Archive for category Politics

Smári’s Slightly Snarky US Election Night Playlist

Nov 6

Posted by Smári McCarthy in English, Personal, Politics | Comments off

#9: Election Day, Arcadia
#8: Right To Vote, Laura Nyro
#7: Election, Don Dilego
#6: Election Song, Johnny Hobo And The Freight Trains
#5: Í Klefanum, Mótettukórinn (translation below)
#4: Cast Your Vote, Culture
#3: The Parliament of Fools, Skyclad
#2: Electioneering, Radiohead
#1: Unamerican, Cletus Got Shot

(Linked two. Go find the rest – and read the lyrics! ;) )

For the Icelandic song, a quick and inadequate translation:

In the booth

Chorus:
Brave, fallible, hesitant
the cross to give.
Lively, gifted, alert
sages in the booth.

Four walls a rag and bar,
Future of the threat and force.
But we have only three
upright – a velvet curtain.

Chorus:
Brave, fallible, hesitant
have much to give.
Lively, gifted, alert
barbarians in a booth.

Life with ink, text, blood
the herd bets it all.
Depressed county – proud nation
listens afraid of provisional data.

Chorus:
Brave, fallible, hesitant
have everything to give.
Valiant, brave, alert
the future in a booth.

So What’s This Pirate Party You Keep Hearing About?

Jul 30

Posted by Smári McCarthy in English, Personal, Politics | 16 Comments

Kári Túliníus’s incredibly dismissive, if not outright stupid article in the Reykjavík Grapevine today suggests that “free speech”, “transparency of governments and corporations”, and the right of individuals to “speak anonymously” are euphemisms for bizzarre sex acts. Whatever he’s smoking, it didn’t come from our treasure troves. Also, the word “avast” means “stop”, so saying “avasting of mateys” makes no sense – much like the rest of Kári’s article.

An Oddly Stated History

Let’s clear a few things up. Pirate Parties derive their name, originally, from Piratbyrån, the swedish organization set up to counteract the Hollywood-funded lobby group Antipiratbyrån. The Pirate Bay also got its name from there. The founders of Piratbyrån, and of the Pirate Bay, and of the Pirate Parties, came from a group of people who have for the last several decades been doing what they can to stem the tide against growing government surveillance, and limitations on the freedoms of individuals.

These people are called hackers. They are people like myself who enjoy learning the details of systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users of systems who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. Originally, the term “hacker” was somebody who created furniture with an axe, but the word has since been reappropriated by two distinct groups. One uses it derisively, to refer to people who break into computers. The other uses it constructively, to refer to the tendency to expend effort towards seemingly useless goals – at first.

Examples of seemingly useless goals we have engaged in over the last decades include making Free Software – computer programs that anybody can use for whatever purpose, study and learn from, share with their friends, and improve upon at will. This is distinct from proprietary software which restricts a user’s freedom. After that, we started building a creative commons: an increasingly big collection of creative works, including the world’s largest and most comprehensive encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

Nowadays the average individual is using our creations every day. From the phone in your pocket to the websites you visit to the top hits of almost every online search, increasingly large portions of human activity is made possible by stuff that hackers made. Despite all of this, we haven’t been able to solve many of the world’s big problems yet. Our anti-authoritarian efforts have been stymmied by a dangerous lack of government transparency and accountability.

Back when there were real pirates on the high seas, the world was undergoing a transition. The enlightenment was in full swing, along with its rallying calls for greater right of self-determination for individuals, access to knowledge and freedom of thought. These ideals can be summarized in two requirements: democracy, and enlightenment.

Now we’re a couple of centuries down the line, and we’ve had an industrial revolution, two world wars, 48 world economic collapses (that is to say, big ones: I’m not counting the 96 banking crises and 176 liquidity crises that have occurred since the ’70s), the beginning of an information revolution, and what? Sure, we’ve ousted a few kings, replaced them with presidents and now have glorified talk shops in almost every self-governing land mass in the world. Sure, we have schools which have confused process and substance for so long that we’ve become blind to institutionalization and high-modernism.

