Mastodawn

Under the lens of permanent sustainability, there is far less room for systems that require excessive centralized maintenance to continue existing. Automation is essential. The motivation is community.

Compare this to the world as it is now functioning under the delusional falsehood of permanent growth. Most things will fail, and very quickly, without constant attention. It's profit motivated; individualistic and unpersonal.

This is why the world burns and also how we fix it.

The quickest path to unseating the powers that are driving the world in its current direction is to stop asking permission for everything and build our own infrastructures and technologies. Design everything with the principle of permanent sustainability in mind. Erosion beneath the foundations of these power structures is something we can all bring about without ever remotely needing violence.

Always think of how things can be done without relying on someone else to do it for us. They won't be there when we need them later, so it's up to us to not need them.

Rob Landley Dec 11, 2022

@valkyrie I miss David Graeber. "You make a cup once, you wash it a thousand times." He wrote a whole book about Direct Action in 2008: https://www.amazon.com/Direct-Action-Ethnography-David-Graeber/dp/1904859798

Amazon.com

ricketson Dec 11, 2022

@valkyrie @valkyrie It's not about needing those people, it's about needing the physical resources that they have monopolized and avoiding their physical attacks against our bodies. There's only so much we can do to challenge their power without risking a violent assault from which we will need to defend ourselves. Regardless, we should maneuver and coordinate as much as possible before that point so that we can maintain our operations while isolating and confusing the would-be tyrants.

Fugue State Machine Moto Dec 10, 2022

@valkyrie Absolutely!

But we’re going to keep running into resource constraints as long as “your property” only exists as lines in some despot’s ledger.

If the feds can seize the bank accounts of any organization they find threatening, how does any organization gather strength to oppose the despot?

Fugue State Machine Moto Dec 10, 2022

@valkyrie This is one of the original motivations of the #cypherpunks, which led to the invention of Bitcoin.

Some of the technical choices that made Bitcoin possible, also made it vulnerable.

I believe there are entities whose control was threatened by Bitcoin, and I think they used their vast resources to colonize it. And that’s why Bitcoin has rightly earned its reputation as an environmental disaster.

Fugue State Machine Moto Dec 10, 2022

@valkyrie Hope is not lost, though. The punk ethos is still alive, and some particularly successful punks have continued working on ways to confound those who wish to maintain their power by denying your freedom to transact. Their infiltration of the World Bank has only just begun.

@cmdrmoto the solution to capitalism isn't hypercapitalism, so this is very far removed from what i'm talking about. money in general shouldn't exist, and cryptocurrency especially shouldn't exit. no form of it will in an advanced enough economy. chasing after that as a solution to anything just contributes negatively to change.

Fugue State Machine Moto Dec 10, 2022

It sounds like you’re not interested in reconsidering your belief that cryptocurrency is categorically Bad.

You are just as entitled to that belief as I am to mine, and we do agree on many other fronts.

Dialog remains my favorite tool towards shared understanding.

Rather than kill our dialog with an intractable topic, I’ll drop it, and we can focus on those areas where we’re closer to agreement.

@cmdrmoto there's really nothing to reconsider when capitalism will always be bad no matter what form it's in. it isn't redeemable, so i agree that it's not worth talking about.

@cmdrmoto also I don't mean to come across like I'm not open to discussions, I just don't see this as a solution to what I'm talking about

Fugue State Machine Moto Dec 10, 2022

@valkyrie I’m glad to hear it. People here are so *reasonable*!

Cassandrich Dec 10, 2022

@cmdrmoto @valkyrie I don't think "your property" was the point of any of this or even related...

Fugue State Machine Moto Dec 10, 2022

@dalias @valkyrie when The Powers are well-resourced and intent on stamping out rebellion?

Property and the freedom to transact with others, those are the “eyes and throat” (vulnerable points) of any organization that wishes to undermine Empire.

Cassandrich Dec 10, 2022

@cmdrmoto @valkyrie The way I read "principle of permanent sustainability" is not creating property that you have to perpetually fight to keep someone else from taking but creating systems that everyone benefits from and individually has only fractional responsibility and need to defend from bad actors who want to ruin things for everyone.

Fugue State Machine Moto Dec 10, 2022

@dalias It’s *absolutely* about property.

Ask some native Americans how that whole “not property but sustainable systems” thing works out when the colonizers come knocking.

Fugue State Machine Moto Dec 10, 2022

@dalias now, imagine a different System of the World, in which every square inch of the planet can be accounted for, via a ledger which is maintained by the consensus of *everyone*.

This is the sort of thing old #cypherpunks like to think about a lot.

For an example of a similar system, actually being implemented in The Real World, you may be interested in the Climate Action Data Trust: https://carboncredits.com/climate-action-data-trust-launch/

Climate Action Data Trust Launched

The World Bank, along with the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) and the government of Singapore, launched a new carbon credit platform "CAD T

Carbon Credits

Cassandrich Dec 10, 2022

@cmdrmoto That sounds like a creepy surveillance hell. No thanks.

Fugue State Machine Moto Dec 10, 2022

@dalias I reckon I’m *already* living in a creepy surveillance hell. It’s just unevenly distributed.

If you disagree, then I can appreciate why you might feel threatened by tools which can establish planetary-scale consensus, despite bad actors’ inevitable attempts to split and destroy consensus.

Divide and conquer.

dragora Dec 10, 2022

@cmdrmoto @dalias Property is a mutually agreed-upon fiction. All the immutable ledgers in the world won't stop an aggressive force from attempting to seize it. Colonization wouldn't have gone any better for the indigenous peoples of America if they had presented the colonizers with deeds.

Fugue State Machine Moto Dec 10, 2022

@dragora @dalias well, that’s sorta the point of a global ledger.

A consensus-based global ledger would mean that, even if an aggressor succeeds at occupying a territory which belongs to someone else, the aggressors don’t get the deed to any of the territory they seized.

They don’t get to start divvying up that land to their apparatchiks. Their “ownership” is globally identifiable, by anyone who respects The Ledger, as illegitimate.

dragora Dec 10, 2022

@cmdrmoto @dalias Lol, they have to care about the ledger in the first place.

@dalias @cmdrmoto it's also not really rebellion. it's a removal of reliance on external and capitalistic entities that don't have any other purpose than money at the cost of literally everything. that's why i spoke about erosion. it's not a violent upheaval. it's not obsession with building novelties. it's a change in reliance.

Fugue State Machine Moto Dec 10, 2022

@valkyrie @dalias We certainly seem to agree that relying on centralized / external / hyper-capitalized entities is dangerous.

It seems like it would be instructive to consider: how did these pesky mini-Empires grow so large in the first place?

Cassandrich Dec 10, 2022

@valkyrie I'm really appreciating the room for #solarpunk and adjacent perspectives here.

David Bridburg Artist👨‍🎨🖼️Dec 10, 2022

@valkyrie totally agree

alcinnz Dec 10, 2022

@valkyrie Under the yoke of capitalism automation is a way to take away our jobs. As personal or collective property it is a way to enjoy more leisure time.