The Aaron Swartz issue really reaffirms a hypothesis ive held for a long time about empathy. This is the first time I've seen HN in uproar, up in arms about the injustice against a man at the hands of the state for a crime which they cannot agree with. Yet there have been far greater travesties of justice, countless suicides by innocent people in Guantanamo bay or prison and not a bleep on the HN radar.
Obviously Aaron Swartz impact on the internet, his relevance to this community and obvious closeness to many people explains it. But take away who he is and the circumstances are sadly far from rare. Aaron Swartz' ordeal is being relieved right as we speak in numerous places around America and the world.
It's just unfortunate that for many it took this long to empathise or understand their plight.
Guantanamo is different. There are a lot of people there (fewer now) who don't belong there, but others I'd have to try hard not to murder, myself.
The problem with Guantanamo is the lack of legal process, and the way some people were swept up who shouldn't have been (which mostly got resolved in 2005-2006), not that many of them aren't horrible criminals. I'd be fine with prosecuting them all in federal civilian court with fair trials.
> There are a lot of people there (fewer now) who don't belong there, but others I'd have to try hard not to murder, myself.
That's what makes (made?!) America so great in the eyes of many (myself included) that have never set foot in there, i.e. the concept that anyone deserves a fair trial, based on actual evidence, and that you wouldn't be f.cked up by the judicial system during the whole process (perdon my French).
That's what happened in Aaron's case, he was f.cked up by the system, at least that's how I see the initial threat of spending 35 (or was it 50?) years in prison for something that didn't involve murdering young kids and raping them after the deed. A judicial system that depends on threats (doesn't matter if they're implicit or not) gets dangerously close to pure dictatorship.
Yeah, this is why police and prosecutors (and judges/juries) should be separate people. It's unreasonable to expect me to not want to kill someone who a couple years earlier was trying to kill me.
The whole point of the tactics used against Aaron was to render his right to a trial by jury too risky and expensive to exercise. In both cases, the legal accountability of the Executive Branch is what's being undermined - by the Executive Branch.
I'd be fine with holding them there for physical security reasons; just ensure that normal US law applies as it would on a US federal military base in the mainland US.
I guess the more profound tragedy, as I feel it, is that I always believed Aaron would be one of the best people to lead the fight against these problems (or at least, what causes them), and that the JSTOR trial was just a new, if difficult front.
I think many people in power got scared by the power he wielded in the SOPA/PIPA debate, which put a lot of pressure on getting him out of the scene. The AG was all too happy to acquiesce.
I guess that the HN crowd easily identifies with Aaron, or at least relates to what he stands for.
Like OP, I'm surprised to be so upset about someone I didn't know about a few days ago, but I keep reading everything by or about him, and man ! What a loss...
I think the difference is that Aaron is considered, directly, a member of this community, which is why there are different reactions than for Darfur or other injustices. Also, the issue, freedom of academic information is one that is very popular here in that it is a common topic of discussion.
I'm going through the exact same thing. I've been upset since Aaron's suicide and I just cannot figure out why it's affecting me in such a way. I didn't know him, and like the author, I have a difficult time feeling emotions for distant (yet immense) tragedies, including war and natural disasters. But this just fucking hurts.
Maybe it hurts because seemingly reasonable, well educated people are behind this. This wasn't some looney that snapped and walked into a school with guns blazing. The people responsible are representatives (in one way or another) of the United States of America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. Supposedly good people. But they can do this (thanks to the wallets of hard working American people) and will probably get away with it? They have this kind of power? They can ruin a person's life for a victimless crime, even when the alleged 'victim' chooses not to pursue legal action? That's a devastatingly scary thought. And it's not just Carmen Ortiz and Steven Heymann. Our justice system is wrought with corruption, and that's scary, because it's probably the best justice system in the world (or at least touted as such).
because it's probably the best justice system in the world (or at least touted as such).
