There is one thing nagging at me currently (I’m sure others will come up as I continue to reflect on this, as they tend to do), about the criticism of his persecution. Apart from the quite reasonable and warranted outrage at the charges that were levi ed against him for such an insignificant transgression (if there was a transgression at all), the critique of intellectual property I’ve heard surround this tragedy seems to be missing something.

While the rentier class who pushes the harsh penalties for intellectual property violation are certainly to blame, and as any purely capitalist force are completely deserving of critique, this forgets the fact that Aaron himself was, in a way, part of this class, having made quite a bit of money when Reddit sold out to Conde-Nast.

First of all, this is in no way to suggest that Aaron, his life, or his work was in any way hypocritical. On the contrary, from all accounts he was a remarkable person who strove to promote equity and justice in the world without exception, committing all of his financial resources to his work of liberating information, and people themselves by giving them access to this information. So much so, that as Lawrence Lessig suggests, he had few resources left for defending himself. I can think of few examples of lives lived in recent times, in which it sounds as if someone so selflessly devoted themselves to what is right, as opposed to what is popular or lucrative. And in general, I see absolutely nothing wrong with taking money from capitalist interests in order to fund the fight against them. This is an unfortunate fact of the extent of the capitalist economy in contemporary times–it is impossible to fight against them without holding property, using resources, and laboring under the auspices of the system.

What this points out, I think, is the contradictions of the system that Aaron was coming up against.

For all the activist technologists out there in the world fighting the good fight, there is very little recognition that the system itself that they are utilizing is broken. This path, of cashing in on a clever invention so that then, one has the resources to spend on the frivolous luxury of doing good, is viewed as the best and most noble path. Business, itself, is the primary tool that many technologists point to, as the weapon with which to undo the negative effects of capitalism. Start a business, make a fortune, start a non-profit, give a TED talk, everyone applauds. But if you do something as forward as plugging in a computer and start downloading public information, you have a prison cell to look forward to.

If we are actually trying to confront the rentier class, then we have to see the way that technology itself is the rent system. I don’t say that we should condemn technology. I say that we need to realize that the entire spectrum of “good” and “evil”, our entire conception of justice and how to achieve it, is wholly owned by this rentier class, and leased back to us, in pieces, in platforms, and in apps.

From everything I’ve read of Aaron’s writings about his life and work, it sounds like it was creativity and curiosity that drove him to accomplish everything he did, and I can only imagine, this is what led him to allegedly set a computer up to download those public files. Curiosity took him to thwart the rules of how to do “good” in the world, and to pursue a sort of good that has been criminalized. If I am correct in this assessment, the lesson I take from this is that our creativity must find ways to take back this sense of justice.

I don’t know what this means. I don’t know how to take back this sense of justice. But as we celebrate the amazing technological things that Aaron did, I can’t help but feel that he was set up, not just by the US attorneys who persecuted him, but by all of the technological wonders that make our world. I feel like the bad guys in this situation are not just the government, the music industry, and the institutions supposedly existing to spread knowledge that sought to restrict it, but also start-up culture, TED talks, what we know as “innovation”, business, and every piece of property, from restricted PDFs to office space, to every dollar and every cent.

I’m an unrepentant anti-capitalist, but if you are a person who thinks what happened to Aaron was wrong, I don’t know how it could be any other way. It was the technological property that Aaron worked with, that he was trying to liberate, that turned was against him; and I can’t help but think that every one of us benefiting by that property is in some way culpable.

Email is published in full.

Re: Your Smashwords account at

Dear Smashwords Authors, Publishers and Literary Agents,

This email is being sent to all authors, publishers and agents who have published
erotica at Smashwords. We will also post this message to Site Updates and the
Press Room.

According to our records, you pubish 1 erotica-categorized title(s) out of 2
title(s) now live in the Smashwords system. This message may or may not pertain
to you.

Today we are modifying our Terms of Service to clarify our policies regarding
erotic fiction that contains bestiality, rape and incest. If you write in any
of these categories, please carefully read the instructions below and remove
such content from Smashwords. If you don’t write in these categories, you can
disregard this message.

PayPal is requiring Smashwords to immediately begin removing the above-mentioned
categories of books. Please review your title(s) and proactively remove and
archive such works if you are affected.

I apologize for the short notice, and I’m especially sorry for any financial
or emotional hardship this may cause the authors and publishers affected by this
change.

As you may have heard, in the last couple weeks PayPal began aggressively enforcing
a prohibition against online retailers selling certain types of “obscene” content.
For good background on the issue, see this Selena Kitt post here – http://selenakitt.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/19/slippery-slope-erotica-censorship/
or here – http://theselfpublishingrevolution.blogspot.com/2012/02/slippery-slope-erotica-censorship.html#comment-form
or this Kindleboards thread here – http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,104604.0.html

On Saturday, February 18, PayPal’s enforcement division contacted Smashwords
with an ultimatum. As with the other ebook retailers affected by this enforcement,
PayPal gave us only a few days to achieve compliance otherwise they threatened
to deactivate our PayPal services. I’ve had multiple conversations with PayPal
over the last several days to better understand their requirements. Their team
has been helpful, forthcoming and supportive of the Smashwords mission. I appreciate
their willingness to engage in dialogue. Although they have tried their best
to delineate their policies, gray areas remain.

Their hot buttons are bestiality, rape-for-titillation, incest and underage erotica.

The underage erotica is not a problem for us. We already have some of the industry’s
strictest policies prohibiting underage characters (we don’t even allow non-participating
minors to appear in erotica), and our vetting team is always on the lookout for
“barely legal” content where supposed adults are placed in underage situations.

The other three areas of bestiality, rape and incest were less well-defined in
our Terms of Service (https://www.smashwords.com/about/tos) before today. I’ll
tackle these one-by-one below, and I’ll provide you a summary of the changes
that will go into effect immediately.

*Incest:* Until now, we didn’t have a policy prohibiting incest between consenting
adults, or its non-biological variation commonly known as “Pseudo-incest.” Neither
did our retailer partners. We’ve noticed a surge of PI books over the last few
months, and many of them have “Daddy” in the title. I wouldn’t be surprised
if the surge in “Daddy” titles prompted PayPal to pursue this purge (I don’t
know). PI usually explores sexual relations between consenting adult stepchildren
with their step parents, or between step-siblings. Effectively immediately,
we no longer allow incest of any variety in erotica.

Like many writers, censorship of any form greatly concerns me. It is with some
reluctance that I have made the decision to prohibit incest-themed erotica at
Smashwords. Regardless of your opinion on incest, it’s a slippery slope when
we allow others to control what we think and write. Fiction is fantasy. It’s
not real. It unfolds in our imagination. I’ve always believed fiction writers
and readers should have the freedom to explore diverse topics and situations
in the privacy of their own mind. From an imagination perspective, erotica is
little different from a literary novel that puts us inside the mind of farm animals
(1984), or a thriller novel that puts us inside the mind of a terrorist, or a
horror novel that puts us inside the mind of an axe-murderer or their victim.
All fiction takes us somewhere. We read fiction to be moved, and to feel.
Sometimes we want to feel touched, moved, or disturbed. A reader should have
the right to feel moved however they desire to be moved.

Incest, however, carries thorny baggage. The legality of incest is murky. It
creates a potential legal liability for Smashwords as our business and our books
become more present in more jurisdictions around the world. Anything that threatens
Smashwords directly threatens our ability to serve the greater interests of all
Smashwords authors, publishers, retailers and customers who rely upon us as the
world’s leading distributor of indie ebooks. The business considerations compel
me to not fall on the sword for incest. I realize this is an imperfect decision.
The slippery slope is dangerous, but I believe this imperfect decision is in
the best interest of the community we serve.

*Bestiality:* Until now, we didn’t have a stated policy regarding bestiality.
I like animals. Call me old fashioned or hypocritical (I’m not a vegetarian),
but I don’t want to be a party to anyone enjoying animals for sexual gratification,
for the same reason we’ve never allowed pedophilia books. I don’t want to publish
it, sell it, or distribute it. The TOS is now modified to reflect this. Note
this does not apply to shape-shifters common in paranormal romance provided the
were-creature characters are getting it on in their human form. Sorry I need
to clarify it that way, but we don’t want to see bestiality erotica masquerading
as paranormal romance.

*Rape:* Although our Terms of Service prohibits books that advocate violence
against others, we did not specifically identify rape. This was an oversight
on our part. Now we have clarified the policy. We do not want books that contain
rape for the purpose of titillation. At Smashwords, rape has no longer has a
place in erotica. It has no place anywhere else if the purpose is to titillate.
Non-consensual BDSM – or any other form of non-consensual violence against another
person – is prohibited.

*NEXT STEPS:* If you have titles at Smashwords that are now expressly forbidden,
by the end of day Monday (Feb 27), please click to your Dashboard at https://www.smashwords.com/dashboard
and click UNPUBLISH then click ARCHIVE. This will also cause our automated systems
to remove the titles from retail distribution.

DO NOT try to hide or obfuscate violating content by changing book titles, book
descriptions and tags. If we discover such shenanigans, said authors/publishers
will risk account deletion and forfeiture of any accrued earnings, per our Terms
of Service.

We take violations of the TOS seriously, because such violations jeopardize the
opportunities for your fellow authors.

We do not want to see PayPal clamp down further against erotica. We think our
authors should be allowed to publish erotica. Erotica, despite the attacks it
faces from moralists, is a category worthy of protection. Erotica allows readers
to safely explore aspects of sexuality that they might never want to explore
in the real world.

