[brunorsini]

Adam Curtis made a fantastic documentary on the darker side of our relationship with technology. I don't agree with all of his points, but it's still a great watch.

From Wikipedia: Curtis argues that computers have failed to liberate humanity, and instead have "distorted and simplified our view of the world around us".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...

[djtango]

My main takeaway from that series was the anecdotes about the communes living in geodesic domes who operated under a hierarchy-less system but all of them allegedly imploded due to a common mechanism:

In a community that has no explicit rules, implicit rules emerge. Power accumulates quietly to the people who know the rules and can bend them often. In those situations the powerless are even more vulnerable to the powerful because of the lack of an explicit power structure with rules that would usually require checks and balances in order for people to opt into the system.

[kreyenborgi]

> In a community that has no explicit rules, implicit rules emerge

This is The Tyranny of Structurelessness: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

[BigFnTelly]

this was a great read, thanks

[bothsidesnow]

Obligatory response:

The Tyranny of Tyranny by Cathy levine

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/cathy-levine-the-tyr...

[mjburgess]

And how often do we hear a demand to 'direct' democracy, egalitarianism, the end of policing, and so on.. from those with a-little-to-much but clearly not-enough, power?

There's rarely anything more in people's political prescriptions other than, "I do not have enough power, and I want more" -- and there's nothing inherently wrong with this demand. Only that when it is disguised by the false promise of power for everyone, it means power for almost no one.

[soco]

Now now, let's not forget that there are already direct democracies at work in the world ahemtzerland and the general inland consensus is that they work.

[dbspin]

Yes - and there are hundreds of thousands of small groups applying principles of direct democracy in practice, from democratic schools to consensus based art centres.

People have been collectively organising movements and spaces for many decades now, and the processes are pretty well worked out. Comparing utopian dropouts in the 60's running farms on vibes to dedicated activists establishing and maintaining consensus based social contracts is disingenuous. There's plenty to be criticised in terms of the practical aspects of these systems - from implementation to scalability, and good luck to the folks doing the hard work of improving them. But dismissing them out of hand is an argument from ignorance.

[Nevermark]

> small groups applying principles of direct democracy

Small groups. That is the problem. It can work but doesn't scale.

As the number of people go up, the need and benefits of more complex coordination go up. People's interactions, dependencies, needs, understandings and problems multiply in quantity, complexity and diversity.

People O(n). Decisions O(n^2).

Direct coordination becomes too costly in time and effort. And people get asked to make decisions in areas where they have no skin in the game, so put little care into their decisions, or seek selfish benefits opportunistically. Things get difficult and ugly.

The default is a descent into anarchy, which gets counter weighted by emergent initiatives that centralize decision making around people who care, have expertise, are good at taking power, etc. Acknowledged or not, "direct", as the universal principle of decision making, no longer works.

Better to see it coming and as directly and openly as possible, prescribe how indirect governance is to be done. As openly and accountably as possible.

Organizations and societies, like computer memory and and processing cores in server centers, need to bifurcate and modularize into different levels, types and policies, to remain efficient and reliable at scale.

[soco]

Once again for the last row: Switzerland. 9 millions inhabitants, 5.5 millions with voting rights, 0 anarchy. Is that still not big enough for the no true scotsman?

[dbspin]

I think this is a tremendously important discussion to have, perhaps the most important one we can have right now. One point I'll make not to counter what you've written above, but to reframe it slightly - is that many of the decisions we make about what needs to scale are cultural (and only narrowly rational).

We've somewhat arbitrarily settled on nation state scale geographic / population scales for governance which (a few less than democratic mega-nations aside), are pretty similar in size and complexity. This is a local maxima, rather than an inevitability. The ideal balance between federalised aspects of governance - which do need to be abstracted to some extent isn't obvious. It's reasonably likely that much smaller micro-states within stronger federalised economies could be more effective. That workplace level democracy can and does increase productivity. That in fact states where the level of consensus decision making is the business, the cooperative and the housing complex, could be more cohesive, less fractious and more stable. Could be more effective if we judge efficacy as best meeting the wellbeing needs of their population.

I'd take issue with the idea that centralisation of decision making is necessitated by having multiple layers of governance. I'd argue a canton style system of carrying forward the decisions and decision making authority of lower houses can also work. Where representation is absolutely essential, sortation can be used to prevent the creation of a distinct political class that is inevitably suborned by capital.

