> My first thought was that it seems increasingly clear that Stallman has been right all along.
The problem is that being philosophically right doesn't always mean being practically right. In order to create the perfect Stallman-esque machine, one would have to design everything from the logic chips up from scratch, because in the end, no third party can be trusted. He says this himself about the Loongson system he uses daily; he considers it a compromise but one heavily weighted in his favor.
In short, Stallman has been right all along, but there's little we can do about it from a practical standpoint.
Cherry-picked from that thread. I just have to point out this awful slippery-slope argument.
What you are referring to is more the traditional distinction between the materialists (i.e. Marx) and those that believe in market forces (i.e. Smith).