August 31, 2003
# Dominion Feature

Dominion: How the Liberal Party Works

posted by dru in original
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# Open Courseware

Some of the monkeyfist folks are talking about trying to take one or two courses from MIT--the one currently being discussed isFundamentals of Public Policy. They're not actually going to MIT, but using the lecture notes and reading lists that MIT has put online as a part of its Open Courseware project. They're talking about taking the course together, and setting up a weblog to collaboratively compile discussion and links to relevant online reading.

The idea, of course, is that anyone who wants to take the course after us will be able to access the discussions and links that we compiled while taking the course. Ideally (i.e. with enough engaged participation), this would result in a kind of cumulative, evolving (dare I say "open source"?) curriculum.

Sounds like fun. For now, it would be nice if a bit more (or any) of the reading list was online (and not so full of broken links).

posted by dru in activism
by Kendall

I think of this idea of ours as "Adult Education Plus Plus": no credit, but serious intellectual engagement. The interesting thing about the MIT courseware experiment is the range of kinds of classes.

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August 29, 2003
# Intellectual Property isn't Free

Some open source types and activists suceeded in convincing the World Intellectual Property Organization to sponsor an international conference on the place of free software in the "intellectual-property landscape", but Microsoft shut it down.

posted by dru in politicsoftech
August 20, 2003
# John Ralston Saul

The following series of excerpts are taken from The Unconscious Civilization, a series of lectures by Canadian philosopher and writer John Ralston Saul.

The most powerful force possessed by the individual is her own government. Or governments, because a multiplicity of levels means a multiplicity of strengths. The individual has no other large organized mechanism that he can call his own. Theres are other mechanisms, but the reduce the citizen to the status of a subject. Government is the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good. Without this greater interest the individual is reduced to a lesser, narrower being limited to immediate needs. He will then be subject to other, larger forces, which is necesarily come forward to fill the void left by the withering of the public good. Those forces will fill it with some other directing interest that will serve their purposes, not the larger purposes of the citizen. It would be naive to blame them for occupying abandoned territory. (p. 76)

* * *

People ask: what kind of government? How much government? I think the primary question is: whose government? If individuals do not occupy their legitimate position, then it will be occupied by a God or a king or a coalition of interest groups. If citizens do not exercise the powers conferred by their legitimacy, others will do so. (p. 78)

* * *

The corporatist idea that elected representatives are merely representing interests has led them to apply pressure directly on the politicians. The result has been a remarkable growth of the lobbying industry, which has as its sole purpose the conversion of elected representatives and senior civil servants to the particular interest of the lobbyist. That is, lobbyists are in the business of corrupting the people's representatives away from the public good. (p. 97)

* * *

Virtually every politician portrayed in film or on television over the last decade has been venal, corrupt, opportunistic, cynical, if not worse. Whether these dramatized images are accurate or exaggerated matters little. The corporatist system wins either way: directly through corruption and indirectly through the damage done to the citizen's respect for the representative system. (p. 99)

* * *

posted by dru in excerpt
# Lack of Posting

It's summer, when a young man's fancy turns toward... staying away from the computer more than usual.

Also, I'm trying to turn misnomer into a place for my own thoughts, while most of the mindless link propagation continues apace at the Dominion Weblog.

But the simple requirement of "my own thoughts" (by which I mean, "someone else's thoughts", just not necessarily from online sources) leads me to psych myself out all too often. Nonetheless, there's plenty on the way; I just need to type it up and click "post".

posted by dru in blog
August 08, 2003
# The sun is in the east, even though the day is done

I've been listening to Pink Floyd's The Final Cut: A requiem for the post-war dream. It's generally dismissed by critics as Roger Waters' self-indulgence gone to far, and not up the the band's usual standards. (The band had effectively split up when it was recorded, and it's usually considered a Waters solo album that that rest of Pink Floyd happens to play on.)

I had that as a first impression as well, but I've recently rediscovered it as a subtle and brilliant (and newly relevant) anti-war album. Considered as something other than a Pink Floyd album, it's a remarkably solid exploration of the horrifying possibilities of war, and the human psychology of what perpetuates war, and what resists it.

And some of the lines are brilliant:

The sun is in the east
Even though the day is done
Two suns in the sunset
Could be the human race is run
Or:
They flutter behind you your possible pasts
Some brighteyed and crazy some frightened and lost
A warning to anyone still in command
of their possible future
to take care
In derelict sidings the poppies entwine
with cattle trucks lying in wait for the next time

posted by dru in culture
by dennis

It's a great album to pull out every-so-often. It was also produced at the height of the little-discussed feud between Waters and Richard Wright.

If I remember correctly, Wright is conspicuously absent from the album (replaced by Michael Kamen?)

