Re: a dumb query? pls humor me

Paul Johnson wrote:
Freddy Freeloader wrote:

GNU/Linux has more in common with freedom of choice than anything else.
It's originators my not see that, or have had it in mind, but the fact
is it does. It doesn't require coercion or attempt to force anyone to
do things exactly the same as everyone else. It is a decentralized way
of doing things.

Socialism is just the opposite when put into practice. It centralizes
all power over individual preferences and decisions in the hands of the
government.

You're confusing totalitarianism with socialism and doing great disservice
to most British commonwealths and much of the European Union in the process
by doing so.

I value freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and personal privacy. GNU/Linux is very compatible with all of those concepts.

So does Socialism.

No. I've yet to meet a socialist who doesn't want freedom from religion. Not freedom of religion.
GNU/Linux also gives the poor man a helping hand.

Exactly like Socialism.

More BS. Socialism taxes all people to death to pay for all it's centralized government programs.

It seems you do not even understand what decentralization is. It means the government is not involved in everything. It means that government is not the central authority. Name me one European country in which the government is not central figure in almost every part of life because it runs all the programs.

The EU is even usurping the power of the various nations, further centralizing all power in Europe. That is not decentralization.
To tell the truth I see very little of the core of socialism in any part
of Linux. Even the core kernel development is decentralized. Linus
does only a very small part of actual development anymore. It's his
idea and implementation so he rightly holds a fair amount of power of
the kernel, but the process of kernel development most definitely isn't
a centralized one. If it were centralized there wouldn't have been more
than 2000 developers from all walks of life adding patches to it in the
last year. And in true socialism Linus would have had to give up his
entire power over the process, which I see as a truly stupid idea.

You truly have confused totalitarianism with socialism.

No. You don't recognize socialism put into practice as different than socialism by theory. Even communism, in theory, is a peaceable, benign, good for its citizens, decentralized form of government. It's proven itself to be just the opposite everytime it's been put into practice. Socialism, put into practice, is a high taxes, government runs everything, highly centralized form of government.




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