Unwillingness to understand the Anarchist "opposition to authority"

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Is Anarchism opposed to any and all forms of authority? Does it oppose coercion of any and all forms? Most importantly, can one criticize it by assuming your own answers to those questions?

Ah, another day, another horribly misguided anti-anarchist post from the Barefoot Bum who seemingly simply refuses to even listen to  what anarchists propose before criticizing Anarchism. It’s kind of sad really, especially seeing that it’s someone who wishes to pass himself as a radical intellectual and yet is too stubborn to know his enemy and rather prefers to imagine what their position is and counter that. It’s starts to feel as if he purposefully avoids knowledge just so that he cannot be accused of willful strawmanning. But one cannot avoid pointing out that this kind of behaviour goes far beyond simple misunderstanding, and rather points out a stubborn unwillingness to understand the other position. This is unfortunately only exaggerated when one is closed to all dialogue and would rather close his ears while shouting at the wind ((It’s not even worth pointing out how astonishingly hypocritical he is to claim that he faces “hostility and contempt”, when he is practically the one making people hostile by treating them like shit, banning them from his site when they disagree with him and then talking shit about others where he cannot be countered. When he is criticized elsewhere, he faces “hostility and contempt”. Hah.)).

Still, it does seem that when sufficiently demolished, TBB just might realize how egregiously wrong he is and jump to another strawman. At best, one can expect him to eventually run out of strawmen. At worst, this might serve to prevent someone who does not know better from being taken in by this kind of nonsense. So, without further ado, lets take a look at the arguments put forward in this article.

First of all anarchism is criticized for not having a sufficiently succinct definition like “Communism” which he mistakenly defines as governmental control of capital. One can provide quite a lot of descriptions of Anarchism but you cannot understand the sociopolitical system from just a description. That requires either reading, or a discussion with actual Anarchists and you cannot do the latter by acting like a twat. Nevertheless, one can describe Anarchism as egalitarianism via prevention of concentration of political or economical power. The replacement of hierarchical control with individual voluntarism and the replacement of competition as the driving force of progress with cooperation. As TBB said, the devil is in the details but fundamentally anarchism is predicated on the idea that distributed capital is order more effective than concentrated capital ((And this is something sufficiently shown by looking at reality historically and empirically rather than pulling facts out of one’s own arse.)) and that self-determination and mutual aid allows humans to achieve personal happiness that is orders higher than authoritarian top-down management can ever achieve.

TBB then moves to wonder what anarchists mean when they say that they “oppose authority” which is something that indeed needs clarification. But if one actually read what Anarchists had to say about this, they shouldn’t really have any confusion on this issue. This is really not a subject that is easy to explain, nor does it spring up from the definition of anarchism or from sound-bites one heard in a forum discussion and unfortunately that is precisely what TBB is doing and then wondering why it makes no sense. Anarchists recognise very well the distinctions of “authority” and are very clear on what exactly they oppose. In the words of Colin Ward:

“You can be in authority, or you can be an authority, or you can have authority. The first derives from your rank in some chain of command, the second derives special knowledge, and the third from special wisdom. But knowledge and wisdom are not distributed in order of rank, and they are no one person’s monopoly in any undertaking. The fantastic inefficiency of any hierarchical organisation — any factory, office, university, warehouse or hospital — is the outcome of two almost invariable characteristics. One is that the knowledge and wisdom of the people at the bottom of the pyramid finds no place in the decision-making leadership hierarchy of the institution. Frequently it is devoted to making the institution work in spite of the formal leadership structure, or alternatively to sabotaging the ostensible function of the institution, because it is none of their choosing. The other is that they would rather not be there anyway: they are there through economic necessity rather than through identification with a common task which throws up its own shifting and functional leadership.”Perhaps the greatest crime of the industrial system is the way it systematically thwarts the investing genius of the majority of its workers.”

It is blatantly obvious, when one retains intellectual honesty and does even a light attempt at discovering what anarchists oppose, that it is hierarchical authority. We oppose the authority which comes from people being in control only in lieu of them having more power than others. In very short, we oppose coerced authority. Either passively or actively coerced, that is either authority enforced by force of arms, or authority imposed by taking away all other choices. TBB proceeds to doubt wether coercion can be imposed as it’s always “within society” but that is blatantly false as any society which has been invaded by another should make abundantly clear.

He also argued:

The anarchist opposition to “hierarchy” does seems really nonsensical; a small group that exercised coercive power should be objectionable even if it were organized other than hierarchically. For example, the capitalist ruling class employs hierarchical structures, but is not itself organized hierarchically.

This is irrelevant, since the capitalist coercive power can only be maintained by hierarchical control. Taking away hierarchical control would necessarily require the abolition of capitalism and therefore the capitalist class. In short, it is not possible to have a “ruling elite” without hierarchical authority, ie someone to rule over.

Anarchists of course do not aim to abolish all coercion, as that is simply impossible. At the most basic level, we still need to use coercion to prevent the imposition of coercion. Eg, we need to physically prevent someone beating up people who will not become his slaves. It is the use of coercion that matters and how it is applied and anarchists argue that using coercion to form coercive hierarchies is bad, because hierarchical coercion is bad for humans. The reasons why this is so, is a lengthy subject for another day.

Furthermore, his argument that distributed coercion is worse than hierarchical coercion is of course pure nonsense.

