Positive Freedom, and Productive Social Investment (Score 2)

As communities bestow right, they also convey responsibilities. In the United States, we have invested enourmous social resources in our schools, information infrastructure, etc. to create a workforce of knowledge workers who create valuable content in many forms that has improved the lives of people in this country and others around the world. Hacker individuals and hacker states undermines these social investments when Jon Johanson or the Peoples Republic of China attack the technological instruments which protect the right of workers to benefit from the content they create we all suffer. What hacker individuals and nations do in the global economy is promote a race to bottom: in values as well as in prices. Standards means not only protecting the labor of knowledge workers and content creators, but ensuring that protecting te environment and the welfare of children has a place in the global economy. Free riders in the global economy undermine these standards. Like polluting plants or shoe-factories filled with children, pirated DVDs undermine the efforts of everyone who plays by the rules. Freedom on the Internet and in community does not rest in the maximization of personal automony, but rather in the creation of communities that can address the shared needs, hopes, and aspirations of groups of individuals. If we care about poverty and inequality, a culture of hacking, a philosophy of negative freedom and excemption from communal responsibility will not get us where we want to go today. Dilly.