by Mseethaler | Jun 26, 2026 | Uncategorized
Digital Sovereignty means owning and maintaining yourself the
computer hardware and software on which you depend, instead of renting them from
someone else.
For example, let’s say a man needed to write a humble word document, and decides to use a
computer; at root, he has two paths, one the one hand, he can use Microsoft, Apple, or
Google Docs, or he can be based and use LibreOffice. The resulting document is identical,
the difference lies only in the means used to create it.
One path is ontologically better than the other! Better in the bones. And the principles apply far beyond creating basic documents.
Cost
Comparing the above paths, the most obvious and first consideration is cost; Microsoft,
and Apple have basic office functionality which is free — with an
asterisk. Both of them withold
substantial features of their office suite on the “free tier” to push people onto an annual
subscription for deeper capabilities.
LibreOffice does everything they do, but forever free.
“BUT WAIT!” I hear you say, “Google docs, is also free! So what’s the difference between the two?
Super glad you asked. I was getting there.
Privacy
While Google docs is mostly free, Google, like many providers of proprietary free services, are in
their bones, data companies. They make their money by tracking
you as much as is legally possible (and beyond) and feeding your flesh to hungry
advertisers. Indeed, both Apple and Microsoft have telemetry as well, but
Microslop is the dirties Debbie of the neighborhood.
Everything you create with Google docs is known and sold in Google. You are a commodity
to be monetized for your feudal-lords, as the price for your lack of bassed-ness.
For Privacy, many don’t care, until they care. Until Big Brother’s boots are on your porch, he’s peering at you while you tuck you kids in bed at night; until your baby monitor sold her live feed to the Vietnamese, until your passport and social saunter into some saucy dark-web databases, they will still say, “Sure officer! You can search my car, I am a stand-up citizen with nothing to hide.”
Dependency
Most thirdly, the difference between LibreOffice and any of the other providers: dependency.
Imagine, if you will, that your child has a rash, and so you take a picture, put
it on your Google Drive, and send it to your doctor. Google’s AI bots, which
constantly scan your drive, detect this, and mark your account as violating
their community standards, having pictures of exposed children: you pervert.
Google’s AI bots do the reasonable thing of course, and lock you out of your Google
account, block your internet, and report you to the police. So much for your
docs! Lets not forget, your passwords, email, and
years of unorganized file storage; also your ad account etc. We need not imagine too hard here, because it happened.
The more you build your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness upon the provision of
techno-oligarchs, the more you are at their mercy.
Back to our example, I now hear you say, “With LibreOffice I am still dependent on the
original developers to have made the code!”
Yes my child, you are dependent on them to have written the code, just as you depend on Pacific Gas
for the electricity to turn on your computer, AT&T for the internet
to download the code, the sun for its light and the Lord for your daily bread.
Who is truly independent? But that’s not the issue, dear child.
The difference between LibreOffice and the others is that once that code is on your machine, the provider can’t/won’t ever turn it off or hold it for ransom. They will never ask you for an upgrade, and push you onto their premium-plus-extra-premium-feature-teir-plus-model. Even if they tried and restricted future releases to a different software license, you still have the old code; known code, which you can pass down to your children’s children. To do what you want with what is yours!
Beyond our Example
Documents, CRM, accounting software, automation software, websites, cloud
storage, video editing, AI models:
You can rent it all from companies who meet every quarter and scheme upon how they can make you more dependent on their
provision. Forever. Or you can learn how to run the things you own. The
choice between slavery and freedom. One is convenient, and the other is how Man
was created to rule the earth.
by Mseethaler | May 27, 2026 | Uncategorized
One of our Lizard-lords once said that in the future,
You’ll own nothing and be happy about it.
Some men see other men only as a thing to be ruled. Some men, somewhere along
the way got the idea that the world was something to steal; that they are the
farmers and we are the cattle. They promise to feed us, give us safe stables,
while we provide the milk, and are fattened for the slaughter. For, they preach, it is a known fact and well accepted by all the great minds
that cattle are not capable of farming, of owning their own estate. For slaves have no right to be self-ruled free
men.
