It’s entirely possible to have a world with guaranteed housing for everyone, solar and wind powered energy, fast and free public transit, high quality education and healthcare for all, well-funded libraries, healthier food, and a shorter work week. Those things are achievable now. Today.
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@benlockwood [citation needed]
It may be technically achievable, but that is not at all the same thing as being socially doable.
@adamgreenfield @benlockwood I just spotted the problem
@adamgreenfield
from a structural perspective (coming from the [citation needed] comment), the original post is questionable.
What does it mean for something to be technically achievable but not doable socially? Do we treat it as not-possible (thus unworthy of our time and thought) or does it just change the problem space from mechanical+economical to social?
@CynAq @benlockwood A hundred percent the latter! But people have *interests*, which they sometimes act in furtherance of, and can sometimes be induced to act against. (Sometimes they have *multiple* interests, which are in tension with or even negate one another!)
They form unstable coalitions. They take their eye off the ball. They delegate or outsource their own prerogatives of oversight. They have obligations that prevent them from fulfilling their other responsibilities, to themselves or one another. They get tired. They get sick. They burn out.
And the whole time, the *whole* time, someone with opposing interests is acting against them, for legitimate reasons, or illegitimate reasons, or for no reason at all.
This is it. These are the rules of the game. And I just cannot, can not, see how it helps to pretend otherwise.
Anyway, let me leave it there. I’ve said my piece.
@adamgreenfield @benlockwood Adam, no one will ever need someone to say, "It's more complicated than that." Everyone understands that already.
What we do need are people saying that solutions are possible, and also more possible than we'd think.
@AlSweigart Obviously some people *do* need just that, though – I seem to recall this one guy thinking he and a small team of bros could just sweep in and “optimize” the government of a large nation-state in a few weeks?
@AlSweigart Ah, also: I’m afraid I profoundly disagree as to the wisdom of casting any of the circumstances we contend with as “problems” that admit to “solutions.” That’s just not how our world works.
@adamgreenfield @benlockwood and -who- keeps it from being socially doable?
Environmentalists (a huge majority of people worldwide want stronger climate leg.)? Anti-cap leftists of various stripes? Feminists? Anti racists? or folks who support them?
Or is it more folks still -psychologically manipulated- by the lies told by dominance based warmongers, crapitalists, and bigots?
Like it or not, it’s oligarchs and emotionally stunted people who still believe the b.s. status quo apologists
I’d love for this to be true, so here are some sources that claim the same (more/less 😉 )
https://libcom.org/article/power-neighbourhood-and-commons-pm
&
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society
&
“Pluriversal topologies” https://steps-centre.org/blog/degrowth-and-the-pluriverse-continued-coloniality-or-intercultural-revolution/
& more here :
https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/ripe-community-resilience-economy-of-care/
(Including 10 alternative economy books by women )
I’d love for this to be true, so here are some sources that claim the same (more/less 😉 )
https://libcom.org/article/power-neighbourhood-and-commons-pm
&
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society
&
“Pluriversal topologies” https://steps-centre.org/blog/degrowth-and-the-pluriverse-continued-coloniality-or-intercultural-revolution/
& more here :
https://labs.ripe.net/author/becha/ripe-community-resilience-economy-of-care/
(Including 10 alternative economy books by women )
@becha @benlockwood Yeah, but, dig: we’re constrained to work within the possibility space that’s available to us.
When in the history of humanity have resources ever been apportioned with universal equity? What attraction basins within the space of possibility offer us examples of any such condition even arising momentarily, let alone being sustained?
@adamgreenfield @becha @benlockwood Women will have to do an international General Strike.
No work. No housework. No care work of children or elderly parents. No "nookie".
The patriarchy and its capitalism would collapse within two days.
@adamgreenfield @becha @benlockwood
Plenty of examples rarely talked about in pre-history
Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything?wprov=sfla1
@adamgreenfield @benlockwood maybe not in history , but definitely in prehistory …
Referencing Daniel Quinn & many other critics of “civilization”
@benlockwood
Theoretically