it actually being done, especially deliberately, by Molyneux.

Even according to this particular quote presented by the author, creation of memory of events that never happened requires some time of repeated incremental changes or lab testing. I am no expert, but it may also be worth pointing out the possible distinction between memories and emotions. Even if emotions affect strengths of memories, emotions themselves may be less susceptible to such faking and more deeply imprinted into the subconscious. It is thus possible that even when memories lie about their content, emotion’s do not lie about theirs and may still react to stimuli matching authentic past experiences.

In any case, it doesn’t seem reasonable to base final conclusions about that on a single quote especially as an exact descriptor of what someone like Molyneux might be doing.

As far as anyone’s ability to through conversation modify what one remembers is concerned, it only underscores the issue of trust in which case the issue boils down to whom exactly can we find trustworthy not to be deliberately manipulative, and the whole point of this series so far is to build a case against the accusations of sinister manipulation on Molyneux’ part.

—

Conclusion

The problem with this “analysis”, much like the article reviewed previously from the same site, is that it relies heavily on conjecturing, storytelling, framing, false dichotomies or baseless assumptions, but most of all on a profound lack of understanding of such concepts as consistent application of one’s individual principles or the definition and nature of love.

An even bigger problem, however, is the fact that the author seems inclined to claim that my deference to these concepts and critique against his understanding of them is just another swath of Molyneuxian propaganda that I have personally assimilated as means of blinding myself to what he may claim is the obvious truth.

But such assertions effectively come down to saying that “if you disagree, you’re just blind”. They leave practically no room for rational argumentation. Whatever I say will just be dismissed under the pretense of being brainwashed by Molyneux.

So either I truly am brainwashed or the author is in disagreement over fundamental concepts behind relationships, personal freedom, consistency and integrity and love.

Or this FDRLiberated article is simply another piece of biased anti-FDR slander.

You may be the final judge of that for yourself.

“The Guardian and the Cult of Freedomain” (links to resources)

Addendum: At the time of writing this I foolishly forgot to refer to a very crucial piece of evidence that by itself blows many of the FDRLiberated assertions out of the water: Interview with Tom Whipple of The Times - Jan 6 2009 in which Tom (Barbara’s son) expresses a rather detailed account of the situation, saying he did try to work things out with his mother to no avail, expressing his feelings about the Guardian article as very one sided and even disgusting and so on. Anyone interested in the truth behind this story must listen to this interview before making any accusations and inferences!

Danijel Orsolic (libervisco): FDR Controversy Part 2: A “brief” misrepresentation of FDR

2009-07-09T07:07:55+00:00

FDRLiberated.com appears to be the most coherent collection of information regarding the “big picture” about Freedomain Radio, but judging from this “brief introduction” which I wish to respond to here, it begins to seem more like an anti-FDR web site that politely presents some rather impolite ideas about it. It is not that these ideas are impolite simply because they are critical or negative towards FDR, but because they are, at least or especially in this “brief introduction”, presented like a one sided story without much references to evidence short of a link to a mess that is the Liberated Minds forum (hosting all kinds of fragmented opinions from different people some of which I’ve addressed in part 1).

The author of FDRLiberated is quoted as saying that he “consistently [re-reads his] little articles for language [he] think is outrageous or unfounded”, but unfortunately I am beginning to suspect that these supposed advances of politeness and balanced attitude are just attempts to lend some credence to what is otherwise a thinly veiled smear campaign.

Still, given that claim one could expect that an article I am responding to right now is not gonna be the same article some time later as he continues to edit them, so I will include the current revision as a quote below, just so there is no confusion as to what I’m addressing.

He begins the article by essentially identifying his audience:

Whether you found this blog as a parent or family member wondering what happened to your loved one, or you are someone intrigued by the ideas of FDR and considering joining the community (as I once was), I offer you the big picture.

On the homepage he also identifies his audience as:

* family member or friend who has been defooed and looking for answers
* member of the press trying to unravel the mysteries of FDR
* someone considering joining the FDR community

Combining this with the overall tone of the article makes it hard to not see this as anything else other than an attempt to completely sway people from even giving FDR a chance, provide some additional reason to certain parents or people who have had someone terminate their relationship with them with more reason to be mad at FDR and provide the media with some additional juicy controversy to write about. Yet the article has no references to evidence, only a story, all ready to go with all of it’s conclusions hereby branded as “the big picture”.