So here we are, with all of the information in the world at our fingertips (with the exception of all of the information which is hidden from us by governments, corporations and others who play power games against the general public), and we still haven’t really gotten democracy or enlightenment.

Hackers like solving problems, and over the last several decades hackers have become increasingly open about their political motivations. So much so that now we have our own political arm: Pirate Parties.

Now, let’s not get confused here: Not all Hackers are Pirates, and not all Pirates are Hackers. But the same core mentality permeates through both groups, and the overlap is substantial. Here’s a diagram:

What’s in a name?

So what’s with the name? I don’t know, really. I’m as confused as you are. Nobody criticises the “Progressive Party” for being one of the least progressive and most repressive parties in Icelandic politics. Nobody criticises the “Independence Party” for fostering a culture without independent thought. The Liberal Party is full of social conservatives and the Left-Greens have an alarming number of fascists. And “Samfylkingin”? Give me a break. Political parties in Iceland have a long history of adopting the most oxymoronic names – or at least the most moronic names – they can come up with. With one exception.

We didn’t choose to go with “Sjóræningjaflokkurinn” because it doesn’t sound cool. Also, we don’t condone theft, only piracy. The law of the sea is quite clear in it’s Article 101 definition, and it does not apply to us.

“Píratapartýið” however came up during a meeting where we had been talking about the ways in which words keep being misappropriated and reappropriated. In Icelandic, the word for “casino” is “spilavíti” – literally “game hell”. The word for drugs is “eiturlyf” – literally “poison medicine”. Icelandic is very direct about its meanings – the language is very actively used as a tool of political manipulation. The current favorite is to stick the word “meint” (alleged) in front of anything – a similar thing is happening in English. It’s a dampening word which makes all certainty go away. The people at that meeting rather enjoyed challenging this tyranny of language, so we decided to use “Pírat”, which is very much not an Icelandic word (and is, as is rightly pointed out, meaningless), conjoined with “Partý”, which means the fun kind of party but not the political type of party. The name might still change, pending election from our members, although honestly I haven’t heard any good counterproposals.

Frankly, I really enjoy the fact that the best people can fling at us is that we have a silly name (oh noes!). A foreign name (gasp!). A name that doesn’t fit acceptable political doctrine (shame!) or befit an organization bent on gaining power (take a hint!). If they can’t find anything better to complain about…

Oh by the way, here’s some Shakespeare:

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

Controversial Free Association

Actually, people have found one other thing to complain about. It’s one of our members. I don’t mean me, although Kári took the time to say that my credibility in nerd circles was so high that if I were a Pirate, my beard would catch fire. I’m no specialist in historical sociopolitical biothermodynamics, but I’d say that’s a stretch. My credibility in nerd circles has not reached the point of spontaneous poganotrophic self-combustion. Next year, maybe, if I keep using words like “poganotrophic”.

Nay, the member people keep complaining about is my colleague Birgitta Jónsdóttir. I’ll admit that in many ways it would be a helluvalot simpler if she weren’t a member of the Icelandic Pirate Party, because then self-righteous pundits would have even less to bitch about, but frankly, her knowledge, her passion and her history make her a valuable asset for a party like ours. Controversial as she is, she’s done a whole lot of good for the world while the selfsame pundits have been sitting on their arses. If actions must spark controversy then let them be good ones. On the other hand, I’d like to see more controversy and dirt dug up against the rest of our members. I’m sure somebody who’s come to our meetings is now or has at some point been a communist. Perhaps somebody made out with the wrong person once, or mispronounced something. Why is Birgitta getting all the heat? She’s just another member.

