You are right, but to be fair most things that are petroleum based are made with it because of economic reasons. Many things don’t need to be it’s just cheaper that they are. That’s because of a combination of factors. If tomorrow every oil field in the world disappeared we would see alternatives for almost everything almost instantly because there would be huge financial incentive for it and many of those things already exist, they just have to compete with a very established and subsidized raw material

Debian is the GOAT

What’s wrong with smaller cities, with more evenly distributed population across countries, with density lowering as you move from the center? Reduces city impact, still promotes dense urbanization and reduces transportation costs if there is something being produces around the city. Also left to nature is a bit impossible in today’s world and promotes detachment from feeling like part of nature for most people. Most of Europe and north America is riddled with invasive species or just have been devastated by agriculture or deforestation in the last centuries and if managed correctly which can mean leave it alone humans can have a positive impact on the world. If you could create forests in the desert with plants from around it, wouldn’t that be positive?

How do those people feed themselves? How do they move around? How far away is the average person’s house from the workplace, or the market, or the hospital? In the end is the average energy consumption per person smaller? The existence of mega cities requires a lot of land elsewhere to sustain those people with the added transportation costs. There is not much to gain from gathering too many humans in one place for the sake of it.

That would be better true but I argue that even if you compare companies to cities the same problem occurs with cities, mega or very big cities are not sustainable or easier to manage, they just occur naturally.

I don’t think even if a company is worker owned or democratically controlled may still choose to go against the customer or competition with monopolistic practices so I’m not sure it’s possible to have mega corps be very positive in any way to society.

You are right it’s kind of exactly what I was looking for, I will look further into that, thank you! As for XR I’ll push forward trying to build connections and meeting like minded individuals who might even be interested in adjacent stuff like what you mentioned.

I’m just afraid that it’s all destruction and PR stunts. I believe in demonstrations, up to a certain point. I just feel like they accomplish too little when they are generic. I read somewhere that XR UK was very poorly seen by general population which is a shame because a few years ago they weren’t (at least so much).

I’m afraid that the regular person is going over the hill of being concerned with the planet and just gets annoyed by road blocks and demonstrations fronted by young people to pretend throw paint at art and just give up. Because those people that are affected feel like there is little they can do about the big parts of it. I know the argument of union strikes civil rights protests but I feel like the public opinion is not going in the right direction.

In the end I feel that if there is going to be any hope of moving the needle of the big issues regular people need feel included and like it’s their cause too.

Thank you, you made some pretty goods point which I’ll consider. Specially the building connections part!

I’m actually in the the part of XR in my region most likely to do stuff like that but since XR in my country has very few people doesn’t look like I’m going to divert many to do different things but I see what you mean. I’m having an in person event soon so I may try to network in that direction.

I used to think like that. As times passes I’m increasingly starting to agree with what you are saying. Sadly I do still think that is a matter of choice. There are poorly valued college educations and not all off them are philosophy and literature. I don’t see anything wrong with them existing like you said, they teach people critical thinking and improve people overall. But like you said the lie that education exists to give us jobs exists and there are people going to college to learn not very lucrative things and expecting to make a living out them and coming out with dept and can’t find an occupation that provides for them. Honestly I think the only way to go around that problem is to make University universal and free. That way you can always go back for something more lucrative or later in life to learn something that makes you grow.

Very cool

Nice and informed comment. Completely agree, specially with the part about software being the domain most advanced in terms of post capitalistic post scarcity.

Interesting… what made you think The dispossessed has solarpunk elements? Obviously anarchist but I feel like it doesn’t have much focus on balance with the natural world, just in how the inhabitants of Anarres feel like the people on Urras have an actual planet and treat it like shit while they have a deserted planet and try as hard as they can to be In balance with it.

Oh that makes sense. The sad thing is that I feel like most people would find signal less cluttered than Whatsapp

I’m with you on that. I feel like open source is the best possible way to security audit and test issues. As any issue will be out there to see, most proprietary code ends ups being years of duct tape which wouldn’t fly if a large community of different backgrounds took a look at the code

Damn you know some cultured people. I can’t get anyone to leave Whatsapp for it. Even when I mention how ugly it is and how shady it is for it to be owned by Facebook

Make a T-shirt with that

Thank you for that, I wasn’t aware that was a thing! I’ll bookmark that to read later as it seems a bit long! I didn’t even know melting currencies were a thing

If there was ever a good reason for pre sales I think that’s that. The problem I see with start up hubs college based is that they are limited in terms of help and mostly lead to companies falling into VCs hands. At least in my country. I think the most “anarchist” way of doing it may be just crowdsourcing mostly because it’s the potential clients that actually fund the venture. I think it’s probably a pain mostly because it turns into a marketing campaign but at least the funding is honest. No VCs, no angel investment, no quarterly projections. A company could actually aim to be sustainable instead of infinite growth based.

Yes but it’s tough to imagine a path to that.

Fair enough. Degrowth from capitalism to market economy is more of an obtainable goal