Finally, he also posits the following “paradox”

Another important consideration is that there are intrinsic variations in individuals and in the organization of more-or-less “voluntary” associations. These variations can combine naturally to afford some groups more power to effect their desires than other groups. And, of course, one natural desire is for more power. Not only does power naturally concentrate, but the concentration of power forms a positive feedback loop. In order to keep power distributed, some group would have to have the authority — the coercive power — to block or reverse natural concentrations of power. Concentration of power is necessary to stop concentration of power, a nifty paradox.

If there’s one thing that an anarchist who has had to debate quite a lot has learned to look out for, it’s the common fallacy from human nature. There’s key words and phrases which should automatically ring alarm bells to the heads of everyone reading such arguments as they attempt to call out to previous assumptions of the reader about “facts of human nature” and work from there. Such is the argument TBB is doing by saying “And, of course, one natural desire is for more power” where he doesn’t attempt to base his arguments on anything other than a very shaky assumptions of what is a “natural desire” for humans. Once you challenge this, the whole “paradox” topples down like a house of cards.

There is in fact no reason for humans to form coercive authority in order to prevent coercive authority. We can firstly prevent hierarchies from forming by not enabling them (which is where the abolition of private property comes in) and by distributedly coercing those who would impose them. But it is not tyranny to oppose tyranny. TBB would like us to believe that humans naturally would try to accumulate power and that groups of people will somehow manage to do this within themselves before extending over others. This of course will not work as within the group, those who are in the lower rungs of the hierarchy will soon rebel and demand equality. This “natural movement or humans within a positive loop” that TBB asserts is nothing more than an unrealistic idea based on assuming a human who acts however you’d like and on the pre-existence of a system which would  naturally select for such a behaviour (such as any propertarian system).

While I was writing this, TBB also wrote an article against voluntary co-operation, unfortunately filled with the same kind of misunderstandings of what Anarchism stands for. This is a perfect example of why it makes no sense to argue against a theory, any theory, without first bothering to at least understand what that theory suggests in the first place. It is unfortunate to say this but TBB is only following in the proud tradition of Marxist-Leninists (I’m certain he’ll reject this classification too and call it slanderous) who  go out and make strawman after strawman as they attempt to make people pre-emptively dismiss Anarchism.

Update: Also see joeldavis’ great point-by-point refutation in reddit.

Quote of the Day: Surgery Metaphor

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A metaphor of how Marxists misrepresent anarchism and democracy

Joeldavis from reddit provided this excellent quote while demolishing a tired Marxist-Leninist anti-anarchist post.

Because workers do not exploit any class below them, as these barriers are gradually overcome workers’ states will tend to “wither away”

And yet it didn’t. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Lenin was alright. Now let’s take this scenario as an illustration of the concept: “A surgeon is attempting to perform a heart transplant. In keeping with his beliefs, he shuns the use of antibiotics. The operation more-or-less succeeds, but the patient eventually becomes septic and dies.”

Using the logic of the Bolshevik argument, the doctor would be right to argue that his rejection of antibiotics didn’t kill the patient, since it was clearly a bacterial infection that killed him, not a lack of antibiotics. Anarchists would say “But if you had given the patient the medicine, they would have at least probably survived the operation.” to which the Bolshevik replies is “No, you’re just antidemocratic.”

How would anarchists deal with problems in contemporary society?

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Are anarchists naive in their solutions to problems in contemporary society? No, we simply recognise the harmful long-term effects of statist intervetnion.

Many Ahmedabad's buildings were set on fire d...
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Recently someone in /r/Anarchism inquired what action should Anarchists ought to take against violent crime in contemporary society, something which triggered quite a thought-provoking discussion since this is a subject which does not really have an easy or simple answer. The subsequent misconstruement from a non-anarchist who happened to be browsing the subreddit at the time, triggered me to put my thoughts down on the general subject of anarchist problem solving and hopefully present a perspective that makes sense and does not sound simply “naive.”

One of the most basic concepts of anarchism, and one that people – who routinely dismiss anarchist solutions – do not know or refuse to understand, is the idea that it’s the methods we use to try and change the world that define how society will look like after we’ve succeeded. To put it more simply: Changing the world via authoritarianism, will create an authoritarian society. Changing the world via violence, will lead to a violent society. Using “bad” tactics, will lead to “bad” society. And as naturally follows, using the right tactics, will lead to the right kind of societal result.

As such, when anarchists see something something that is not right, they look for ways to fix it, that are compatible to the future society they wish to have. And since the two main cores of that future society will be direct action and mutual aid, any way to resolve a contemporary problem will most likely revolve around them primarily. The problem arises when the current society as it exists makes such methods difficult or outright unviable. This, more often than not, is because to allow them would undermine the legitimacy and requirement for the state itself.

In practical terms this means that anarchists will initially try to find a solution to a social ailing which they can implement themselves, via their own power, and when that is lacking by the cooperative power of the community affected by the problem. They will not immediately turn to the state’s aid, even when that is easier to do (in mental and physical effort) because we recognize that not only are most of these problems the result of state action in the first place, but to go to them for solutions only serves to de-power us in favour of those who caused the problem and more often than not, creates peripheral problems that are of equal or greater intensity.

The cop that you empower and trust to protect you from violent crime and activity you wish to prevent, ends up performing it itself, either as a form of corruption (i.e. turning the blind eye to the criminals who can pay him) or as a result of the authority and power that only he possesses (i.e. bullying, uncalled violence, violation of rights etc). And whereas you could fight alone or with your community against crime, you are now powerless against the police.

