Solarpunk Is Not About Pretty Aesthetics. It's About the End of Capitalism
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Frankly that sounds excellent to me. I don't really trust the royalties at the tops of the various old-fashioned hierarchies to which we are subject to have my family's and community's best interests in mind. We're entirely capable of planting gardens and operating life-supporting equipment by ourselves.
I don't particularly trust entrenched interests either, but they still seem better than the alternative. Imagine if the hospital electrical and oxygen grids were made and operated by the electric equivalent of script kiddies who are proud it hasn't fallen over in over 3 days now! Not to mention citywide sewage installations and whatnot.
No one's suggesting that we democratize medical care by expecting everyone to do their own dentistry, or abandon the idea that the people who should do X are the people who are good at/well-trained at X. They're suggesting that we don't need to be beholden to centralized hierarchies for everything—like, for instance, electrical power.
Anarchists and solarpunks alike abhor unjust hierarchies, instead they trust in experts and those with knowledge, not those who "fail upwards".
Pretty sure everyone dislikes 'unjust' hierarchies. The difference is what people think is just or unjust
But it's what the people appear to want.
How are you to tell them that they are wrong?
What is the difference between 'Bias' and editorial/opinion?
And I do not interpret "decentralization" as a abolition of hierarchies or a complete decentralization to the lowest individual level in all cases.
I interpret it as a bias towards making decisions, allocating resources, and wielding power at the lowest level where something can be effectively managed.
With respect to the US political system someone who prefers decentralization might favor abolishing agencies or laws at the federal level in cases where the states can handle those responsibilities themselves. (And similarly avoiding state-level regulation of anything that can be effectively managed at the municipal level.)
"Mitigation and development goals cannot be met through incremental change". [0]
"Transition pathways entail distributional consequences such as changes in employment and economic structure" [0]
[0] - https://scientistrebellion.com/we-leaked-the-upcoming-ipcc-r...
(however, me personally, I don't think growth is really necessary anymore. The real problem since at least the 80s/90s has been inequality, so the thing people should really look at is redistribution of wealth/income etc.) We have everything we need, we just don't have the political and economic systems to put it in good use.
What we need to do is to ruthlessly tax externalities that haven’t effectively been considered before, and use the proceeds to transition to an economy with net zero climate gas emissions. Then repay the damage with large-scale CO2 sequestering, multi-gigaton scale.
If economic growth is considered everything we value getting cheaper and more abundant over time, anthropogenic climate gas emissions can be considered a horrendous debt that needs to be repaid. This is achievable! It’s expensive, but doesn’t require a 1950s lifestyle for everyone.
Captialism at its core is soulless and I hate it — BUT so far I've failed to see any alternatives I would trust to help on this matter. These days I just see romantic descriptions of communism and socialism (actual socialism, not the social democracy Americans often mistake for it) everywhere, from people who clearly haven't ever had to live in it.
Just as a reminder, here in Germany we're _still_ cleaning up the economical and ecological disasters of the GDR to this day (Bitterfeld anyone?), and the USSR didn't exactly lead the green revolution either (Chernobyl, Mayak, ....)
Whenever I see people advocating "Tackling climate change needs a system change", I'm like: Yeah... nope.
Side note: If we acknowledge that a realistic CO2 tax is democratically unpopular - excellent! Now we're making progress, that's a real piece of data to work with. It needs to happen, there's absolutely no way around it. If it doesn't currently fly in a democracy, we need to sweeten the deal. Trying to force it through by revolutionary means is an act of desperation, let's hope we don't even have to consider it. There's a hundred ways to make it more palatable. Let's start in that end!
Paying part of the CO2 tax back to individuals is one way of bribing the electorate to do what's necessary.
The French government tried to spin a fuel tax as a carbon tax apparently. And protesters said it wasn't just about that tax.[3]
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Carbon_Emission_Tax_and_S...
[2] https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_E...
[3] https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-riots-france-paris-in...
We've got three choices:
1. Harness that growth to decarbonize. 2. Let the rich accumulate it all. 3. Give it to the poor who will use it to enjoy a middle class life style. Which may or may not include a middle class carbon foot print.
