I normally wouldn’t bother but my reply draft started to grow general and it became worthy of posting somewhere imo.
This is in response to this comment:
https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/issues/164#issuecomment-387787082
That thread is now locked.
I have no illusions about the impact my words are going to have. I get that. And he’ll probably never even see this, though I will email him a link to it and promise to publish any replies he has.
This is about my own ethical code and recycling of labor. It has nothing to do with him beyond my code of conduct towards all people
So, here is my reply proper.
…
> Again, you can demand all you like, and you can claim that it’s totalitarian that nobody wants to implement them. I don’t think it’s a very effective way of getting what you want though. Obviously the burden of proof lies with whoever want to invest labour in a feature (specifically other people’s labour).
This whole paragraph is nonsensical. Burden of proof doesn’t even apply here. If you’re tangentially talking about power and responsibility which is loosely similar to burden of proof then yes, those with power collectively have responsibility. But it is diffuse. I was always only ever speaking in general and about classes.
> So who are you directing your demands at
I don’t have any demands at all beyond ethics. My demand in this context was simply that the goal should be doing what’s right and sensible. As for who would implement then, if ever, that’s entirely up to those able to do so.
In my view compensation would come in the form of an improved society paying up front with a basic income, the utility of the code itself, and respect paid to people doing good for its own sake.
> I’m not suggesting it’s easy to become a (good) developer, but once you are, it’s trivial to get a job.
Goal post move. Adding that subjective qualifier changes the entire scope of your assertion. 99% of coders can’t find work already. Millions of coders bag groceries thanks to the exponentially increasing demands of profit.
https://newrepublic.com/article/145734/costs-millennial
Only the privileged pampered elite among coders have wildly insecure jobs in the industry. That they don’t feel pampered is merely testament to the 0.1%’s ability to get people to works for the bare minimum they’ll accept.
It’s worth noting also imo that those jobs are ALL about making it so corporations can hire machines instead of people. Coders are maggots in the corpse of the job market. And to be clear I say bravo because the job market is only different from a slave market in methodology. The result of both is still brutal physical punishment for refusal to work. We just moved from away from whips towards crushing poverty in the midst of technological plenty.
Objections to capitalism itself center on this fact but rarely make the comparison because traditionally communism and socialism by necessity of technological immaturity had to have workers as a necessary evil.
We are building a new mechanical ecology. Earth is going to become an indoor garden or lush space station eventually and the floor of the food chain is going to be fission reactions and robotically actualized open source code.
> This is not the first time the world has gone through technological shifts
This statement is entirely wrong.
We’re today capable of dispensing with the food chain and work generally at the same time. And we’re on the cusp of both an AI singularity and a reproductive revolution that is going to force us to redefine what “human” even means.
In the context of code work alone the change coming is so substantive and qualitative that work itself is about to come to an end.
Retaining it much longer in the face of our physically real option to obviate it will amount to a religious decision completely unconnected to the objective world.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36246153-can-biotechnology-abolish-suffering
> Well, in your star-trek communism it still wouldn’t really be voluntary, would it? I would have to work on the majority-vote feature.
Firstly, Star trek isn’t communist. It’s fascist. Secondly, you won’t have to work at all if you don’t want to (Yay for actual real freedom) and what you do work on will be your choice.
See also: http://underlore.com/the-apex/