The judge that you empower and trust to take the objective and right decisions, ends up following the rules that have been decided for society by biased people (politicians), has far more connection (and therefore bias) towards the wealthier society due to his status and is easily manipulated by money (i.e. who can buy the best laywer). As a result, justice is skewed towards the rich, sometimes in very crass ways. Much like the previous example, a distributed, democratic solution would serve a justice that was far closer to the real sentiments of people, which is in fact why trial by jury was implemented (and subsequently corrupted by the way the system works), but as the system stands now, your only options for justice are via costly and time consuming means, which of course end up favouring those with spare time and/or money.

So instead of this, we try to find a way which would be both anarchistic and viable. In the discussion above, people (inlcuding me) attempted to posit answers to the long term problem of violent crime in contemporary society. We recognize the limitations we have to work with, i.e. that as long as the state, capitalism and gross inequality persist, violent crime will never go away, and thus propose solutions which are effective in the short and in the long run. The person who dismissed anarchism because of its proponent’s unwillingness to use state power to combat violent crime only looks at the short term solution and even worse, from a punitive, rather than a reformative perspective.

But the problem is not how to stop this particular gang of thugs in the short term. It doesn’t really matter when the system you empower to do this, will endlessly grind more people into this lifestyle and as long as communities of people cower in their homes unless the police comes to help them – not to mention when those thugs come out of the inhumane prison system far worse than they entered it. It’s like fighting fire with oil. Sure,if you use quite a lot of it, you may end up smothering the flames for a bit, but not only did you create a mess of the place in order to do this, but it wouldn’t take a lot of effort now to end up with even a worse conflagration than before. Just a spark.

Let me present you an example from my own life to see what my own actions and perspective are.

Almost one year ago, me and my girlfriend finally moved together into a larger house. The area we live in is a classic German residential one. As a result there’s a lot of teenagers around who are bored and alienated from society, especially German society which is ridiculously uptight. As one would expect, there’s also the usual samples of discontent youth who just don’t care about the rules enforced on them. The Germans call them “Asis” which basically means “anti-socials” and don’t really want them around. Not because they’re dangerous per-se, but because they’re unruly and will most likely give you the finger if you try to tell them to follow “The German Way”.

As a result, most residents around here, many of which are middle-aged or old try to get rid of them whenever they see them and their main course of action of course is to (threaten to) call the police. This means that the Asis end up in a nomadic style, moving around the neighborhood every time some old fart threatens to call the cops because they don’t like their presence (they’ll imagine some excuse). Eventually some of them ended up sitting close to our balcony, boozing, smoking and whatever and I really couldn’t care less. Not only did we not care if they sat there all day, but my girlfriend at some point even waved at them in friendship.

And it seems that was a mistake. Shortly after this, snowballs started pelting our balcony window now and then, something that is quite shocking if you’re having a calm night watching a movie or something. I didn’t notice it often because I’m either not here or in my own world behind the monitor. However the gf is really starting to get upset about it, not just from the snowballs per-se, but because some of them ended up breaking a plant pot or two and she’s afraid one of them if going to think to throw of beer bottle eventually, which our window will probably not survive.

Now a typical German would have called the Police a long long while ago but my gf (who is slowly moving towards anarchism herself) didn’t and asked me what our joint course of action should be. She had already tried talking, explaining, shouting, and even approaching them in person and she was at the end of her wits. They seemed not to listen and whenever we tried to go down to speak to them, they thought we were trying to catch them or something, and run away.

Now this is difficult situation for me as we need to find a solution to this problem (stuff on our balcony likely to break and we need to then pay for replacement) but I am loathe to involve the state. Thinking about it, we’ve decided that our first actions would be to somehow reach out to them and explain what effects their actions have. The original idea we have is to see when they’re around and then go down to talk to them. If they flee when they see us, we could try to leave them a message and a beer or two, and explain within how we really don’t mind them around but we would appreciate them not breaking our stuff. Will it work? Hopefully. If not, we’ll adapt our tactic.

There is always the case that nothing we think of will make them stop. There’s always the case that my solutions are foiled because I unfortunately live in the current society and not a future anarchist one. I could try to organize something like a neighborhood watch or something similar but given the community’s rather large alienation from each other (a normal middle-class city-dweller’s mind frame really, exaggerated by the German ideas) and my personal language isolation, it will most likely fail. Thus it may come to be that I will indeed have to call the police. The difference is that I will do it as a measure of last resort, and fully recognize that I had to involve them mostly because of the mess they, and all they stand for, have caused. I will rightly blame the state, not thank it, for taking away all my options except going to the state. Much like I would blame a Mafia, not thank it, when my store doesn’t “accidentally” burn down while I pay them for “protection”.

That unfortunately I sometimes may have to go against the ideal solution I would like to have is simply an indication of the non-ideal system we live in. It is not a betrayal of principles any more than working for a capitalist or renting an apartment is a betrayal. We’ve been forced to live in an unfair system which very often leaves us with no choice. However the difference is that as anarchists we will explore all other possibilities which are closer to how we’d like things to be done, before accepting a bad option. And then agitate and point to the unfairness of being left with no choice but to perpetuate evil practices.