So the baseless accusations start with:

Stefan Molyneux has long been associated with the Libertarian community. His goal has always been to be recognized as a person of importance.

As if the author knows all of Molyneux’ motivations throughout his life. This kind of a generalized statement has no place in what is supposed to be a factual article backed by evidence, but indeed this article is not such.

Upon explaining what libertarianism is, he continues to analyze Stefan Molyneux starting with concessions to his explaining ability and brilliance and then continuing with what can easily be explained as FUD.

As wikipedia describes, “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) is a tactic of rhetoric and fallacy used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda. FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative information designed to undermine the credibility of their beliefs.”

This perfectly describes what is being done in this section which is filled with arbitrary conjecture. He first brings up Stefan’s tendency to not cite his exact sources posing questions which imply that Stefan may be “simply addicted to the accolades from his less-well-read followers”. He then proceeds to describe how Molyneux’ tendency to combine various fields which he names as politics, philosophy, psychology, economics, relationships, and religion must mean that in Molyneux’ head (as if the author knows exactly what is going on in Molynex’ head) all these areas are tied up into “one cohesive truth” that everyone who agrees to any of his ideas must accept as a whole.

Of course, this was all serving as the follow up to the conclusion that Stefan Molyneux is an accolades craving psychologizing manipulator who believes he has what the author terms as “the very key to existence” and an “unified theory of the universe (that only the leader knows and offers to his followers as the key to happiness)” which just coincidentally happens to be what “nearly every other cult leader has in common”. But no he wont tell you outright if FDR is a cult or not, but he doesn’t really have to because in so many words it is already utterly clear what he thinks and wants you to think as well.

To illustrate just how ridiculous this line of reasoning is consider his jump from tying politics, philosophy, psychology, economics, relationships and religion into “one cohesive truth” to calling this a “unified theory of the universe”. As anyone who has read anything about science knows, there are various pursuits of the unified theory of the universe and neither of them involve solely these areas mentioned and certainly cannot be without one crucial field which Stefan Molyneux certainly is not about and never claims to be: physics. So how can he possibly have a unified theory of the universe without physics?

In the second section he describes defooing and the same style of argumentation continues. He starts with a staggering statement:

Another significant Molyneux idea–one that has caused immeasurable suffering within the afflicated families–is that family relationships are voluntary.

I am almost at a loss for words on this one. Apparently it is the idea that family relationships are voluntary which is responsible for immeasurable suffering within the “afflicted families”. From such a statement one can only conclude that for such suffering to not be present such relationships must in some way be coercive or imposed. Yet this is apparently not the position he takes as he in the second paragraph and in parenthesis states that for what it’s worth he believes in voluntary family relationships.

However, the contradictions continue alternating since if he truly believes such relationships are voluntary then he would respect every choice people in such relationships make with regards to them and not imply that they have a freedom to exit such relationship only in some arbitrarily determined “extreme cases”. Of course if he would consistently take such a position his FUD campaign against FDR and Stefan Molyneux would lose quite a bit of thrust.

Instead he refers to Stefan Molyneux’ book “On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion” (without naming the whole title) to point out that Stefan apparently “tries to tell you that your parents are liars and bullies if they believe in government or religion” and that “your childhood was a prison and you are a victim of abuse”. Now it’s easy to see how this provides some rocket fuel to his ongoing flame against Stefan Molyneux. However, this is coming from a self professed libertarian, someone who believes initiation of force is wrong.

Unfortunately this hits on a sadly recurring theme in the libertarian movement, a problem that coincidentally Stefan Molyneux has been most vocal in targeting head on; and that is the consistent application of libertarian principles in every day life and to personal relationships where such application is possible (without threats of violence). (Wilton D. Alston has recently wrote an excellent piece on this topic aptly titled “Do You Really Want Freedom, Or Are You Just Kidding Yourself?”).

If you believe initiation of force is wrong you by definition consider someone who supports it to support something unethical, no matter who that was. Are parents somehow to be excluded from this? What about siblings or friends? If they are to be excluded then why not arbitrarily exclude everyone else whom we wish? How exactly do these libertarians plan on achieving their freedom if they are not only afraid, but so hypocritically hostile to even suggestions of applying the core libertarian principle to their own lives?