What’s all this then: Digital Sovereignty is the concept that your tech exists
for you, and not that you exist for the technology. Your hardware is that, your hardware. You shouldn’t have pay rent to use it.
Your software (and here is the true rub) is actually your software, and you shouldn’t have to pay rent to use it. This is the thesis of digital sovereignty. Own your own technological estate.
It’s been quite some time we’ve had these computers; they’ve really taken over the world. As they’ve grown, their power has grown, and their ubiquitous presence. The plumber now finds
his next leaky pipe, not from the paper, not from the herald, but from the
computer. Your car is now more computer than car; some even have started dating their
computers (and we are told by the Japanese not to notice or judge). But with all
this computing, some of us have started to feel that we are the computed.
All these services are tracking our thoughts and actions. Apparently I must
log into my car. We are pushed onto endless subscriptions, to run software we cannot own
on hardware that is supposedly ours, yet we cannot modify without legal
consequence; we are locked out of our own devices, unable to install what is
ours by divine right, what is withheld from us for “safety”.
My wife and I went to buy a cat from a breeder. We went to buy a cat. As in the cat would move from
the possession of the seller to our possession. Well, the breeder and I apparently
don’t share the same dictionary. She pulls the contract: terms upon terms!
Should we decide to sell the cat, we must sell to her first! Should she think that we are bad
owners, she may repossess the cat back with no refund! She had visitation rights to the cat. Should she
sue us for violation of the contract (solely upon her discretion, of course), we must pay all her legal fees. When we
say buy, we mean ownership; when she say buy, she means
she’ll issue a temporary license to access the cat which may be
revoked at any time at her discretion.
Sovereignty is the ability to do what one wants with one’s property, not being subject
to the will of another. Now, I’m no godless pagan warlock — we are all
subject to the law of God, and will stand at the judgement. But these
sellers got it in their heads along the way that commerce is to be done according
to the standard of a divorced crazy cat woman, and we all must
stand before the judgment seat of ${LIZARD_CORPORATION}.
From the counsels of eternity past, when our first fathers fought the giants,
it’s been debated whether one must cut costs, or increase costs to increase
revenue. The baker bakes less when his buns have less to pay for. But if he must
bake, he ought to invest in equipment to bake more when he bakes: more bake; less time. But
if the equipment which he purchases cannot be purchased, but
rented, then he truly can never stop baking, because he must now bake to pay for baking!
If he was born to bake — and only bake: if he should sleep and live in his bakery,
it is then good and right that he only profits enough to pay for his act of baking.
But should he ever desire to spend a day not baking, perhaps to take a wife, to
help his neighbor, to preach the Gospel, to ride a bike: he finds that he cannot leave; he is chained
to his kitchen.
When one must rent the tools of production, one is enslaved to the specific
realm of production for which the tools are rented. If one cannot simply buy a
rake to rake the leaves, but must rent the rake at a monthly rate, one
cannot simply rake his leaves. One must go from house
to house, knocking on doors of the neighbors, and offer 50%-off our leaf-raking
special. One must put all the yards into our new CRM, and hopefully make enough
in the fall to sustain us until the next busy season, lest the reaper come and
take away the rake and the house together.
Imagine with me — and it is difficult, I admit — a life where you owned your
possessions, your
castle, your car, your computer, your software, your clothing, your cattle, your
fields. Such freedom! Not freedom for the life of the sluggard, but a life to
reap and plow, to serve God and love one’s neighbor.
“Oh” but you may be thinking “in this utopian vision you have, you have
forgotten one thing, property tax!” Yes, it is hard to imagine a world where the
government does not treat its citizens as tenants, to rent the land which they
supposedly own. Let us deal with one set of overlords at a time. First the
unelected.
Ownership of your tools leads to more discretionary
time, which is true wealth, more freedom.