In short, anarchists may be visionaries but we are are also pragmatic. We will first try to exhaust the options which would be compatible with our future society before moving on to the “lesser evil” solutions as a measure of last resort when no other possibility is left for us. And even then, the consequences of not taking the “lesser evil” solution need to severely overwhelm the negative effects of such actions, which anarchists are often all to aware of.

Also see:

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If you want my support, why don't you give me the code?

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A new development company recently announced its attempts to crowdfund its upcoming game. I explain why it makes sense to Open Source it as well.

I just heard about the upcoming Diablo-contender game Grim Dawn which is still in its early development and has now dipped its feet into the concept of crowdfunding. That is a step in the right direction but I feel not enough to convince. You see, I’m a fan of Action RPG games (or more aptly called Diablo Clones) and I’ve even been playing Titan Quest the last few days as well but I see no reason to put my money on a game coming out 1 year from now just to “show my support.” Where is the mutual aid? Why are people asked to fund a company’s ventures but then expected to not receive any of the benefits any publisher or venture capitalist would get? Ownership.

When a publisher funds a game, they end up owning all the “IP” behind it. The copyrights, the trademarks, everything. The developer doesn’t get to keep anything, which is incidentally when developing companies go under, the actual team behind them cannot keep working on the settings they created. We end up with stuff like games truly deserving of a sequel simply disappearing. As such, it’s very worthwhile to try and get away from such a restrictive contract if possible.

However to jump from that to a concept of crowdfunding where you get to keep all the benefits and take none of the risks just strikes me as very unfair for those actually putting their money on the line. Not only do I give my money one year in advance, without knowing the quality of what I get or even if I get anything at all, but all I get is a license to play the game I funded? Does this seem  like a good deal to any you? Personally, I feel like a sucker.

If you want to crowdsource or crowdfund your ventures, then you’d better be willing to give something back to those who help you. And no, simply a license to play the game is not enough. You’d better give us the code in the form of free software. In short, if you do a public venture, it’s only fair that you create a public content. Not only will you then show that you are willing to meet those helping you half-way, not only will you ensure to those taking the risks (i.e. putting their money on the line) that they will get to keep whatever you started even if you get hit by a bus, but you also create a feeling of goodwill which will go a long way in making people willing to support you.

And not only that, but you will also get free support and development from the community you’ve become a part of.

The downside? If your game becomes insanely successful, you won’t end up swimming in money but with games like Diablo 3 coming out in the same year and you being a small-time developer, do you think that’s a possibility? You will still be able to sell your game just fine but you’ll simply have to find a way to give people a reason to buy. WIll that be dedicated online servers and scarce material goods? More likely. Will you end up losing the revenue from trying to sell a bunch of bytes? Sure, but then again, you got your money beforehand and those who want to support you will do so anyway, as they do with any free software project (of which many survive with substantial donations). Those who wouldn’t pay any money and simply play the gratis version are the sames who would pirate the game anyway.

Think about it. It makes sense to free your code if you go down this path. Think of the goodwill. I know for a fact that if you announced that the game would be licensed under the GPL, I’d already have given you my money and so would many others. Think of the free publicity from all the free software and open source related sites that announced this bold move of yours, from all those free software enthusiasts which now join your ranks of ARPG enthusiasts to spread the word of mouth. Think of freedom and the fact that your game will survive and continue to improve no matter the money.

UPDATE: I posted a link to this post on the official fora and an initial response seems to indicate that opening the source is impossible since the game is built over the proprietary Titan Quest engine. If this is indeed the case, it is very unfortunate as it takes the free software licensing just out of the table altogether. This again points out the problems with building a game on a proprietary engine or base. If the engine of the game was open sourced, it would have been improved and updated by the community and new ARPG built on it relatively cheap, creating a wealth of such games to play. See the Quake3 engine for example.

Also, it’s worth noting that GNU/Linux support is not planned.

EDIT2: Thread was closed, so even if you do want to argue a point, you now can’t. This personally does not fill me with any confidence.

On the recent betrayal by the US "justice" system

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Yeah, yeah. You’ve been screwed once more. Noting to see here. Move along.

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So your courts finally and unapologetically sold your democracy out to the corporations. Are you truly that surprised? I see a lot of gnashing of teeth lately online from people who are outraged, Outraged that their high courts would pass such a ruling. “How can they not see that they’re handing the power over to the plutocracy?”, “There goes our democracy”, Boo-hoo-fucking-hoo.

WELL, WAKE UP AND SMELL THE FUCKING COFFEE.

Your democracy has been a farce ever since your corporations started being considered “persons” in the late 19th century. Your politics and your government and your justice system and your enforcement agencies have always worked for the benefits of the rich only. Whatever crumbs of wealth and illusions of democracy you received were only to prevent you from realizing the truth of your situation. But you’ve been so pathetic lately that they know they can get away by spitting at your illusions directly.

I find it extremely humorous that after all the things that have been taken from you. After all the rights you’ve lost, all the people they’ve imprisoned for nothing, all the people they’ve killed and tortured, all the wealth they’ve transferred straight out of your pocket to theirs, now you get all upset and seeing the dystopian future that awaits you?

They’ve been turning your constitution into toilet paper for the last decade (not to mention defecating in the spirit of liberty for the last 150) and you’re still surprised when they crassly continue doing it? Who’s going to stop them? Your politicians? Those were in their corporate pockets long before this latest detail, and it is a detail after all for it functionally changes nothing in the way your political system has always worked. They know how to bypass such limitation for a long while now. They’re just confident enough with your pathetic resistance that they don’t even care to keep up the pretenses.

