Theophillis Goodyear: Open Source as Enabler of Integrity

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From the Film Casino: The Perfect Analogy for How Open Source Everything Works

Sam Rothstein is describing the checks and balances that kept everybody honest in the casino that he was in charge of, and said, “In Vegas, everybody's gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The box men are watching the dealers. The floor men are watching the box men. The pit bosses are watching the floor men. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. I'm watching the casino manager. And the eye in the sky is watching us all. Plus, we had a dozen guy up there [above the gambling tables in the casino, in the “eye in the sky”] most of them ex-cheats, who knew every trick in the house.”

In fact this is how ancient tribal societies worked. In a small community not much is secret. As someone once told me who lived in a very small town in Arizona, “There's always someone checking out your action.” But civilization turned out to be a great enabler of deception and wrongdoing because the complexity of the community became a kind of human forest that obscured crimes against the people.

Open source everything is a way to restore the dynamics of ancient tribal societies whereby we had each other to keep us all in line. No one has anything to lose from this dynamic except those who are exploiting the environment of secrecy that's screwing us all. Cockroaches scurry when the rock is lifted.

Every enlightened mind knows that the checks and balances that the Founding Fathers set up are not nearly enough today. They've become a joke. They've been gotten around. They've been subverted. So no matter from what perspective people may argue against Open Source Everything—-in regard to republican values versus representative democracy versus pure democracy, for example—-they can't argue against it from the perspective of checks and balances!

The argument of checks and balances is like a stake through the heart of anyone who argues in favor of limited participation in democracy versus Open Source Everything, because the idea of checks and balances was the glue with which the Founding Fathers cemented our fledgeling republic, without which it would have never taken wing.

Open source everything would be a case of the rock permanently lifted.