Degrowth really isn't an option. The only way to achieve it is through mass unemployment, and that will just result in riots and election losses.
What degrowth advocates usually ask for is a ban on stuff like gas cars. But the past two years have shown that banning one type of economic activity just moves out else where.
tldr; no capitalism in the solarpunk future. Am I grokking that right?
Note I didn't say we can't reform capitalism, but all the ills and failings that will not doubt be enumerated ad nauseam in this thread almost all apply as well to EVERY OTHER economic system human beings have tried.
The real solution is a post-scarcity economy, but we can't have that until we, you know, don't have scarcity.
they're far more interested in tearing down existing systems, without any real plan that has any chance of being laid out and accomplished.
What you have is a scattering of anarchist, socialist, and communist groups - all small in their own right, all with their own little ideas, and even vast deviations of those ideas within their little groups.
Everyone has some alternate way to organize hierarchies, wealth/resource distribution... and they really don't get too hung up on the details of all those differences and hte problems each of those plans have.
What they do have is a consensus that the "system" is so rotten to the core, so irredeemable that the whole thing must be torn down. In fact, in some ways, they court agreement with moderates, centrists and even some right-leaning anarchists and libertarians in some ways (at least as it might apply to government or corporate capture of government).
So there's consensus in destruction. There's zero consensus in what to build in the wake of that destruction. Theres' little enclaves of DIYers, doomsday preppers, anarcho-houses, urban farmers, etc..
So what you will have, if said destruction ever gets anywhere is a power vacuum they're unable to fill.
And instead what will fill it is foreign powers, capital forces worse than what you already have, criminal/mob groups, and a whole lot worse actors than we already have.
Downvote me too. But 25 year old, often testosterone pumped up male, radicals normally can't see 5ft in front of their face. All they see is what they're mad at, at the moment, what is immediately unjust and they're willing to throw the baby out with the bath water like a Republican is to the entire taxation system.
This sounds interesting, if a bit frightening. Could you describe these? What new innovations do the even worse capitalists have planned for us?
But the democratic system isn't bent 100% to their will. Mostly, but not entirely. Sometimes capital is restrained by that system, sometimes the illusion that it's restrained must be maintained as they hide behind a wall of bureaucracy
you're not tearing down capital without tearing down the state that enables it - the same state that keeps it at bay.
you take off the safeties, and the influence of money to control becomes even more unfettered and uncontrolled.
if you "tear the system down", it's not like the power money has will just go away. you'll end up in a more of an AnCap scenario than some left wing dream of anarcho-communism.
Think..Somalia but with a lot more monied powers at play
Everyone decries the evils of context switching, meetings, interruptions when my headphones are on, etc. People come to this field because they don't like doing people-centric tasks, but people-centric tasks are at the heart of any organization -- especially one operating as a collective.
How do you know the person cleaning the toilets doesn't have the potential to be a better manager/developer than you?
Being a co-op doesn't mean you have to cut yourself off from the outside world.
And this isn't just being facetious, the executive team already sees the sales team as the real value-adders and the developers as merely a cost centre.
Either you respect the toilet cleaner or you don't respect anyone.
As an annecdote, the company handy-man was the social glue that held morale together. He was never recognised for it, but it was always him firing up the grill on a nice day, or remembering your birthday. Everyone matters or no one does.
I've seen so many co-ops fall apart over things like this.
That's a fallacy. There are very smart people cleaning toilets and picking strawberries in the hot sun because capitalism is far far from a level playing field. While not everyone is going to be a surgeon or physicist, there are far more people capable of it than our current system surfaces.
> How do you equally compensate everyone
It's only in a selfishness-oriented culture where someone with rare skills will leverage that scarcity to hoard more of society's resources for themselves. Why should a surgeon make 50 to 100 times a farm worker for work that is equally exhausting?
Why should a star NBA basketball player earn 10 times more than that surgeon, for being born tall and having amazing ball handling skills?
Why should a founder/CEO earn 10 to 100 times more than that NBA star (10,000 to 100,000 times more than the strawberry picker) for a social media company that profits off of social media addiction, undermining privacy to harvest information to sell advertising that in turn is used to manipulate people's emotions and weaknesses?