Partially because she’s an MP. Public figures should be criticized. But it would be nice if it were leveled at her ideas instead of her persona. Kári points out that she’s been a founding member of four political parties now: Borgarahreyfingin (which was taken over and had their mandate changed some weeks after the elections which gave her her seat, causing the MPs who were elected on a different platform to split and form:), Hreyfingin (of which she is still a member and MP), Dögun (which, let’s face it, was a really disappointing idea, really), and now Píratapartýið (which doesn’t actually exist yet!).

There’s this wonderful thing that we free thinkers love to bandy about: the right to self-determinination. It includes a right to free association. That means you can join as many clubs, collectives, parties and organizations as you want. Harrison Owen turned this into an “open space technology by stating:

If at any time during our time together you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, use your two feet, go someplace else.

This is something I wish were a more prevalent practice in Politics – although it might leave the Parliament building empty quite a lot of the time.

Democratizing Democracy

One thing that appears to confuse the fuck out of everybody: Our governance model. It’s not entirely ready yet, but it’s more or less emerging as a flat structure. What does that mean? No leaders? No gods, no masters? How can this be?

Individuals being the fundamental unit of society, we’re basing the entire thing off individuals, not off hierarchies and committees. We don’t do committees. Committees explicitly give people authority instead of implicitly allowing them to garner support for ideas. A lot of the really bad things in any governance structure stem from explicit power relations.

We’re doing things differently. Implicit all the way. The way this works is that every member has voting rights on every subject. They can join or withdraw from subject areas to their liking. They can propose ideas to their liking. If people need to discuss ideas and come to decisions, we have workgroups. The rules are:

  1. A workgroup is founded to discuss a particular subject.
  2. When a workgroup is convened, its existence shall be announced on the mailing list and a page created for it on the wiki.
  3. A workgroup exists for the time which is is needed.
  4. 1 or more individuals can decide to form a workgroup.
  5. 1 individual from the workgroup is its rapporteur, and shall submit their final report to the wiki and the mailing list.
  6. 0 or more individuals from the workgroup can be shadow rapporteurs, giving independent reports to the wiki and mailing list.
  7. Workgroups keep their minutes and content on the wiki.
  8. When a workgroup disbands, it hands over its final report to the mailing list and onto the wiki.

This is different from a committee because a) anybody can found one, no mandate is needed, b) anybody can join one, no permission is needed, and c) anybody can report from one, no authority is needed. Workgroups do no need or require legitimacy – their only purpose is to expand our knowledge base. If they want to make proposals, they do so as individual members through the same mechanism as other members can propose ideas.

I’ve written a lot about these ideas before, sometimes more explicitly, othertimes less so. Check the books I’ve contributed to for details.

Trying Something New

We’re not just trying to get to “copy with impunity”, as Kári suggests. That would be silly – everybody already copies wildly, it cannot be stopped. It’s a part of the way the universe works, and human societies could not exist without copying and copymixing. Impunity is not required. Sure, we are in favor of intellectual monopoly reform – we see copy rights as detrimental to artists, consumers and the economy, and letters patent are completely useless and very harmful. There are ways of fixing society such that everybody benefits, but we cannot approach those solutions while there are intellectual monopolies in place. It is an unwritten rule that in democratic societies we do not allow monopolistic behavior, and yet for some reason we allow companies to retain the right to claim rents on cultural artifacts made by starving artists for up to 70 years? What kind of madness is this?

We can do better.

And that’s a general statement, you see. Pirate Parties are formed around the idea that traditional politics is a forlorn mess, and that a dash of ingenuity, a bit of playfulness, and a whole lot of hacker ethic can help us get somewhere else. Our ideas aren’t all about copy rights and other intellectual monopolies. They’re about information politics in general: transparency, accountability, individual freedoms, liberal markets, few and well understood regulations, and resilient social infrastructure.

A question each person should ask is: How can government function X be improved by adding more information?

It doesn’t take a Pirate to see that this makes sense.

(It’s worth noting that the above is my opinion, and not necessarily the opinion of the Icelandic Pirate Party. Parties don’t have opinions, people do.)

