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2006-07-30

LP Reform?

More Whiggish thoughts.

Last week I posted some Whiggish thoughts about the prospects for freedom in America. It seems that Denverite David Aitken recently participated in the national convention of the Libertarian Party, where as a member of the Libertarian Reform Caucus he had a hand in producing the LP's new platform. Is there hope for the LP? I'm not yet sure, but I may take another look.

Posted on 2006-07-30 at 20:49. File under politics.

~ link ~

Shadowing Diana

My so-called representative.

The Club for Growth reports:

Thanks to Congressman Jeff Flake's 19 anti-pork amendments, we now have every House member on record regarding their positions on earmarks. Before now, House members have been able to avoid scrutiny because their pork was co-mingled with other projects and tucked into the dark corners of big spending bills. Or they were able to withstand the scrutiny because they were attacked as a whole chamber and not directly attacked themselves. But because of Flake's amendments, they were recently forced to cast up-or-down votes on specific projects.

Diana DeGette, my representative in Colorado's First District, voted for all 19 of the listed pork projects. Methinks that someone in Denver needs to start shadowing Ms. DeGette's every vote. Here's a list of web pages that might be of assistance:

• SourceWatch
• OpenSecrets
• VoteSmart
• Congress Votes Database
• OnTheIssues

Posted on 2006-07-30 at 20:27. File under politics.

~ link ~

The Sleeping Giant

Europe and the future.

I just finished reading Bruce Bawer's book While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within. I am given given neither to schadenfreude over the problems of various European countries nor to the view that they are experiencing a crisis of world-historical proportions. Yet one who values the Western values of free minds and free markets cannot help but be disturbed by the prospect of the heart of Western civilization bowing down meekly before militant Islamic fundamentalism, accepting sharia, and becoming a Balkanized kind of Eurabia. Many observers call this threat Islamo-fascism, which I think is not really accurate since fascism was a form of nationalism. The term jihadism seems closer to the truth, in part because the jihadists have nothing positive whatsoever to offer and seek only to destroy the West. I don't have enough first-hand knowledge to say whether some or all European nations will submit to jihadism in the way that Bawer outlines. But I do know that it will never happen in America.

Posted on 2006-07-30 at 20:14. File under society.

~ link ~

2006-07-29

Condensation

Entrepreneurship in America and beyond.

A few months ago, Internet entrepreneur and essayist Paul Graham published an essay entitled Why Startups Condense in America. He adduces ten reasons why America is so entrepreneurial (or, more specifically for his purposes, why America has Silicon Valley):

1. It allows immigration
2. It is rich
3. It is not a police state
4. Its universities are better
5. It has less restrictive labor laws
6. Work is not strictly identified with having a job
7. It has fewer regulations
8. It has a large domestic market
9. It has venture capital funding
10. Americans change careers more often

Graham argues that these factors lead to more examples of successful entrepreneurship in America (or in certain parts of America) and that attitude or "culture" doesn't have much to do it. (Inexplicably, he also associates startup-friendly environments with places that have lots of public transportation, which doesn't seem to have especially helped, say, Prague or Brussels.) And he says it doesn't hurt to have low (or no) taxes on capital gains.

How realistic is it that another will beat America at encouraging startups? The prospects don't look encouraging if you're not American...

First, very few countries in the world encourage immigration -- the short list is probably America, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and to some extent Britain. It is unlikely that, say, China, Korea, Japan, Mexico, or Germany will suddenly welcome people from all over the world. It is even less likely that such countries will not only allow immigration but become a destination for immigrants in the way that the Anglosphere seedling countries (especially America) are.

Second, one reason America has traditionally been entrepreneurial is that labor costs have been much higher in America than they were in Europe or other parts of the world (i.e., America has been rich for a long time). This has driven the need to innovate in order to save costs. There is little incentive to save human labor in, say, India or China, since the costs are so low there.

Places like China don't come out so well on the "not a police state" score. Even democracies such as France, Spain, Germany, and Latin America have a long history of state regulation, centralized decision making, inflexible labor markets, and economic ossification (even corruption, in the case of China, India, and Latin America). It is extremely difficult to overcome that kind of history, especially since it's much easier for a would-be entrepreneur to leave for America or Canada or Australia than it is to reform one's home country.