The moralists forget that we humans are all sexual creatures, and the biggest
sex organ is the brain. If it were not the case, none of us would be here.
Erotica authors are facing discrimination, plain and simple. Topics that are
perfectly acceptable in mainstream fiction are verboten in erotica. That’s not
fair. Our decisions today are imperfect. Please, act responsibly, don’t try
to game the system or publish content that pushes the limits of legality. Help
us continue to help indie authors around the world to continue to publish and
distribute with freedom.

*THINGS TO AVOID:* Avoid using words such as ‘bestiality,’ ‘rape,’ ‘incest,’
‘underage,’ or ‘barely legal’ in book titles, book descriptions or keyword tags,
otherwise Smashwords may conclude you’re violating the Terms of Service, or trying
to push the limits. If you’re writing non-erotic works, and any of these words
are necessary, then you’re okay.

On Tuesday (Feb 28) we will begin removing content that we deem in violation.
When we remove a title, you will receive an email notifying you of such, and
that email will append this letter along with instructions on how to notify us
if we made an error. I promise you, we will make mistakes, so please work with
us, take a deep breath and honor us with your patience.

If you believe we removed something in error, please click “Comments/questions,”
mention the title we removed, provide the hyperlink to said title, and provide
your *calm* reasoning for why we should reconsider.

Our support team is backlogged, so it may take several days for them to respond.
As we mention in the Terms of Service, we reserve the right to remove anything
for any reason. That said, we will also try to make our decisions with care
and prudence.

You might wonder if Smashwords should simply switch to a different payment provider.
It’s not so easy. PayPal is designed into the wiring of the Smashwords platform.
They run the credit card processing for our retail store, and they’re how we
pay our authors and publishers. PayPal is also an extremely popular, trusted
payment option for our customers. It is not feasible for us to simply switch
to another provider, should such a suitable provider even exist, especially with
so few days notice.

Please note our Terms of Service is subject to additional modifications as we
work to bring Smashwords into compliance with PayPal requirements. Let’s hope
today’s actions mark the limit of the slippery slope.

Significant gray area remain. Erotica is still permitted, though if authors
try to push the limits of what’s permitted, we risk further clamping down. Please
be responsible. Don’t go there. If you’re going to push the limits, push the
limits of great writing, not the limits of legality.

Thank you for assisting our compliance efforts on such short notice. We know
these decisions will be upsetting to some of our authors and publishers, and
for that we apologize. We do believe, however, that these decisions will place
us on a stronger footing to represent the best interests all indie authors and
publishers from here forward.

Best wishes,

Mark Coker
Founder
Smashwords

P.S. Please contact our support team for inquiries regarding this change in
our Terms of Service by clicking the “comments/questions” link at the top of
any page at Smashwords. If your inquiry regards a specific title, please include
the hyperlink to the book page of that specific title.

unknown flame-effect vehicle or building or bicycle or something

A dis-jointed meditation on things learned at Burning Man

The night after we got back from Burning Man, I had a waking playa-dream.

I woke, dazed and disoriented, in the orange street light that filtered in around the curtains. The sound of the light rail going past was a non-potable water truck to my ears, spraying down the dust street outside of the enclosure of our apartment. I reached my heavy arm up from the bed, tossing covers off of me in the heat, and touched the drywall. “Odd,” I thought. “Drywall would be such a mess on the playa. But it does have a nice finish.” Who built this structure? It has a very regular cubic shape. Have they pre-made dry wall panels, and then hung them from the inside of a geodesic dome? How have they sealed the edges? There is very little dust in here. I want to meet the person who designed this structure and chat with him or her. I got off the mattress, sitting on the playa floor, and only when starting down the hallway towards the bathroom to look for a water tank did I realize I was back in our apartment in Portland, and was not in a city of 50,000 built for a week on an alkaline lake bed.

2011 was my first Burning Man, an event I’ve wanted to attend since I was about 15 and read about it in BoingBoing. 13 years later, it’s a completely different event, of course. And apparently, it is also many different events at the same time. The week of Burning Man is a tripartite collusion of drunk revelers, hardcore makers, and hippie consciousness-expansion. But outside of that week, it is something else again.

I was lucky enough, through a convoluted series of events that was never fully explained to me, to get an early access pass. These are handed out to volunteers, artists, and theme camp builders so they can get a jump start on construction before the event officially opens. The unofficial theme camp I was camping with managed to get a few of these, and having nothing else to do except drive rebar into the earth, I went along with our small build team to erect shade structures for 30 people from PVC, aluminum conduit, tarps, and silk parachute. Easy enough.

Black Rock City, pre-city

The best part of this, which I never imagined in all my visions of the event, was being there for the week immediately prior to the actual week of Burning Man. Before all the “tourists” and party-goers get there, there is a hardcore contingent of people there with one goal. Build shit. Also, I suppose, drink beer and make sexual innuendo, but that kind of goes hammer-in-hand with build shit.

So you’ve been to a Maker Faire. You’ve read about the DIY revolution in countless publications. You have a network of enthusiastic artists you know who are all involved in crazy projects to put Arduinos on Roombas or something, and have a couple Kickstarter campaigns under their belt a piece. All of this is awesome, and I don’t mean to imply it is anything less than so. But none of this really compares to the building environment pre-Burning Man.

It’s possible that I was extraordinarily lucky to be with such a particularly awesome group of people on our own build team, and I have no doubt that I was. But the feeling extended beyond our group, to the entire community. It was an notion of collectivism and altruism that I’ve only dreamed about in my most blue-sky moments. There was an overall sense that everyone was there for a single purpose, and every project and camp was an extension of that process. Resources, tools, and hands were all part of the overall effort, and were lent and asked for freely. Every task was praised and supported with helpful suggestion with a single voice. Rivalries existed, but only insofar as it improved the overall experience. There was a sense of cooperative challenge that paled team-building activities in comparison, and completely flattened the lip-service of collectivity espoused by sports.

I have no doubt that the harsh conditions of the playa contributed to this. If we were in a meadow somewhere, near air-conditioned homes and bars, disputes would result in people “stepping out for a moment”, and divisions would result. However, in the desert there is no place to go. Furthermore, the daily effect of the desert on the body means that collectivity is a survival strategy. It is a saw on the playa, that if someone is getting pissy and annoyed, the proper thing to do is to tell them to “drink some water”. It’s irritating, because people say it all the time, but after you drink water you immediately feel better because you were actually dehydrated. A “fuck you, buddy” turns into a “drink some water”, and everyone is reminded that we are in the desert together, and we are nothing but evaporative meat sacks a few liters of water from death at all times.

Camp Spinaesthesia - PVC, aluminum, canvas, silk.

This sort of hydration ethic is found in other forms. During the pre-week, there was a ubiquitous imperative to thank people for just about everything, and to be obsessively polite. Someone gives you a hand, you thank them by name. Someone gives you a piece of cheese, you look them in the eye and say thanks. If a tarp is about to be ripped away by a 50 mph gust of wind, you still take the time so say, “hey, would it be possible for you to give me a hand with this?” or “do you have a minute to help?” At first, I thought this was simply hippie sentiment, and I found it a bit obnoxious. But then I realized that the overall imperative to speak this way had the same effect as the emphasis on hydration. By reminding yourself to speak like this, it is a sub-conscious reminder that we’re all in this together, and the help you ask for is the help you will give five minutes from now. Yelling, “somebody help me now!” might be literally true, but it won’t get you the help any faster, and promotes division and aggression as opposed to collectivity. The tarp blowing away is not actually the most important thing. The fact that the tarp will continue to be an inch from blowing away for an entire week is the important thing, and that everyone works together to make it secure is the real goal.

As the event began, this sort of ethic was still present, but as the “tourists” showed up, it faded. Perhaps it was simply the number of people, or the heightened vocality of people just there to consume and not to build. But by the end of Burning Man, people in general had stopped saying thank you, and were much more interested in what they could get from people.

As the Man burned on Saturday night of the event, I remember in particular a couple of girls yelling at everyone in front of them to “sit down” so they could see. A number of people had heeded their call, and so they had the feeling that their request was valid, rather than questioning it. We did not want to sit; this was the Man burning, and a culmination of everything that we had built and lived for two weeks. But even though we were on the edge of the standing mass, and it was clear we were not going to sit, they continued to yell at us to sit down throughout the entirety of the burn. Not a single please was uttered, just a constant braying of the will they wanted to impart upon others. If there was ever an example of the “selling out” of Burning Man, this was it. It isn’t a selling out at all, actually–it is a socio-emotional mind state. It is the transferring from a state of mind of collectivity, in which each person is a functional component of the whole, to a state of mind of ego-actualization, in which each person must fight to harness others to their own particular vector. Would I ever have sat? Perhaps. But suddenly, facing this person who was negating the positive culture I had experienced up to this point, my own will turned to stone.

Trojan horse, under construction. It was burned 5 days later.

I tell this anecdote to impart the seriousness of the community, and the strength of collectivity when done right, and how quickly all of that can be negated by thoughtless violation of that network.

The point of Burning Man to me is the way in which the stark reality of the intersection between art and infrastructure is made apparent, and becomes lived experience for those who choose to take part in it. Okay, sure: dancing all night in the middle of the desert is fun too. But that was what I expected, whereas the lessons about building collectivity were a complete surprise. The purpose of Burning Man is to entertain. The art is low on poignant meaning, high on effort converted into wow-factor. But through that expression of entertainment is channeled an incredible amount of material, human resource, and hard work. The end effect is in itself a cause, because it stimulates the drive to make such an incredible human infrastructure come together. It isn’t profit, or a pay check, or even something as pedestrian and necessary as security, safety, sustainability or stability. In fact, it is mostly antithetical to all of that, and perhaps that is why what happens at Burning Man is able to ignore those everyday drives, and really step outside the standard channels work normally forms itself to, and all the petty problems therein. But as much as an outlier this experience might be, it is a hell of a model to aspire towards. Perhaps there is some sort of synthesis to be made.