By whom? The US has more citizens in prison than even China; and that is talking about absolute numbers, not even a percentage. Also, I often read posts by Americans that sarcastically mention justice going to the highest bidder. I never heard it touted as "the best", or even just "acceptably okay", for that matter.
Land of the free. Home of the brave. Supposedly good people.
That was never true, never will be, even though lots of countries and groups think that of themselves. It's like a child whistling in the dark; you don't do that because there is music all around you, but because there isn't. Actually brave and free people would never call each other, and surely not themselves that. Why, they wouldn't even have a word for it, they'd just be it.
> The people responsible are representatives (in one way or another) of the United States of America. Land of the free. Home of the brave.
I don't get this at all... Harvard fellow uses MIT's network surreptitiously to violate the terms of service to download a nonprofit's entire database and then give it away for free, putting them out of business. Gets busted and charged with crimes. Where's the problem here?
Ok the prosecutor may have been overzealous, but we do have an adversarial system and it was Swartz's bad decisions that brought the hammer down. They didn't plant drugs on him. He wasn't doing it to feed his family. Sorry to all the people here that knew him personally, and to whom this is a personal tragedy, but this is not the kind of travesty of justice that you are making it out to be.
JSTOR's database is scholarly articles going back about 500 years. These papers were written not-for-profit for the public good by academics and then peer reviewed (for free) by other academics. This represents our shared cultural knowledge, it belongs to everyone of us, and should be 100% freely available. And indeed much of it is in the public domain anyway since copyright has lapsed.
Whether the gate-keeper is nonprofit or not isn't really important. In point of fact, the entire system of journals charging fees for access to academic papers is outdated and broken, and is merely a parasitic relic from an age where it cost large sums of money to print and distribute paper-based media. Remember that universities pay a fee to access journals, and sometimes even pay a fee to have their papers published in journals, all the while generating and peer reviewing the content at their own expense.
In other words we can do better. And we should do better. By releasing JSTOR's content publicly Aaron was engaging in activism for the common good. You're welcome to your opinion that he deserved the book throwing at him and a $1M legal bill, but (in my opinion) you should think again.
* Why is this a Federal crime at all? Because some computer in another state was involved? If so,then soon all crimes will be federal.
* It appears they used mostly catch-all laws. The vague wording is subject to confirmation bias where almost any action looks like a violation. This is a particular problem with laws related to computer use; but also includes laws like "obstruction of justice" and "lying to a federal agent".
* In order to have a "reasonable" sentence on the table at all, he has to give up his right to a trial.
* As far as I can tell, no damage was actually done to anyone yet.
* Since when is violating a TOS a criminal issue? Did we outsource the writing of laws to company legal teams?
According to the Wall Street Journal[1], the government would probably have asked for 7 years, and a plea bargain offer was made to reduce to 6-8 months in prison. The 35+ years was the potential maximum, would have required conviction on all charges, and ultimately would have required an independent trial judge to "throw the book at him."
And "checking out too many books at once" = allegedly hacking into a third party network to download 4 million articles from 1,000 academic journals without paying the required fees.
Allow me to rephrase that then: 6-8 months, for downloading articles that should probably be in the public domain? Well, that's not prosecutorial overreach at all.
"allegedly hacking into [...] without paying the required fees
"Crime against 'intellectual property', goddammit! Let him rot in prison, I say! That content was paid-for by tax dollars, and nobody lost a dime because he never redistributed it, but so what? It's the principle: if you break property laws, you should always go to prison."
> Harvard fellow uses MIT's network surreptitiously to violate the terms of service to download a nonprofit's entire database and then give it away for free, putting them out of business.
Do you notice the contradiction in 'non profit' and 'putting them out of business'?
Non-profits and being a business are not contradictory. The Associated Press and NPR are both non-profit and have the potential to "go out of business" if people stop supporting them and paying member fees. The best non-profits are run as good businesses...because you need money to pay salaries and keep the lights running.
