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Comment by daemonologist | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised to hear of the "aspects [...] which sacrifice individuation and individual liberties" - my experience is that the solarpunk aesthetic is often combined with anarchic political views and if anything is too individualistic for my taste. Could you elaborate a little bit on what you're referring to?

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From what I can tell, some intellectual circles would like solarpunk to be “Communism with solar panels”, which I find uninspiring. I also find that some thinkers in this movement have misguided notions on social justice (like open border policies), which I worry will result in the same cultural pushback we’re currently observing. I think political extremism is the root cause for why any futurist vision turns dystopian.

Are they suggesting authoritarian communism or some sort of sci-fi anarchist communism? (which would be pretty pro-individual-liberty).

Open borders seem pretty pro-liberty as well. What’s more authoritarian than a government telling you there’s a magic invisible line on the ground and if you cross it, that’s crime?

Solarpunk is firmly rooted in the anti-authoritarian camp. It's fundamentally inspired by Murray Bookchin's books on ecological anarchism.

It's not magic and it's not invisible. And if it's a government for the people, then it's the people that are being authoritarian. Maybe a high-liberties society can only prosper if it protects itself from the outside.

The birds don't seem much to care about our magic invisible lines...

Sorry, bud, it's just monkey stuff.

Are you saying that borders shouldn’t exist because they’re man made?

Borders are a thing, and birds do care when someone invades their nest.

What is not natural is nations.

Nations are a social phenomenon and only sometimes line up with borders. States are what define borders (in fact it's part of the definition of a state).

Which is funny because China is the king of solar panels including both production and deployment, specifically in rural areas [1]. I'm very interested the "village level aggregation" which sounds super communal and solarpunk, TBH.

The big difference between China and the west seems to be that in the west, we need to pay a tax to our wealthy by their ownership stake in major companies and private capital that keep enshittifying everything.

[1] https://www.aiib.org/en/news-events/media-center/blog/2024/H...

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