Why is it that hexayurts and geodesic domes, two structures billed as fabulous advances to architecture in the real world, have taken off much more strongly at Burning Man than in the real world? Why is it that in a place practically devoid of Internet and networked devices, and stronger and more resilient social network has developed? Why is it that people spend a year’s worth of time developing projects that will last a single week? I don’t really know the answer to these questions in words, but I could kind of feel the answer happening at Burning Man. The answer itself wasn’t important. If someone had tried to answer this question, the answer might be, “I don’t know. Let’s drink some water, and then put together this hexayurt before lunch.” A pretty good answer, I guess.

Grey-B-Gone greywater evaporation rig.

“Radical self-reliance” is a term that is thrown around a lot in regard to Burning Man. I don’t know that it’s necessarily accurate, because Burning Man seems to be much more about relying on other people: the people in your build team, the people in your camp, the neighbors on your street, the Department of Public Works folks and the rest of the volunteer infrastructure, and everyone who attends the Burning Man even. I suppose though, the term kind of works if you factor in the fact that Burning Man is a radical deformation of your sense of “self”. Call it collectivity, call it an ecosystem, call it a team, or call it intentional anarchism. It is about a state of constant reminder that your self is actually pretty frail and insignificant, and if you try to do anything on your own or only for yourself, you will end up with a sloppy pile of bricks, working for forty years all alone, or simply be dead. The human is a resolutely social animal. And while we build things for all sorts of reasons, the thing we are really building at all times is our culture, with those other humans around us, whether we are close to them or not.

I’m following the Guardian’s live blogs, which are as usual, pleasantly diverse in their coverage. (Here’s the current one–they retire the url and start anew every 12 hours or so.) Also Twitter, of course.

- Geography – An on-going question of mine. I’m unfamiliar with London geography, and I wonder what relation the riot areas have with each other. I read an article recently (offline, sorry no link) about how public transit can dramatically decrease crime and increase civic-togetherness in quantifiable ways by connecting slum neighborhoods to the rest of the city. It seems these London neighborhoods are not slums or favelas by any means. I wonder how that thesis relates to this situation. Reading about the areas, it seems there is a large amount of gang activity based around post codes, or “ends” (Americanized as ‘hoods, perhaps), which is standard for places where people are unable to connect to the rest of the city. I wonder about the particulars of why these areas might have been cut off from the rest of London. One sense of London I have, though based on almost nothing, is that it is perfectly easy to be “lost” in the sprawl. When I lived in Harlem a couple of years ago, I noticed that one reason it was a perfectly excellent place to live was that it was very much ‘synced’ with the rest of Manhattan, and did not seem cut off by the park, as perhaps it had been at one time. Unlike the South Bronx, which although was only a few blocks and a subway stop from where I lived in Harlem, seemed miles away due to the river, and the overpass highway systems on the north side of the river. A similar thing is evident in South Central LA, where the highway loops and concentrates poorer neighborhoods, and the only public transit linking it to the rest of the city is a long, slow bus ride. And yet, perhaps because London doesn’t have the history of red-lining the way the US does, the riot areas are spread out, and all over. Maybe it has something to do with low-income areas that are near shopping areas? i.e. Potential rioters, with access to riot targets, but not much else? All speculation, because I don’t know.

- Riot vs. Protest – I hope, perhaps with a bit of guilty schadenfreude, that this puts the difference between riot and protest in perspective, and next time there are protests at least in the UK, the language used to describe the black bloc is different. The black bloc may to some degree made from “kids who just want to break stuff”, and yet they do not steal merchandise, burn down buildings, smash smaller businesses, or destroy private vehicles. On the other hand, we may see a new form of provacateuring on the part of the police, or, potential looters may try and join the bloc, now that they have a taste for how easy it can be.

- Anarchism – Relatedly, hoping for a language shift surrounding “anarchy”. But more than that, I’ve been waiting and hoping for an anarchist response to these riots. Solfed, a North London Anarchist Organization, released a statement, but I’m (still) hoping for more. Since this is the Internet, and posting utopian reality-design-fiction from half a world away is completely acceptable, let me draw you a pen-portrait of the anarchist response I’d like to see:

First and foremost, black shirts on the streets. Properly marked as anarchists, perhaps with circle-A insignia, if not something else. This is to make it apparent that any person with a mask and a hood is not necessarily an Anarchist, and to mark the difference. Now, the activity would depend on the numbers and the resources available. Taking as a pattern Common Ground rebuilding efforts, Black Cross street medics, organizing consensus groups of people in the community to defend their block or communicate anger towards the government, or simply Food Not Bombs if nothing else, an effort to build solidarity and community between people in the street, and an effort to break the categories of “Rioter”, “Police”, and “Vigilante”. The bloc pushes protests towards radical anger, but the riots are an opportunity for the other side of anarchism, organization, community, and building (which we all know and love) to show its face. Take that bravery in the streets that faces down cop riots, and show how it can help people. Show how a gang doesn’t just point aggression outwards, but works together for mutual benefit.

Anyway, or so I wish. I try to think how I would do this in my own city, were this to happen here. I have some ideas, but I don’t know if they would work or not until I try it. I have the feeling though, that we must begin to try things like this, because these won’t be the last riots, and things we not return to the status quo where anarchists just mobilize for protests and society runs on in an uneasy truce “as normal”. It’s time for those who believe in a self-determining society to step up. Easy for me to say, but I’m going to keep saying it.

- Racism/Bigotry – Race is certainly a factor here, from the original shooting to the often repeated anger about the police’s right to stop and search in the UK. And, we’re seeing it become a HUGE deal in the backlash to these riots. Race riots normally start as racial anger (justified or not), and then a backlash. It doesn’t matter who starts it, but what happens is people are getting killed in the streets because of their race. The reaction to these riots seems to be heavily pushing things in this direction. There’s news of nationalist groups getting together, drunken vigilantism, and many, many characterizations of who is rioting that are based on race. Furthermore, calling the rioters “thugs”, “yobs”, “criminals” or other things like this is in fact a bigoted statement. They may be committing crimes, but from the people put in court so far, I’ve seen school teachers, counselors, and children. You would not call these people criminals if you met them on the street. To assume to use such a term to refer to a large group of people is a categorical judgment, and worse, a sentence of social death. It is not in terms of innocence/guilt that they are called thugs, but in terms of being reduced to a stereotype that always leads back to race. This is much like the phrase “crackhead”, at least here in the United States. Calling someone a “crackhead” because they look weird or act oddly may in fact be an accurate statement. That person might smoke crack, or some other drug. However, one does not actually know this, and is using the epithet based on a characterization of how a person looks, and is a stand in for “n—–.” It doesn’t matter the person’s color: what is implied is that the speaker has judged this person on the basis of categorical appearance and decided they are a worthless undesirable. I saw a twitter comment (sorry no source, it got lost in the flood) saying, “you KNOW what people wearing masks on the streets are up to”. Actually, NO. Most definitively, you DO NOT KNOW what they are up to. You are judging them, based on what you assume they are up to; and what you assume is that from the way they look and the way that they are dressed (mask or not) that they are a worthless undesirable. Leaders at the highest levels, to the media, to the people on the street are reifying this categorical depiction of “thugs”, which is at heart the expression of a skin-deep, racial judgment. Listen to 911 calls here in the States: “he looked like a thug”, “they were a couple of gangsters”. It is clear what this means (and sometimes they use the actual word, because this is America). You better believe that when the vigilante groups form, they are going to go after people they KNOW are thugs. And you know whom those people are. This linguistic racism MUST BE STOPPED, and now. Not only is it wrong, it’s going to get innocent people killed.

- Class War & Fascism – Seguing from the above, we can see that under stress, the lower segments of Western society oscillate between two opposing urges. The first, to riot in anger, to take things, to burn and smash. The second, to hurt people, to shoot people, to put boots on faces in order to support a paradigm of “order”. And of course, these are not far apart at all, leading “violence” to be the category we use to describe them inclusively. But they are not the same thing. It is one thing to act destructively towards physical objects, an entirely different thing to act that way towards people. Between these two, we see what Class War actually looks like, and it isn’t pretty.

There are other forces at play here besides what we might point out as solely “class” issues. Race, police, geography, etc. But if we look at those in this rioting society, we see the uninsured, the un-secure, the unemployed, and the undersupported. They are the ones with the most to gain by rioting, and the most to lose in the fires and at the hands of the police who are supposed to be “protecting” society. For the first time in at least a couple decades, we are seeing what a major “first-world” city looks like without the supposed continual protection of the police. In other words, what many of the lower classes see every day. What is “violent”, “anarchy”, and “thuggish” is a lower class world, and now it is on the television and the Internet. The way people react in this situation is according to two models: they hit the streets in gangs to take what they want, or they hit the streets in mobs to blame whom they want. This is the purest, uncontrolled, undisciplined form of class war. When the authority that held the class in its position (“under control”, or “peaceful” is what it is typically called, even though it is normally nothing like “peace”) is released, the class agonism boils over in these directions. We might call it “uncontrolled” class war, but we certainly shouldn’t call it unexpected. Again, this will not be the last riot in the history of the world.