Your justice system? Only deluded fools with naive beliefs in the efficiency of common law or due process can still expect that there’s some objectivity in the legal system that appropriately balances the interest of the poor to the interests of the wealthy. That the process by which laws and rules were created ensures their fairness. That rich judges with a constitution and politicians making laws skewed towards the wealthy, would create legal precedents that went contrary to the spirit of your “justice” (i.e. protect the rich from the poor).

Perhaps this might wake some of you up but I doubt it. The only thing you people seem to think first when they’re once again preparing the lubricants is to vote for the brand. Yes, lobby some politician to pass some law, or even better, waste your time building yet another non-starter.

When are you going to realize that these things don’t work. Not because you may not get another Pyrrhic victory in such issues, but because your whole system is rotten to the core. These are just the latest symptoms of the decay.

Realize finally that what you’ve been told to believe since you were kids, that your democracy works, is a lie. It does not. No matter how likable the muppet you have at the front is. Your only solution is to tear it down and start from a solid basis again, not battle with palliatives.

So can we please stop with the impotent internet outrages? At the least switch do some good ol’ honest cynicism. This is nothing novel or important.

It’s only business as usual.

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Why do people pirate games?

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Do people pirate simply because they’re cheapskates or is there more to their motives?

In the conclusion section of the article examining piracy of TweakGuides, the author puts forth his basic explanation on why Piracy happens and it basically boils down to “People are immoral cheapskates” which as far as the rest of his analysis goes is a strikingly shallow and one-sided explanation that simply reeks of his personal bias against piracy. This is based on his frankly shallow correlation that because piracy still exists, even though things like Steam, demos, DRM and whatnot have tried to fight it, people pirate simply because they can.

If you are currently scratching your head on how on earth this follows from the premises, it doesn’t. The author doesn’t even make the effort to explain why the persistence of piracy means that it’s done because of people being cheapskates and not because the available options do not satisfy the demand as the piracy option does.

To this end, I’m going to present a few reasons why piracy still persists and seemingly increases. Starting with the mean reason of course which as you’d expect is…

People Pirate because they can’t afford the games.

It’s really not difficult to grasp the concept that there’s poor people in the world. It’s also not difficult to grasp that because PCs are becoming increasingly necessary or useful during one’s daily tasks, that one will be available for many middle and lower-middle class families. Take places like India or China which have a very very large lower-class populace and yet their PC and internet use is increasing. There’s a lot of people with capacity to play games who can’t really afford them. When one takes into account the price gouging that also happens between countries in the gaming market ((Basically it goes like this: If the country’s currency is worth more than dollars, the game is priced in the local currency the same amount as in dollars, no matter the exchange rates. This is what commonly happens in Europe where 1 dollar = 1 euro for buying games. Now if the country’s currency is worth less than the dollar, more likely than not, the game is still sold in dollar price-range, making it far out of reach of most people. Sometimes you get the even worst results as is the case of Australia)) it’s not difficult to understand how legal gaming is outside the budget of those capable of it.

So all those people, who can’t afford the games will still want to play them due to the extensive marketing campaigns around them. And piracy provides this option. Where piracy not an option, these would not become customers. They would turn to something else. This is like the most obvious realization one should be able to make about people who do not have a lot of disposable income really. It is a fallacy of a monumental scale to claim that just because someone got the game for free, they would be willing to buy it if they couldn’t.The reason is simple, people try to find the games that are of the highest quality and within their capacity to buy them. Let me repeat this:

People try to find games that are of the highest quality and within their capacity to buy them.

This means something very specific. If one’s highest quality game is prohibited due to price, they are simply going to go for the next best option. If it ends up that the highest quality game they can afford is an indie game, they’ll play that. if it turns out that it’s a free browser game, they’ll play that instead. At no point will their inability to pirate a game increase their capacity to buy them. This means that even if piracy where to disappear overnight, the sales of PC games is unlikely to increase to any significant degree. The end result (companies not making as much profit as they think they deserve) will really not change.

Are these people cheapskates if they get to enjoy something they wouldn’t be able to afford anyway? Are they cheapskates because they didn’t prioritize games over food, rent or necessary socializing (eg going out for a beer with their friends)? Only by the very tortured reasoning of very privileged people.

It’s the kind of reasoning which assumes that everyone’s situation is similar to one’s own. That everyone has similar opportunities as a middle-class US American. That everyone certainly has enough money to buy their games but are just too cheap to do it. It’s simply ridiculous when you then see this reasoning used with a straight face to make an statement like this:

The purely self-serving nature of the arguments people use to justify piracy has become quite galling, and frankly is an insult to the collective intelligence of all internet users. Whether you pirate games or not is ultimately none of my business, but at least have the decency to be honest with yourself and everyone else about the real reasons why you’re doing it.

It almost sounds like a Theist who’s confidently declaring that the only reason some people are Atheists is because they’re angry at God. And is as convincing.

People pirate because it’s more convenient

If we move to those people who can afford to purchase some their games, it’s quite common to discover that many still pirate because Piracy is still the better option. Whereas a normal buy would require the whole issue of trekking to the shop, buying the game, wrangling with restrictive DRMs and whatnot. Pirating can be done from the comfort of one’s own house, usually within hours for the most popular games. And if it’s not obvious already, people value their comfort as well, especially when it’s about a hobby.