The Pirates of Enlightenment

Jun 26

Posted by Smári McCarthy in Economics, Politics | Comments off

On the Guardian’s liveblog of Julian Assange’s extradition plea on the 19th of June, they published a statement from the Pirate Party UK, along with an explanation stating that it was a “hard left” political group. Later, they updated the blog to say “libertarian” instead. I’m not sure which of these labels annoyed me more, but both exposed a failure to acknowledge a subtle change in politics – either on behalf of the Guardian, or on behalf of the Pirates themselves.

Traditional wisdom suggests that the political doctrines of any given age specify the manufacturing models available in the market. Capitalism and communism are seen as the political doctrines engaged in a struggle between individualism and socialism, and for some reason they both underpin an industrial model of production. A sense of history will grant the opposite: The industrial revolution, having amplified the productive capacity of mankind – at least in the West, at first – dislodged the craft production era’s manufacturing base and the political debates that came with it, which primarily revolved around the extents and limitations of monarchic power.

Looking at this understanding through the lens of modern post-industrial production, we can see that the information revolution is similarly dislodging individualism and socialism as core political ideologies. Left and right stop making sense in the networked age. The generation of people engaged in so-called ‘information politics’ come from an ideology which rejects individualism and socialism as opposites, but rather acknowledge that there is no society without individuals, and without a society, the individual is meaningless.

One might call these people individualist socialists, which to the politically astute brings to mind figures such as Peter Kropotkin and Benjamin Tucker – who argued that “the most perfect socialism is possible only on the condition of the most perfect individualism”. This would not be entirely wrong, but a pure traditional anarchist classification would be ignorant of the influences of more modern thinkers such as Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen and Yochai Benkler.

So what is a Pirate Party? It is not libertarian, nor hard left. Neither capitalist nor communist, it is an informationist, neo-enlightenment party. It is a party that demands that individual freedoms be respected throughout, but that individuals not be driven or directed by antisocial incentives. The Pirate Party is the political manifestation of the idea that people have a right to information, that governance should be conducted by the people themselves, and to the smallest extent necessary, that privacy and transparency be held up as high values, and that democracy not be sold short with cronyism and elitism.

Invoking enlightenment ideals may seem cheap, but the first enlightenment failed to bring its two core ideas to bear. The ideal of individual enlightenment was bastardized into what we now disgustedly refer to as the ‘education system’, an assembly line treatment of uncreative thoughts intended to mass-produce generations of workers suited to industrial monotony. The ideal of democracy was similarly bastardized, as representatives of representatives now go around representing each other, and not us, both nationally and internationally, in massive bureaucracies that neither the general public nor those within the systems have any real control over or ability to alter.

I’m not sure if the Guardian’s depiction of the Pirate Party is a misunderstanding of origins, a miscommunication of intent, or a misinterpretation of goals. It is entirely possible that those who populate the Pirate Party UK are predominantly uncreative children of the industrial era, seeking out unnuanced labels such as “libertarian” or “left”. It is a fact, philosophy aside, that most candidates on Pirate Party lists globally to date can be described as traditional leftists with little difficulty, while the vast majority of their voter base has been from the libertarian right. But this fact alone shows that the tides are turning.

Whatever the reason, I hope this little tirade serves to open up the discussion, both of whether post-chiral politics are ready to emerge, and if the Pirate Parties are harbingers of one of the ideologies, however inept we are at describing it still, whatever will its alternative look like? Are we ready for the second enlightenment?

The Center as seen from the Edge

Jun 21

Posted by Smári McCarthy in Collapsonomics, Development, EU, English, Politics | 6 Comments

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”
- Kurt Vonnegut

Recently I attended an event in Strasbourg which had a very unclear goal. Organized by the Council of Europe, Edgeryders, a community of young people of diverse origins came together to discuss what to do with their continent. In many ways, it can be said that the Council of Europe was taking a huge risk with this – admitting a relatively radical group of individuals into their midst under a heading as provocative as ‘Living on the Edge’.

