On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 3:55 PM, Dean, Jodi <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:JDEAN@hws.edu">JDEAN@hws.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
Another question:<br>
</blockquote><div><br>there is no question here? :)<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>
Your account of Free Software is celebratory rather than critical. </blockquote><div><br>actually, I want people to see that Free Software is itself a kind of critique, which is why I think the language of publics and public spheres is the appropriate one (perhaps in this sense more so than that of markets). If I celebrate it, I celebrate it as critical.<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">That is, it seems like you endorse and applaud the geek mentality you describe. </blockquote>
<div><br>this I don't do. if I describe a geek mentality (which I don't think I do, or others do much better than I), I would neither endorse nor impugn it as such. particular uses of it, maybe.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
It seems as if<br>
you think that markets and publics share enough of the same ideals as to be thought together. This, then, makes it seem as if collective interest were only<br>
the aggregation of self-interest (and as if this could happen immanently, as if there were no fundamental antagonism).</blockquote><div><br>this I don't think. whether or not this is an accurate description of some variants of liberal thought might be arguable, but it is not fair to say that because I observe and analyze this kind of rationality, that therefore I think that way.<br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
That publics (I think the term society is better here)</blockquote><div><br>I don't. at least, I don't think they should be confused. "society"
as something that emerged in the 18th and 19th century as an object of
both governance and scholarship is quite distinct from either markets
or public spheres, and I think liberal thought in western europe, in
all its variants, treats them as three different kinds of things.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">and markets can be treated as spheres into which governments should intervene minimally does not mean<br>
that they should be treated this way or that they are symmetrical or that minimal v. maximal intervention is the best way to describe matters or even that<br>
intervention is the best term (insofar as markets and societies depend on forms of law and legality).<br>
</blockquote><div><br>this i agree with. I'm not endorsing classical liberalism, neoliberalism or the form it takes in free software, but I do think these ways of thinking are operative in Free Software, and attenuated versions in lots of other places all around us. I would like to understand how it is possible to think this way, and how it became possible to be opposed to thinking this way though. <br>
<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>
Another way to put this: the justice of the market is not the same as political justice.<br>
<div class="im"></div></blockquote><div><br>okay, i'll bite, what is the difference?<br><br>ck<br></div></div><br>