Graham seems to think that the problem of creating a large domestic market will be overcome in Europe through the efforts of the European Union (and that national languages such as French and German will die out in favor of English), but those who have absorbed the point that there is no such thing as Europe know that this is more fantasy than reality. India and China perhaps have a better chance of creating large domestic markets, but they are still so poor that this will take many, many decades (if it ever happens).

Finally, I think Graham underestimates the importance of cultural attitudes. Why does America have a more flexible labor market, fewer regulations, and a more competitive educational market? Why do Americans have a greater propensity to welcome immigrants, invest time and money in risky ventures, devalue status in favor of accomplishments, and change careers or pick up stakes in pursuit of new opportunities? These phenomena do not exist in a vacuum and are expressions of the American culture of freedom, opportunity, flexibility, openness, rebelliousness, novelty, optimism, hard work, pragmatism, and all the rest. American attitudes provide a cultural medium for the organic growth of new organizations in many fields -- not just high tech companies (consider American entrepreneurship in, say, retailing and logistics) and not even just companies (consider American entrepeneurship in religion, philanthropy, education, and even government -- we have 50 state governments, over 3,000 county governments, countless town and city governments, and an ever-increasing number of special-purpose entities that cross jurisdictional boundaries). In a way, the first American settlers were entrepreneurs, and most subsequent immigrants were attracted by the entrepreneurial opportunities of the New World. Americans have thus by and large self-selected for entrepreneurship. It's difficult to see how any other nation could come close to building that kind of culture (especially nations outside the Anglosphere). Not that they shouldn't try -- but it would be unrealistic to expect strongly positive results anytime soon.

(Cross-posted at Albion's Seedlings.)

Posted on 2006-07-29 at 22:39. File under society.

~ link ~

2006-07-28

The Free Stream

Karl Fogel on questioning copyright.

One of my two favorite talks at OSCON was by Karl Fogel -- The (Surprising) History of Copyright, and What It Means for Open Source. The conclusions that Karl has reached based on his research into the history of copyright comport with mine: that copyright is a mechanism for retricting access to information (it grew out of early attempts at privatizing government censorship) and that it is utterly out of place on the Internet. Karl runs QuestionCopyright.org and has written cogently, even beautifully, on The Promise of a Post-Copyright World. Unfortunately, the myths about copyright are so prevalent and so deeply ingrained that it will take many years to dispel them, despite the emergence of what Karl calls a "free stream" of works that have been released by their creators without effective copyright control. Hearing Karl speak and chatting with him afterwards have inspired me to finally start writing my long-promised essay entitled "Who's Afraid of the Public Domain?" -- so I intend to have a draft of that available before too much longer...

Posted on 2006-07-28 at 16:41. File under publicdomain.

~ link ~

OSCON Slides

Building the real-time Internet, one presentation at a time.

My OSCON slides are here. I forgot to mention some Jabber clients (Nokia 770, Blackberry, Play Station Portable, etc.) so I'll need to add those for my next presentation. But right now I need to get to the airport and fly back to Denver. I'll be writing some blog entries and catching up on email on the flight. BBL. :-)

Posted on 2006-07-28 at 12:14. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-07-26

Whig Nation

Libertarians and the future of American politics.

[Written while flying from Denver to Portland on 2006-07-23, posted from OSCON on 2006-07-26.]

A recent exchange over at ChicagoBoyz pointed to an article by Ryan Sager on the place of libertarians within the Republican Party (see also Sager's earlier articles in the thread here and here). Sager argues that libertarians -- those who believe in free minds and free markets -- will never exercise much political (as opposed to intellectual) influence if they pursue third-party politics. As many observers point out, America is a two-party country. Third parties are typically doomed, especially ideological third parties such as the Socialists (in the early 20th century) and the Libertarians (in the late 20th century). Given that those with libertarian leanings are only 10% or at most 20% of the American population, they will never win elections (even in rare two-way races, Libertarian Party candidates typically win only 30% of the vote). The only way that a third party could become one of the major parties is if it could form a coalition that draws from the existing factions among the Democrats and Republicans -- e.g., modern-day libertarians, small-government conservatives, and freedom-oriented liberals. Even then, it's doubtful that there are enough Goldwater Republicans and Jeffersonian Democrats around to form a coalition. (And I ignore the fact that most people of such political persuasions are cussedly individualistic, thus naturally being averse to party politics and organized action.)