If your answer is that "the market says so", you are begging the question.
If your answer is that it's because of "human nature", we've made that a self-fulfilling prophesy by adopting a system where "selfishness is a virtue".
Not everyone can be a surgeon -- like literally might not have the steady hands for it. More importantly, you don't want just anyone performing surgery on you.
Not everyone has the baseline genetic gifts + nurturing required to play sports at a world-class competitive level.
The more rare something is that is useful, the more value it has in society. I'm sorry that supply and demand is a difficult concept for you.
Now assume your utopian society where everyone is worth the same. Who does the truly difficult jobs? Do people become brain surgeons because of their gifts and training or because they want to? Why would somebody go through the rigorous education process necessary to do brain surgery if they could farm or serve food? Not everyone _loves_ their job, even at the highest levels of talent & training. Now, would you want somebody to be a brain surgeon _just_ because they love it and it's what they want to do? Even if they aren't good at it? Please.
So your strategy for discourse is to demean and make condescending assumptions?
As I and at least another have pointed out, you beg the question. Supply and demand based valuation is not an arbiter of fair value, it is simple a mechanism for determining value that some people consider an optimal self-correcting "algorithm". I do not.
There are plenty of people with the skills to become doctors and who would do it not to "enrich myself", but because they would like it, or want to help other people, or like the social status of doing something not everyone can do, and they would do it for no more pay than a grade school teacher or a janitor job that entailed the same amount of work/effort/stress. Sure, if one job was more stressful, or more dangerous, our more distasteful (e.g. cleaning toilets), there would be adjustments in compensation, hours or something else to make up for it.
You will counter that the "free" labor market does just that: automatically arrive at fair adjustments. It does not. Because it is centered on supply & demand of skills -- people with rarer skills can coerce more money out of society. Their price will be bid up naturally at auction.
I counter that that is the wrong auction. Imagine an inverted auction: people (with the same inborn skills) bid for the jobs they want to do. So on the auction block is 40 hours a week as a surgeon (for the first N years your job is to be trained, you are paid the same before and after training), and 40 hours per week cleaning toilets, and 40 hours per week working in the fields (please, at least out of respect for the people who feed us, watch at least 10 short videos on United Farm Worker's feed: https://twitter.com/UFWupdates/media). Whoever bids the lowest wins -- just like bids for government contracts. I'll bet anything that the result will be bids to be doctor will be lower than farm worker which will be lower than cleaning toilets -- i.e. the toilet cleaner will have the highest salary.
To me this latter auction is the true arbiter of fair pay. The more desirable jobs (intellectually, creatively or spiritually stimulating, higher social status) will pay less, and the more undesirable jobs (dangerous, dirty and/or demeaning) will pay more.
We have plenty of people with the skills for "brain" jobs. But capitalism and its naturally resulting symptom, the Mathew Effect, ensure that a lot of smart people never see the light of day. So we would do fine without people who will only do work to enrich themselves. Especially when we have a culture that exalts the common good, and gives social status to givers, as opposed to our current culture that worships takers. Those who have the skills to be a surgeon but won't do it unless they are paid 100 times what a farm worker makes can go ahead and pick lettuce. Fine by me.
Just look at the UK or like...almost anywhere in South America.
No one will ever come to a consensus about what they think the economic reward for a particular thing should be. Why should we listen to you about what is fair and how much an NBA star should make? Markets should decide, with people voting with their money
See my other reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28457605
> people voting with their money
This also begs the question. If the system is unfair, then what you say is "their money" is at question. There are also challenges to the notion of any Earth resources being private property. You don't get to assume capitalist principles to argue that capitalism is correct.
Agreed that we won't come to consensus. There is no consensus that capitalism and so-called "free labor markets" are the right way. You preference just happens to own the day. But so once did Feudalism. And slavery. And the divine right of kings. To believe that humanity has now arrived at the be all and end all of economic systems is sheer human arrogance and folly.
Says the guy trying to dictate what everyone should get paid. Also, that is a strawman argument since no one claimed we are at the 'end all be all' of economic systems.