As one who has on occasion acted as a proponent for “class war” in a rhetorical sense, I think it’s my responsibility to identify this as what it is, and to try and identify strategies to prepare for this literal, street class war, that is far more brutal and horrifying than any proletarian uprising as proposed in words. To try and simply clean this up, and go back to “normal” is a fallacy. To “regain control” is only to bottle up this urge again, until the next time it boils over. The class controls that keep areas impoverished, and susceptible to the urge to destroy, to blame, and to mob and kill are always insufficient; and in fact, they are the cause of the build up of agonism. This sort of agonistic tension needs to be released, and not simply by sports matches, video games, and bar brawls. Rather than placating the lower classes, they need to be elevated. The infrastructure that needs to be set up must be akin to hydroelectric power. The floods of intensity can be harnessed to build, rather than destroy. But the upper classes have no interest in this, as if very clearly goes against their interest. It is in the interest of the upper classes that riots occur, so that stronger police forces can be built, so that racial tension explode, and so that the lower classes rise up and fight each other, and burn down their own neighborhoods. Look for new police budgets, new racial organizations, new gentrification after these riots.

Lastly, when I say “they” to refer to the lower classes, be aware this is an attempt at objectivity. Because, it is really “We”. If you are not one of the upper classes, you are in the lower classes. There is no bourgeois anymore: the shopkeepers and employees who will clean up this mess are from the same neighborhoods where the destruction originated. Rents will still be collected. The sneakers and TVs that were stolen are teardrops in an ocean of consumerism. Profits have never been higher, and you and I are not seeing any of it.

- The Future – To try and turn away from the preachy-anarchist angle, let’s look to the future. The future is undoubtedly uncertain. No one could have predicted this, and no one will predict the next one. However, what we can say is that there will be a next one. There is something incredibly zeitgeisty about these riots. It sends a shutter down the back, and makes one’s eye look to the bookshelf, to the SF paperbacks that have described similar things at “some time in the near future”. That near future is now, even if we don’t know why.

The key of it is, that there was indeed a time when our culture as a whole stopped worrying about “this”. There was a moment of comfort, sometime in the 80s and 90s. Not to say that there weren’t riots and conflicts and crashes and wars, but they were such that a perspective was enabled. It became possible to “look the other way”, whatever direction that was. Now things are back in view, which is probably for the best. It’s hard to say whether we’ll be able to make these things better by preparing for them, but we can’t say they’d get better if we ignored them.

But, I think it’s our duty to try. Besides “radical politics” things we can do, (see anarchist reality-design-fiction above) and standard liberal politics things (reinstate and build support structures), it behooves us to think like futurists about this. If we are feeling a pull towards science fiction, maybe we should consult science fiction. And not just by planning for utopia/dystopia, but by doing the grunt work of SF: look at the aspects of one particular technological element, and then imagine how things would be different if one-little-thing were different. Examples? Hmm, let’s see: well, what if rather than using Blackberry Messenger to coordinate riots, what if the youth used it for X? I don’t know for what. But what sort of payoff would there have to be to make people freely organize for X, rather than riot? What is the payoff of rioting, and how could that be supplanted by something positive? SMS and QR codes are used to advertise and sell products, and with arguable results. What is between a riot and a sales pitch? A flash mob? A meme? I don’t know, but these are questions we should be asking, because these are things we’ll likely be dealing with in the future. Think of Graffiti-Markup-Language. Graffiti used to be purely a nuisance, and a sign of urban blight. Now it is merged with programming language to make an art form. Who could have predicted that? Maybe no one. But somebody made it.

I think we all should probably be thinking about making things, as hard as we can. That might be the purest advice for dealing with destruction that I can think of.

In a post on G+, Tim Carmody proposed the notion of a full disclosure for tech journalists including what particular devices/systems they owned and used. For example, if one was writing about Windows, and didn’t actually have a Windows machine, should that be acknowledged?

The brief consensus in the comments was that this information is certainly helpful. I noted that when on a tech forum discussing problems with one’s tech, the first thing you’re asked to do is state the system you’re using to set the context. So shouldn’t this be standard for tech praise or tech criticism as well as tech support?

Justin Pickard brought up the site UsesThis at which influential tech folks are interviewed about their setups for particular tasks. Certainly this counts as an endorsement of some sort. And yet, obviously the reader interested in a particular graphics engine box will be taking these personal choices with a grain of salt. People still have preferences, and no one person’s choice can be said to be the canonical best of all. Every choice has pros and cons, and that what a reviewer hopefully seeks to identify in reviewing a product–saying “this is not simply the best for me, but here are the sorts of tasks it does well or poorly, by which you might make your own decision.” The declaration of one’s own setup is quite subjective, while reviewing intends a sort of objectivity.

And yet, there is more to these alternate points of view. When hearing about someone else’s gear, one doesn’t just take it as a personal endorsement. There is something more dynamic than that. You aren’t just reading someone else’s shopping list, or their wish list in a catalog. You are hearing a narrative about how they’ve solved a particular problem. The choices they’ve made speak to their workflow, and their way of confronting a regular, complex task. It doesn’t represent the best way, or the cheapest way, or the newest way: it speaks to the actual way that something is done.

This is not a narrative of qualitative or quantitative indicators, it is a narrative of praxis. It’s like looking into your grandfather’s tool box, or watching a friend drive. By listing one’s central tools or gear, you are learning about the person as much as their objects, because you are learning about the network of the person, extending outward to their objects.

I’m not a tech reviewer, but I take my gear seriously, and while I don’t fetishize it I select it carefully. So I came up with my own toolbox list, which is now a standard page here on the website, which I’ll update as it changes.

I didn’t list everything I use or own for everything, but I listed the things for which I had a choice, and after some thinking, made that choice carefully. I’m a writer, and a part of my daily work is reading, so I’ve also listed some standard reading sources. This is a potential place for the list to turn into the fetish catalog–it would not be completely inaccurate to list every book I’ve read, or basically add a blog roll or even my Twitter follow list, as these all affect my daily work considerably. But this would be veering towards the Minimalist Lifestyle Design Fetish, which is to make everything one associates with a personal accessory and endorsement. Brand is not an element of praxis. Brand is the total picture–the holistic aesthetic that commodity merchants attempt to sell, because once the brand is sold, accessory products can be shilled with the ease of action-figure play sets. Brand washes over the actual praxis, erasing use-value and replacing it with aesthetic. Aesthetic can be part of praxis, but it is the use of each particular object that defines its part in the network, not the overall image, or the construction of a total lifestyle list. Think of it this way: it would make sense for tool box to contain screwdrivers. And, a person might choose a particular sort of screwdriver, with ratchet grip and selectable tips, if that provides them more utility from time to time. However, it does not make sense for every toolbox to have this particular screwdriver, simply because it is more functional. And furthermore, although one might be able to order this particular screwdriver in custom colors, that is not relevant at all. Praxis extends and networks a certain amount of usage and features in particular devices, in a contingent framework that is developed individually, and uniquely at each occurrence of use. On the other hand, attempting to bind every feature or object together as a single continuum is where the brand develops. The difference between a real life toolbox and the Sharper Image catalog is the difference of steel, grease, plastic, and scuff marks, versus glossy paper, photos, and artful descriptions. It’s the difference between the things you use, and the things someone thinks you should use.

And in the end, this comes back to Tim’s originally raised question. In listing the items in our toolbox, we aren’t only rattling off a list in the effort of full disclosure, description, or identification. We are picking up each of our items individually, and thinking about why and how we use them. Is this a “toolbox” item? How carefully did we consider this object when we brought it into our possession? Would we accept a different tool in its place, or is there something about it that is unique to our relationship with the objects around us? These are questions of praxis, whereas an itemized list is a catalog, or a collector’s checklist. Perhaps reviewing technology as products should be more personal, more practical. But certainly our relationship with our own tools should be.

by Flickr user adactio

First of all, the claim in the Guardian piece is that the guards make £470-570 a day off the mining. I’m not sure if this is supposedly per prisoner, or for all the prisoners, but either way, it appears to be a disingenuous way of presenting the figure. This article claims that the average monthly wages of a “free” gold farmer are about 145 USD a month, working 12 hours shifts, or 40 cents an hour. This source claims the average Chinese gold farmer makes 0.30 USD an hour, while management makes about $1 an hour gross off that worker’s labor. So, with 300 prisoners (as cited in the Guardian article) working 12 hour shifts, we could imagine the prison bosses are pulling in $3600 a day gross if they are the top of the management structure, and $1080 per day if they are merely reselling the prisoners’ labor. Either way, we see the £470-570 sum is closer to the combined profitability of all the prisoners, (subtracting subscription and computer costs), and not the work done by the individual prisoner.

But even now that we’ve straightened that out, how much money is that, really? Gold farming only exists because there are economies in the world in which 30 cents an hour is a wage that someone is willing to work for. It is widespread in China, because of the size of the population and what that money will buy. In the United States, even working as a illegal farm laborer for half minimum wage is more than ten times that rate.

But don’t trust me: let’s look at some statistics. Federal minimum wage (the absolute minimum, as some states mandate a higher wage) is $7.25 an hour. The lowest minimum wage in China (China’s minimum wage is set regionally, not nationally) works out to 33 cents an hour, figured with 12-hour days. So gold farming in China is actually almost as lucrative for a worker as a minimum wage job, whereas in the US, it doesn’t even come close. This is why the Chinese bother to do it, whereas in the US, we hope for jobs in food service. Keeping in mind, of course, that “minimum wage” is an abstract figure in itself.

As it turns out, the US has the highest prison population per capita, at 756 prisoners per 100,000 people. We also have a tried and true prisoner labor economy. For example, in Arizona prisoners work as farm laborers, earning $2 an hour, 30% of which goes back to the prison for “room and board”. That is pretty good pay, considering that prisoners are also used as “out-sourced” call center workers, for an average of only 92 cents an hour.

by Louise Boyle, via Flickr user KheelCenter

Now, there are two ways to look at this.