So what is a libertarian to do? As I explored in my essay Toward a Practical Objectivist Politics, there are many opportunities for influencing the American debate outside of electoral politics: fighting for pro-freedom initiatives and referenda, providing expert testimony, speaking out at public meetings, serving on non-partisan boards, and the like. But when it comes to electoral politics, libertarians are betwixt and between (here I ignore those voluntaryists and others who eschew the political process entirely, although I have respect for their approach as well). However, something that Seymour Martin Lipset says in his book American Exceptionalism resonates with me: America is essentially a Whig nation. Lipset argues that conservatives in America have never really been big-government Tory paternalists (though there have been Rockefeller Republicans, a tradition in which we can squarely place the current president). Similarly, I would argue that dedicated progressives care more about freedom of speech, association, and action at the local level than about centralized government programs promulgated and managed from Washington, DC (the anti-statist stance of early labor organizations such as the A.F. of L. and the I.W.W. is consistent with this thesis).

Is there a constituency for decentralization, local action, market freedom, religious tolerance, inidividual opportunity, and the rest of the American creed? It can be hard to discern true support (as opposed to lip service) for that creed in the Republican Party of George Bush, and even harder in the Democratic Party of Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean. Yet I'm enough of an optimist to believe that it's there, and even not that far under the surface. If I'm right about that, then it is possible and legitimate to work toward greater freedom in the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, or the Libertarian Party -- and one's decision about which party to work within is a matter of means, not ends. Sager argues that the best place for libertarians to fight for their ideals in electoral politics is within the Republican Party. The fact that there is a fairly large remnant of small-government conservatives and Goldwater Republicans might lead me to agree with Sager. Balancing that is the fact that, as Bruce Bartlett pointed out recently, Republicans are the most successful party in most of the country right now and therefore attract the kind of opportunists who simply want to get elected (until about ten or twelve years ago, those people were probably attracted to the Democratic Party). Having worked within the Libertarian Party (and knowing that third parties traditionally do not succeed in American politics), I would argue against investing too much effort in the LP on practical grounds. I somewhat doubt that folks in the Democratic Party will open themselves very far to libertarian ideals, but if they continue to lose elections then they might welcome some fresh thinking. And let's not forget that if history repeats itself, American politics is about due for a major realignment (1776, 1860, 1932, and perhaps 2012?) In any case, libertarians won't have any influence if they don't get involved. So pick a venue and get busy. :-)

The Whigs are dead, long live the Whigs!

Posted on 2006-07-26 at 15:15. File under politics.

~ link ~

2006-07-21

Dvorak

Typing efficiency experiment.

On and off over the years, I've considered a switch to the Dvorak keyboard layout, but I've never gotten around to it. However, chatting with Kevin Smith and Remko Tronçon earlier today has spurred me to perhaps give it a try over the next few weeks. Bloggage may be light since my typing skills will be so challenged. :-)

Posted on 2006-07-21 at 14:53. File under personal.

~ link ~

2006-07-18

JabberID Headers

You got your Jabber in my email!

Last night I had a few spare cycles so I updated the Jabber-ID spec describing how to put your JID in an email header. Thanks to Frank Ellerman for his comments!

As a follow-up to IETF 66, I'll be updating several of the other XMPP-related Internet-Drafts soon as well...

Posted on 2006-07-18 at 11:51. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-07-17

Secretarial Duties

JSF membership, Board, and Council elections.

Until about 9 months ago, I had functioned as the Secretary of the Jabber Software Foundation. Because of the seeming disappearance of our current Secretary, I've assumed the secretarial duties again (at least temporarily). So I have just extended and formally announced the Q3 membership application period and I have also proposed a schedule for elections to the 2006-2007 Board of Directors and Jabber Council. Now I need to do some recruiting. :-)

Posted on 2006-07-17 at 12:03. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-07-13

Micro This!

To ubuiquity and beyond.

Terrell Russell is encouraging various providers to starting using the MicroID technology to show page ownership on the 'net. I'll be contacting last.fm and LinkedIn. If y'all do your part, I know we can achieve ubuiquitous deployment by, oh, next Thursday or so. ;-)

Posted on 2006-07-13 at 12:01. File under identity.

~ link ~

Blip!

More pubsub action.

If you squint really hard and read between the lines, you can sense an interesting XMPP pubsub story emerging over in the Ruby on Rails community:

• M. David Peterson on Service Oriented Blip on Rails (scroll all the way down)
• Russ Miles on SOA and Rails, Part 1
• Jason Kolb on Using, Sharing, and Securing Rich Data on the Internet using Online Identity
• The draft LLUP specification

I'm sure we'll be hearing more about it in the not too distant future...