This whole thing can easily be seen in many different ways. Take Steam first of all. In regards to the wealthier pirates, it is the primary reason for them becoming legitimate customers by giving them actual reasons to buy and making their service far more useful than a torrent download. Automatic updates, free re-downloads (at fast speeds), community/social networking services  etc. All of these make buying from Steam a higher convenience than simply getting it for free, and basically smashes the pathetic people-are-cheapskates argument of the author. If people are willing to shell money for Steam even though there’s a free alternative just around the corner, doesn’t that make you rethink that argument? Or are those in Steam only the noble ones?

Don’t like the Steam example? Take good ol’ CD Piracy which is still extremely popular in the poorer nations. Why does this still exist when so people now have the capacity to either download the files directly or find someone who can? Even in the most of the poor areas of the world, you usually find internet stations with high-speed connections which can easily be used for people to download what they like. How can CD/DVD Piracy still be a million, if not billion-dollar industry? The answer again is convenience. Amongst those who do not have a lot of money to spend on gaming, paying something like 4$ is low enough of a price for avoiding tedious download periods, shady cracks and possibly non-working copies. CD/DVD pirates know this and thus provide copies that are generally working out of the box pretty well, which is especially important in a word-of-mouth kind of job they work in.

Piracy is working so well against normal purchases because it provides some very good advantages other than price. It allows people without credit cards to get their games online. It provides quicker service (not have to wait for weeks or even months to get the game in your own country). It avoids having to mess with physical items or DRMs. Services that wish to compete with Piracy for the people that can afford to purchase legally need to also hit on these points as well or alternatively provide other advantages to give people a reason to buy instead. Services like Steam and Impulse understand this and the fact that they also drop their prices temporarily to grab all those without a big gaming budget as well does not harm either.

People pirate to avoid unnecessary restrictions or delays

Compared to the previous two reasons, this is a relatively minor cause and most often than not, it does not change the number of people who buy (i.e. those who pirate for such a reason are likely to have already bought the game as well). Still it does increase the number of perceived downloaded copies which is used by people like the Author to boost their anti-piracy arguments.

These are the people who download a game in order to be able to play it in an uncensored version (with blood. With sex etc). If you consider how many countries, even rich ones like Germany, have ridiculously restrictive policies on this, it’s not hard to understand how it matters. I’ve done it quite a few times on games I have legally bought, just because I hate having to play a lobotomized game because some politician listened to the puritan lobby.

Then there’s those who can’t wait until companies get off their restrictive butts and release worldwide when the capacity exists. Some can’t wait until the game is translated or censored first and just want to play with their friends ASAP. Some know that the game is never going to be brought to their country because of ridiculous laws (coughAustraliacough) Most often than not, they end up buying the game when possible in order to get all the legal features as well.

People pirate on principle

While the author is quick to dismiss and belittle this attitude, it is not only true but getting stronger the more annoying the anti-piracy measures and lobby becomes. People pirate to teach companies a lesson.

You see, price does not give a complete signal to the companies, when the number of copies sold for a particular game are low, the company has no idea what the reason was. Perhaps the game was too bad. Perhaps people didn’t have money in that period. Perhaps it is because everyone’s a cheapskate pirate. And because companies don’t know why the game didn’t sell as much as they expected (or as much as they wished) they cannot fix the issues with it. However, when their customers explicitly and in very clear terms point out before-hand that they will refuse to buy the game if their favourite features are taken away (dedicated servers, lan play etc) or restrictive measures enforced (eg heavy-handed DRM) and the companies still go ahead and do it, how can they act surprised that their piracy rates skyrocket?

If you notice the top pirated games of the last years, you notice the same trends. Spore at the top of 2008 with its heavy DRM. CoD:MW2 at 2009 with its lack of dedicated server support. It’s not difficult to imagine that many of those pirated copies were done as a punishment for the companies from people who refused to buy. The more companies insist on going against their customer’s wishes, the more those customers will refuse to deal with them and will go to the next best alternative. And this is good.

Consumers have very small bargaining power compared to the megapublishers of games. Thus by refusing to play the games at all, they punish themselves just as much. Piracy provides the alternative which makes only the companies feel the pain of their bad management and provides a miniscule advantage (in the grand scale of things) back to the consumer. And even that is usually not enough as hardcore gamers are enough of an addict to shell their money even when they swore they wouldn’t. Thus the amazing success of MW2, even with a severely lacking multiplayer and a hostile PC community.

Piracy, much like union funds or other social nets, provide a needed counterbalance to corporate power.

In Conclusion

Speaking from myself, as someone who wholeheartedly supports the existence of piracy while currently doing very little of it myself, I can easily fit in all of the reasons I provided above. I was a heavy pirate when I was younger, poorer and without a job and this helped me actually develop a far better personality than I would have without it. Once I started having some more money, I used cut down on piracy heavily, unless it was more convenient to do so and with the advent of Steam, even that was basically reduced to zero and any times I do it now, it’s because I’m trying to get around restrictive bullshit laws of the country I’m in, for games I generally buy anyway.

I could probably list or expand on the reasons for piracy if I wanted to, but my main point was to show how amazingly short-sighted and downright insulting is the author’s analysis for the motives of pirates. It’s an extremely black&white view of the issue of piracy which is a handy way to ignore the real reasons why it happens. It’s far easier to decide there’s a good side and an evil side and those you do not like belong in the evil side. It’s like tribalism 101.