One: the Chinese gold farmers are probably (the article is not clear) paid NOTHING for their farming. The prison bosses pocket 100% of the gross after equipment, with zero labor costs. The workers are making 0% on their labor, and 100% of what would be their minimum wage is being stolen from them on account of their incarceration. Whereas, US prisoners keep at worst (figuring 92 cents an hour) 12.6% of what would be their minimum wage, 87.4% of their due as workers being taken from them on account of their incarceration. In other words, it is better to earn something rather than nothing, and the American prisoners are doing better than the Chinese.

On the other hand…

Two: The surplus value is what matters. It is not so much the percentage that those workers could have earned at a “real” job farming, gold farming, or whatever. It is the work that their bosses are getting out of them, and in this case, the money they save by using prisoners. It is the comparison between the money the bosses might have spent to pay free workers, versus money that those bosses save at the expense of their workers’ incarceration. In this case, per working hour, the Chinese prison bosses are earning $1 off each worker per hour, because this is the largest price they can get from the farmed gold, even when paying their workers absolutely nothing. While the American boss who out-sources prison labor is earning a full $5.25 extra per working hour in pure profit by skirting minimum wage requirements. That is on top of the profit that boss would already collect, from phone orders of products, or harvested produce. In avoiding the necessity to pay workers a minimum wage, US bosses pocket 525% more surplus value per prison-work-hour than their Chinese colleagues with the gold farming scheme. The Chinese prisoner may get the shaft when it comes to being paid. But as far as saving money on labor, the US prison boss is doing much better than the Chinese prison boss.

While our first instinct might be to compare the two instances as in approach One, it is crucial that we compare them by approach Two. A prisoner is a prisoner, but the value of that prisoner to the economic system of industrialized prison labor, shows exactly what stake that system has in keeping that laborer a prisoner. A US worker in prison is worth 525% more to the economy than a Chinese worker farming gold in prison. The Chinese prison bosses would make a little less if they couldn’t steal free labor from their prisoners. But that is small potatoes, compared to what US corporations make off their prisoners. My instinct is that the Chinese gold farming bosses are working on their own, just trying to extort a little bit of labor from their charges (the prisoners also officially work make products for export, which I expect are far more lucrative). To compare gold farming, a little bit of exploitative pocket money gathering, to the worldwide system of prison labor, is merely to make an internet-ready article, and not to even begin to comprehend the injustice done to incarcerated workers by surplus-value economies.

The real story, therefore, is not that it is so crazy that in a Chinese prison, prisoners are made to do some meaningless task for their bosses’ benefit. When measuring the profitability of the prison-industrial complex within the working economy, the US is still #1, baby.

Oh, and the story is also that we love to imagine China is the great economic Satan. But the US has been outsourcing exploitation since there was a trade deficit, and extracting surplus value from workers since time immemorial, so don’t think we’ve forgotten how to fuck over the lower classes.

There was a Martin Luther King Jr. quote falsely attributed, or perhaps better described as misinterpreted, and then corrected.

The last might be blamed on the haste of internet users to re-post a message without fully reading it and/or verifying it. However, in an unrelated intrigue, Wilko von Hardenberg and Tim Carmody got to the bottom of a falsely-attributed Decartes quote, that not only has been live on the Network for years, but printed in several books, going back to the 1970s.

And then yesterday, in consideration of these events, I decided to repost a quotation mystery that has baffled me for years: that in the University of Minnesota edition of Deleuze & Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, there is a endnote left absolutely blank, with the quote unattributed. William Ball jumped on it, and solved the mystery by figuring out that the quote was oddly translated, the citation left blank, the punctuation misprinted so as to obscure the context, and perhaps the passage creatively-recalled to begin with. Like that, my mystery fell away, like scales from the eyes.

by Flickr user hans s

Perhaps it is apt that we can watch these little sessions unfold over Storify, because it is not really the work of one person that uncovered the puzzles of these mistakes. One person could perhaps fix a mistake, not unlike editing, if he or she had the knowledge to rectify an obviously perceived error. But it was because these were mistakes echoed wide and far throughout the network, or because one person’s doubt could be shared and extended by other interested parties, that there was a conclusion to these, and a narrative of the puzzle could be established. They are dialogs. One person has a doubt, and expresses it outwardly. From the topology of their Network, no doubt established by a previous acknowledgement of similar interests, comes the response: yes, I share your doubt. Then the synthesis: let’s see if we can’t manipulate the Networks to find our solution.

As I mentioned to @exstasis, who pretty much solved my mystery single-handedly as I watched in awe, it was amazing that he solved the issue using only online sources that were readily available. Search engines, scans of books uploaded (perhaps with dubious copyright conformity), and the various versioning that the wide duplication of resources on the Network can provide. While the puzzle could no doubt have been solvable with standard academic resources at hand, such as a good academic library, he didn’t need any of this. And considering the fact that we found no mention of the existence of the puzzle at all, it is entirely possible that no one has ever bothered to track down the solution. Therefore, the Network allowed a couple of “amateur” scholars satisfy their curiosity, without needed to avail themselves of the resources of the standard fact-checking institutions. Those institutions that through their mistake, created the puzzle to begin with; but we won’t blame them for that, as what all these cases make clear is that the Network is in fact equal to “higher” academia when it comes to creating these intellectual puzzles, as well as solving them. One wonders if in fact, the Network has further merit in that not only does it allow access to anyone with the basic ability to connect and the will to participate, but the pace of both mistake and correction is incredibly rapid (perhaps related to the scale of participation as compared to academia).

All of this being fairly apparent to anyone who is more than a casual user of Twitter, or some other tight-knit soft-network.

by Flickr user Randy Son of Robert

by Adam

But here’s what I wonder, and what I’d like to suggest. The theory of gamification states (my own generalization here) that a motivation strategy for behavior could be an assigning of points and reward structure so that a person can more easily visualize their progress towards a goal. But perhaps rather than gamification, we should be considering puzzlification as a strategy for utilizing these sorts of soft-networks.

The difference is this: a game is designed to structure goals via a definition of quantified points and winning conditions. A puzzle, on the other hand, is itself a structure of a qualitative and logical quandary. A game can be cheated when the points structure is manipulated to achieve the winning conditions without necessarily achieving the goal. But a puzzle can only be solved, or not. However, a proposed solution to a puzzle can be at first accepted as seemingly correct, and then later found to be incorrect. A puzzle can be be the goal, structured into part of game. And in a sense, the strategy for winning (or cheating) a game can be thought of as a puzzle. But the difference is quantitative/qualitative.

To more directly contrapose the two: the game structuring numerous small problems together via a generalized quantitative network, the puzzle an isolated network structure of specific logical quandary. Both are ways of structuring our assessment of reality, and so neither is more “real” than the other. The facts of gamification are not about the ability to cheat, so much as what that ability entails. A poorly-described puzzle is in no way superior to a well-designed game. Nor is a properly-apportioned game necessarily worse than a clever puzzle. They are merely alternate ways of describing a goal, so that the mind can attempt to guess what its move should be to satisfy that goal, so defined.

Furthermore, I would venture to say that in addition to simply quantifying the issue, a game’s rules are more generic and abstract from the actual tasks at hand, bridging beyond one issue to a whole set of issues, wired in series as it were. While a puzzle, in addition to quantifying the situation, is specific and concrete to the issue, considering everything holistically. Once the puzzle is solved, that is it. It may be intricate in its layout, but a puzzle is entirely self-contained.

Game: Quantitative, Bridging, Generic, Abstracting, Network-Extensive, Structural Assessment
Puzzle: Qualitative/Logical, Holistic, Specific, Concrete, Network-Inclusive, Structural Assessment

Because these are similar ways of assessing problems, both have merits which are no doubt applicable to different situations. But to a soft-network such as Twitter, I think we should look towards the puzzle. I am calling it a soft-network because Twitter is not meant to organize any particular process or activity. Sure, it is based around 140 character messages, but clearly the point of Twitter is not simply to create 140 messages. Twitter represents language itself, in a way. Language is for communicating, but that’s not all we do with it. We also grunt, express emotion, think, act, commune, organize, and many other things through language. With Twitter we send messages, but also network (in the verb sense), share, express, link, and a bunch of other things. It is that there is a very basic framework without explicit purpose that we are able to do so much with it, extending it outward from its premise. On the other hand, a hard-network is defined by specific tasks. The html structure of a website, for example, is designed to render information via a browser, and provide programmed functionality. There are different ways of doing this, and one can do an incredible number of things with such a structure. But it is a specifically-defined system and outside of its core task, has no other function.

Hard-Network: Specific, Network-Inclusive, Rigid, Concrete, Defined Structure
Soft-Network: Unspecific, Network-Extensive, Flexible, Abstract, Interpretable Structure

And this difference is ironic, when it comes to interacting with these structures. Problems with hard-networks, those structures that are very specific, are perhaps best solved by quantified assessment. HTML ought to render fast and error-free, and be coded simply and quickly. With a specific structure to act upon, we can take an abstract and generic method of assessing those actions and still assess very effectively. On the other hand, with a soft network like Twitter, it is very difficult to generically assess a “winner”. Rather, with such an open-ended structure, it is better to assess our actions within it logically, only according to a concrete and specific set of qualitative parameters. Do you “win” Twitter by tweeting the most, or fastest, or having the furthest reach? It all depends on the specifics of the particular puzzle you are trying to solve. You can see with the traits I’ve identified above, that a puzzle has certain attributes of a hard-network, which a game has attributes of a soft-network, and yet I suggest they should be oppositionally aligned.

