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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

There was an interesting story someone wrote about their time with some anarchists who traveled to New Orleans to help in the wake of the hurricane to help. The had a house and kitchen and in addition to traveling around and helping on an individual basis they planned to provide free meals to the locals.

They ran into the problem where one group of volunteers that aligned to cook together were vegan and insisted on making only vegan food (it also sounded like the dishes were very strange to the locals). This made sense for the cooks, but the locals didn't want the food. But nobody could convince this group to do anything differently.

Their system resulted in a sort of rotating hierarchy that meant every few days they couldn't provide for the locals.

Functional anarchy seems like it takes a lot of work.

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Funny. Anarachism, like every other political philosophy, is not an antidote to stupidity.

That said, it is easy to think that some other decision making mechanism (besides the rotating decision makers these guys were practicing) would always lead to better outcomes. A common consensus mechanism is decision by majority voting. Which often works, but often just picks the suboptimal solution, because it the average of the actual close to optimal solutions different subgroups are advocating for.

Every decision making mechanisms has some failures (and advantages). It's good to know what they are.

Even if just putting someone in charge of collecting some data that might say "looks like we feed more people with PPJ sandwiches than X,Y,Z, let's mix that into the rotation a bit more". Could even satisfy all parties.

Unfortunately there's an underlying "i do what I want" in a lot of political philosophies where it just doesn't work that way, even for getting what they want..

> Which often works, but often just picks the suboptimal solution, because it the average of the actual close to optimal solutions different subgroups are advocating for.

It's called a compromise, and it's fairly critical to a functioning group of humans of literally any size.

| Anarachism, like every other political philosophy, is not an antidote to stupidity.

Not necessarily picking on your comment in particular, but it does remind me of several (what I considered at the time) broken software development methodologies that I've encountered.

Someone tells me their philosophy of development, I point out what I feel is a problematic edge case, they respond with something like the above: "well you still have to use your brain".

It seems to me that everyone's real philosophy is just being sufficiently smart and the "formal" definition is really just brought out for story time.

Imagine being homeless from a hurricane yet still so privileged you can turn your nose up at a free vegan meal! Guess they didn't really need the meal after all...

I feel like this is more a commentary on the "needy" folks.

No one goes into a soup kitchen and expects to get their favorite meal, but I guess these folks were expecting the vegans to give up their beliefs and cook them hamburgers.

The people who they were helping weren't starving on the streets, I don't know what you imagine the aftermath of in New Orleans was like, but it wasn't that.

There's a strange cruelty to your comment where you're thinking of homeless people who went through a natural disaster ... so you can call them 'privileged'.

I'm not trying to be cruel, but rather point out perhaps these community meals weren't that valuable if locals just turned their noses up at the free food. When folks are really hungry, it wouldn't matter if lentils isn't their normal cuisine, they'd eat it anyway and be grateful. It would be a different story if the meals violated some religious taboo, but the way you wrote it really makes the survivors sound ungrateful.

People in this country, across class lines, are addicted to their likes/dislikes being catered to, particularly in challenging times.

The issue is deeply cultural & until it's being worked on, solidarity is key: serving people in the ways they choose to receive care.

People generally don't like having their immediate needs exploited by those seeking to proselytize an ideology. I'm not sure that's an "issue" that needs to be "worked on". If you're being altruistic and want to help people in need, the help you're offering is about them, not you -- if you make it about you, why would you be surprised when people doubt your intentions?

Imagine if the local library were destroyed, and a group came forward to organize book donations, but due to the religious beliefs of the people running the book drive, they only were willing to collect evangelical literature, and refused everything else. Would the locals in that scenario be wrong to avoid them?

Precisely what I meant when I wrote "solidarity is key: serving people in the ways they choose to receive care"

At a men's shelter I have seen the guys trash and refuse the carrots because they were purple. I think on some level a dignity thing kicks in. Like I will take the charity but I'm not going to let you treat me like a lesser person because of it. I tried explaining that the purple carrots were actually fancier but they weren't having it.

I think folks in desperate situations .... could use the gift of allowing them some dignity / choices. If you're in a bad spot your choices are so limited.

Don't want to go too far down the religious hole considering where some folks have taken religion, but the whole story of Jesus washing people's feet wasn't just about his own humility / setting an example. I think it was also about treating others with some respect.

Or they could have just gotten over themselves and served them what they wanted.

Things breaking down over veganism sounds like the typical anarchist self-own.

I think it's quite likely that the locals legitimately were just not that desperate for food in this specific neck of the woods, which would simply mean that, unfortunately, well-intentioned efforts to help with that were misallocated.

But if they really were short of food: I'll side with smug vegans over choosing beggars.

If you're cooking for other people, shouldn't it be the kind of food they want to eat? Otherwise, who are you cooking for, your principles?

Well... if someone requested I cook them BSE-infected meat when there's perfectly good non-infected meat to have, I think (hope!) most people would offer to cook the non-infected meat instead, even if it's not "the kind of food they wanted to eat". Why? Because it's ridiculous to demand BSE-infected meat, at least to someone who knows of the potential health effects.

Some people draw that line elsewhere. I could picture someone else saying "it's ridiculous to demand meat, at least to someone who knows of the environmental and financial consequences, when perfectly good food exists that does not have the same consequences." That's putting the line elsewhere, but it's just the same line.

It's not about cooking for one's principles, it's about respecting them while offering to cook for someone else.

I'd argue that Overton's Window has a place in the context for where one tries to place that line.

FDA approval of food is far more respected in our culture than Vegan approval of food is at the current time, and food means a lot more to a dining experience than just filling up a nutritional fuel tank.

In a hurricane you are eating so you don't starve. While there are reasonable limits to what you can serve before you should stop serving anything at all, most vegan food is far from unreasonable.

In emergency situation you don’t always have the time to gather people preferences and do the shopping. Often the vegan diet match the most restrictions and is super cheap if cooked with raw ingredients like lentils. I can’t help thinking to the "eat together" movement that do one step further and integrate Jainism : https://www.dietethics.eu/en/home.php

>I guess these folks were expecting the vegans to give up their beliefs and cook them hamburgers

They expected food that looks like a food and does not come across as disgusting to them. They did not expected hamburgers, they expected simple cheap foods that wont stress them out further.

They have choosen to go more hungry for that day.

if you've worked at soup kitchen, which your comment indicates you have not, you would know that serving people what they want to eat is the dignified way to give people food.

It was thirty years ago. I wasn't the one choosing what to cook. I just poured out bowls of soup. I didn't realize these days soup kitchens take orders! We surely do have a remarkable abundance of food in this country that even those without can choose what they want to be given from charity.

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