Linked by David Adams on Thu 1st Oct 2009 01:39 UTC
As much as we like to stay away from letting real-world politics bleed over into our ongoing discussion of tech politics, I found an interesting essay over at The Economist's "Democracy in America" blog that draws a parallel between Apple's Mac/iPhone user-friendly ecosystem and the Microsoft Windows freer-but-more-chaotic ecosystem and how that lines up along the authoritarian/libertarian spectrum of real-world political division. They don't mention Open Source in this essay, but I'm sure it could make an interesting addition to the discussion. The essay's main point is that, in governance, attempts to make life more user-friendly for citizens usually ends up giving them less freedom of choice, and a certain segment of the political establishment will reliably oppose such moves. The idea that the tradeoff between choice and usability persists into the world of governance really set me to thinking. What kind of country would you rather live in? An Apple one, a Microsoft one, or an Open Source one?
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Member since:
2006-01-10
really?
can people handle school choice? Alberta, Sweden, Chile, British Columbia.. hmmm.. apparently they can and society does not collapse!
Can people handle drugs? Hmmm, Holland isn't collapsing.
Can people handle sexual morality? Hmm, yep, society is not collapsing as sexual freedoms have arrived.
Can people have guns? Switzerland, Finland, even USA. Despite the rhetoric, crime in the USA is not that much higher (as in orders of magnitude) than other western countries with more gun laws.
Yep, looks like people can actually handle freedom.