It is also notable how many non-profits aren't necessarily what people would conventionally think of as charities, despite being given a special tax status, etc.
We're upset because Aaron was an activist while many of us capable of doing what he did, just sit on our couches or comfy chairs.
We're upset because the full legal power of the government was used as a weapon against him almost as if he was mass murderer instead of his "crime" being just setting information that was technically free in the first place, actually free.
We're upset because instead of waiting pensively for what his sentence would be and protesting what would undoubtedly be unjust, all we can do is remember who he was and triumph his cause in the hope that this won't happen again.
He didn't deserve to feel this was his only way out and he had so much more to contribute based on his past accomplishments.
I guess the problem with us identifying with Bradley Manning in comparison is he didn't do things like contribute to RSS and Markdown. But the information he set free is just as important.
"I guess the problem with us identifying with Bradley Manning in comparison is he didn't do things like contribute to RSS and Markdown."
No, my problem identifying with Manning was that he exposed private communications involving the State Department, which could have consequences for our foreign relations and national security. Swartz was downloading scientific journals, which is an entirely different ballgame.
Very few people believe that State Department communications should be public. So, even if you convince everyone that some injustice was done to Manning because of specific situations that called for whistle-blowing, it does not reveal any general problem in the federal justice system.
With Swartz, I think just telling his story will cause many people to realize how broken the federal justice system is.
imho the american mentality is a hysterical and one can observe this in esp. in media induced reactions.
A friend pointed out Aaron Swartz is our Lady Di of the hacker culture and it fits nicely.
The US (loony) laws and the US "justice system" is fueled by that blinding hysteria in which commensurability is just a muted voice of reason far away.
I wish Bradley Manning would receive this fierce reaction of an actual influential lobby like us. And he didn't take the easy way out.
> Explain to me why what Bradley Manning did should be legal.
Allegedly did. You see? Comments like that are exactly the problem. Aren't we "innocent until proven guilty?" And that is why everyone is upset about Bradley Manning. He's been treated like a criminal though he's never been convicted.
There's no presumption of innocence in the military justice system. It's not common law, and military courts are heavily biased in the prosecution's favor.
Pvt Manning was a member of the armed forces at the time of his alleged crime, and thus is not subject to most of the procedural protections afforded to civilian defendants.
I don't feel that what he did was legal. On the other hand, the way he has been incarcerated and treated while in military prison seems excessively cruel.
Cruel? He hasn't been excuted for exposing private government communications, including internal communications on national security issues and correspondence with foreign governments. That is potentially treason, and just a few decades ago he would have been summarily executed after a quick, brief trial.
I am too a cold, rational bastard and yet I've found myself fighting tears over and over these last two days. And I barely knew who Aaron was until two days ago.
But I think the OP nailed it, for me and I'm sure for many more. I can still recall when I was an idealist as a child and a young teen. But I preferred to become cynical rather than suffer from injustices in the world. Much easier to be above, untouched, than fight for change and inevitably suffer, a lot.
But we still viscerally admire somebody like Aaron, somebody who took the hard route, somebody we could have been but hadn't the courage to.
That's why we suffer so much today, the best part of us has died.
I think you nailed it for me with having to confront out best selves and their absence. It's why I keep thinking of this George Orwell verse where he cursed his own cynicism upon meeting an idealistic young soldier in Barcelona (hat tip to Hitchens):
And a hat tip to you for sharing this poetry, which so perfectly expresses the feelings some of us have reading about Aaron's life, and seeing his smile in photos.
Reposting my comment from a forgotten thread, because I think the sense of loss many of us are feeling should be channeled into actions that may conceivably do some good:
---
1. What concrete steps can people take to prevent cases like Aaron's from happening again? What enduring commitments can be made, and to what causes or organizations?
2. Who should we be listening to and supporting who is of like mind with Aaron, and has been neglected so far? Who is doing good work out of the public eye, like Aaron was?