Posted on 2006-07-13 at 11:43. File under jabber.

~ link ~

IETF Report #2

XMPP @ IETF 66, again.

I'm flying back from Montreal right now so I figured I would provide another brief report about Jabber goings-on at IETF 66. First, I have to say that the multi-user chat rooms used by the IETF are quite popular (folks in the IRL room scribe the discussion into the chatroom, people using Jabber lob in questions that someone reads aloud at the mic in the IRL room, etc.). I did a bit of scribing and it's tiring work, so anyone who fills that role is to be appreciated! And speaking of appreciation, the IETF (actually NeuStar) runs its own chatrooms now so I no longer have to maintain the canonical chat server over at xmpp.org, which is just fine by me because I have plenty of other things to do. (Oh, and the IETF Tools Team may start sending out Jabber notifications related to state changes in various IETF documents.)

In other XMPP-related news, I presented my talk about sending Atom notifications over XMPP pubsub (slides here) to the assembled throng at the Atompub WG meeting (well, there were more folks there than I expected, so that was a good thing). I also chatted with Yoshiko from IANA and Sandy from the RFC Editor's office about the XMPP URI spec, so I hope xmpp: will join the short list of permanent URI schemes real soon now.

Posted on 2006-07-13 at 11:29. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-07-11

IETF Report #1

XMPP @ IETF 66.

Aside from the fact that my luggage arrived 17 hours after I did, my trip to Montreal for IETF 66 is going well so far. Unfortunately, two of the working group sessions I wanted to participate in were being held at the same time: Sieve and SIMPLE. The Sieve folks called me over to address a point about the XMPP notify draft and by the time I got back to the SIMPLE session I'd missed my brief time slot to speak about the XMPP-SIMPLE interworking draft! But Robert Sparks kindly pointed me out at the end of the session, and in any case I think Adam Roach and I have reached agreement on the concern he raised about an amplification attack. I'll incorporate his and other comments, then submit a revised version after the IETF 66 "quiet period" is over.

Tomorrow: the Atompub WG session, where I'll discuss the Atom Over XMPP draft.

Posted on 2006-07-11 at 17:51. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-07-09

Americanism

What makes America different.

In my continuing effort to understand American society (an effort that smarter people than I are also engaged in, as witness Jim Bennett's post yesterday), recently I've read the following books:

• American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword by Seymour Martin Lipset
• It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States by Seymour Martin Lipset
• The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille

All three are highly recommended, especially The Culture Code -- it's only 200 pages long but packed with insights into not only American culture but also France, Germany, England, and Japan.

As Lipset points out, America is different from the other advanced industrial nations in that socialism never happened here. The early American labor movements fought for worker rights and power, but were suspicious of government (the AFL was syndicalist, the IWW anarcho-syndicalist). The New Deal led to greater unionization and an acceptance of government power (especially among the CIO), but efforts to create a viable socialist or labor party floundered (unlike even our parents in England or our cousins in Canada and Australia), in part because America's two-party system works to co-opt third-party efforts. Unionization levels in America have almost always been lower than in the other industrial nations, and since the 1950s have slowly returned to pre-Depression levels (even here, unionization is by far the highest among old-line industries and government). American workers tend to think of themselves as "middle class" and don't have the kind of class consciousness that provides fertile ground for socialism. America has never had the kind of aristocratic Tory paternalism (opposed by working-class laborism) that England, Canada, and Australia have had -- we threw out the Tories in 1776 (Canada took them in) and have been essentially a Whig nation ever since. American conservatives are not Tories and are not to be confused with conservatives (Tories) in other parts of the Anglosphere; similarly, American liberals are not socialistic (e.g., they never pursued a strategy of nationalized industry) and are not to be confused with laborites in other parts of the Anglosphere. Instead, both liberals and conservatives are mostly Whig in America -- after all, Democrats are the party of Jefferson and Republicans are the party of Lincoln (or at least they claim to be -- we know that the Democrats tend toward the laborite end of the Whig spectrum through their patronizing the unions and that Republicans tend toward the Tory end of the Whig spectrum through their patronizing the modern-day aristocracy of big business).