Rented Software
Software is the primary battleground of digital sovereignty.
Our Computers are at the root of it. Now computers at root are information systems, they are tools for the recording data and
processing of that data according to preset instructions; this even holds true
for A.I.. The instructions written to run that data must be written by
someone or something, viz. software developers.
Software, generally must be maintained, (though the necessary maintenance, in closed systems, is widely overestimated).
The unrelenting desire/need for greater profits incentivizes companies to design
products that bring recurring revenue. A buyer who walks away with a permanent product is
not forced into future purchases for future use. A subscriber doesn’t walk away
with a product, but with a license to temporarily access something he doesn’t own. The subscriber is dependent upon the provider for continued use of what they have already paid for. This is what these companies desire: permanent dependence.
“Buying” and “selling” presupposes the reality of ownership. Subscription
companies frequently use terms like “buy” and “sell” during the transaction, but
in the terms of service, those terms are redefined so as to accord with the mind of
divorced-cat-woman. What they provide is not a product, it’s a plantation.
It is understandable for people to protect their intellectual property, and software
developers should be paid for their work. Workers are worthy of their wages. No one
may be compelled to work for free. But the model adopted by most software
companies forces a purchase of work today to also include an obligation for
purchases of future work in order to continue to use the work purchased today.
That is, they offer no way to purchase a one-off job, or a finished and
completed product which the buyer is responsible to maintain and keep. But
instead, as the provider continues to endlessly update their product, that work
is forced onto the buyer, and the buyer has no means of preserving access to
their past purchases without continuing to pay the provider indefinitely.
Take for example, the modern XBOX and Playstation game library subscriptions. It
may seem on the surface to be a benefit to the buyer, to only have to pay $20 to access 1,000
of video games, but the economic reality is that it is a bad deal.
Instead of paying $60 once to receive a physical piece of media, which can be
played infinitely, so long as the buyer stewards it well, rather, the buyer must continue to
deal with the seller forever, even as the seller is free to change their terms
however they please, or to add and remove content from the library at will. The
buyer has transient, fleeting, temporary access to the content they thought they owned. I
have video games, console and disk, which my parents purchased for me as a
child. My children will be able to play these game. But anyone who has dealt
with a provider through a subscription library will eventually lose access to
what they purchased, while having payed an order of magnitude more for it.
Where is the honest transaction where the seller provides property to the buyer, and relinquishes all claims to that property
upon the transaction? Many companies today do not offer any path to
ownership at all. The only terms of business
are terms of dependence.
As an example of a software company which does respect ownership, I give you Ableton, who sells the digital audio workstation software Ableton live. The company sells a finished version of a software at a set price. The buyer pays for that software;
the buyer can use that software forever. It is upon the buyer to maintain the
environment fit to run that software. Ableton makes future revenues by
creating addons and other offerings to their users, as well as selling updates.
If the purchaser desires to get the update, they can pay for it as well. If they
are content with their current holdings, they do not upgrade. It’s a clean,
honest and ethical transaction. Would that there were more companies like this.
Open Source
Businesses today need not live with this. The good news is that so many people desire free and open
software that they have created it for themselves; or they have a business model where they give
the software away for free, and make the money some other way. Many have designed
a system to escape the plantations and were gracious enough to the rest of us to
release it into the wild.
And the good thing is, once a software is written and released to the world, it
is permanently known; it cannot be retracted. Tools like CRM’s, Accounting
Software, Project Management Softwares, are basicaly solved problems. The code
to run these programs is known and available. One only needs the technical
skill to do it.
For whatever motivation there be behind the development of so many open source projects (again, people should be paid for their labor) the naked truth is that tons of programs exist, with known and open code, which can be launched and run in a
private environment with no external dependencies. And when it’s yours, you can
do whatever you want with it. You can tweak it, modify it, but usually, you can
simply use it and enjoy the utility which it provides to bake your bread and
make your gold. Praise the Lord.
More on this in coming essays.
