[IP] Case for the correlation between hacking, civil liberties & American prosperity
Begin forwarded message:
From: Megan Holbrook <megan@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: October 26, 2004 1:32:11 AM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: For IP: Case for the correlation between hacking, civil
liberties & American prosperity
Good Bad Attitude by Paul Graham, from Hackers & Painters. Well worth a
read:
http://paulgraham.com/gba.html
An excerpt:
"Smart-alecks have to develop a keen sense of how much they can get
away with. And lately hackers have sensed a change in the atmosphere.
Lately hackerliness seems rather frowned upon.
To hackers the recent contraction in civil liberties seems especially
ominous. That must also mystify outsiders. Why should we care
especially about civil liberties? Why programmers, more than dentists
or salesmen or landscapers?
Let me put the case in terms a government official would appreciate.
Civil liberties are not just an ornament, or a quaint American
tradition. Civil liberties make countries rich. If you made a graph of
GNP per capita vs. civil liberties, you'd notice a definite trend.
Could civil liberties really be a cause, rather than just an effect? I
think so. I think a society in which people can do and say what they
want will also tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions
win, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people.
Authoritarian countries become corrupt; corrupt countries become poor;
and poor countries are weak. It seems to me there is a Laffer curve for
government power, just as for tax revenues. At least, it seems likely
enough that it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out.
Unlike high tax rates, you can't repeal totalitarianism if it turns out
to be a mistake.
This is why hackers worry. The government spying on people doesn't
literally make programmers write worse code. It just leads eventually
to a world in which bad ideas will win. And because this is so
important to hackers, they're especially sensitive to it. They can
sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense
an approaching thunderstorm.
It would be ironic if, as hackers fear, recent measures intended to
protect national security and intellectual property turned out to be a
missile aimed right at what makes America successful. But it would not
be the first time that measures taken in an atmosphere of panic had the
opposite of the intended effect.
There is such a thing as American-ness. There's nothing like living
abroad to teach you that. And if you want to know whether something
will nurture or squash this quality, it would be hard to find a better
focus group than hackers, because they come closest of any group I know
to embodying it. Closer, probably, than the men running our government,
who for all their talk of patriotism remind me more of Richelieu or
Mazarin than Thomas Jefferson or George Washington.
When you read what the founding fathers had to say for themselves, they
sound more like hackers. "The spirit of resistance to government,"
Jefferson wrote, "is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it
always to be kept alive."
Imagine an American president saying that today. Like the remarks of an
outspoken old grandmother, the sayings of the founding fathers have
embarrassed generations of their less confident successors. They remind
us where we come from. They remind us that it is the people who break
rules that are the source of America's wealth and power."
:) M.
--
Megan Holbrook - megan@xxxxxxxxx
Partner - Business Development
kapow, inc. (www.kapow.com) - website design and development
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