Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

Voici en avant-première le tout dernier article de François Guillaumat et Georges Lane sur la fameuse Loi de Bitur-Camember.

Pour rappel, La loi de Bitur-Camember fut originellement publiée dans le Tocqueville Magazine du 21 mai 2002. J'en ai fait l'exposé dans le billet de mon blog: Redistribution = Dissipation. La BD de Christophe d'où provient le nom est aussi disponible sur mon blog: On ne pense pas à tout.

Pourquoi la loi de Bitur-Camember

François Guillaumat et Georges Lane

I had submitted a variant of my Black Magic text to the essay contest conducted by The Better-World Project. The results were just published on Build Freedom, and I only got a consolation prize. That was well deserved: the other texts were much more inspiring. I invite you to read the actual winners! Thanks again to Frederick Mann for being such a source of inspiration, through his many sites and projects. Few people in the world know the road to freedom. He does, and he leads the way.

On the first weekend of April, I attended the Spring 2005 Convention of Libertarian International, in Sofia, Bulgaria, as organized by the Bulgarian Society for Individual Liberty. I was a speaker, and my speech was about Capitalism as the Institution of Ethics. The notes for my speech are now available on my web site.

Vous le savez peut-être, je boycotte par principe les élections politiques, car je refuse de cautionner le pouvoir sur moi de quelqu'homme politique que ce soit, et je refuse de me faire complice d'un tel pouvoir sur autrui. Ni esclave, ni maître. Chaque voix qui leur est donnée est un soutien à leur imposture; les citoyens ne seront libres que quand plus personne n'ira voter, et que les politichiens n'auront personne derrière qui se tenir pour cacher leur usurpation. Cependant, je vais voter au prochain référendum et je conseille à ceux qui le peuvent de voter aussi. Pourquoi?

Derisive comments are often made about the syntax of Lisp, as witness some reproaches on my previous blog entry. Thus the half-joking, half-serious backronym of Lots of (Insipid | Irritating | Infuriating | Idiotic | ...) and (Spurious | Stubborn | Superfluous | Silly | ...) Parentheses, and accusations that Lisp syntax would make code incomprehensible to read and error-prone to write. I will take exception to this general kind of comments, and I will argue in defense of the Lisp syntax.

Lisp has this particularity that (1) there are distinct syntaxes for data structures and for program code, that (2) code syntax is a subset of data syntax (code can be seen as data), and that (3) data syntax can be embedded easily into code syntax (by enclosing it in the QUOTE special form). It is then possible to write in Lisp a small program that executes Lisp programs seen as data structures, EVAL. The discovery of such a simple canonical correspondance between code and data is what made Lisp so great. Alan Kay called it Maxwell's Equations of Software.

Quand Raymond me demanda d'écrire pour lui, j'en fus très flatté; Et de suite s'imposa ce sujet que j'avais décortiqué: la Magie Noire, et son règne insidieux sur notre société. -- Hein???

La magie noire, c'est attendre le bonheur, le succès, la rédemption, etc., de la part d'entités supérieures. C'est croire que ces dieux apporteront ces bienfaits par miracle si les croyants s'humilient, consentent des sacrifices, soumettent les incroyants. Croire que ces êtres surnaturels ont des pouvoirs illimités et ne sont tenus par aucune loi rationnelle, mais par des désirs arbitraires. Bref, faire reposer son espoir irresponsable de jouissances sur les caprices d'intervenants extérieurs dont on revendique l'ignorance.

Or, la religion officielle de ce pays n'est-elle pas un culte de magie noire, où l'État est Dieu? Au moindre problème, il s'agit de "débloquer les crédits" -- une manne divine bloquée par des démons! À tout sujet médiatique, on crie à une "réglementation" -- le progrès s'obtenant par simple décret. Mais que Dieu-l'État ne décrète-t-il pas la semaine de 4 heures, champagne et caviar gratis, un doctorat pour chacun? Partout, l'État est vu comme un Sauveur, un Berger, un être extérieur à la société, source d'une bienveillance absente des hommes, dont l'action ne coûte rien et accomplit parfaitement son intention affichée.

