Ramsey NasserI'm thinking about the axios exploit, ai slop pr deluge, agents ddosing servers and apis, foss and the open web under attack from multiple angles...
the "tragedy of the commons" is a debunked economic idea that you can't have free access to a shared resource because "everyone is a self maximizing rational actor" and will overuse the shared resource to their own benefit and the detriment of others. this is simplistic and refuted by history.
I feel what happens more often is *specific sociopathic actors* take advantage of the collective resource and attempt to claim it for themselves, often destroying it in the process.
common land in england was not overused and depleted, it was enclosed, deliberately, by powerful actors, and taken away from commoners.
anarchic projects like the Paris Commune, Kronstadt, Catalonia, Rojava, Chiapas don't collapse under their own weight because they are not sustainable, they are destroyed from the outside, deliberately, by violent people for whom the success of an egalitarian society is an existential threat.
foss and the open web are not straining under the weight of individual over consumption, they're being attacked, deliberately, by malicious actors seeking gains and power.
why does this matter?
when the focus is on the thoroughly debunked view that "all people" are a certain way, prone to overconsumption and "rational self maximization", you're not only wrong but also impotent. there just isn't much to do. if the problem really is "human nature" then we're cooked and may as well give up.
if we accept instead, as I'm pointing out, that projects with aspirations of egalitarianism and freely shared resources can succeed but *will come under external attack by the forces of capital, the state, and the defenders of hierarchy* we are not only in alignment with history but we are no longer helpless. we have something to defend, something worth fighting for.
in the history of anarchism this defense manifested as militias. I don't know what the equivalent is for foss, the open web, and open computing in general, but we should probably figure that out.
GhostOnTheHalfShellOn this point, I would like to direct people to a book titled “ hierarchy in the forest” by Boehm. It explains the consensus framework that cultural anthropology has developed to enumerate the material conditions and social factors that lean societies towards egalitarianism or towards hierarchy.
I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is very useful for thinking about these topics.