After two days of relative politeness, where the Edgeryders sat through a variety of discussions ranging from monotonic to bland to tedious, having their most pressing questions disregarded while pith was picked up and played with by politicians and bureaucrats from various ends of Europe, they broke off to an unconference – an unprescribed meeting where attendees filled slots with their own agenda – where real magic happened.

Free from ‘adult supervision’, we discussed economic collapse, state failure, environmental annihilation, and other existential risks. We worked through the systemic failings of the banking system and came up with a number of simple improvements, most of which would be easy to implement if not for lack of political willpower. We discussed the theoretical and practical groundwork to be done in order to replace state services with peer-to-peer software using open communications protocols, how to perform scale-independent participatory budgeting, how to hack law and build more participatory and resilient democratic models.

Had anybody from the Council of Europe – or from any other political entity that has any form of legitimacy – been there, their brains would have exploded. Not only were we having a serious, apolitical, coherent and productive conversation on a subject that the political governors of this world would rather not have to think about, we were coming up with functional solutions with a rapidity that made our own brains ache.

While it’d be wrong to be unappreciative of the opportunity the Council of Europe gave us, it is right to be critical of their form of engagement. One reason we could have such a conversation was because we suffered from a collective closeness to reality. If defection from reality could be measured as a distance, we would still have been sitting in Strasbourg, while our supposed leaders were orbiting Jupiter right along with Russell’s teapot and the radial fascist architecture so popular in European political assemblies. This meant that not only didn’t we manage to have the conversation with the policymakers that we really wanted to have, but they didn’t even return the favor of attending when it was our turn to soothsay.

Some of the people in the room were Spanish or Greek or Italian, and are currently using society as buffer against failure. They understand all too well the fact that agro-industrial auto-catalysis (to use a term I learned during the unconference) has stopped, that our society is stuck in a resource starved downward spiral. They live it every day, feel it and know it.

Others were from places like Romania, Poland, or Hungary. Countries that had fought hard to rid themselves of oppression around the time they were being born, in the latter part of the twentieth century, and are now seeing their birthright of socioeconomic liberalism slipping from their grasp as extremist entities make power grabs in the chaos of a dying European dream.

In a crowd of young, smart people, there are many voices and many dreams. People came from many walks of life, different political inclinations and different outlooks. What united us there was an interest in talking through the problems and finding actual solutions, using the best tools we had available to us, and pushing the boundaries as much as possible.

It would take days, or weeks, or months for me to intend to aggregate the ideas put forward during our time together, let alone exposit them in their full depth. That’s not my role here. The Edgeryders community will flesh those out collectively over coming months. My only role here and now is to make sure that people are aware of what has happened, and inform those in power that the following is about to happen:

As you watch your political doctrines crumble under the weight of a new reality, we are going to emerge from your ashes and help build that reality. Our systems of governance will be open, collective and efficient like nothing you have seen, inclusive and scalable in ways nation states prohibit, and will be devoid of the explicit hierarchical power structures you are used to.

Edgeryders itself won’t be the only community to do this. It isn’t a task for a hundred people. It is a task for everybody – but if you had been paying attention to the kids who grew up with Napster and MySpace and given yourselves the time to understand the motivations of the networked youth, you’d have seen this coming. Perhaps, then, you might have even appreciated our offering rather than tried to stifle it with broken models, and take our society down with them.

Kvóti, einokun, og auðlindir

Jun 7

Posted by Smári McCarthy in Authority, Copyfight, Economics, Icelandic, Politics | Comments off

Kvóti er lagaleg takmörkun á nýtingarrétt auðlindar til að endurspegla takmarkanir á auðlindinni. Sem slíkur er hann einokunarréttur sem er haldið uppi af ríkinu – þeir sem eiga kvóta einoka auðlindina, aðrir komast ekki að. Nú vill ríkisstjórnin gera þá heimtingu að þeir sem hafa fengið úthlutaðan svona einokunarrétt greiði fyrir hann og fylgi strangari reglum varðandi nýtinguna. Sama ríkisstjórnin og veitir þennan einokunarrétt.