Questionnez ceux que vous côtoyez sur ce qu'ils attendent de l'État. Vous verrez que la magie noire règne sur les esprits. Car ceux qui sont contrôlés ne sont pas ceux sur qui on jette des sorts, mais bien ceux qui croient en de tels sortilèges.

I am François-René Rideau, a one-man think tank from France, and the webmaster of Bastiat.org. Since I realized tonight that time is expensive, I will be short. Iris asked me to answer the question: What is the reaction in France to Ayn Rand's ideas? Well, the answer is quite short actually: <french accent>The reaction to what???</french accent> In France, Ayn Rand is even less known that in America. The difference is that in France, academics don't even have to find a pretense so as to dismiss the significance of Ayn Rand, that is hardly ever brought about.

But the problem with the silencing of libertarian ideas goes much further. Consider that free trade was relatively popular in 1776 after Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations. At the same time, socialism was mostly unheard of. Nowadays, free trade goes mostly undefended, while socialism is the semi-official religion of the day. So this is not just a matter of new ideas that haven't had the time to spread.

Ayn Rand insisted that the superiority of objectivist ideas resides in their rationality. Well, for an argument to be accepted, there are four steps which must be overcome: the argument must be heard; it must be listened to; it must vanquish prejudices; it must be understood. Only on the last step does rationality matter. For the rest, we must develop our skills at rhetoric if we want our ideas to compete on par with those of our opponents.

Having fun together is nice and well, and we're enjoying tonight (at least, I hope); but it only goes so far in terms of advancing Liberty. To advance Liberty is to convince other people of the nature, validity and importance of human rights. And convincing other people is a long and difficult task. It is an Enterprise of its own, to be approached as such. We have limited resources; we must manage them properly. With these resources, we must develop and market our ideas and arguments. Usual marketing techniques and pitfalls apply. We must define our targets, and cater to their needs. Most importantly, so as to survive and to extend, we must follow the bottom line: the self interest of the participating individuals, the sustainability, hence profitability, of the structuring institutions through which we advance Liberty.

Liberty will not prevail by chance. It will prevail because some people will have taken its success seriously, and will have undertaken the task of heralding it rationally. You can be among these people. You can become an activist. Or you can fund activism by people who specialize in the field. You may decide to fund my think tank, or another libertarian organization. In any case, it is your responsibility to entrust proper resources to people who will advance the cause of Liberty. Because you are the ones who know better.

Thank you for your attention.

At long last, I completed a readable version of an essay based on the speech I gave in Leiden. You can find it on my site: The Enterprise of Liberty vs The Enterprise of Politics.

Dans une discussion rationnelle, chacun explore la structure conceptuelle de l'autre -- mais aussi la sienne propre, qui restait souvent implicite jusqu'à être révélée par la confrontation. Cette structure est caractérisée par ses distinctions et ses identifications, c'est-à-dire par la façon dont on distingue ou identifie les situations en leur appliquant le même concept ou un concept différent. L'interlocuteur rationnel tente de comprendre ces distinctions et identifications, avant de pouvoir juger si oui ou non elles lui sont pertinentes -- c'est-à-dire propres à faciliter et améliorer le processus de décision et d'action humaines.

I am relieved to announce the release of Economic Reasoning vs Accounting Fallacies -- The Case of "Public" Research. This is the translation to English of my 2003 article Raisonnement économique contre sophismes comptables -- Le cas de la recherche « publique ». Many thanks to Bruno and Johan for their help in translating. Please feel free to comment on the expression as well as on the ideas.

You are an Anarchist. You think that capitalism is evil, that the "market" is a subtle dictatorship, that wage labor is but hidden (or softened) slavery, that consumership is an illusion to manipulate minds, that the State is the institution of this system of exploitation. You want to promote human life, natural beauty, liberty, and things well and good. That's why you oppose all the above evil things. OK.