101 Blogs on Anarchism (and some guides)

Db0

I’ve populated the postrank topic on Anarchism and here I explain how it may be of use to you.

PostRank Inc.
Image via Wikipedia

Inspired by the latest postrank rankings of the Anarchosphere, I decided to improve upon the initial number of Anarchist blogs that I’d added in the past to the topic of Anarchism. To this end, I’ve basically scoured the internetubes and added around 60 new blogs to the topic bringing the grand (current) total to 101 tracked sites.

Now you may be wondering what’s the point of all this. We already have an aggregator after all. Well the thing is that postrank goes a bit futher than simple aggregation as it offers some extra features and capabilities that I’m certain some of you might find useful.

The Benefits of a postrank topic on Anarchism

  • It allows you to not only subscribe to the RSS of the topic, but also to balance between the quality and the quantity of the content you’ll end up seeing so that you don’t get swamped with posts from more than a hundred blogs. For example this feed will only display the posts from each site which have a very high engagement for that particular blog. This does not mean that you’ll be seeing only the most popular sites as the rating of a post is judged to the relative engagement of all other posts within the same site. More info here.
    It also provides you with more ways to subscribe. While you can do it the usual way of simply subscribing to the RSS of the topic, you can also simply export an OPML file with all the blogs and add them as individual feeds to your own Reader granting you even more control.
  • It avoids a centralized management as is the case of a normal Aggregator like Anarchoblogs. While there’s not reason to expect that the an admin like RadGeek would decide to start arbitrarily banning and removing sites he does not like, it still puts some limitations such as is the case in every benevolent hierarchy. Practically, there’s probably going to be little difference but with postrank you ensure that the control is more distributed and moderation thus happens faster.
    This means that you can go right ahead and add your own blog to the topic if you think you deserve to be there. While I tried to include as many as I felt should be there, doubtlessly I will have forgotten or not discovered them all. If you find you’re not included, just go ahead and add your anarchism-related blog as well. I will post a short guide on how to do this later on.
  • It provides some interesting statistics to see how popular you are, which are your most engaging posts and how active you are on the social web compared to other sites in your topic. Eventually, at the end of the year, you will also see how well you did and how your popularity rose or dropped and you can even get a nice badge for your site 😉

So if any of this is of interest to you, just go ahead and play around with the system and see how you like it.And no, before you ask, I’m not affiliated with Postrank in any way. I just like the way it works and the functionality it provides.

And now, some instructions.

How to add your own site to the Anarchism topic of Postrank

  1. Navigate to the anarchism topic
  2. If you haven’t used Postrank before, you’ll need to create an account. You can use your google or yahoo accounts to login as well AFAIK or simply an OpenID if you have one.
  3. Once you’re logged in click to manage the topic.
  4. Where it says “Add Feed” put the url of your blog. If “nothing found” is returned, it means that your site is not yet in the Postrank index. Don’t worry, it’s a few seconds’ work to add it.
    • Put your site’s url in the search textbox on the top right and press enter.
    • A new page should open from postrank, telling you that they do not know this site but will add it ASAP.
    • Go back to the management page for the topic and add your url to the “Add feed” box. The name of your site should now appear below. If it doesn’t, try removing the http:// in front of your url and leave only the domain name. The site should appear then. If that still doesn’t work, try to remove any trailing backslashes from the url and try again.
  5. Press the little green “plus” sign on the right of your blog’s title. The whole title should now become green.
  6. Click “Save Changes”. Once the page reloads, you site has been added to the topic. If you were just added in postrank you really won’t have any rank or info. Wait a few hours/days and check again. Your blog should appear at some position in the topic feeds. Visit its postrank page to get more details.

Congratulations. You’re now part of Postrank’s anarchism topic 😉

How to get only higher quality posts from the anarchism topic (or any topic for that matter)

  1. Go to the posts area of the topic.
  2. On the top, use the drop-down menu to select the quality you wish. It goes like this in regards of quality: All < Good < Great < Best. The higher the rank, the less posts you’ll get to see but all of them should have relatively high engagement for their blog’s standards.
  3. Once you have the quality you wish, click on the “RSS Feed” link on the right. You will notice that the URL has a number on appended on the end. That is the engagement rank or higher that a post needs to have before you’ll see it. You can change that number to 10.0 to see only the best of the best (note: this will be an extremely low quantity feed. Alternatively if you’re using google reader or bloglines, click on their relevant links instead.
  4. Use your browser’s controls to add the feed to your reader or do it normally via cut & paste
  5. There is a chance the feed will timeout if Postrank’s servers are overloaded. In that case you’ll have to copy the feed’s URL and add it to your reader manually. Once the servers recover, you’ll start seeing new posts.

Be aware that getting your feeds via postrank’s aggregation is going to be slower than going to the source due to the fact that a post needs to be first grabbed, then analyzed and once it has a high enough rank, presented in the feed. Therefore expect hours or even days of delays for each quality-filtered post. This shouldn’t be such an issue in general for non-news related sites as blogs are in general.

If you want new posts to appear ASAP on your reader on the other hand, your best option is to export to an OPML file and add all the feeds as individual sources to your reader. However, with this way you won’t have any filtering based on quality. If you use an online reader, you can use the special tools to achieve the same result instead.