Instead they somehow find it perfectly fine for a son or daughter who discovers the moral problem with the initiation of violence to see their parents support of same violence as somehow acceptable. Yet these are their very own parents and their own family. The same reason why they decry the termination of such familiar relationships as somehow cruel is the reason why it is exactly these relationships which ought to be examined first with regards to the moral and other support of initiation of violence. It is in these relationships in which a person is most vulnerable.

What about religion? In Stefan’s view religious beliefs are defined as superstitions, beliefs based solely on faith towards certain revelations in certain mythical books. One may disagree with this exact definition, but this is the definition he seems to use consistently throughout his work and serves to understand what exactly is he condemning when he condemns religious parents.

Libertarians, those oh so principled libertarians, are also on about their opposition to initiation of fraud or cheating someone out of something or into something. Some of them equate the fraud offense with the force offense and some do not, however hardly anyone believes that cheating and dishonesty are virtues to be defended. So when Stefan Molyneux judges parents as abusing their children when teaching them certain religious beliefs he is referring to exactly the fraud that is perpetrated by such acts. The child is a natural explorer, like a little scientist. In its very early age (s)he truly has integrity. She does not escape expressions of what she feels nor suppresses what she senses. She thinks naturally and has no built in cultural or societal paradigms of thinking.

When such a child is then exposed to claims of truthful existence of that which she cannot possibly perceive and is asked to somehow communicate with (pray) or obey that something under threats of being considered evil and outcast not to mention the horrifying threats of hell and certain eternal death, that is not only a clear case of fraud given that parents whom teach a child such nonsense cannot provide the child any real evidence of what they claim, especially evidence that a child can understand, but it is also a case of emotional manipulation and intimidation that given it is inflicted at such early age is bound to leave lasting consequences.

Yet of course, this type of abuse is so common and widely accepted today that someone suggesting it is actually a very real type of abuse worthy of critical examination, the whole world frowns and libertarians, the very ones who are supposed to be understanding towards these types of things, join in the chastisement.

Typically, I myself may be now accused of falling for some sort of a cult manipulation for saying such things. Of course, no way that I could actually be telling what I see as an honest truth that I understood on my own volition. I must be intellectually inept and susceptible to manipulation. Everything, just don’t let me be right.

And this really seems to strike at the very core of this controversy. It is really pitifully said that there are libertarians who would rather engage in a smear campaign on the basis of these ideas considering them somehow sick and twisted rather than try to understand what is it that they are getting at.

In any case, this “brief introduction” article continues with more conjecturing telling an interesting story about a straw man he names Stefan Molyneux, a person whom, rather than for the above explained reasons, wrote the things he did in “On Truth” because he wishes to portray everyone who doesn’t believe in anarcho-capitalism as an abuser. A person who wishes everyone to break all of their relationships with anyone except other FDR members and singlehandedly guides them through this painful process. And a person who never devoted any podcasts to developing healthy relationships with your parents (yet he wrote a whole frakking book on exactly that topic; Real Time Relationships, which after identifying the problematic things about modern relationships offers a constructive framework of what truly loving relationships could and should be).

Ultimately, Stefan Molyneux is portrayed as nothing more than an entrepreneur whose goal is to manipulate people with his podcasts, books and conversations into buying his “truth package”. And apparently another piece of evidence is this hearsay I’m just supposed to take his word on, that most of this manipulation is happening, guess where? Where YOU and most people cannot see it and from where he coincidentally cannot provide much evidence. How convenient.

The final characterization of Stefan Molyneux may be most interesting of all - that he is the most loyal member of his own cult. He is supposedly somehow accidentally creating this cult without any real plan and deliberation because he truly believes in it. One could say Mr. QuestEon just “proved” his own theory wrong, for if there truly was no deliberate attempt on Molyneux’ part to create a cult that pretty much automatically blows most of the FACTnet’s cult warning signs out of the water since they depend on exactly the deliberate, dishonest and sinister manipulation.

At any rate this article is completely void of evidence and completely consisted of biased conjecture and unfounded claims. It effectively amounts to an interesting story to sell to the media and disgruntled mothers like Barbara Weed who supposedly love their children so much that they cannot respect their choices enough not to put their names and reputations through metaphorical mud that is the media hungry for the next scapegoat.

—
This article puts a bitter taste in my mouth and discourages me from addressing any of the other ones presented. However, I may still try, for the sake of being balanced. There are certain issues to be addressed and perspectives to be expressed with regards to one case to which critics have some shred of credible things to say; the UPB (not that they completely blow it out of the water).

