FLOSS/Linux Political Party

Samuel Liddicott sam at liddicott.com
Thu Mar 3 09:13:31 UTC 2005


I think Xdrudis's comments below make sense.
More political fragmentation would be a bad thing.

We can more effectively contribute to the new under-parliament by 
joining (all?) political parties and influencing and voting on party policy.
I fear this is the only way true democratic representation can be 
ensured these days.

Sam

xdrudis wrote:

>El Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 07:36:26PM -0500, Sid Dabster deia:
>  
>
>>*** Proposal for a FLOSS/Linux Political Party ***
>>
>>I suggest a Linux Party is formed to promote the idea
>>of free software (and possibly related ideas). The
>>last European Election with the patent issue showed
>>the relevance of politics to the free software
>>movement. Voting purely on patents lead to some
>>undesirable alliance partners. While as LUG Radio
>>    
>>
>
>what do you mean undesirable alliance partners? 
>The "problem" we have is that we might all agree 
>in some topics (although the small list you give 
>below would probably already raise discrepancies),
>but a political party has to decide on more than 
>those topics. If we get together because we agree
>in information policy topics and then we disagree
>in taxes, social policy, security, foreign policy, 
>common agricultural policy, etc. it wouldn't work.
>
>Political parties join people that have similar views
>and priorities on individual freedoms, collective
>freedoms, redistribution of wealth, environment, 
>economic policy, "world order", etc. 
>
>From any of these views you can argue against swpats, for open
>standars, and so on and so forth, because these do not oppose
>essentially any of the basic values of any party (at least any I
>know). Right and left is tradionatilly distinguished by distribution
>of (scarce) resources. Distribution of infinetely reproducible
>resources is orthogonal to that. Nationalist, eurosceptics, pro-EU,
>pro or against globalisation, etc. are mostly about who decides which
>and where power is located. Religious or traditionalist party don't
>have much of a precednet with computer networks, so they can adapt to
>anything. Votes show that information policy issues depend more 
>on whether a representative "gets it" than his or her political colour.
>It is most useful for us to join our prefered party if we
>have one and enlighten them on inmmaterial goods and information
>society, so that all parties push for a resonable policy, or 
>at least for different but all reasonable policies, instead of 
>just legislation who does not match reality. Another option is
>to join no party and try to enlgihten them all in campaigns for
>specific topics.
>
>Yet, if you don't like any party, and you don't like to talk to 
>all of them on a single issue, you are encouraged to start a 
>political party. But when you do that, please set up a program
>in all kind of political decisions, not just information policy.
>Anyone may want to know what the party is going to do on 
>environment, trade, taxes, health, education, etc before joining it. 
>And you can give priority to information policy, but I guess
>you are not going to abstain in all the rest if you get to government,
>do you ?
>
>  
>

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