So that’s about it. I hope you find it as useful as I do and feel free to contact me about any issues you find with it or to just let me know what you think about it.

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The perpetual confusion about "Property"

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Private Property or Possession? If only an actual discussion between the two finally replaced the endless definitional bickering…

keep out
Image by Arriving at the horizon via Flickr

Once again I must return to the subject of ownership rights and how there’s two very distinct ways to define them: Private Property and Possession. That is not of course to mean that there’s no further variation between each of those systems, such as variation on the time to abandonment, the scale of ownership (individualist or collective) etc but rather that there is a hard core difference which splits the ownership scale in half, making each half incompatible with the existence of the other within the same social structure.

This idea, that Private Property as an ownership system is distinct from Possession as an ownership system should not be difficult to grasp.  It is after all one of the core concepts of most forms of Socialism and anyone trying to do a substantial critique – especially of communism – should as a bare minimum be able to understand what socialists actually oppose when we speak about “abolition of private property” or what collective ownership means in practice.

And yet, time and again, instead of seeing valid criticism against socialist theory from defenders of the capitalist mode of production, we see an endless string of strawmen centered around misunderstanding (purposefully, one starts to think eventually) the socialist opposition to “Property”. This is even more cringe-inducing when it is stated as a novel and irrefutable argument against socialist theory. As if it so easily proves that all socialists are just too silly to see and understand the obvious flaws in their opposition to Capitalism. It’s like someone bringing up the “Mud Pie” example as a new and exciting criticism against Marxian economics.

Such is the most recent example where we are guided to understand what “property” is and that communists “seem to forget” a bunch of stuff about how human societies function and the positive aspects of being able to own stuff. It once again trots out the classic red herrings about people who would prefer private property over anything else and that the only way to stop them must be via a state. Yadda yadda. Regular readers of mine should already know how easy it is to refute this nonsense.

It is all, in the end, based on simply calling all “Ownership” as “Property” and thus claiming that we, as humans, can’t function without “property”.He therefore obscures the fact that there is a difference between “Possessive property” and for lack of a better word now, “Sticky Property” and its significance. He pontificates on the voluntary aspects of “property” and how everyone else got it so wrong, while failing to make any point on whether Possession or “Sticky” property should be preferred, something which is at the heart of the socialist idea. In short we replace arguments over substance with arguments over vacuous semantics.

You see, it does not really matter what we call the various systems of ownership, we could call them blue and purple bananas for all the good it will do us. The important thing is that we understand the same concepts. That the socialist criticize the ownership system which facilitates and promotes wage-slavery, rent and usury and promote one which makes that systematically impossible. That this is not a discussion on how we’re going to enforce it (voluntarily or coercively) but on simply which system we ought to prefer.

To simply take your own or what you assume are the “right” definition of the word ‘property’ and superimpose it onto socialist critique, is simple a recipe for strawmen fallacies. Perhaps you have the most popular definition. Perhaps you have the proper or more the most clear. Perhaps not. The important thing to remember, as Proudhon pointed out in the past, is that if you’re going to call all types of ownership “property” then you really need a way to distinguish between possession and “sticky property”. He suggested to call the later the more appropriate name of “theft” of course but I doubt the propertarians will agree on that.

As a communist, I have a reason why I prefer the definitional distinction to be between “Private Property” and “Possession”. Property is generally understood anyway to be “sticky” that is, to remain with someone until they sell or abandon it, regardless of occupancy or use. As such, it does not take much effort, other than explaining that there’s other possible forms of ownership other than that, to clarify my opposition to it.  But it’s not important to use those concepts if they confuse someone. I can easily switch to a terminology that one feels more comfortable with if that will make things easier for them. However this is still my preferred terminology for the reason I just explained and thus find it incredibly silly for someone to make strawmen based on what I write for the general audience and then defend their actions on the grounds that their definitions are superior or more correct.

OTOH, what I most commonly end up seeing is that propertarians do not choose to call everything “property” because it is easy to discuss the concepts around it, but because it conveniently allows them to pretend that other valid forms of ownership do not exist. They will attempt to argue that “Property” is necessary and by that lump all concepts of ownership into the same umbrella, even when incompatible with each other. This is necessary in order to make their core arguments from “self-ownership” lead to Laissez-faire Capitalism, something which would be weakened if possession was a valid form of ownership, distinct from private property. Therefore it’s better to assume that the former is simply a subgroup of the latter. In fact, this is surprisingly similar to the way they try to argue that they’re open to the idea of communism…as long as it exists within a greater propertarian framework.

But I digress into an anti-AnCap rant again. What I’m trying to point out is that the words we use are irrelevant as long as we end up understanding each other and making substantial arguments. I long to see someone making  a solid critique on why a Possessive system is unfeasible or even simply inefficient, or how private property is more ethical and whatnot…without having those points demolished by decade-old anarchist arguments or simple facts of reality.

And until then, all misguided propertarians who insist on making strawmen and presenting them as the most insightful thing ever and the absolute refutation of any and all forms of Socialism – should and will receive at best a quick dismissal as the waste of time they are, or at worst a well deserved ridicule for being obnoxiously ignorant.

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Quote of the day: Words and Meaning

Db0

A quote about the use of words

Quoth Chuang-Tzu (c. 200 B.C.E) ((As seen in the book On Being Certain))

The fish traps exist because of the fish. Once you’ve gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words so I can talk with him?

This is related to my article on the use of Mathematics and language