Just as all inviduals are unique, so are all nations. America is not special in being unique, but in being an outlier in terms of so many statistics and values. Other countries have a high radius of trust (England, Germany, Japan), but few other countries couple that high radius of trust with high openness. Other countries are open to new people and ideas (especially immigrant cultures such as Australia, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina), but few other countries couple openness with a high radius of trust. The same goes for productivity, religiosity, entrepreneuralism, optimism, and the like.

If I were to summarize my reading so far, I would say that America is full of optimistic, work-focused, religious, sectarian, freedom-loving, patriotic, rebellious, energetic, ever-moving, adaptable, pragmatic, can-do, individualistic, youth-obsessed, generous, philanthropic, hopeful, innovative, entrepreneurial dreamers. Naturally, not every American is optimistic or work-focused or religious or whatever, but those are the general tendencies of American culture.

These differences are, as Lipset points out, something of a double-edged sword. Americans live in material abundance but also experience more poverty and crime. Their rights are respected but they are more litigious. They get things done but they don't enjoy the more sophisticated pleasures of life. They are educated for specific professions but they are anti-intellectual. And so on.

Realizing that America is different does not imply claiming that it is better. As an American, I tend to like American optimism, opportunity, individualism, freedom, and all the rest. I even tend to think that the world would be a better place if more nations were more like America, but I have no interest in forcing American values on other nations since it is (and always has been and, I hope, always will be) easy for people who find those values attractive to emigrate to America and pursue their dreams here.

American historian Richard Hofstadter is said to have observed that "it has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies, but to be one." That feels right to me. The word "Americanism" sums up the many traits and values of Americans (as far as I know there is no comparable "ism" derived from the name of any other nation), and Americans are always fighting over what is American and what is un-American (it's that sectarianism again). We don't care what the global villagers (China, Japan, Russia, etc.) think, what our grandparents (Europe) think, what our parents (England) think, what our cousins (Canada, Australia) think, or even what our fellow Americans think (if I don't like your approach, I'll start my own sect or company or whatever). We're a noisy, rebellious, adolescent bunch -- and we like it just fine that way. We don't always succeed, do the right thing, or live up to our ideals. But woe to anyone who bets on American failure, decline, or decay, because we seem to learn from our mistakes better than any other people in history.

(Cross-posted at Albion's Seedlings.)

Posted on 2006-07-09 at 18:05. File under society.

~ link ~

2006-07-07

Montreal Bound

Heading north next week.

I'll be in Montreal most of next week for IETF 66. In addition to catching up on what's happening with various standardization efforts, I'll be giving brief presentations before the SIMPLE WG (about draft-saintandre-xmpp-simple) and the ATOM WG (about draft-saintandre-atompub-notify). See you in Montreal!

Posted on 2006-07-07 at 21:03. File under personal.

~ link ~

More Federating

Still catching up on Jabber servers.

Last week I added about 15 servers to the XMPP Federation and this evening I added another ~20. I've still got about 20 more to add. Maybe next week I'll get that done. :-)

Posted on 2006-07-07 at 20:51. File under jabber.

~ link ~

LiveJabber

LiveJournal joins the Jabber network.

The good people at SixApart have officially launched an IM service over at LiveJournal. Instead of running a closed service like some online communities, Brad Fitzpatrick and his team are using XMPP (they wrote their own implementation, called djabberd) and therefore they natively communicate with Google Talk, jabber.org, and all the thousands of other Jabber servers out there on the Internet. Plus there are all sorts of possibilities for further integration. Great work, guys!

Posted on 2006-07-07 at 12:11. File under jabber.

~ link ~

New Cert

X.509 again.

In my continuing experiments with security technologies, I've obtained a new X.509 certificate, this time from the StartCom Free SSL Certification Authority. So I may be signing my emails with this new cert for a while, or switching back and forth between this cert and the one I received from CAcert a while back. Forewarned is forearmed. :-)

(Oh, and by the way, this page has helpful information about exporting certificates for publishing on a website.)

Posted on 2006-07-07 at 11:41. File under technology.

~ link ~

2006-07-06

What's So Great About America

American exceptionalism in action.

I tend more and more toward what Seymour Martin Lipset calls "American Exceptionalism" -- the view that America is different from other countries in some fundamental ways (different even, I regret to say, from the other nations of the Anglosphere). There are many reasons for thinking so, which I intend to write about in future posts (one example I've noted before: economic productivity). Until then, I leave you with a link to an article by Dinesh D'Souza entitled What's So Great About America?.

Posted on 2006-07-06 at 21:59. File under society.