Ólíkt flestum einokunarrétti þá er einokun í þeim tilgangi að takmarka ágang í takmarkaðar auðlindir réttlætanlegur, þó háð því skilyrði að aðgengi að einokunarrétti sé réttlátur – þ.e., að allir sem óska eftir að fá aðgang að auðlindinni fái það í sanngjörnu mæli, miðað við einhverja réttláta mælikvarða.

Ein leið til að gera þetta, sem hefur ekki verið farin, væri að deila heildarkvótanum með íbúafjöldanum, úthluta hverjum einstaklingi kvótahlut sem því nemur, og gefa þeim rétt til að leigja út sinn hlut. Þessi leið hefur ekki verið farin því það væri pólitískt sjálfsmorð að stinga upp á slíku, og auk þess væri umsýslukostnaðurinn gígantískur, nema við hefðum til dæmis einhverskonar hraðvirkar maskínur af einhverju tagi, sem gætu geymt upplýsingar, birt þær á einfölduðu formi, gert fólki kleift að hirða um sinn hlut, og reiknað út hver fengi hvað. Ef við hefðum slík tæki, við gætum kallað þær “tölvur”, bara svona til að rétt ímynda sér, þá gætu þessar tölvur einfaldað réttláta úthlutun.

Í staðin fyrir þetta var farin sú leið, árið 1991, að gefa bara þeim sem áttu skip hlutdeilt í takt við stærð skipsins. Hugmyndin var sú að þeir sem voru nógu ríkir til að eiga skip ættu að sjálfsögðu að fá að vera ríkari, með því að fá einokunarrétt á nýtingu auðlindarins. Slíkar röksemdafærslur eru tiltölulega algengar hjá ákveðnum hópi fólks, en sá hópur er að flestu leyti óaðgreinanlegur frá þeim sem fengu afhentan umræddan rétt.

Sem betur fer hefur ríkisstjórnin fundið leið út úr þessu sérkennilega máli, sem felst í því að láta fólk greiða fyrir sína hlutdeild í einokunarréttinum. Þetta þýðir að fólk sem fékk einokunarréttinn á silfurfati hér fyrir tuttugu árum þarf skyndilega að bæta við einum útgjaldalið, en um leið þýðir þetta að ríkið getur innheimt fyrir hönd fólksins nokkurskonar leigugjald fyrir þennan rétt, og hugsanlega notað það gjald til að bæta lífskjör fólksins í landinu, ekki síst þeirra sem nú eru á mínum aldri eða innan við þann aldur, og hafa tiltölulega takmarkaða minningu af Íslandi sem hafði ekki ríkisverndaða einokun á aðgengi að fiski – en sá aldurshópur er nú mikið til vel menntaður og atvinnulaus eftir því.

Þegar fólk talar um einokun hugsar það yfirleitt um einokunarverslun eins og var á Íslandi á hluta af valdatíð Dana, eða um stórfyrirtæki eins og Starbucks sem ryður sér leið inn á markað, undirbýður umhverfið sitt og gerir öllum öðrum fyrirtækjum ókleift að starfa. Fólk talar mun sjaldnar um það að eignarréttur í hvaða formi sem er, er í rauninni tegund af einokun.

Fyrir vikið þá er lítið argast út í það þótt örfá símafyrirtæki og nokkrar sjónvarpsstöðvar eigi svo til allan nýtingarrétt á rafsegulrófinu – og þó, eins og Steinn Sigurðarson benti á á Smettiskinnu fyrr í dag, borga símfyrirtækin 265.500 krónur á Megahertz á ári, ásamt 0,30% af bókfærðri veltu (ekki hagnaði), fyrir aðgang að þeirri auðlind.