I join you in commiseration. I'm going to look for a local organization to join in support of online freedom. Perhaps find a club to mentor promising youth in tech. I hope the Americans here will take every feasible step in correcting overzealous prosecutors (and nonetheless calling for justice where it hasn't been meted out). Aaron's passing must not be in vain.
I know absolutely why I feel so upset. He was part of my tribe. Though I never met him, or even directly engaged with him, I was very aware of him and took direct inspiration from his actions. I have dealt with the death of close peers in the past who were part of my tribe. I was younger and more prone to succumbing to anger and spite - now I know the best thing I can do is to honor their memory by maintaining the impetus we once shared.
While I sympathize with the tragedy of Aaron's death, I have to agree that he is receiving a disproportionate amount of attention. Take away his association with the HN community and the Internet, and his case is not nearly as tragic as many others. Take the Guantanamo inmates who committed suicide. They were innocent and were imprisoned without any control over the situation. Aaron chose to break into the MIT network closet and JSTOR (though I agree that the punishment is way too harsh, there should be no punishment at all). But everything Aaron did was by his own choice. The people in Guantanamo didn't do anything at all. Their situation is much more infuriating, much more tragic, and deserves much more attention.
Maybe it's similar for you to how many people were surprised by their level of grief, when Princess Diana died. Girls growing up in the 80s grew up on the fantasy of being like her, chosen and given wealth and fame and becoming a queen. And then she didn't buckle up and the entire childhood fantasy died right there with her in the tunnels of Paris. This trauma has changed England's emotional landscape for good - no more stiff upper lip.
So you saying 'Aaron is what I wish I was' is the correct analysis - Aaron had everything that we here strive for - he was recognized for his potential when he was a teenager, he had been accepted by YC, was part of a successful exit, was a highly respected and idealistic Internet activist and intellectual... These are the goals people strive for when they tell themselves 'if I only could achieve XYZ, then I will be happy - I will put all my energy into XYZ, because it will eventually be worth it'.
The reality is more complex. Even with all these achievements, the highest potential that we can strive for can be destroyed. In his case by the beast of depression when driven by senseless persecution through the political apparatus.
I'll tell you why you're upset. You're upset because you are precocious. And decided. And certain. And dare I say sometimes morally certain!
Aaron was an absurd hero who chose not to revolt. He just didn't imagine himself happy, so he agonised about the futility of living with every breath he took. He remained a stranger in his own life even with each new career summit he topped. Ultimately he chose to check out thinking that was the only way from the inevitable. Tragic. It needn't have been.
Like most of the high achievers of Aaron's age, your generation has achieved so much so quickly that you've missed the barely audible slow burning whisper of your own existential questions. The din of success, of the ceaseless twittering of Twitter, of the vacuous flapping on Facebook and the daily showboating wankery of blogging has made you forget that it's the SILENCE that matters. It's the silence of your thoughts to yourself that will answer your questions. Slowly and with meditated patience.
I'm upset too. I'm upset that his parents have to deal with this tragic loss, that his surviving loved ones are looking for answers to this tragedy. I'm upset that traditional methods of calming, of seeking, of surviving are lost to this generation - a generation addicted to instantaneous Google-fed answers and one that is now gyrating to hokey lyrics like "partying & bullshit", "we're gonna die young"* ... :-(
This generation that obviously knows a great deal about internet startups and computer science, and Batman and world peace knows very little about how to answer their own questions about a meaningless existence. Their parents did it. Same shitty world, shame shitty life - they made it! How??
Finally, I now know what a pointless Sisyphean desk job has to offer to a young person: how to suffer patiently without self-destructing. How to fold, without going all in on the flop.
<Quote>
Seriously, if you think this
generation has a monopoly on
glamourising the "live fast,
die young" ethos, you haven't
been around for very long.
</Quote>
I didn't say that really, did I?
