You and The System
My officemate, a very fine hacker if there ever were one, did a nice door hack last week. The RFID reader pad that controls the electronic door lock for the suit we're in was too high by a few inches (centimeters? wazzat?), so he removed it from the wall and put it back a few inches below; the result isn't quite as nice and clean as it used to be, but it is much more functional: if you carry your electronic key in your pocket, as every one does, a proper twist of your hip (depending on said pocket being front or back, left or right), and there the door opens -- just like it is with other doors in the company. Everyone involved is happy, and no administrative sanction is taken, sought or even considered. Correction: Everyone involved is happy, thus no administrative sanction is taken, sought or even considered. Incidentally, what the competent administrator did decide when he became aware of the change, and after seeking explanations, was to set straight the pad that had been left slightly crooked, acknowledging the enhancement, rather than putting things back with sanctions as could have been his reflex, into which a bureaucrat would have gleefully indulged. That's the power of capitalism: all consensual transactions are legitimate.
Actually, I had noticed and been annoyed by the awkward height of same lockpad before, but I immediately swept out the idea of moving it, and I had promptly smiled at the idea of making an official request to have it moved. When I first saw the pad at its right place, I was happily surprised, but somehow didn't connect the dots: the idea that it could have been hacked didn't occur to me; I interpreted the displaced look of it as some people trying to do something to it (either break it, repair it or both), and leaving it in a bad looking but functional state at essentially the same place. I preferred to believe I was confused as to which pad had been at the wrong place; and the natural feeling of the new setup made me not think about it too much anymore -- which is proof that it was progress if there is any. When my officemate, with his usual congeniality, asked me whether I had noticed what happened the pad, I wondered if something even new had happened to it (maybe putting it back right, adding some new feature, whatever). Only when he told me that he was the one who put it at the right place did I connect the dots. I was too baffled to react. And only later did I realize the full meaning of it.
Mind you, when I was younger, I also did my own door hacks. Hacking had once been something natural to me, and it is after being badly sanctionned for it, many times over, that I had somehow unlearned hacking. I have one notable such story that I will tell next. Meanwhile, MIT students could freely hack, and would, for everyone's benefit.
In socialist Europe, I had learned that the System was a bureaucracy set up against you, that forced you to play by its wasteful rules, lest it would wedge its power upon you. The Hierarchy, not the involved people, decided what was good, and enforced it upon everyone, willing or unwilling. You had to be happy within the room left to you, learn how to best play the dictated rules and/or play the power game so as to extend your roomspace, and most importantly, learn to never get caught trespassing one of the actually enforced rules.
In capitalist America, I may relearn that the System is a free association made for you, that you may adhere to on a mutually voluntary basis, whereby all parties deem the other parties worthy; I may relearn that the interest of all involved, not arbitrary rules set by a remote overarching power, is what matters; I may relearn that people actually have to please me and that I actually have to please them, for positive interaction to happen; I may relearn that liberty is acquired, not by playing negative-sum con games of politics, but positive-sum creative games of engineering, and that the laws of nature, not of men, are the limit. I may relearn that ability, not pull, is rewarded.
But I will remember that though my immediate surrounding is capitalistic, the great Evil of Socialism is looming above me. The context in which I produce (work and hobbies) and consume (lodgement, food and other goods and services) is clearly based upon mutual consent. But a consent-less monopolistic Bureaucracy is preying on money, transportation, and security. It levies important taxes -- enough to wage a war abroad. And the nature of this evil is completely misunderstood by most people, especially so by those intelligent who ought to lead opinion. This misunderstanding is one of the most significant distortion achieved by this Evil, through the way it corrupts the Universities -- though without owning them all wholly as it does in Europe.