~ link ~

The Abacus and the Rose

A poem on science and art.

I recently had occasion to re-read Jacob Bronowski's little book Science and Human Values, which contains a pleasant if somewhat dated dialogue entitled "The Abacus and the Rose". I've always rather enjoyed the sonnet with which Bronowski ends the dialogue:

I, having built a house, reject
The feud of eye and intellect,
And find in my experience proof,
One pleasure runs from root to roof,
One thrust along a streamline arches
The sudden star, the budding larches.

The force that makes the winter grow
Its feathered hexagons of snow,
And drives the bee to match at home,
Their calculated honeycomb,
Is abacus and rose combined.
An icy sweetness fills my mind,

A sense that under thing and wing,
Lies, taut yet living, coiled, the spring.

Posted on 2006-07-06 at 21:11. File under literature.

~ link ~

Centralized Feudalism

Political organization in England and Japan.

In a talk entitled Some Reflections on the Origins of Industrial Capitalism in a Comparative Perspective, historian Alan Macfarlane makes the following observations:

Western Europe and Japan are the only two major agrarian societies which are known to have passed through a stage of authentic 'feudalism'. But even more significant was the similarity between England and Japan, which each had a peculiar form of feudalism - what one might call 'centralized feudalism'. Its major feature is that it provides order, without choking society by developing into 'absolutism'.

The essence of this political balance is outlined by Tocqueville in his Reflections on English History. "There are two great drawbacks to avoid in organizing a country. Either the whole strength of social organization is centred on one point, or it is spread over the country. Either alternative has its advantages and its drawbacks. If all is tied into one bundle, and the bundle gets undone, everything falls apart and there is no nation left. Where power is dispersed, action is clearly hindered, but there is strength everywhere." De Tocqueville thought that only one country had found the balance and, with occasional wobbles towards absolutism, maintained it. "I don't know if a mean between these extremes can be found, but it would seem that William did find it."

This balance, encapsulated in the contradictory words 'centralized feudalism' is what was also maintained in Japan. Through its curious system of division between ritual ruler (Emperor) and military ruler (Shogun), through its almost identical form of feudal tenures, it maintained orderliness without absolutism, severe centralization with strong local power. It did not veer towards the 'dissolution of the state' feudalism of anarchy, or the absolutist state which Perry Anderson believed lay inevitably in the path to modernity. Only in the early twentieth century was the balance temporarily lost, with the abolition of the Shogun and the placing of the Emperor above the law.

While I tend toward radical decentralism (at least a much more decentralized political structure than we know today), I see the wisdom in Tocqueville's observations. And one could draw productive analogies between this political balance and the organization of things other than countries -- corporations and open-source projects come immediately to mind...

Posted on 2006-07-06 at 21:01. File under society.

~ link ~

Politics for Edglings

Can wikis save the world?

Jimbo is aiming to shake up American politics with a new wiki. Participatory politics for participatory people! Will it make a difference? I don't know, but it's worth a try. Count me in!

Posted on 2006-07-06 at 10:53. File under politics.

~ link ~

Jabber News Posting Policy

What gets posted at jabber.org and what doesn't.

As sent to the news@jabber.org announcement list:

In the past, we have posted items at the www.jabber.org news page (and to this email list) that linked directly to press releases and news announcements made by companies, service providers, and open source projects. Unfortunately, this has resulted in some difficult decisions regarding which press releases and announcements are newsworthy, and which are not. These decisions are especially difficult since the Jabber Software Foundation is and must remain a neutral source of information about Jabber/XMPP technologies, and must not post news items selectively about particular companies and open-source projects.

Therefore, our new policy will be to post news items only in order to:

1. Link to factual articles published by recognized magazines, newspapers, and Internet news sites.

2. Make official announcements from the Jabber Software Foundation, such as press releases and notices that the latest Jabber Journal has been published.

Therefore, we will no longer link directly to any press releases or news announcements made by companies, service providers, and open source projects. However, we may link to such press releases and news announcements "indirectly" via the Jabber Journal or news articles linked to under rule (1) above. Furthermore, we encourage projects and companies to have their announcements aggregated at Planet Jabber News.

Finally, this policy is subject to further modification based on experience and feedback. Feel free to contact me directly if you have questions, comments, or concerns regarding this posting policy.

Thanks.

--Peter

Posted on 2006-07-06 at 10:41. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-07-05

MicroIDs Ahoy!

More standards in the making.