I've lived long enough to hear more than one case of rapid success claiming a suicide victim in the field of arts. We all know them. Many of these cases are often dismissed as some sort of underlying pathology and the rest as inevitable result of the individual's pathetic circumstance. All of course inadequate in truly explaining the "storm inside".
But guess who the high-achieving rock star child prodigies of today are, if not the erstwhile artists? The new kids have given up their piano keyboards for computer keyboards ... and there are plenty more of them in every second suburban basement than there are talented musicians, actors and artists today. And they are winning! And good for them! But some of the winners are even dreaming, no - decided, about ideals like social justice, equality, freedom. No amount of black and white binary talent will help answer the grey of these concepts that have plagued humanity since the beginning of human conscience.
Wisdom is a slow cooking dish ... that's never going to be ready. I guess you'll just have to grow up, kid.
(I'm sorry to sound patronising but there's no point in blaming the morons at MIT, the tits at JSTOR, the vindictive FEDS or the rotten capitalistic system. All really irrelevant.)
"I am upset that we have a justice system that would persecute me the way it did Aaron."
But it wouldn't, because we allow our fears to convince us to keep our thoughts to ourselves. And I am upset the very persons who are courageous enough to fight for our interest are eliminated, leaving us.
Please don't compare yourself to anyone else. It's pointless, disempowering, and generally a waste of time. Your "best you" is what I wish you wished you were.
I am a bright technologist...
You are not alone. There are many of us here, like you and like Aaron.
...but I've never built anything of note.
The things you build do not have to be famous to be "anything of note". Do people use the software you have written? Do they benefit from it? If yes, then it is most certainly "of note".
I have strong opinions about how to improve this world, but I've never acted to bring them to pass.
That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. That means you're normal. 99% of us are in exactly the same boat. We go about our daily business, taking care of ourselves and those close to us, making the world a better place in a thousand little ways.
Think of it this way. We're all just one great big football team. The Aaron Swartzs and Steve Jobs of the world are the quarterbacks and ball carriers whose names are in the press all the time. But they would accomplish little if it wasn't for those of us around them who block and tackle all day long. Don't be upset that, up to this point, you've been a blocker or tackler. Be proud. And realize that your turn to carry the ball has yet to come.
I have thoughts every day that I would share with the world, but I allow my fears to convince me to keep them to myself.
Congratulations. You have just taken the first step toward addressing that issue with that statement here on Hacker News. Now please take Step 2. Start a blog. If it's anything like this post, then I want to read it. And others, I'm sure, will want to also.
If I were able to stop being afraid of what the world would think of me, I could see myself making every decision that Aaron made that ultimately led to his untimely death.
You don't know what really led to Aaron's untimely death. No one does. The decisions you make are just one input to a complex process we still don't understand. So go easy on yourself and don't jump to unnecessary conclusions.
I am upset that we have a justice system that would persecute me the way it did Aaron.
Many of us are upset about this and a lot of other things too. But we won't allow any of them to stop us from living our lives fully. You can be upset about things in background and still have a wonderful happy life in foreground. Give it a try.
I am upset that I have spent 27 years of my life having made no discernible difference to the world around me.
I bet if I asked those close to you if the felt they same way, I'd get a resounding "No!" Maybe you should, too.
Most of all I am upset that Aaron's work here is done when there is so much more he could have accomplished.
Agreed. I guess that means that each of us now has a few more things to add to our own To Do Lists.
Thanks, John, for the great post. Best wishes for feeling better and getting on with it. Ultimately, that's what we hackers always do.
While the untimely death Aaron is tragic, the constant fawning over celebrities on Hacker News is frequently depressing. Both in the sense that we, as a community, are not able to rise above it and, rather more selfishly, that I am not one of them.
While, to a large extent, I already knew everything that you'd written, I'd like to thank you for reiterating it.
I don't know if I'd call the posthumous interest in Aaron as fawning. He did a lot of great work and had admirable ideals. He no longer has the capacity to be an agent of change. And while you can say his spirit "will live on", part of that passing on the torch comes from a thorough examination and celebration of his life. It doesn't just happen sometime down the road.