Unfortunately you will find that they simply are not as effective as regular corporations, and hence they tend to be very small, and occupy only a small niche where their lack of competitiveness won't cause them to go bankrupt quickly.
Of course the effectiveness of the existing system led us right into a climate disaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
Ocean Spray has over 2,000 workers and has been going for 91.
Once established however worker cooperatives do very well.
One thing I have read is that cooperatives are less likely to grow into monopolizing behemoths because they approximately maximize profit in proportion to the number of workers rather than overall; they will only grow to the most efficient size. I can't remember where I read this, but it makes sense to me (although I'm not an economist.)
I grew up shopping at a Bi-Mart. Some folks have entire careers at Mondragon. Worker cooperatives are incredibly successful; we should really be asking why traditional corporations get so many subsidies and tax benefits.
A different take: Capitalism reinforces the most base part of human nature and sabotages our ability as a species to transcend that nature.
Our biology evolved to make culture possible, and as culture evolves we have the possibility of transcending that base nature. Or we can choose a culture that doubles down on "selfishness as a virtue".
The whole point of culture is to enable us to evolve beyond our original core / bootstrap programming.
So yes, there is a scarcity, even if it’s only in the opportunity cost of what else can be done with the same money, like roads and fire brigades.
That's not how those changes happen. Regular people everywhere constantly experiment with lots of changes. Some stick. Then we retcon a pretty story over it to make it seem like there was some monotonically "better" trend.
It's certainly not as if humanity kept feudalism until a well-formed notion of capitalism was ready to replace it.
I am arguing that's not possible. Improvement will be incremental and evolutionary, by necessity, and will most closely resemble capitalism for a long time
Can we have an "artistic movement" that's about something else for once? Does the dogma really have to soak into every facet of life?
Jingoistic art that upholds and celebrates power is usually pretty awful.
Having said that, many pro-capitalist artists who don't make it big in their twenties seem to transition to advertising or design.
I mean seriously. Just do it. China. Great place. Leave the grubby capitalists to fight over Europe and the USA. It sucks here right anyway?
When the question is “How do we fix this global environmental issue?” (which is part of solarpunk even if not all of it), you literally cannot just move county.
Capitalism has been so successful, it's convinced people that they can have all of it's benefits with none of the pain. That we can achieve advanced technology, bountiful harvests (sans genetically engineered and ecosystem-destroying mass-produced industrial farming), and seeming social stability, without a global system of profit seeking.
I'm not a fan of capitalism. But it's pretty clear when you look at other economies and the state of the world in the past that advancements and social stability don't come cheap. In a post-capitalist society, most of those resources wouldn't exist because there'd be a lack of capital to develop them. Where they did exist, they'd be too expensive for the common person to benefit from them. And where they were applied to the whole society, they'd be ineffective due to poor funding models.
Solarpunk is a utopian dream. We all know how those turn out.
I often get these economic/political systems and ideologies all confused and mixed up.
What I will say is no matter what you have, if there are evil people at the helm it won't work out and so the way I see what system is the least worse when there are bad players up top?
Evil people don't really exist in the sense most people mean. The whole concept of an evil person is that there's something uniquely broken about them that we could avoid if we just selected the right people. But the truth is that all humans have the capability for evil, and circumstances and flexible morality conspire to lead people towards evil. Evil is more of an eventuality of humanity than some kind of bug, and people at the helm are just inherently more susceptible, like bacteria in a petri dish.
Therefore, we can't just hope to remove evil people from the helm. We have to design the helm to work in spite of evil at it. For example, we've been incredibly lucky in the USA that our leaders have been ineffective at wielding their power for truly evil means, a la Hitler. But the system today completely supports evil actions. The only check on evil in the system today is its wildly differing political/cultural makeup.
We could probably also add anti-evil properties to the system's design. The trouble is, the people at the helm are the least likely to apply those changes, because it reduces their capability for evil. It's a dilemma. And the final dilemma is, evil tends to dominate. If our system isn't capable of evil, we might not be able to fight off a more evil society. Evil might be a necessary component of a thriving political/economic ecosystem, like bacteria in nature.
Human nature can't be changed, but I sincerely hope capitalism isn't the best we've got.