[hosh]

It's my conclusion that the system has failed as well, and it comes from things that are intrinsic to the system itself. Our civilization and systems are set up for failure. When "success" and "wealth" is determined by how much resources you can extract from the land and people, and how much control over access to those resources, it incentivized centralization and control over basic necessities. This would be food, water, shelter, warmth and clothing. Every one of those require money and participation in the economy. There is no fixing it, as every single possibility moves us towards eventual collapse.

The alternative is having the basic needs (food, water, shelter, warmth, clothing) be met by being a participant in the ecology. Where these things can be provided through decentralized means as part of regenerative processes. When these things are provided by regenerative cycles, families can live off of that across many generations provided that they are wise stewards of the land. This is better than Universal Basic Income. You can't eat money, and UBI still relies on the fragile global supply chain to meet basic needs.

Furthermore, because these systems are decentralized, it does not require collective action. It does not require organizing, or fighting against the system. It does not require waiting for leaders to Do Something About It. It is more like letting the weeds grow. Pioneering into depleted soil with tenacity and resilience. It requires a mindset shift, and connecting with the local ecology and local community.

[vlunkr]

This argument really doesn't work for me because you have nothing to compare the system to.

> Our civilization and systems are set up for failure.

I mean, it's succeeded so far. There have been and will be growing pains, but so far the standard of living has increased over time. To declare failure is just speculation.

> fragile global supply chain

Fragile compared to what?

> Every one of those require money and participation in the economy.

Sorry, but this is just the reality of being a living creature. You can go fully off the grid if you want and make all those things for yourself, but most people don't do that, because, spoiler alert, it sucks. It's more work than participating in an economy.

> There is no fixing it, as every single possibility moves us towards eventual collapse.

Citation needed.

You can point out problems with economies, government, etc. all day long, but if the system you're comparing it to is pure fiction, then what's the point?

[analbumcover]

> I mean, it's succeeded so far. There have been and will be growing pains, but so far the standard of living has increased over time. To declare failure is just speculation.

Industrialized society has been reducing the long-term carrying capacity of the earth for over a century. These effects, until recently, have been masked by intensification i.e. continually increasing consumption of resources for use as inputs of various processes (e.g. agriculture) that improve the standard of living. In the absence of infinite resources this method eventually reaches hard limits. Also, in a closed system negative externalities can eventually reach levels where they negatively affect carrying capacity.

> Sorry, but this is just the reality of being a living creature. You can go fully off the grid if you want and make all those things for yourself, but most people don't do that, because, spoiler alert, it sucks. It's more work than participating in an economy.

Hunter-gatherer societies have routinely been found to be happier and involve significantly less work than industrialized societies. The accelerating Holocene extinction, ongoing for millennia now, has obviously made this harder. Climate change is making this considerably harder as biomes, generally, shift poleward at rates that negatively impact biodiversity and hence carrying capacity.

> Citation needed.

Not sure what the other poster had in mind here, but the CMIP6 models taking into account cloud dynamics (which also happen to most closely fit historic data) show climate sensitivity of 5-7C, i.e. doubling preindustrial CO2 levels will entail to global average warming of 5-7C. Do you think warning in this range unlikely to occur because you see the necessary immediate societal change as likely? Or do you think that given that degree of climate shift occurs it is unlikely to entail a societal and/or biosphere collapse?

[hosh]

You're welcomed to jump in there with the citation. I had no intention of citing anything because it was my personal opinion. And mainly because, I think the system is complex enough that no single model can definitively prove that it will always tend towards collapse.

I am going to add, what I have in mind isn't a move backwards towards hunter-gatherer, but a move forward, into a post-industrial sociey. And I think post-industrial means becoming decentralized, and in alignment with natural processes, and one where people largely follow ethical principles to live within the ecology.

Food forests are a good example. They can be created with perennials or self-seeding annuals that regenerates itself, even when harvested by the residents.

Family sizes will probably have to increase, or at least, we may be talking about pooling the resources at a neighborhood level. A nuclear family alone doesn't have the time or resources to really pull this off well, but a nuclear family is also the product of the industrial idea of "success" and "wealth".

Careful use of technologies can make this a much different experience than hunter-gatherer, or even horticulture. Among the biggest difference is the presence of the Internet -- specifically, allowing people exchange practical information and barter for things from beyond the local area. (So I am not talking about the current Internet dominated by Big Tech and aggregators, but more of what Tim Berner-Lee had in mind with permissionless architecture, and Richard Stallman's views of Free Software).

The biggest thing we'd have to give up is this notion that wealth comes from extracting resources from the ground and controlling access to them. As long as we continue to use that as a means to rank ourselves against other people, we will continue to perpetuate a mindset that takes resources beyond our fair share, without regard for the earth or for the people. That one mindset is harder to give up than the extra cars, eating out, cheap fossil fuels, indoor plumbing, because we feel that we are entitled to all of it, and we get jealous when we see others have when we don't. Wealth inequality is intrinsic to this model of wealth. It will always be there, no matter how much resources we keep extracting.

[vlunkr]

> Hunter-gatherer societies have routinely been found to be happier and involve significantly less work than industrialized societies.

So is it a coincidence that 99.9% of hunter-gatherer societies have chosen to industrialize?

> Or do you think that given that degree of climate shift occurs it is unlikely to entail a societal and/or biosphere collapse?

My guess is that society wouldn't collapse, but again, this is so speculative.

[analbumcover]

> So is it a coincidence that 99.9% of hunter-gatherer societies have chosen to industrialize?

