I agree and I’m aware it has negative connotations – it is inseparable from modern methods of administering power. Without records, how can you demonstrate you’re distributing resources equitably? I recognize that my role as admin is basically an anarchist bureaucrat – approving applications, responding to reports, writing reports on progress for the community each month; it’s done digitally now, but it’s the stuff that would otherwise be the paperwork for which bureaucracy was made famous.

Bureaucracy was invented in France during the reign of kings, in hopes that it might quell the frequent revolutionary uprisings. It used to be that the only way you could get a license to do anything was through an audience with the king, or access via one of his courtiers – a role similar to modern lobbyists. This exclusivity of access meant the richest and most well connected were granted corporate charters, business licenses, or land titles, creating extremely stark class division between the bourgeoisie and even the petit bourgeoisie.

The role of bureaucracy (named after the drawers where they kept the mountains of paper this activity generated) was to ‘democratize’ distribution of licensing and grants to everyone based on meeting the same requirements and paying the same fees. It was popular enough to get grafted into the organs of the new republic once one of the uprisings hit the mark.

It was ‘democratic’ in the same sense that electoral ‘democracy’ is democratic - that is, it is closer to the ideal of freedom than autocratic rule. But citizens are still vulnerable to the whims of tyrannical bureaucrats. Even at the local level and at small scale, a bureaucrat can do a lot of damage if there isn’t popular power prepared to resist him.

For example in Chennai, the Zero Rupee was invented to build popular power against a culture of compulsive bribery that is endemic to all levels of the state bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is a burden that’s accepted because the alternative is clearly worse, like the French kings of old. But all bureaucracies are not the same, and merely making them smaller or ‘distributed’ does not solve the problems that can arise when they are not open to public challenge.

The primary purpose of distribution centers is to serve capital, and there are plenty of private libraries. In the case of a library or dispensary, a bureaucracy can definitely increase the equanimity of the distribution of wealth in a society, but that relies on both the bureaucrats and the public they are supposed to serve to be willing to fight for that ideal.

I think wider discussion of micro-bureaucracies would be valuable. During the November meta, a member requested some kind of vote on our descision to defederate nazi instances, which I think was adequately discussed and concluded. It stood out to me that the member objected to my description of voting in this manner as ‘bureaucratic’ – a word I felt I was using descriptively, but was interpreted as pejorative. I think it’s interesting that different people have different definitions of bureaucracy.

What is bureaucracy?

I think you’re categorizing cycling as cardio because that’s what happens on a stationary bike at the gym. When you’re riding a bike in the wild, you frequently come to a complete stop and then have to bring it up to speed again. Even at a high gearing ratio, this is not a slow-twitch muscle activity. With increased load like additional cargo, the resistance is even more significant.

I’m glad you said something. I don’t mind so much when pieces that are critical of solarpunk or a corruption of the aesthetic are occasionally posted here because it gives the community an opportunity to define itself against those representations. I tend to skip over them myself though. I think introspection and criticism are core to the Solarpunk ideal, and I’m glad this essay was a fresh carafe of that tea.

Monoculture is a terrible idea, even in a robotic vertical farm with sterilization. Decentralization is key, but brexit tyrants like Dyson will never share their automation technology or research with the public. Open source sharing is the only way to bring the price down to the point it can be decentralized.

Also, his vertical farm would not be profitable without his biodigesting power plant that gets free high-quality fuel from his non-vertical farm empire.

I was looking at the vfairs.com site, where they host content from 2024 and 2023. I guess they started using their own domain exclusively. I expected them to update the vfairs site for 2025.

I think it’s not immediately obvious what Donut Economics is about. It is a category of degrowth, and !degrowth is a fairly active community. Posting about DE there will help spread the word.

It’s strange they haven’t announced for 2025. Did they lose their funding?

@marcin_ose

Any tips for how to collect trailers?

No hills, also important :)

ARG has a mastodon account. Mastodon is easily convertible into an RSS feed, but that doesn’t give you what you want as an audio-only version. Lemmy and Mastodon share activitypub messages, so you can ask ARG yourself if you ping their feed.

Is there an audio only version (preferably with RSS feed)?

@ARG@kolektiva.social

It’s nice to see someone publicly admit their mistakes, criticize the inherent autocracy in building new utopian cities, and move away from corporate idealism toward participatory politics.

Degrowth is reducing production, not reducing productivity. Raising prices for consumers is a feature of degrowth when external costs of the goods have been included in the shelf price - the price remains the same but the cost is no longer borne by the formerly politically disenfranchised. Trump is intentionally trying to disenfranchise more people - tariffs are effectively a sales tax, which are one of the most regressive forms of taxation.

Trump isn’t succeeding at ecological socialism, he’s failing at extractive capitalism.

I hope this isn’t the main takeaway from this essay - the essayist confesses his own experience has repudiated this chart.

It assumes individual people can, in spite of heavy propaganda and social pressure, individually can accurately evaluate an opaque hierarchical system as changeable and/or ‘totalizing.’ He viewed Trump as proof that the neoliberal system is not totalizing, that system change is possible.

Surprise! He was wrong.

That sounds like a really nice neighborhood to live in.

Congratulations!

It’s called Tractorbeam Earth because it’s a quarterly publication run as a sweepstakes by Tractor Beverages, Inc.

Tractor Beverages is a corporation in Coeur d’Alene, ID that sells canned beverages through Amazon and Walmart, correct?

It sounds like extremely toxic organic chemistry. I imagine the waste from the reactions has special disposal requirements. Do you think the powder is hazardous as well?

I’m not a chemist, but from what I can tell it’s created using cesium salt as a precursor or catalyst. This doesn’t sound like something punks can safely mix in a bathtub.