I actually feel the opposite: HN is one rare forum, giving space to lots of side-projects and experiments, the overall motto being "stop talking and build it". Of course YC people get more space (hey, it's not a newspaper), but that's hardly "fawning over celebrities", or at least nothing compared to what you'll see on most other sites.
You are X. Someone else is Y.
The key is defining "the best you" as X++, not Y.
Taking inspiration from someone you perceive as Y and defining X++ in the pursuit of Y is fine. Just so long as you recognize success and failure are X++ and X--.
I get what you're saying, but it's not always about that. We need exemplars. We need people who are willing to stick their neck out and make change. Because you each think that if you're the only one taking a chance then you'll probably lose, but when we see others on the stage fighting the good fight then more of us will be willing to follow that example, and that allows us to build strength in numbers and win more of our battles.
I think that's what he was getting at with saying "best you". Being the "best you" that you can be would presumably mean reaching beyond the "you" that you currently are.
I personally interpreted this statement in abstract terms, rather than in concrete terms: to be a builder, to have the courage to voice our beliefs, and to put our beliefs into action.
These concepts are abstracted high enough from "the actual Aaron Swartz" that they are just general positive traits. Striving to embody these traits (rather than trying to mirror Aaron Swartz, for instance) is in my opinion, health (to a limit, of course).
In that sense, "Aaron Swartz" was a personification of these abstract virtues that perhaps many of us wish we could project more strongly in our own lives.
Abstracting virtues from the person you're ascribing them to is a lot like religion. Opinions will differ on whether that's a bad thing or not, but it may be useful for many to be mindful of the difference between eulogy and hagiography.
Just wanted to say, reading your post made my morning. I've noticed that with me, and (generalizing here, hopefully it doesn't dilute my message) a lot of us in the hacker community tend to be very good at finding flaws, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
It's very rare to see strangers stand up for each other, say a kind word, or generally just be..._nice_. Especially in semi-anonymous places like the comments section of HN. It's always a welcome change, and I hope we see a lot more of this.
I would like to add that those of us who knew Aaron (however briefly) can say that rarely is anyone as simple & admirable in reality as they are painted in obituaries. Was Aaron a good person? Did he mean well? Certainly. But our relatively brief, pre-Reddit friendship ended years ago because I couldn't take his sometimes relentless negativity… something Cory Doctorow hinted at in the obituary he wrote for Aaron. Cory wrote that Aaron's mentors were a support network for each other because it was emotionally hazardous to be on the receiving end of Aaron's disappointment. Aaron was never, ever mean to me, but still the overall bad feeling was a weight I couldn't take. I'm incredibly sad that it appeared to be a weight that he couldn't take, either.
It's been my experience that a lot of "bright" people are angry that the world, and the people they know, don't "live up" to their "in a perfect world," clean-room expectations. Instead of using that as fuel for empathy and character-building, they use it as a weapon and turn it outwards to attack others, or inside to stoke their own misery. Sometimes this drives them to try to achieve more and more and more to shut up the desperate voice inside, but this never works. Maybe they achieve, but achievements don't make them feel better.
This makes the whole situation sadder because everyone expects a person with achievements to be happy.
Unfortunately, sad truths about how a person contributes to his/her own troubles and miseries, aren't considered kosher or polite to mention in the wake of a tragedy. But Aaron was a complex human being and I don't think it does him any honor to whitewash the complexity.
Everyone blames the system but we should really blame ourselves first. We did not protest Aaron's prosecution enough, we did not make him feel our support. We ourselves allowed this to happen.
I partially agree. I remember reading about his arrest thinking "uh-oh, this time he messed up" and kinda forgot about it, but I never realised he was facing the threat of 35+ years to life.
If he'd been planning to use his own death to bring about radical change, you'd think he'd at least have arranged for a suicide note to appear on his website after he was gone, or something.
