--- xdrudis xdrudis@tinet.org 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?
Many people in Britain did not want to suppport UKIP.
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.
I hope Wayne Stallwood will not mind me quoting him:
I think what Sid is proposing is a single-issue party. The aim of these is somewhat different to that of a full manifesto party that pretty much has to have a policy for every issue.
The whole point of a single-issue party is not to gain elected office, but to attract enough votes that a full manifesto party will start paying attention to that single issue and adopt the same policies to gain the single-issue parties votes, either that or some single-issue parties actually do manage to 'grow' to a full manifesto but it's quite rare.
That's the way I think I understand it anyway, somebody more versed in politics can correct me.d
xdrudis wrote:
From any of these views you can argue against swpats, for open standards, 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 ?
The environmentalist have the Green Party, pressure groups like Greenpeace (both), Friends of the Earth they work at both level at the same time. However the Green Party in England has run into problem with trying to be a full party because environmentalists can be right, middle of left of the political spectrum. The Green party has also had problem with people being more interested in a special interest that they support than saving the environment. FLOSS is not a rightwing idea, it goes against normal capitalist ideas.
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