Below is the quote of the entire article I was above responding to.

A brief introduction to FreeDomainRadio

Whether you found this blog as a parent or family member wondering what happened to your loved one, or you are someone intrigued by the ideas of FDR and considering joining the community (as I once was), I offer you the big picture.

Stefan Molyneux has long been associated with the Libertarian community. His goal has always been to be recognized as a person of importance.

If you’re new to all this, it’s easiest to think of Libertarians like the US Republican or Democrat parties–in that within each party you’ll find a range of liberal-to-conservative view points. In general, Liberatarians believe that government is never a solution to the problems that face us. Like US President Reagan, Libertarians believe the nine scariest words in the English language are, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

As I mentioned, however, there are a range of beliefs. On one end, you’ll find Libertarians who believe in small government (however they define that) and at the opposite end are those who believe in no government (anarcho-capitalists)–and everything in between. Some are atheists. Some believe in a Higher Power. Within Libertarianism, you’ll find many different views on economics. It’s a single word that covers a broad area of thinking.
On Stefan Molyneux

Stefan Molyneux is an atheist anarcho-capitalist. He received early notoriety as a great explainer of already existing concepts. Many of these early podcasts are downloadable from his site and from YouTube. In addition, some of his early papers are still on-line at reputable Liberatarian sites. Make no mistake, Molyneux is a brilliant man and an extraordinary teacher. He is very engaging and many people tend to connect with him on a personal and emotional level. While he has not made many original contributions to Libertarian thinking, the few he has made are typically grandiose (and usually preposterous).

Unfortunately, Molyneux often ignores the need to cite his influences or give references. As a result, many of his followers today–who came into FDR as a result of his podcasts–mistakenly believe that most of the ideas discussed originated with Molyneux. Is it plagarism? Well, Molyneux doesn’t specifically claim to be the author of those ideas. He simply discusses them–unattributed–with great passion and lets his acolytes draw their own conclusions.

This troubles me because there may be some deception or self-deception occurring here. In his passion, does Molyneux simply forget to attribute his sources? Or is he simply addicted to the accolades from his less-well-read followers?

Molyneux has a unified theory of the topics (politics, philosophy, psychology, economics, relationships, and religion) that he discusses on FDR. He expresses his views on each of those topics with great authority.

What’s important to know is that in Molyneux’s head, he has them all tied together as one cohesive truth. In other words, to accept Molyneux’s beliefs, you must accept his conclusions in all of these areas. If you do not, he typically attempts to demonstrate that some psychological flaw is preventing you from understanding the truth he is revealing. His critics often accuse him of psychologizing any detractors.

As a result of this unified truth, his followers don’t believe he’s just teaching them ideas about Libertarianism or philosophy–they believe (and he believes) he is giving them the very key to existence. Now, one can say he is a cult leader or one can say he is not a cult leader, but I know one thing–a unified theory of the universe (that only the leader knows and offers to his followers as the key to happiness) is something nearly every cult leader has in common.
Defooing and the break-up of families

Another significant Molyneux idea–one that has caused immeasurable suffering within the afflicated families–is that family relationships are voluntary. For example, you owe your parents nothing because you didn’t get to choose them. They freely accepted the positive obligation of birthing you, caring for you, teaching you about ethics, and sending you out into the world as a healthy adult.

That idea might be difficult for some to accept. (I believe it, for what it’s worth). But–in and of itself–it’s not the real problem of FDR. The problem is how Molyneux subverts it.

He has introduced into the FDR community the idea of defooing. In this case, FOO is the abbreviation of a common psychological term meaning “family of origin.” As you can imagine, a great deal of study in psychology is devoted to understanding how your family of origin shapes you.

Defooing, on the other hand, is purely a Molyneux term. It refers to completely leaving your family behind and having no further contact with them. Now, most psychologists do agree that a few family situations are so toxic, the most mentally healthy course for a patient is to separate from them. However, they also quickly point out that these are extreme cases and typically a great deal of counseling with the family is suggested before such an act.

Not so with FDR.

If you read the book “On Truth” by Molyneux, you’ll begin to understand how he truly views families, using arguments that (I believe) are without merit or substance both philosophically and psychologically. He tries to tell you that your parents are liars and bullies if they believe in government or religion. Your childhood was a prison and you are a victim of abuse.