I haven't seen anything like that, and if it existed and was accessible to the public, I'm sure it would've appeared on HN's front page by now.
Then again, if he was planning this, we could account for our observations by saying maybe he mailed instructions, passwords, documents and public statements to someone he trusted to make the greatest impact with it, and that person's sitting on the information, watching the momentum build, waiting for the most effective time to release it. The noise about this has been deafeningly loud for us in the tech community for quite some time, but only in the last day or so have I noticed this story being picked up by mainstream news outlets.
The state has for as long as I can remember disgusted me, amongst many other things, exactly due to behaviour like this. Murdering thuggish religious zealots are a lot less sympathetic than anti authoritarian information crusaders, but the hysteria pitch here is eye opening to me at least from the perspective of people being so incensed by the fact that their government could be involved in such a thing.
Look around; the state is not your friend and it never has been, look at the statistics for democide in the previous century if you need any more proof. It's mindboggling to me that with all that goes on, when the blowback of business as usual in a modern western nation state hits closer to home people are actually shocked and amazed.
Look at the representatives of the law here on HN bleating about the nature of the offense in question as within the strictures of the law and thus beyond reproach and simply a symptom of a system that needs further tuning; This is how the state operates, this is what it runs on. Changing this fact doesn't require a simple tuning of a few dials here and there, it requires a fundamental re-examining of the central role of the westphalian nation state and the gears and levers upon which it operates in the modern world.
To be fair and admit my biases, yes, I believe castrating the beast is necessary, and this is just one more on a practically endless list of bullet points that demonstrate this.
As important as what happened here is and as much as it is nice to see people actually appearing to finally notice what is being done in their names and with their tacit consent, I simply can't see that actually happening. In a few weeks people will become resigned to the fact that they have no actual power and cannot make any actual change.
The depressing fact of the violent and compulsory nature of state authority coupled with it's extreme innate resistence to any kind of actual, real change are simply too entrenched for just this event to actually make any more difference than the millions of others just like it that ended up hitting some other tribe instead of ours.
The state is not a person, and ergo cannot be your friend. However, the state is a collection of persons, both elected, appointed, and hired, and many of those persons can be your friend. Indeed, I count a number of such persons among my friends.
In a democracy, the state is what you make of it--it is your family, friends, and neigbhors. It is not some monolithic evil construct.
That the state is an organisational structure and thus that it is "composed of people" is no more an innate hedge against corruption than any other organisational structure. That plenty of the people which make the machine are otherwise good is precisely the problem; evil people will do evil things, but evil people are rare.
A much larger problem is when otherwise good people can be convinced that evil is good, and are wholesale conscripted into the commissioning thereof. Look at the statist lawyer pack currently continuously stating that this is just business as usual in this case. They're absolutely right, but that they can accept that state of affairs purely because it is done under color of law should be telling.
Any organisational structure given unlimited power and no direct oversight by market forces will historically trend toward this kind of behaviour, that is why I believe as I do that it is an innate characteristic of a state. The ability to write your own rules and modify them at will and without effective limit to power, coupled with the ability to levy compulsory fees on your "customers" is put simply a recipe for disaster. Democracy is a laughable hedge on that of power, the subversion of which on a daily basis ought to be evidence enough that this is true.
I am aware of the traditional refrain that the solution is better educated voters and less money in politics and a whole raft of other prescriptions, but I am similarly aware that they never come to pass and all attempts are made to keep the violent, psychopathic machine chugging along as it was before with nary a sideways glance for other possibilities.
The reaction from the subjects when this is pointed out to them is disappointing, but telling. I apologise if I sound overly shrill on the topic, it's not my intent, I am simply tired of seeing this pattern repeated over and over again only to have people utterly unwilling to examine the real root of the problem.