These interaction pairings are antithetical to how we might think of them. Wouldn’t a well-defined hard-network structure benefit from an assessment system specific and concrete to its limited definition? And wouldn’t a more flexible soft-network require a general, far-reaching assessment? The answer is no–because assessment is not about mimicking what is being assessed. It is about control through overlap. Reality and our conceptual schema are always, in a sense, in opposition. We can’t think that our mental conceptions of the world will ever catch up with the detail of the mechanisms of the world. Instead, we need to model and simplify. The best model is one that overlaps the boundaries of what it attempts to model, rather than mimicking the subject. It looks at the difference between the object and field, rather than the undifferentiatedness of the middle of the object or the edge of the field. If a system is limited, a generic model will cover more of the extent of the system. If a system is more fluid, specific samples will gain a better sense of what needs to be observed. The model is part of the system it observes and assesses, and therefore it ought to fit in as component, rather than attempt to draw a map of each grain of sand.

by Adam

Consider again, these checks of attribution error conducted via soft-networks. Should we award each of these people who succeeded in correcting an error “points”? Why? What would these points mean tomorrow? What do they mean in terms of the errors themselves? The game, as it were, is not “winning the Internet”, as the joke often states. The puzzle was identifying and correcting an error that no one knew existed. These puzzles were each solved in their entirety, and no doubt many more lie out there waiting to be discovered. If we awarded these players a number of points, how would these points help them prepare for the next puzzle? On the other hand, if we congratulate them for solving a puzzle, we can trace the steps that went into the solution. We read back through the dialogic steps of the Storify, and see the moves they made. We don’t attempt to replicate these moves exactly, but we recall the strategy they imply: collect a network of intelligent, like-minded individuals; keep a sense of what search tools are more helpful; locate resources for finding illicit copies of otherwise un-retrievable texts; and when you think something is amiss, why not say so out loud, and see who responds? “TRY TO GET MORE POINTS” is not a helpful tactic here.

The interesting thing about it for me, is how this new burst of functionality actually creates a feeling of frustration for me. I’m frustrated for all the ways the Wii is not like Chrome.

Netflix is probably the first useful thing I’ve used on the Wii’s network connection. The browser is near pointless, the weather and news apps are useless in comparison to my cell phone, I don’t play multiplayer games online. I have downloaded a couple of games from the Wii Store (Secret of Mana and Zelda: Link to the Past, suckas!) but other than that, it just sits. But now that Netflix is pulling gigs of hot entertainment off of the cloud, I realize just how useless that pretty white box is.

Where is my Pandora app? A usable YouTube app? Free, pointless web games? Audiovox? Al Jazeera, or other news networks? I don’t know very much about the Wii programming front, but as wonderful and easy as navigating the Netflix native app with the Wiimote, I can’t believe I can’t stream music, news, or do any of the other easy web app tasks I do on all of my computers.

This isn’t the only inherent limitation in the setup. I can’t play DVDs in the Wii, so I’m constantly switching the RCA cables back and forth to my crappy single input TV. I can’t access network shares of any format. I’m expected to use a SD card to transfer pictures, for goodness sakes. And when I point my Wiimote at the toaster or the toilet, nothing happens!

Well, I might need some additional black market… hardware modifications… to make my waste elimination controllable via bluetooth. And I know that my Wii is several years old, so I shouldn’t expect cutting edge technology to be on it. But this is a common gadget problem, gadget problems being the localized “serious first world issues” that they are.

Everything electronic device I have seems to be limited by something. And not by being a few years old, or by having no interface to my spinal cord. I have devices running iOS, Mac OS, Windows, Linux, and whatever it is that is going on inside the Wii. Certain things will work with others and the larger network, via TCI/IP, CIFS, USB cable, or native app programming. But they don’t all work. Certain functionalities occur on certain devices, but not on others. I feel like I have a tool box filled with magnetized tools. The hammer is perfectly useful on its own, but bring it near my cold chisel, and the chisel flies across the room.

I know it is too much to hope that there ever be one OS to unite them all. But then, my good systems make me wish for what could be. There’s Roku, there’s Boxee, there’s XBMC. I could buy one of the pre-made systems, or I could hack together my own using free software and a small PC. These all get a little closer, but it still isn’t perfect. It will never be perfect.

What is perfect? Shouldn’t we at least have something to shoot for? What are people shooting for? I have some guesses as to what Apple and Nintendo are shooting for. It rhymes with “shmonetization”. Open-source developers like those working on XBMC might be shooting for perfect, one step at a time. But they are constrained by the pay services, and their own goals. Netflix won’t work on XBMC running on a Linux box, for example, because of the Silverlight DRM. Of course, Netflix is constrained in turn by their content providers, and I have no problem with this really. Their service is totally worth the money they charge. It provides real value, if you are into entertainment value. But it could provide more value, and yet is not. There are always limitations.

Limitations are a part of life. They only become frustrating when they seem arbitrary, and what is desired is just out of reach. I can listen to Pandora and Last.fm on Chrome OS, but I can’t watch Netflix. I can watch Netflix on the Wii, but can’t listen to Pandora. I feel like if I want it hard enough, I should be able to figure out a way past this impasse, but alas, technology is much more complex than wishing.

I could put this aside as just a silly little entertainment issue, and go back to doing something important. But, this desire to sync is not just a TV problem. It’s an information problem. We, the consumers, think of our technology in terms of features, not in terms of company motivation, operating system, or app availability. We want to DO functions, not understand the complex paths of compatibility. This problem engages all technology from car cabin controls, to social networking, to kitchen appliances.

Some of us (like myself, or so I like to think) can see past our desires and understand the reasons why things don’t work, and wait patiently hoping that some day they will work. But why is there a disconnect? Can’t we meet somewhere in the middle, with more easily component technological connections that more closely adhere to our schemas of functional understanding?

via Flickr user Mac User's Guide

Take RCA cables, for instance. In some scenarios, I’m the “tech geek”, simply because I understand the difference between red, white, and yellow, and between input and output. I don’t know anything about how a DVD player functions, but I can understand making a simple component connection between media source and display. I can figure out how best to organize the stereo receiver, the DVD player, the game system, and any other inputs and outputs to cobble together a home theater system from whatever is lying around. Just with some colorful little cables.

Everyone tries for this sort of component ease. Debian packages. iOS apps. Chrome apps. Web stores. Plug and play. But this component ease is always designed within a particular system, either an operating system, a gadget industry, or a particular company’s product offerings. Why isn’t the system the “consumer’s logical understanding environment”? Probably because consumer user experience only goes so far as to increase that consumer’s surface area as a customer. Why would anyone spend time and money working on R&D for improving UI purposefully outside of the scope of a product? Why would anyone want to potentially improve someone else’s product, outside of doing so as a way of improving their own product? Everyone is trying to use everyone else, be it the OS using its third-party developers, the developers using the interface, the interface using the customers. Except for the customers, who aren’t using anyone, and only getting used. It’s consumer capitalism, and this isn’t any revelation.

What would happen, if cell phone manufacturers actually wanted you to have better health care? Or if app developers really wanted a more directly representative democracy? If the world was made to help enable the synchronized functions we desire, rather than the functions that will earn someone money? First of all, we’d be living in a utopia. We’d be living in a world in which the human species was not self-interested and individualistic, and in which the consolidation of power in the form of money and resources didn’t beget the accumulation of more power and resources. All of which is not the case. No need to get weepy about it; we are whom we are.

But we could get much closer than we are now. I’d wait on my Wii apps, if it would help.

Image credit: Flickr user damiosantana

And like a shot, the Aufhebung Klaxon goes off, the Marx signal is shining in the sky (it is the full of the Theses of Feuerbach, blurrily illuminated on a cloud), and I’m off and running to the Use-Value Mobile (okay, it’s my website)… all because someone needs some learning about the true worth of labor.

Okay, so I don’t know how much this guy actually knows about Marx or not. According to his bio he’s studied economics, so I would hope that means he at least he thinks he gets it. At any rate, all of that was just my intro to my rebuttal of this stupid piece, which is the real point, and doesn’t involve Marx at all. Except where it does.

Look–I don’t mean to be a jerk. I just am. But even so, I don’t like utterly condemning the thoughts of someone I’ve never met. That person could be a pretty good person, all things considered. And yet sometimes, the nature of the argument requires it. If we’re going to make and strong definitions, sooner or later, they are going to have to be definitions in opposition to something. And considering that this guy pretty much just shit all over everything that I and many of my acquaintances do, I’m not going to pull any punches on this trash essay in my effort to show just how wrong this conception really is. Be forewarned.

Fella’s point is this:

Why won’t hipsterism ever go away? Consider that technology (facilitated by capitalism’s emphasis on efficiency; i.e., consider the assembly line a technology as well as the internet) is stripping people of what has been traditionally defined as “useful” or “legitimate” or “meaningful” work, and thus stripping meaning from their lives. “Nothing productive left to do since the robots came; better make my consumption more flamboyant and self-announcing!”

[...]

Hence the field of consumption becomes the field of distinction and social recognition as well, and consuming becomes a sort of semiotic labor that absorbs more and more of our natural inclination to do something regarded as socially useful. (And Shop Class as Soulcraft-style retro crafts like carpentry and gardening and Etsy-ism start to register as consumerist hobbies, not “real” production.) Social media supplies the factory and distribution center for this sort of work, as well as the scoreboard in the form of data about just how many people are paying attention to you. We produce content and links to try to “connect” to others, that is, have them regard us as socially necessary the way, say, in the 19th century the village blacksmith was vitally necessary when the horse you were traveling on pulled up lame. (Okay, that was a somewhat far-flung, Downton Abbey-inspired example.) The point is we want to feel useful, and there are fewer opportunities for that in the sphere of production. So consumption becomes production, and the main way that happens is to make what we consume more salient and more socially significant, to have it inflect an ever-shifting language of status signifiers.

