[plug] Randianism (was: VoIP)

[Leon Brooks]

On Tuesday 22 February 2005 23:36, Chris Caston wrote:
> No offence but the only legitimate role of government is to protects
> peoples individual rights including the right their property. The
> free market will do a better job at promoting VoIP than the
> government could ever do.

I think it was LAX who tried completely private, contracted ambulances.

On that occasion, the free market decided that it was OK to anaesthetise 
the prettier patients and rape them en route, and to inject air into 
patients with no medical insurance since they were worth more at the 
morgue like that than the ambulance crew was ever likely to be paid if 
they took them to hospital. And a few other atrocities which secretly 
installed cameras and mikes helped to reveal.

Ayn Rand has a few good ideas, but taking everything she (or any other 
idealist) says at face value is not a career-enhancing move. The first 
thing that goes out the window with idealists is any recognition that 
we're dealing with actual people here, not cookie-cutter robots, and 
they're pretty much guaranteed to be short-sighted, greedy and just 
generally random enough to completely bugger up any "sensible" form of 
organisation.

This is why Linux's organisation succeeds where a legion of other OSes 
struggle. It works with, for, by and despite real people.

Cheers; Leon