In my copious spare time, I'll soon be helping jer with standardization of MicroIDs, ably assisted by Fred Stutzman of ClaimID. Jer has posted more over at the MicroID blog.

(Given my work last year with Passel and my ongoing work with CAcert and other certification authorities, it seems that digital identity is most definitely my second technical pursuit -- after Jabber, naturally.)

Posted on 2006-07-05 at 13:51. File under identity.

~ link ~

2006-07-03

The Importance of Property Rights

Explicit decisions or cultural inheritance?

In an essay-review of a recent academic paper by Acemoglu and Johnson, Clemson University economics professor Daniel K. Benjamin portrays one aspect of their argument as follows:

The authors' conclusions result from their empirical estimates of the impacts of alternative patterns of European colonization. They show, for example, that the legal systems brought by the colonists interacted with pre-existing conditions of the lands they colonized to shape the long-term institutions of each colony. Some nations happened to colonize prosperous lands where population densities were high, as Spain did in Mexico and Peru. These colonizers imposed legal institutions that would facilitate the exploitation of indigenous peoples. This yielded short-term riches for these colonial powers, but discouraged long-term investment. Other nations, such as England in colonizing North America, settled lands with few local inhabitants, and thus had to rely on investment and voluntary exchange to survive. This required strong property rights institutions, which promoted investment and yielded long-run prosperity.

These forces were amplified by local disease conditions. In locales such as sub-Saharan Africa, where settler mortality rates sometimes exceeded 50 percent per year, colonizers created legal institutions that enabled them to extract resources quickly, without regard for protecting long-term investments. This was an understandable short-term strategy. But its long-term legacy has been legal systems with weak property rights that even today enable governments to extract resources at will from their citizens.

In contrast, settlers in low mortality colonies, such as North America, opted for property institutions that would protect their investments from predation by others, especially the state. These decisions of 400 years ago have produced dramatic differences in long-term prosperity. Per-capita income levels today can differ by a factor of fifty across nations with different property rights institutions, and the people who live where property rights are strongest are the richest.

This argument puzzles me. Do Acemoglu and Johnson think that the colonizers of North America and South America, like some kind of Rawlsian shmoos, made explicit decisions about which property rights regime they would choose? Do they think that whether a colonized region's politico-economic culture is characterized by exploitation or voluntary exchange is determined by the pre-existing conditions of the region (density of population, mortality rates, etc.)? Do they think that if the Spanish had settled along the Chesapeake River whereas the English had settled along the Rio de la Plata, the institutions of modern-day Maryland and Virginia would respect property rights whereas the institutions of modern-day Argentina would not? If so, their thinking flies in the face of the historical experience of all the nations that were settled by the Spanish (at the time of colonization an exploitative, centralized, absolutist autocracy) in contrast to all the nations that were settled by the English (at the time of colonization a free, decentralized, constitutional-associative polity). I have yet to read Acemoglu and Johnson's original paper (it's not available online), but I look forward to reading it, if only to determine if their argument could diverge so far from historical facts.

[Update: Yes, I grant that there are variations here. To truly analyze the issue, we'd need to compare English settlement / colonization of North America, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Hong Kong, Jamaica, etc. against Spanish settlement / colonization of Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Cuba, the Philippines, etc. (not to mention Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, and French colonization efforts). Some of these happened at different times (e.g., by the time English colonization of India really got underway, British foreign policy was much more socialistic than it was during the settlement of North America). I don't doubt that the existing environment (population, climate, mortality) had some impact on respect for property rights. But I think the overall patterns (Anglosphere vs. Hispanosphere) are pretty clear, and were not driven primarily by existing conditions (compare, say, Singapore and Hong Kong against the Philippines).]

Posted on 2006-07-03 at 21:17. File under society.

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Raptor Rescue

Excitement around the homestead.

There's a 120-year-old cottonwood tree in my front yard, which this year is home to a family of Cooper's Hawks. Last night around 8:00, one of the nestlings either fell out of the nest or, I think, was forced out by the parent hawks. This morning the nestling was on our porch and seemingly unable to fly, so we called around and located some volunteers who could collect the young hawk and take it to the Birds of Prey Foundation, where we hope it is being well take care of. Thanks to volunteers Ken and Theresa from Northglenn, Colorado, and to the folks at the Birds of Prey Foundation, it seems that the raptor rescue was a success.

Posted on 2006-07-03 at 20:49. File under personal.

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