Flippanarchy
Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.
This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.
Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Rules
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If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text
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If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.
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Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
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Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.
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No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.
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This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.
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No shaming people for being anti-electoralism. This should be obvious from the above point but apparently we need to make it obvious to the turbolibs who can't control themselves. You have the rest of lemmy to moralize.
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
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Theres a steep irony in someone doing government controlled work idealizing a system where the work they do would likely not exist. Who exactly would be mandating/funding the existence, operation, or regular testing of a sewage plant in an anarchist society?
Society is poorly designed in the general sense, sure. It could be vastly improved and people could have more liberty wrt a lot of things. But left to their own devices people on average would not choose to mandate water treatment. Even if they somehow did, providing no central system of oversight for making sure that it happens would all but guarantee it doesnt get accomplished.
Its ridiculous how many people take critical aspects of society for granted and assume they would continue to exist in a world where everyone does whatever the fuck they want without any central planning or control. In many places around the world people already dont have access to fresh/clean water for this exact reason…
Look at the libertarian experiments that have all failed spectacularly, like Grafton, NH. Mfs couldnt even agree to not feed the bears or dispose of their trash appropriately. And that doesnt require some massive infrastructure project to accomplish. The greater good often necessitates protecting people at large from their own stupidity, otherwise your liberties are quickly diminished by your neighbor’s negligence
Ok, so you have people willing to work at the wastewater treatment plant. What happens when the Reverse Osmosis pump gives out? Costs $500,000 to replace. Whose going to pay for that? Wait, sorry I forgot we're in an anarchist society so supposedly no money (if there is money, add on a whole other layer of complexity to the following questions).
So who's going to build the pump? People willing to work at the pump factory? Ok, where do they get the materials to build it? I'm assuming none of this is local because logistically that's practically impossible, so who delivers the materials to them? The pump factory is unlikely to be next door to the wastewater treatment plant, so how is the pump delivered? Who is the specialist that installs the pump? Who makes sure it's done safely and correctly? Are there consequences if it's done in a way that doesn't result in clean water?
That's the thing, anarchism seems great whenever everything is working and everything is already in place. The moment something big breaks, anarchism just doesn't provide enough resources to get it fixed. We would need a post-scarcity society before we could move to something like that.
Would you (or any other anarchist reading this) ever want to do an AMA? I have questions, but I imagine that asking them here would feel like dog-piling and I don't want to do that to you. I'm just curious and want to learn more. The last time I heard people take anarchism seriously, school teachers were quick to shut it down.
I have my own concerns and reservations, but I don't truly know how much of it exists from being stuck in an authoritarian society, and I simply haven't heard the solutions yet because of it. I've always been a skeptic, and I'm always looking for a new way to think about things, even things I don't necessarily agree with. I think a question-and-answer session could be quite enlightening.
I might not be able to go outside this authoritarian box and explore for myself, but an AMA would at least allow me (and others like me) to look out a window.
Why do you think sewage treatment plants exist in the first place? I’ll give you a hint, its not because people came together altruistically to build them (or even regulate that they need to exist).
The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 was signed because people, left to their own devices, self-destructively pollute their water supplies. That law mandated people couldnt dump shit in the water. It also was passed because state laws weren’t effective at stopping people from polluting the water
It wasnt enough, so there was the Water Pollution Control Act of 1948. And then the Water Quality Act of 1965. And then the Clean Water Act of 1972, which provided funding to create sewage treatment plants, and mandated that all wastewater be treated to a certain standard. And even that wasnt enough, which is why we later invented the entire EPA, an entity dedicated largely to that one issue (among similar things).
None of that would have occurred without centralized authority, nor would have been necessary if a plurality of people were not inherently self destructive when left to their own devices. Anarchism is opposed to any central authority. Thereby, under the most basic logic, sewage treatment plants would be virtually guaranteed not to exist in an anarchical non-society society.
Giving people at large the benefit of the doubt about an issue they have repeatedly shown to fuck up for centuries is silly. And sewage treatment plants require centralization to be built and maintained.
When will it be enough?
How do those engineers get their education? Do they find a mentor engineer? So for each engineering student you need an already engineer teacher?
Or would there perhaps be a school of engineering with a hierarchy to organize the engineering lectures so there could be more students per teacher?
But there's not only engineering. Perhaps we might also need medical schools, art schools, sewage maintaining schools. Maybe those schools might want to interact with eachother in order to provide consistent curriculums and aid students if they want to switch from one school to another. Perhaps we need a department of education to coordinate all this schools.
Maybe, like we arrived at the department of education, we might want departments for other matters. Look! A government!
Everyone in Lemmy is American, everyone knows that
I think that you should read about anarchism because you're so confused that it's difficult to explain where.
councils, working groups, community bodies, assemblies etc are all entirely compatible with anarchy.
It is not opposition to collectivism, indeed anarchism is (generally) deeply collectivist.
You have a very simplistic view of what an anarchist society could look like and it's rooted in the assumption that the only possible alternative to central planning is no planning. It's absolutely possible for people to organize access to clean water in a decentralized manner and I know this because it has been done repeatedly all over the world and throughout human history. In the places you're thinking of that do not have access to clean water it is often not the result of a lack of central planning, but directly caused by it, such as when a multinational corporation claims a community's water supply as its private property and restricts access.
Precisely. The original post shows there could still be labor willing to do the work, but it does does not address how that work would be funded. Even if the labor was free there are resources required to build and maintain that plant that are not free. Where do those resources come from?
Wait till you hear about the anarchist that loves going into the mines with toxic gases and all to get the resources for the sewage maintainer guy.
Let's see; keep things running by going into a mine and digging out something that is needed with the proper safety gear, or going into a mine and digging out something with only the safety gear your boss couldn't convince the the government to not require.
Such hard choices...
If it's necessary, someone will do it. If that can't be counted on, we're kinda fucked.
Will you? Because I know I won't
If all that stands between me and the beginning of a society with no oppression is strapping some gear on and doing some manual labor, then fuck it gimme a pickaxe I'm going down there.
Am I suited for it? Absolutely the fuck not, but I'm willing, and I'm sure many others are as well, especially if they know that whatever happens, their safety and health comes before profit, and they'll always come back to a good place. I could certainly stand working until things begin to hurt if I knew every bit I dug up would do good.
Yeah that's cool. You and sewage guy will make a great duo. But the 5 dudes over there organized themselves, acquired a weapon and killed the other guy. They're waiting for you to come out of the mine with all those resources and you don't even know it.
Is that freedom from oppression?
Anarchism is the absence of hierarchy, not organization. The means of the people to use force against violent attempts at theft for personal gain are neither eliminated nor lessened.
Wait, you imagine that there must be a guy forced into dangerous situations against their will and that this society is better because it forces that guy to exist?
If you consider the Zapatista's anarchist, they are a federation of autonomous municipalities that do stuff like this (along with hospitals, schools, etc).