Tim Howe
Ms. Wallin
A.P. Language and Composition
2 February 2000

Government is a necessary evil, put in place to keep the people from self-destructing. It provides a way for the people to protect themselves and live their lives in peace. However, many assume that it is an integral part of human society, required to get anything done. It is not.

A perfect example of the things that can be accomplished without government intervention or oversight is the free software movement. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Richard Stallman, a researcher at MIT, grew dissatisfied with the fact that software licenses kept him from sharing his source code--the human-readable instructions to a computer. He quit his job in 1981 and began the Free Software Foundation, dedicated to producing the GNU system, composed entirely of software which requires itself to be made freely available.

The success of the movement has been astronomical. Hundreds of programs have been released, dealing with problems ranging from scientific applications to games. The Internet itself, to a large extent, runs on this software, and it has been extended to thousands of individual projects--which could not have happened had freedom not been required.

Note that this all took place with no government requirement, no task force to ``aid the underprivileged programmer,'' no legal decisions invalidating software licenses. Stallman made the decision for purely altruistic reasons: ``So I looked for a way that a programmer could do something for the good. I asked myself, was there a program or programs that I could write, so as to make a community possible once again?'' (Stallman)

The tremendous success of the movement shows what people can do without any central control or oversight. Of course, there are several issues which cannot be explored in detail here, such as the fact that the existing government and regulations put the ``teeth'' into the GNU license. The main problem when relating this to government, however, is that a system like GNU, being voluntary in nature, would not scale well to the world at large.

The free software community is open to anyone. However, most of the people who would not be welcome choose not to join, out of their own free will and for their own reasons. There is no way to opt out of life, though, so any government has to work for everyone, not just the people who believe in its philosophies. Communism on a government level does not work, since it forces everyone to renounce all ownership.

The main goal should be to allow everyone to achieve the most for themselves personally, while keeping anyone from infringing on another's right to do so, even the government. This is a difficult balance to achieve, however. Federalist 51 states this perfectly: ``If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place oblige it to control itself'' (Hamilton).

The best government is minimalist, along the lines of the Wiccan Rede: ``An ye harm none, do what ye will'' (Aislyn). As long as a government serves to enforce this rule, it is beneficial. When it moves beyond this, no matter how positive its motives, it ``even when rules are perfectly fair in form... serve[s] in practice to exclude particular groups from meaningful participation'' (Guinier 973).

Governments are parasites, living off of the resources of their citizens. This symbiotic relationship can be benificial, as in the relationship between the shark and the remora. Yet the people must always be ready to reshape the government, lest it suck them dry and the masters become servants of their own creation.

Aislyn. ``Principles of Belief.'' Online http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/7402/principles.htm. 1 February 2000.

Guinier, Lani. ``The Tyranny of the Majority.'' The Norton Reader. Ed. Peterson, Linda, Brereton, John, and Hartman, Joan. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. 973-977.

Hamilton, Alexander, or Madison, James. ``Federalist no. 51.'' Online http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1776-1800/federalist/fed51.htm. 31 January 2000.

Stallman, Richard M. ``The GNU Project.'' Online http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html. 1 February 2000.