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by mcarlin 1518 days ago
I'm very much not a fan of RMS, but here's one way you can square that circle:

He and you could both live by the principle that you do as much to fit your principles as you feasibly can.

If you have someone to help you get online anonymously for free, you do that. If you need to pay to be online, you do that instead.

If you can get by in life without buying things and being tracked, you do that. If you can't do that, because it's not the life you can imagine living, you don't.

The more important the principle (to you), the more you sacrifice to implement it.

Low-to-no military spending is important enough to me that I won't work for a defense contractor. It's honestly not important enough for me to purposefully earn less than the taxable minimum (and thus pay no taxes, and thus pay no military money).

And of course by evidence, "Anonymous internet" is important enough to RMS to live an ultra-hippie life, but not important enough to use no internet at all.

1 comments

I completely agree with you except that I think that politics is important and not working for a defense contractor is insufficient. Everything I am pointing out is that there are shortcomings in RMS' model that can't be applied to everyone. I am not a "fan" of RMS, either. I am not a "fan" of anyone.
Wait, you completely agree, except you don't.

If you do agree with parent then you are simply communicating differences in what is worth what.

You then point out what you see to be RMS shortcomings, based again on disagreement with parent comment.

Don't get me wrong, all that is OK, just nowhere close to complete agreement to the parent comment.

Which is it?