Considering that the guy leaves out most of the connections between his data points, let me try and reconstruct his argument a little bit more direction.

1) Technology is more efficient; thus there is less “meaningful” work to do.

2) Consumption takes the place of meaningful work, in our understanding of what “meaningful” is.

3) “Meaningfulness” is related to social recognition, and so consumption becomes a social activity, furthered in social arena.

4) The things that we make, if they are at all social, are akin to consumption, because we only think they are meaningful, in our attempts to replace actually “meaningful” production.

Interesting, but completely, utterly wrong. There are a couple of syllogisms here I think, but I’m going to focus on the biggest, overwhelming lacuna.

Exactly what in the hell does he mean by “meaningful”? It seems to be key to the argument, because the lack of meaning is what causes production to be replaced by consumption, as a way of countering this lack of meaning. But if we don’t know what we are supposed to be replacing, how can we tell if we are indeed attempting to replace it?

He never actually says what this “meaningfulness” is. I’m not going to even attempt to try and flesh out what he thinks “meaningfulness” is, because if I did, I would be grasping at such thin connections in the attempt to half-create a distinguishable sense of his concept, that I wouldn’t even have a straw man, so much as a scattered bit of hay with a carrot nose sitting on top.

But along with “meaning”, our guy here places “useful” and “legitimate” at the head of the table. “Useful” is a pretty good one, because many people have attempted to theorize what “usefulness” is. “Legitimate” is much more problematic, so I’m going to set it aside for now, and then we’ll come back to it.

So starting from here, let me tell you what I think meaningfulness is. In a sense, it is hard for me to do so, because I’m an artist/anarchist not really willing to make general statements about what things mean, let alone what they mean to other people. But, in the effort to work this out, let’s table aesthetic value as a different category than this “meaningfulness” he is trying to get at. Aesthetics are neither here nor there, I suppose: eye of the beholder, and all that. So let’s continue to suggest that beyond the relativism of aesthetics, there are actions in the world that do indeed have meaning.

Usefulness… usefulness… let’s see what I have in my philosophy bag here… oh look, Marx! Without digging too deep in Marx, let’s simply remember use-value: the use an object or labor has for a person, based upon its use. i.e. The satisfaction of a want.

Use-value goes hand in hand with exchange-value, which is itself based upon the equivalence of two different use-values via a fair and equitable exchange of these objects/labors. 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, as the old example reads. Linen has a certain use-value, a coat another, but in these proportions their use-value is equivalent. The exchange is typically phrased in the form of currency. X number of $ is equivalent to both use values, and so the exchange takes place. This is like the Newtonian physics of markets. Many other complicated things happen from here on out, but this is the basics of where it all begins.

But, the author of the aforementioned article specifically states, “meaningfulness” does not occur just because someone will pay money for labor. So he says. It might be exchanged, but does it doesn’t necessarily have a use. This is the “meaningless” labor that so-called hipsters do–moving social signifiers around, trying to up their follower counts, even occasionally building things just to get on BoingBoing, Reddit, etc, the bourses of hype-exchanging. To him, all of this labor is “meaningless”. Through these social exchanges, this is all no more than continuous consumption of whuffie: some sort of hipster bullshit.

But what about use-value? How can there just be none, simply because there might be other systems of social exchange-value applied over top? As I said, I’m totally going to bracket the aesthetic value of Steampunk cell phones, just because that is not even necessary to discuss. Guess what: even if you only make a single call on your Steampunk cell phone, it has use-value. If you do not buy another phone, because you are totally happy with your retro-cycled Nokia with gears glued to the outside, it has use-value. If you do not exchange anything, money or otherwise, for another phone because you have a Steampunk cell phone, then its use-value is greater than anything else that could be exchanged for it.

See, the question is not about efficiency–which, if I had my guess, would be what this irritating author meant to say instead of “meaningfulness”. The power of use-value is not about efficiency. It is true that the vast field of technology and exchanges supporting the development and distribution of technology have trended towards efficiency. Certainly, a Capitalist will look towards efficiency as a quantitative means for increasing surplus value via technology. But efficiency does not define use-value.

What this idiot so dismissively refers to as “hobbies”, and not “real production” is less-than-totally efficient production. It isn’t nostalgia that causes me to pick up my grandfather’s screwdriver to fix my 35MM camera. It is pure use-value. It would be more efficient if I used an electric screwdriver, outsourced the repair to a professional, or junked the whole thing and picked up a new digital camera as small as my thumbnail with a zillion megapixels. That would be most efficient. But the reason I “hobby” around, is because it just works. I don’t need that other shit. This screwdriver works fine, just as it has for the last sixty years. Maybe I would get more use-value out of a digital camera. In fact, I own several digital cameras, which means that I totally understand the use-value they provide. But I also understand the use-value of film cameras, and that is why I use them. Are we expected to believe that the instant I put down the digital camera and pick up the film camera, suddenly what I produce with that camera is meaningless? All of a sudden, my production switches to consumption? Is that the definition of “meaning” that we are really supposed to be using?

You know what carpentry and gardening does? It keeps me out of the mall and the supermarket. My partner knits–not just because it is quaint and because the textile life is so hip–but because we get high quality, repairable, custom-made clothing out of it that keeps us warm in the winter so we don’t have to turn up the heat. I run my own websites, rather than outsourcing it to pros, because it is cheaper, and it is fun. We cook too, even though Domino’s is like, totally more efficient. All of these things have real use-value, and that is why we do them. Maybe our personal household economy isn’t exactly the wonderful world of Monsanto and Dow Chemical… but you know what? I am totally okay with that.

This comes back to the issue of “legitimate”, which this guy equated with his notion of “meaningfulness”. Legitimacy, otherwise known as authenticity, is one of the big battles of the human race. It is the motive force for a thousand actions, for horrible crimes, and for great triumphs. It is the reason to try, and the reason we deem things failures. Largely, authenticity is completely relative. But the way that we do orient our own sense of direction in this crazy, relative world, is by looking to the people around us. We ask our social scene, which we largely compose from folks whom we believe share and supplement our values and views. Is what I’m doing worthwhile? Should I keep trying on this, or should I give up and try something else? From the responses to these questions, we form an understanding of what it is we are doing in the world.

And yes, we sometimes get too wrapped up in it. Our little egos get inflated, and we care too much about what a large number of people think, than what the really important people think. What others think, rather than what we, ourselves think. This happens. But we typically come back to earth. We use our social scene to discover the true meaning of life–the great arbitrator of exchange-values for all of the disparate human actions we call existence.

Whether or not we are heading in the right direction is impossible to say for sure. We can only do our best. At one time, and still for many people, “best” seeking efficiency, profit, and power to go with all that use-value, to supplement it, and even to establish these things as their own tools for achieving useful action. Lately, doing our best has meant, for a large number of different people, that we are ignoring or even becoming disgusted with that way of thinking. Instead, we are doing are carpentry at home, sewing rather than shopping, making crappy amateur art and music rather than buying whatever is on TV. I can tell you this: I am reasonably sure that this is a better course for human life than working in a Lowell mill, or a Chicago slaughterhouse. It is better than achieving someone else’s notion of “success” working for a health insurance company. I don’t know if what I’m doing is “meaningful”, but it sure as hell has more meaning than the common Capitalist lifestyle, and I can say that definitively, without even checking my Twitter feed’s opinion. And know what else? I’m still alive. My current use-value wins out, until the day I die.

So is my life fraught with consumption? Of course. But I’m also consuming less things than I have at any other time in my life. If that is “meaningful”, or even if it isn’t. Judging my level of production is a much more delicate procedure, and I’m sure there are those that could say I could be producing much more. But if production means slamming other people’s life-systems because they refuse to participate in mine, then whatever sort of “meaning” that is, I don’t want any part in it. And I’m not the only one.

So cry about it. Play the real estate market. Write an essay about it, if that justifies your existence. (Works for me.) But I have better things to do than satisfy someone else’s notion of Capitalist legitimacy. And people who agree with me are not just theorizing this world. We’re out there, living it, not buying into that legitimacy. That’s our personal brand. Rather than worrying about it, I suggest that that idiot develop his own a little bit more. ‘Cause as is, it kinda looks like crap.

It irritates me when people say something along the lines of, “Unions in America are good in principle, but…”

The “but” is followed by some sort of criticism about how the institutions of unions are corrupt, or inefficient, or outdated, or not applicable to all industries. This is then followed by most often by an anecdote about a cousin’s friend’s father in New York who was a union member who was really lazy and overpaid and was then cheated out of his inheritance by his union that was supposed to protect him. Or something of the kind.

It irritates me because people who say this are wrong. People who espouse this sort of caveat are hurting us–all of us. They are tools of our society’s downfall, whether they wish to be or not, and every time they open their mouths to rehash this sort of argument, they should be shouted down and told to shut up.

I’m going to tell you why.

My argument is not about the 40 hour workweek, or about the weekends, or anything else you might see on a bumper sticker or a protest sign. My argument is about what a union is, not about what any particular union has done. In the realm of ideas, where we are now and where these statements are made, it is important to begin from the general, and move towards the specific. Anecdotal evidence may sound good, but holding general statements to be true based on only specific evidence is a logical fallacy.

