Just as liberal democratic capitalism evolved over centuries to achieve success, socialism is also in its early stages of development. There's still experimentation, and there will inevitably be some mistakes along the way. That's no reason to give up on socialism. #socialism#capitalism#liberalism#democracy
#DistributedDemocracy#Decentralization#NetworkedFederalism#CyberSyn#Socialism: "Just as liberalism is flawed in its calls for democracy to extend only to parliamentary representation, the core internet protocols are flawed in their assumption that distribution need only apply to network topology. We have seen the consequences of asking private enterprise to construct a distributed system: centralisation, monopolisation. Just as we demand more democracy than offered by parliaments, we should demand more distribution than offered by private telecommunications. Distribution can only be achieved in this sense via socialisation.
Effective network design demands collective, not private governance. If the private market cannot distribute the network itself, as we have seen it cannot, we will need to find new protocols which can achieve this. And there is no reason to limit this aspiration to topology; we could also distribute computing power. If “the cloud” offers the appearance of distribution, a socialist network might achieve the real thing: equitable access to the power of computation, autonomy over algorithms, open and public archives, digital democracy.
We can go beyond the existing conceptions of distribution to build four necessary protocols for a socialist network:
Distribute network topology (a demand already latent in TCP/IP)
Distribute computing power
Socialise communication
Socialise the development of network infrastructure itself
The question of how to go about socialising these things remains an open one, but however weak the left might be in this domain today, we are not without options."