Now you face wierd people who say they are anarchists, yet who promote those evil things you associate to the State you hate. How can that be? Are they hypocrites? Spies paid by big corporations to instill confusion? Are they crazy people incapable of coherent thinking? No, we're people just as sincere as you are; we also despise the current state of affairs and hate dictatorship, slavery and mind manipulation; and we're also motivated by our love of human life, natural beauty, liberty, and all things well and good. But we just have a different interpretation of what is evil.

How slight or how big is this difference? How much of it is a matter of a cultural gap in terminology and how much of it is actual irreconcilable ideas? Can we find a common pattern by which both of our groups may legitimately claim to be anarchist? Can we identify and circumscribe the root of our disagreements? Is it possible to find a peaceful way to resolve our disagreements, or will we have to kill each other before either or us may have his way? Well, if you'll allow me to argue my case, we can enter a sincere debate. And maybe we can find a resolution to settle our conflict in the anarchist way: through peaceful discussion.

Ceci est une réponse à un message point-godwin reçu sur la mailing-list rationalistes-autrichiens, en réaction à une intervention aussi enflammée qu'argumentatoire dans laquelle je démontrais par l'exemple que toutes les règles de comportements ne se valent pas à un jeune relativiste qui niait le processus de découverte du Droit. J'y discute les notions de courtoisie, de règles de comportement, de tradition, d'innovation, de Droit, de Libéralisme, etc.

This week-end, I was at the Libertarian International spring 2004 conference in Leiden, Holland. I was invited to give a speech on the Enterprise of Liberty vs the Enterprise of Politics (Update: the text is available on my site at last).

Pour justifier l'intervention de l'État, les adeptes de la magie noire s'inventent des scénarios-catastrophes du genre que se passe-t-il si les fournisseurs de tel type de service font tous faux bond et ne satisfont pas le public? Ces ratiocinations suivent un modèle standard, et on peut leur donner une réponse standard.

As a follow up to What Is Anarchy? by Butler Shaffer, Stephan Kinsella has published an enlightening article, What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist. Here is my take on the basics of Free-Market Anarchism.

Information protectionists and other corporate fascist try to sell us software, goods or services under the terms of shrinkwrap licences they unilaterally define, and that they claim to bind you by your merely opening the package. Well, as a reply to such juridic abuse, I hereby introduce a solution to all these problems. Indeed, I have no less right than these fascists to impose unilateral terms that apply to people who want to do business with me. So I hereby solemnly declare that anyone who undertakes to have any business whatsoever with me is bound by the terms of following contract, therefrom known as the end-seller license.

Argument étatiste typique, tellement souvent rencontré: "Mais, sans état, il risque d'y avoir la guerre!" Parce qu'avec l'état, il n'y a pas de guerre peut-être? Encore un qui a raté 6000 ans d'histoire. L'état fait-il disparaître la guerre, où lui fait-il prendre au contraire des proportions gigantiques, mondiales?

Tout à l'heure, quand je m'assois dans le bus, deux quelconques beurettes d'une seizaine d'année discutent derrière moi. De retour de l'école, elles semblent commenter une nouvelle (réelle? prospective?) comme quoi l'Aïd-el-Kébir deviendrait jour férié en France, ainsi que le Yom Kippour. L'occasion pour moi de me rendre compte de visu (ou plutôt de auditu?) de l'état d'esprit de l'immigration maghrébine en France...

OK, I know there are many other things I should have been writing instead, but this was near the top of by writing list for a long time, so it was the one I picked while I procrastinated my other activities. So here it is, completed at last: Government and Microsoft: a Libertarian View on Monopolies.

The article explains what I think of the case of Government against Microsoft, and about the notion of Monopoly and the issue of Intellectual Property that are at the heart of this case, despite having been systematically avoided by the prosecution and defense alike.

mood: sleepy

music: Sarah Vaughn -- Good Night, My Love

La manifestation a eu lieu. J'ai mis mon discours en ligne: OGM et principe de précaution -- le drame de l'irresponsabilité administrative. Trop fatigué pour en dire plus. Mais de la bonne fatigue, partagée avec de nombreux amis. La route m'attend.