Anyway, it's certainly worth having in a Floyd collection.

by paul

I think the only truly terrible moment of self-indulgence for Roger was Radio K.A.O.S. But The Final Cut is strong and very weird--I see it as the culmination of a very complex theatrical/musical aesthetic, which went over to the other side (more theater, less music) by the time he did The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. It's a cool album at the cusp of that, and you're right, the man could write some lyrics; in all the angst and big theatrics it's often lost how sharp he could be.

by dallas

My first real term-paper I had to write was in my first year 20th C History course. I wrote on the Falkland's War and listened to The Final Cut on repeat for days while I organized my notes and wrote my essay. From that day on it became tradition that I would listen to it while writing any History paper during my undergrad. A fantastic album!

My paper opened with:

"Brezhnev took Afghanistan, Begin took Beirut,
Galtieri took the Union Jack.
And Maggie over lunch one day sent a cruiser with all hands, apparently to make him give it back..."

... i got an A-

- i first came across your site when you posted John Brady Kiesling's resignation letter; one of the best anti-war pieces from the past year. i've been a reader ever since. thanks for your contributions.

August 03, 2003
# Flat Tax for the Left

A simplistic and yet apparently common-sense policy occured to me the other day. I call it "market communism", though it may as well be a flat tax of the far left, as it is undoubtedly too simple to work well. And yet, I find it compelling.

It works like this. First, a cap is placed on all salaries, everywhere. No one can be paid more than four times the amount paid to the lowest-paid employee. Any time the top-paid folks want a pay raise, they have to raise the salaries of all of the lowest-paid by 25% of their desired raise.

The rest is details.

A whole new set of laws would be needed to keep people from finding ways around this, and substantial sum would be needed to enforce it. This could be accomplished with the death penalty. Not that death penalty, the corporate death penalty. If executives at a certain corporation were found to be paying themselves more than 4x the lowest paid, the corporate assets would be used to pay severance to the employees of the firm, and the rest could go to an unemployment insurance fund.

Aside from some fine-tuning (the range of pay might need, to some extent, to be calculated by state, by type of business, etc.) I have trouble seeing any problem with this plan.

There is nothing about capitalism that says that one has to accumulate insane amounts of money. On the other hand, the more evenly income is distributed, the more it is likely to be spent or reinvested, making for a much more dynamic economy. Even Warren Buffet agrees with me on that.

A lot of other problems would be easier to solve after a few years of market communism. It would be easier to find funding for decent journalism, for health care, for new environmental and cultural ventures. As the "money primary" states clearly in its name alone, money is power, and the easiest way to get power to more people is to give them more of the money.

This also explains why market communism isn't likely to happen. For some strange reason, rich people never have a strange need to be richer than everyone else. Mutual prosperity doesn't cut it.

The inverted version of the market communism policy is concisely addressed by Conceptual Guerilla's piece on cheap-labour conservatives, which I recommend.

posted by dru in article
by adam

it's an interesting idea, but you could've chosen a better name than "market communism". i don't think it accurately describes what you propose, and it's guaranteed to alienate people who don't actually think the idea is a bad one.

that said, i've thought about it for a minute and can't do any better.

by dru

Yeah, "market communism" is a term calculated to appeal to exactly no one. I felt the need to invoke a bit of irony before making sweeping statements about economics and politics, which I don't know that much about.

As long as I lack an explanation for why it's a bad idea, though, I'm inclined to see the reasons for 'market communism' not existing as primarily, if not completely, political.

by adam

also, that cheap-labour-conservative thing is a real eye-opener. it's been a long time since i read a theory of everything, and that one was pretty, uh, brazenly confident. and with good cause.

there's a follow up on the guerilla's website. it's mostly snarking to-and-fro with a critic of his, but finishes in fine style:
"Defeat the Right in Three Minutes" is only the first step -- and it has done exactly what I had hoped it would do. It has rallied the left, and inflamed the right. What's next? Stick around. We’re just getting started.

# Olive Branches Without Trees

The symbolism here is a little disturbing:

Apparently, the contractors building the massive 80 mile fence to further cut up the west bank are uprooting olive trees and selling them to rich Israelis.

So what's next? The systematic theft and export of Palestinian doves?

posted by dru in war
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August 01, 2003
# Refund from Microsoft

Linux Journal: Getting a Windows Refund in California Small Claims Court

A very complete explanation of how the author got a $199 refund for bundled Microsoft software that came with his PC... through small claims court. Apparently, there is a line in the license agreement that says you can get a refund if you don't agree.

The main thing to remember throughout this process is to remain calm and reasonable. The more reasonable you seem, the more silly they seem. Remember you're dealing with a large company, and the larger an organization, the higher its potential for collective stupidity.

When that stupidity crosses the line and the company won't follow the law, that's where small claims court comes in. In court, most of the time common sense and reasonable win, even when it's a small guy against a big big company. And the case always ends with those magic words, "It is so ordered."

My refund check will be arriving this month.

Excellent.

posted by dru in politicsoftech