In terms of skin in the game - essentially all forms of consensus (which it's important to point out is radically different in theory and practice from direct democratic voting), require participation as the price of involvement. There is no voting without engagement, in fact in most consensus systems there is no voting at all. Participants become politically sophisticated through their involvement, and their level of involvement inevitably dictates their level of influence. For this to work, groups have to structure themselves such that a lot of the groups effort is spent engaged in decision making. Many of the specifics of the various consensus approaches push proponents of decisions into being responsible for the implementation of those decisions. There's no pretence that people don't affiliate, don't form minimal group paradigm loyalties, aren't selfish, or don't manipulate one another - an understanding of these processes is built into such systems. In fact they what leads to the cohesion that allows consensus to function.

But my key insight here is that many of ills of modern society arise from the idea that things should in fact 'scale'. Climate change and ecocide, the homogenisation of culture, the commodification of everyday life, the alienation that leads to polarisation and sensitisation and ultimately political extremism. All of it's rooted in an appeal to competing in a global scale market economy where goods and services move freely and people do not. Where all nations must grow or stagnate, where legal systems and free trade must be imposed at the barrel of a gun in order to allow the extractive system to continue to expand. This is one possible way for the world to work, in no means inevitable. Societies have existed with radically different affordances and compromises historically.

[eru]

Switzerland works because it's Switzerland, and despite the direct democracy.

Day to day their government is run via elected representatives, just like almost anywhere else.

[marxisttemp]

All the goals you named are about literally removing tyranny and adding structured egalitarianism. Curious that you only mention leftist policy issues when rightoids are the ones whose entire ideology is about the will to power

[mionhe]

Yes, I suppose you can summarize their positions as the right is in favor of self-determination, whereas the left appears to prefer to let others determine their fate.

Looking at it that way, though, I find myself concerned with the people who are setting themselves up as the arbiters of my fate. Regardless of party affiliations, they don't seem to think very highly of me or care about my personal happiness.

Seeing that is the case, I'd rather they stay out of the business of pursuing my happiness and instead support my freedom to pursue happiness. I can be responsible for my own happiness.

[wredcoll]

> Yes, I suppose you can summarize their positions as the right is in favor of self-determination, whereas the left appears to prefer to let others determine their fate.

I find this meme, in the original sense, rather odd. Speaking as an american, over the last 40 years the right wing of our political institutions have been extremely hierarchical and authoritarian. Right wing ideologies are almost entirely based on which group should obey which other group and why.

The term left-wing has gotten a little vague recently, but I think you could say that the common premise of most of their political theory is that there's already/always going to be a powerful government that everyone has to obey so we might as well make that government the best it can possibly be for as many people as possible.

(I have a personal theory that political power, much like energy, can never actually be destroyed, merely moved.)

[BigFnTelly]

> (I have a personal theory that political power, much like energy, can never actually be destroyed, merely moved.)

This journal article discusses power in two forms:

- 'Power to' (freedom, from others): a variable-sum game

- 'Power over' (others, ultimately denying freedoms): a zero-sum game

I'm no scientist and this is just from the abstract: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00323187.2020.1...

[marcosdumay]

If you speak for the US, your political system has only 2 powerful entities, one on the far Right, flirting with corporation capture, and the other on the far Right going into fanatical Fascism.

[pixl97]

>I suppose you can summarize their positions as the right is in favor of self-determination, whereas the left appears to prefer to let others determine their fate.

I mean, no I really don't summarize it that way at all.

>Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect

Is a better, but much more politically charged saying.

Moreso, self determination is more of a libertarian thing rather than right directly.

[eru]

Alas, that 'documentary' is long on insinuation and short on facts. As is typical of that auteur.

[dijksterhuis]

yeah, but the soundtrack is brilliant. so…

/s

[eru]

Oh, when viewed as works of art, they are quite interesting.

[brunorsini]

I agree. Curtis consistently makes films that are a lot more about opinion and interpretation than anything else. He is not bad with facts, but he does have a tendency to present the viewer with an avalanche of data points... only to later express what is basically his opinion, often not even directly linked to the facts that have just been presented.

With that in mind, I still find his opinions interesting, original and provocative. Also, his films have some of the coolest imagery ever — if I recall correctly he used to work at the BBC, dealing with their archives.