Það er sömuleiðis mjög lítið argast út í það að ýmis fyrirtæki og einstaklingar eigi allan nýtingarrétt á hugverkum sem sum hver eru stór og mikilvægur partur af sameiginlegri menningu okkar – það er litið svo á að réttur fólks til að hagnast á því sem það fann upp á vegur þyngra en það að samfélagið fái að njóta góðs af því að hafa hlúið að slíkri sköpunargáfu. Ekki það, mér finnst að skapandi fólk eigi að lifa vel af sinni sköpun – og satt að segja finnst mér þetta einokunarfyrirkomulag ekki vera að gera neitt ofsalega mikið til að tryggja það. En þetta er samt svipað.

Allar auðlindir virðast vera að ganga í gegnum ákveðin ferli í lífi sínu, hvort sem það er fiskur, vatn, land, rafsegulrófið, hugverk, og hvaðeina. Ég er undanfarið búinn að vera að skoða þetta ferli ásamt kollega mínum á Spáni, og er ætlunin að birta grein í haust… en í stuttu máli þá kemur þetta nokkurnvegin svona út:

  1. Óreglaður almenningur. Engin ríkisafskipti eru höfð af auðlindinni, og hún ýmist álitin verðlaus, ótæmandi, eða hreinlega fólk veit ekki af henni.
    • Eitt sinn voru skógar álitnir ótæmandi, og í Bretlandi var “lopping” stundað, sem er fjarlæging ystu trjágreina til að nota í eldivið. Allir gerðu þetta í sínum nærskógum, en þetta hjálpaði skógunum að vaxa ásamt því að allir höfðu nóg til að brenna.
    • Frá uppfinningu útvarps og fram til 1913 voru engar reglur um takmörkun útsendinga, sem þýddi almennt að fólk gat fiktað áfram með tæknina og þróað nýjungar hratt, en um leið þýddi þetta að oft var erfitt fyrir fólk að finna senditíðni sem var ekki full af hávaða.
  2. Leyfisskylding afnota. Ríkið sér vandamál varðandi nýtingu auðlindarins og grípur inn í – ýmist vegna þess að hún er álitin vera í hættu vegna of mikils ágangs, eða vegna þess að deilur um nýtingu hafa komið upp, eða stundum hreinlega til að auka sínar tekjur. Jafnvel þótt auðlindin sé mögulega ótæmandi getur hún verið þess eðlis að það geti ekki margir notað sömu einingu af auðlindinni í senn (til dæmis er nóg af sætum í bíói, en aðeins einn getur notað hvert sæti svo vel sé í senn…), og mismunandi einingar misjafnlega eftirsóttar.
    • Eftir að Titanic sökk var komist að þeirri niðurstöðu að hluti af ástæðunni fyrir því að engin björgun átti sér stað var að allar þær tíðnir sem Titanic sendi sínar hjálparbeiðnir á voru uppfullar af skruðningi og hávaða vegna annarra sendinga. Þá var ákveðið að leyfisskylda útvarpssendingar, taka frá ákveðnar neyðartíðnir, og gera gæðakröfur um útsendingabúnað.
    • Í gegnum árin komust höfðingjar að því að það væri stórkostlegt vandamál fólgið í því að fólk notaði land til landbúnaðar algjörlega án þess að greiða fyrir það, því landið væri jú takmörkuð auðlind. Landskikkar voru lokaðir af og fólk látið greiða fyrir nýtingarrétt á þeim, með tilvísun í það sem líffræðingurinn Gerrett Hardin hefur kallað “The Tragedy of the Commons“. Bændur þurftu því að greiða stóran hluta af sínum tekjum til lénsherra eða óðalsbænda fyrir beitingarrétt, eða minnka umsvif sín, en engin raunbreyting varð á heildarnýtingu auðlindarinnar.