A Union is, in principle, the sum of its parts. There are many different kinds of unions, ranging from civil unions to the Soviet Union. We are interested in labor unions specifically, but it is important to remember that in essence, it is a union, and should be considered thusly before any other sort of analysis.

There is nothing wrong with a union in this general sense. As an organizing body meant to represent its parts, there would be no cause to deny those parts the ability to organize themselves for any reason they chose, whether it be for love, for diplomacy, for collective bargaining, or to usher in the future communist order, if that’s what those parts so desired. Self-determination is generally considered a right of all humans, before any particular reason to deny that right might adjudicated. And so, if any person declares him or herself in unified allegiance with another person, who could raise an argument to deny that union?

Except, of course, that the right to unify is denied all the time, for various reasons. Certain love unions are denied, to allegedly protect a certain ideal notion of that union. Public gatherings are often disallowed, for reasons of safety, hygiene, or other effects of that gathering that might infringe upon others’ rights. Even national sovereignty can be questioned, if that nation acts as a threat to other nations, or to itself. But these denials of the right to unify are all considered after the fact, once the union in question has presented itself as a threat (at least in the eyes of those in charge of making such decisions).

A labor union is made of workers. A labor union separates itself from other kinds of unions by fact of its membership. Sure, union members could marry each other. And unions could combine to form bowling leagues, international organizations, and various other things. But the labor union is a union of workers. And so any judgment of a labor union must be constructed on that basis.

What is a worker, anyway? It’s a person with a job, of course. Having a job is still, despite the unemployment rate, a common occurrence in the United States. But what does it really mean? Perhaps because it is so common, and because it is such an indicative part of every day life, we tend to forget what it really is. Having a job is working, and receiving pay in return. Nothing more, nothing less. Among all the jobs that exist, we can say that all qualify in this distinction by being work for pay.

Now, when we are discussing the general in this way, it is important not to be taken in by our understanding of the ideal. The ideal job is not necessarily the general job. In the general, a job is the common traits of all jobs. In the ideal, a job is what we most commonly think about when we think about all jobs. In this way, the ideal is no more than another anecdote. It is a particular job, that we think of in place of all the other particular jobs.

I’m not sure what your ideal notion of a job is, but I can tell you mine. I think of a particular locally-owned grocery store I know, in a small town in Iowa. They hire stock boys from the local high school. Yes, “stock boys”, because they hire exclusively males. Females worked the registers. (Ah, small town Iowa.) The stock boys also wore identical green aprons, and they pushed around identical wide, shop brooms. They were paid every week with identical checks, drawn on the local bank around the corner, for identical wages. This isn’t what job I would do, given the choice. And this isn’t what I think jobs should be like, necessarily. This is simply the common example I think of, when I think of a “job”.

There is nothing wrong with this ideal job. Ideally. A young man without any experience starts at the bottom in a locally-owned business, doing the grunt work. He is paid for his time, and if he works hard and learns, he eventually moves up the meat counter, or to manager, or whatever might be next in line. Then he receives a pay raise, and he starts doing his darnedest at these new increased responsibilities. And so on and so forth, all the way to the American Dream.

The only thing wrong with this ideal job is that it is not the general form of employment in the United States, and to act as if it is, demeans all of the people out there working in less-than ideal conditions. There is nothing general we can say about employment conditions in America. How do we describe in common hedge fund managers with seven digit bonuses, smart creative people “living the dream” earning money doing exactly what they want, workaday folks feeding their families month to month, people without education or experience unable to find any job but manual labor, and the underpaid and exploited who are put in dangerous situations or straight-up robbed because they are criminals or immigrants or threatened or simply not very clever? All of these things exist. And there is no general state to describe them, other than “work for pay”. They are workers, all. And this is all we can say.

Luckily for them, these workers are able to form unions. A labor union gives definition to the dynamics of everything entailed within “work”. Because the ideal does not exist, unions instead provide a commonality, and a general status by which we can address the problems and benefits of certain trades. Labor unions form their membership from those who can ally together, to form a single entity from disparate individuals. Workers self-determine themselves by identifying that generality, and expressing it via their membership.

From this commonality develops the notion of collective bargaining. If an organization exists that counts similar workers in its membership, the workers can use that organization to bargain to change aspects of their employment. No one would argue that an individual isn’t free to bargain the specifics of his or her employment. That is what “work for pay” is. Somehow the work and the pay must be agreed upon between the employer and the employee. And so, the idea that workers would unite into one body for the purpose of more expediently bargaining together at the same time with the same employer isn’t too far of a leap.

Except, that collective bargaining is much more effective. Unions have higher salaries and better benefits because they are able to bargain with the employers on equal terms. An employer is already unified. If a worker loses a job, s/he doesn’t have other jobs to fall back on. Whereas, an employer can lose one, two, or more workers easily, depending on the size of the operation. An employer holds all the cards. S/he knows all the salaries of all the workers in the operation, knows the value of all the positions in terms of the profit generated. When workers are unified, that dynamic changes. The workers know each others’ salaries, know how much labor charges affect the employer. The employer can no longer select and drop workers at a whim, like produce at the supermarket. Grievances aren’t ignored, and they are factored into the bargaining process. Hence, collective bargaining bargains a much better deal than any employee individually.

Collective bargaining is so effective, it can, in fact, take advantage of the employer. It can put in place rules that hardly seem “fair” in a general perspective. It can organize extortion and crimes, in addition to legitimate bargaining. Nothing that an individual couldn’t do, and nothing that the unified organization of an employer couldn’t do, either. But it can do this, and if it does, it does so more effectively than it would without that unified force.

It is the effectiveness of collective bargaining that spurs the attempt to deny the right of union to form. No one would dispute the right of individuals to enter the street, until the individuals do so in such numbers that the union of people in the street has effects not recognized as caused by a single individual; no one would deny the right of two people to engage in a love union, until the genders of the members of that union contradicted a closed and ideal notion of what love is; no country would dispute a sovereign nation unless its sovereign disputed their own; and no one would oppose workers coming together to organize, until they were organizing for collective bargaining. One cannot argue with the general definition of a union, because it is no more than individuals, together–one seeks to ban the general by nature of its effect.

This effectiveness is the basis by which people try to make unions illegal. When we look at it in terms of what unions are in a general sense, the idea of illegalizing unions on this basis seems ridiculous. There is nothing about a union that is illegal. It is what any particular unified group of individuals chooses to do with that unity. What a labor union decides to do with its unity is to counter the unity of the employers, and this is what is despised about them. The ability to collectively bargain makes a union dangerous, not necessarily to law and order, but to employers who are trying to extract every bit of value they can from workers. It reduces employers unified power to manage workers, by balancing that power and leveling the playing field, and so they dispute it. Workers’ exploitable value to employers is diminished when employees know and demand their worth, and so it contradicts their notion of what the ideal employee ought to be.

Let me summarize:

1a – Unions are, in general, a constituent organization of individuals

1b – Unions do not have any abilities outside of the unified power of these individuals

1c – Therefore, to deny the ability to form a union, it must be justified by the effect of this unified, and not by nature of any other ideals or anecdotal evidence.

2a – A Labor Union is a constituent organization of workers

2b – A Labor Union’s ability is collective bargaining

2c – To deny the ability to form a union is to deny workers the power of collective bargaining, for good or ill, lawfulness or lawlessness.

Now that I’ve stated these general ideas more or less clearly, let me talk about you. Yes, you: you who would perhaps agree to these points, but still disparage unions for all the ways that their collective bargaining does not fulfill your personal definition of justice, rights, or productivity.

You are on the side of those who seek to exploit, those who seek to silence, those who seek to malign humanity and take advance of individuals in their faults. You may be against crime, against graft, against extortion, and against laziness. All of those are noble beliefs. But to take specific wrongdoings and lay them at the feet of organized labor in principle is to follow the urge of the employer, who would find any excuse, sensible or baseless, to destroy opposition to his/her own cause. And because they cannot find general, logical reasons to deny unions the right to exist, they use these specifics to further their partisan cause. The enemies of the labor union, of the general concept of collective bargaining, of organization for the betterment of the individuals involved–they take specific wrongs and blow them up as evidence against the general. They lie, steal, and extort in addition to this. But we could even set that aside for the moment. What they are doing here, and what they have convinced you to do as well, is to reject the reasonableness of the concept because it threatens them. They deny the right of forming a union because it contradicts their notion of what they can get away with, and of what ought, in their opinion, to be the status quo. They deny that workers are capable of forming their own law-abiding constituent organizations, because to them, worker organization is as dangerous as a blood-thirsty mob. They have reduced reason and logic to a tool, that they deploy only when it benefits themselves.

I’m not saying the ends justifies the means, or to support the power of the movement means we should not question its actions. Never would I stoop to that utilitarian logic, which is the exact thing I am arguing against. There is nothing more important than the specifics. There is no fight other than the day to day aspects of organization, where abuse and exploitation ought to be settled on every side. But in order to fight abuses, one must have an organization with which to do it. Humans naturally form organizational structure, whether it be government, labor union, or abstract social relations. We cannot question the fact of this organization, and still seek to fix its problems and weaknesses. One can’t fight crime by dissolving society, improve the institution of marriage by excluding individuals from it, or solve international conflicts by denying countries’ right to exist. One can’t improve employee and employer relationships by removing organization. We need organization. If you think the organization should look and function differently, then join it, or start your own. The last thing we should be doing is denying to principle of organization. It is a general fact of the human species, and one of our best attributes.

When you defend unions, but with these caveats, you do not help humans to organize. You help those who would dis-organize us all, and then feed on the chaos.