I don't think there is much evidence of this. Would you say that hunter-gatherers in Australia, Africa, or the Americas chose to industrialize? It seems more that agrarian society was forced upon them. Likewise, industrialization isn't much of a choice once you are already in an agrarian society as failing to adapt to it will see you outcompeted and displaced or extirpated.

Your question is like asking "why do 99.9% of people choose to have sex with me if I hold a knife to their throat?" It takes some serious mental gymnastics to construe that as them wanting to have sex with you.

[int_19h]

99% haven't chosen to. It's more that those few that did, quickly wiped out or assimilated their neighbors. The ones that are left today are those who lived in regions too remote for that to happen (but it's still an ongoing process, e.g. in Brazil and Papua).

[fnovd]

> Hunter-gatherer societies have routinely been found to be happier and involve significantly less work than industrialized societies.

Yes, grasshoppers are typically happier and less hardworking than ants. There's an old fable that comes to mind...

[analbumcover]

Yeah, I didn't expect that to go over well on a distinctly techno-optimist site.

[hosh]

I have describe systems. There are demonstrator sites all around the world with people living with less dependency upon the system. It does not require 100% self-sufficiency to make a difference, and even 50% self-sufficiency with reslient and regenerative processes makes that family much more survivable.

But if you really want some case studies, the best one I have come across is this: https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/cubas-urban-farm...

After the fall of the USSR, Cuba had trade sanctions, cutting them off from the global supply chain. Locals had to come up with something to survive, and they started building a number of local, decentralized food systems. This was all grassroots, though they were eventually supported at the policy level. These were the same people who developed a sneakernet, passing contraband information from the Internet via disks and thumbdrives along the gossip channels.

So no, this system is not pure fiction. There are working examples. There are practices in place that people have been developing for 50 years now. There are people who are living that way.

More to the point, I am already implementing these things at my house and working my way towards that. I don't need to convince you. I'm not here pointing out problems with economies and governments. I have come across solutions, and they don't require large scale changes in policy for me to start taking action.

> Sorry, but this is just the reality of being a living creature. You can go fully off the grid if you want and make all those things for yourself, but most people don't do that, because, spoiler alert, it sucks. It's more work than participating in an economy.

No, it is not the reality of being a living creature. We can do better than that and we have the technologies and practices developed. There are some conveniences we have to let go, but there are a lot of the "work" is not as hard of a work as you think. It does not require a sudden change in going completely off the grid either. Small changes, over time is the way to go, one that works with the social customs and culture of the people involved.

[pdfernhout]

Thanks for your comment. To expand on your point, a healthy society has a good mix of subsistence, volunteer/gift, exchange, and planned transactions. And when those are strong, theft is reduced.

I made a video about that about a decade ago: "Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

Hoping more people understand that over time.

[centerthiz99]

Centralization? In America?

You mean how the tax authority distributes the work to Intuit and HR Block?

How housing is distributed to private owners, financiers, and realtors?

The problems we’re experiencing are due to the opposite of centralization. Arguments against it are ideological conservatism.

Post office was a model of efficiency and distribution for an org that size until the GOP saddled it with debt.

In fact MOST human need centric social services in the US historically did great work on a dime budget.

And consider how much duplication of effort we get instead. Instead of NOAA sharing accurate weather data, we get Accuweather who takes NOAA data and wraps it in story mode for the innumerate masses who still believe in literal human hierarchy dictated from top down.

Utilitarian centralization of needs can and has in recent history, worked fine.

It’s limbic systems riddled with memes of the past, that can’t express motor agency outside a restricted norm that are the problem.

The concepts themselves are just that.

Connect to the mindset of local and you’ll see central shared effort is how local thinks. It’s where those broader ideas of federal centralization grew from!

Centralization can work. What we have is a terrorist political organization fighting against the end of their ideology in the form of Republicans and Democrats who prefer fealty to the past story they know and read about all day. Not the emerging one thanks to shifts in technology and social agency.

Imagine just getting a slip of paper in the mail with taxes owed?

Or not pricing 5 different package carriers?

This uncentralized waste playing ideology whack a mole is infuriating. It’s to prevent the centralized work habits, to enable authoritarian desire to grift on our work and game our agency.

“If the public were allowed to collectively build agencies that were successful, I might not be a rich important person!”

[hosh]

Yes, centralization.

Let's start with housing. We have this idea of property laws and property rights. Before the rise of civilization, we didn't have such laws. People squatted and lived off of the land as needed. There are also blended model. The Homestead Acts allowed people to claim territory, which, after certain requirements are met, would pass into their hands as legal ownership.

Property, then, is an example where the registration of ownership is centralized to the legal mechanism of the government.

Or, let's take a tomato. Like the kind I can get from Wendy's. That tomato probably came from California or Mexico. (Or during the winter, from the hothouses in Canada). It is grown there and then shipped unripen across country. There are multiple actors involved. You can argue that, because the government is not involved, this is not centralized.

The kind of decentralization I am talking about is a tomato that I grow in my backyard. That can be watered from rainwater harvesting. That can be fed by compost from other parts of my garden. Whose seeds I can save, and I can replant. Every generation, those tomatoes become more adapted to my biome (low desert). After the initial setup, there is no money involved to intermediate between me and the tomato. It is between myself and the land, and the local ecology.

> Connect to the mindset of local and you’ll see central shared effort is how local thinks. It’s where those broader ideas of federal centralization grew from!

I have no idea what you mean by this. I don't consider shared effort at the household or neighborhood level to be that centralized. That speaks more about coordinating efforts, and cooperating together.