  3. Óleyfisskyldur tímabundinn nýtingarréttur. Þar sem markaðurinn sem keppist um tiltekna auðlind er orðinn sæmilega þroskaður og lagaramminn utan um nýtinguna vel þróaður ákveður ríkið að taka hluta auðlindarinnar og leigja aðilum í markaðsráðandi stöðu aðgang til takmarkaðs tíma með mun færri leyfisskilyrðum, eða jafnvel án leyfisskilyrðingar fyrir þær einingar sem hann hefur.
    • Árið 1710 ákvað Anne bretadrottning að innleiða lög sem gáfu höfundum bóka 14 ára einokunarrétt á endurprentun á þeim, með það aðallega fyrir augum að brjóta þá einokunarstöðu sem Stationers Company hafði komið sér í, en ekki síður til að hvetja fólk til bókaútgáfu með því að auka líkurnar á fjárhagslegum ávinningi, vitandi að það væri gott fyrir menntun að fleiri bækur væru skrifaðar.
    • Eftir að sjónvarps- og útvarpsútsendingar urðu algengar boðleiðir fyrir fjölmiðlun vildu fjölmiðlafyrirtækin fá tryggingu fyrir því að þeim yrði ekki ýtt yfir á aðrar tíðnir í skyndingu, sem gæti valdið því að áhorfendur eða hlustendur týndu þeim. Gripið var til þess ráðs mjög víða að selja á uppboðum tíðnihluta, sem fyrirtækin höfðu þá heildstæð yfirráð yfir til ákveðið margra ára, oftast nær með forgangsrétt á endurnýjun.
  4. Eignarréttur. Óleyfisskyldur nýtingarréttur er gerður ótímabundinn og veittur lagalegur réttur til að krefjast bóta ef ríkið endurheimtir aðganginn að auðlindinni.
    • Höfundarréttur stökkbreyttist í gegnum árin og gildir nú víðast hvar út ævi höfundar verksins, og sjötíu ár til viðbótar þar eftir. Ekki hefur verið sýnt fram á hagfræðilega nauðsyn þess að hann vari svona lengi, og þessi lengd er tæknilega séð óendanleg, þar sem sjötíu ár er ansi langur tími, og við vitum það vel að þegar kemur að því að höfundarrétturinn á Mikka Mús er að fara að falla úr gildi mun hann sennilega vera framlengdur. Hugtakið “forever minus one day” hefur verið notað í þessu samhengi. Sjá myndbandið að neðan.
    • Einu sinni voru stórir almenningar á Íslandi, þar sem fólk mátti ganga um, tjalda, tína ber, veiða, og allskyns. Nú er sérhver fermeter lands á Íslandi í eigu einhvers – oftast nær ríkisins, sem fyrir flesta parta gerir ekkert í því að fólk tjaldi eða tíni ber, en málið yrði ögn flóknara ef einhver ákveði að byggja hús. Þessi breyting hefur verið réttlætt sem vernd, þar sem að það er jú, eins og allir vita, rosalegur skortur á landi á Íslandi til afnota. Rétt eins og í Wyoming, eða Síberíu.

Þótt einokunarréttur sé ekki alltaf óréttlætanlegur þá þurfum við að spyrja okkur “hver græðir?” í hvert skipti sem einhver einokunarréttur er lagður til, og ennfremur: “hver tapar?” Hversu mikinn skaða valda óréttlátar takmarkanir á auðlindum á hverju ári, ef skoðaður er tækifæriskostnaður þeirra sem vilja færa sig inn í geirann, eða fórnarkostnað þeirra sem vilja stækka við sig þar. Hversu mikinn skaða veldur það, ef auðlind er svo stýrð að engin nýsköpun getur átt sér stað, og aðeins gömul öfl fá að sitja þar við?

Þegar spurningin er spurð á þennan veginn hljótum við að sjá að tilfærsla fiskikvóta úr eignarrétti yfir í leyfisskyldan afnotarétt er klárlega það sem ætti að gerast, og um leið og því er lokið ættum við, sem samfélag, að setjast niður og skoða hvort það sé ekki fleira sem mætti færa til um flokka.