Got that? If your parents believed in any kind of religion or government, you were a victim of abuse. Also, if your friends believe in either of those two concepts (which they nearly always do), they are corrupt and should likewise be abandoned. So, defooing really means getting rid of everyone.

He believes that the reason you struggle with accepting the truth and beauty of his version of an anarcho-capitalist society is a direct result of this abuse. You have accepted the role of slave. Only by throwing off the shackles will you find your way to freedom and happiness.

In this case, of course, the “shackles” are your current family and your current friends.

As I said before, one can say he is a cult leader or one can say he is not a cult leader, but I know another thing–convincing one’s followers of the need to separate from their family and friends and associate only with other members of the group is something nearly every cult leader also has in common.

One more thing about this defooing business. No one ever seems to pick up on the fact that Molyneux’s first two philosophy books are clearly targeted to late-teen to early twenty-year-olds. Whoever heard of targeting a philosophy to a specific age group?

Since Molyneux believes that most family relationships are bad, he’s doing his followers a favor when he convinces them to defoo. That’s the danger and destruction of FDR. If you are a victimized parent, that’s what probably led you here.

His goal has always been to separate kids from their parents, a goal made easier by the fact that nearly everyone in his target age range is already in the difficult struggle of finding his/her independent self. To many of them, Molyneux is the pied piper.

Molyneux has defooed his family and speaks often of his rage for his mother and brother. He convinced his wife to defoo after they were married.

Despite his claims of innocence, most assuredly if Molyneux removed all of his defoo “therapy” podcasts (such as the one he did with Tom) from the board and promised he would never counsel another potential runaway again, I believe there would never be another defoo.

In other words, although Molyneux’s book “On Truth” sets the hook, it is only a recruiting tool and not persuasive enough to allow him to achieve his goal of family breakup. Based on the many hours I’ve spent listening to his “counseling” podcasts, watching him interact in the chat rooms and on the main forum, I believe nearly every defoo is heavily, personally influenced by Molyneux in one way or another.

Amazingly, each of his followers who suddenly decided they were the victims of abuse believe they came to that conclusion of their own free will with no input or influence from anyone.

Sometimes Molyneux offers the weak excuse that he is only interested in building healthy families. He probably has hundreds of podcasts that are about or mention defooing at one point or another. Would you like to know how many podcasts he has devoted to developing a healthy relationship with your parents?

Zero.
The FreeDomainRadio Community

FDR is a financial enterprise and Molyneux’s sole source of revenue. He receives money in the form of contributions or subscriptions. Molyneux does not simply preach the truth–he packages it and sells it.

Despite Molyneux’s defensive responses to media inquiries, FDR is as far from being “simply a Web site” as you can imagine.

It is a complicated system of video and audio podcast outreach, on-line forum, chatroom, media library, books, and a distribution of members into a hierarchy. There is continual development of technology to allow for immediate and one-on-one counseling and discussion.

Few people realize how much of what is “FDR” takes place within the chat room and during Skype chats. It is through those means that FDR members get the personal attention from Molyneux that they crave, as well as (since many are now alone and without family and friends) the ability to socialize with others. All the necessary work of indoctrination, love-bombing, and social control gets done here.

There is clearly a social system on display: at the highest level in the hierarchy is an inner circle that enforces behavior and thoughts posted to the site. Critics of the site or Molyneux are swiftly purged.

FDR members have vacationed together, attended annual BBQ’s at the Molyneux home together, attended philosophy and psychology seminars conducted Molyneux and his wife, and more.

But above all–more than anything else–FDR members are intellectually, psychologically, and emotionally invested in a utopian worldview based on Molyneux’s unique approach to anarcho-capitalism. Even though they understand at some level that the utopian society they hope for is at minimum generations away, their investment is powerful enough for many of them to live lives in near-isolation, each one a modern-day Diogenes, hoping to find “honest and virtuous relationships” based on Molyneux’s definition of such relationships.
Okay–so is it a cult?

You’ll have to decide that for yourself. In my opinion, the answer is yes. I think of it as a baby cult. It’s relatively new and I’ve been watching it with the same fascination that an astronomer would watch the birth of a star. I don’t think Molyneux has a master plan. I think he is, in fact, the most loyal cult member of all. FDR seems to be springing up organically around his need to be revered.

In this blog, we’ll examine specific issues of FDR. I’d be very interested in your input. One of my favorite sites is Liberating Minds. Many of these issues are discussed there as well. Why not drop on by?