Any organisational structure given unlimited power and no
direct oversight by market forces will historically trend
toward this kind of behaviour,
Exactly. Absolutely right. The bureaucracy is like middle management gone berserk. The founders were onto something, they built something with incredible revenue potential, and were both the executives AND the workers. Then some middle management layers had to arise for coordination. Over time the separation between the executives and the workers grew to become a yawning gulf, and the middle managers captured the asylum.
Lacking any inherent ability to create value (like actual producers) nor any ability to be bold and take risks (like good executives), the legal bureaucracy/middle management just consumes more and more resources.
It can go on for quite sometime when you have a company producing as much revenue as USG. But in this case it won't go on forever, as China is now rising beyond USG.
Look at the statist lawyer pack currently continuously
stating that this is just business as usual in this case.
Yeah, this seemed weird to me too. The best way to understand it is that they were taught in law school that extralegal methods (whether Lincoln suspending habeas corpus or 60s sit-ins) are allowed if and only if they are in service of fighting racism, sexism, homophobia, or something similarly Nazi/KKK-ish. And for those who are not straight white males, which is the majority of today's new lawyers, they also believe (and are repeatedly told) that they owe their current positions/status to the federal government's past extralegal activities.
So they combine hatred for pre-1960s America with reverence for the 60s revolution and absolute fealty to the modern US federal government. Insofar as they ever critique it, it is almost always to strengthen it (more taxes, more laws, more regulations, more government). They used to push to weaken criminal penalties for actual criminals (Miranda) and to defund defense, but here too there's been kind of a recent change; the new breed of Sotomayor/Holder/Bloomberg/Obama types (along with the lawyers here) are actually pretty hardcore on both of those points. They are all about mandatory maximums and drone strikes.
The result is something similar to the first class of students raised after the 1917 revolution. Extralegal methods for the Great October Revolution were completely justified. But after that point complete obedience to the state was required; the only exception were extralegal methods that tended to increase the power of the state and be directed against various libertarians, reactionaries, dissidents, or running dogs. When they felt they were still fighting against Russian culture, they pushed to reduce penalties against criminals; but once they felt they were fully in command the harshness of everything ramped way up beyond where it was pre-Revolution.
I've also been wondering about the depth of my emotion on this event. I have looked up to Aaron Swartz mildly in the past, but the turn of events and subsequent reactions have occupied my attention greatly since.
I too wish to be more like Aaron Swartz in many ways, and I too am strangely moved by his story and his passing. Reading my thoughts in someone else's blog is appreciated.
Aaron Swart is an example of people whose technical ability (IQ) exceeds their other ability (EQ). His technical ability allowed him to accomplish great technical achievements; it also let him get into troubles at work or with the law, which together with his fragile mental health eventually got him.
With all due respect, is EQ really that important? We keep getting told that it is, but EQ never won a war; EQ never sent anyone to the moon; EQ didn't cure polio. Maybe cases like Aaron Swartz are a wakeup call to us a society, not that we need to be more "emotionally" intelligent, but that a society with severe hangups chews up and spits out its best and brightest, to its own detriment.
Say what you will about his activities not being in the accepted norm, or his mistakes, but the way we treat mental illness in this country is something we should be ashamed of, and I'm not just talking about the medical establishment.
EQ is that important. Simply because you don't live in a vacuum. You live and communicate with other people. You can be as technically capable as you can, but if you keep pissing people off, you won't go anywhere. Now in addition to this, if you are mentally fragile, sooner or later you will be shocked by what society has for you.
It is not the right time to analyze Aaron Swartz, but if you look at what is publicly written about his tenure at Stanford, Reddit, etc., you will see what I am talking about. Is it that important? You bet.
Obviously Aaron Swartz impact on the internet, his relevance to this community and obvious closeness to many people explains it. But take away who he is and the circumstances are sadly far from rare. Aaron Swartz' ordeal is being relieved right as we speak in numerous places around America and the world.
It's just unfortunate that for many it took this long to empathise or understand their plight.