[jl6]

When I don’t put salt in my coffee, it’s not because I’m uncurious about what salt is, and nor does it mean I don’t appreciate salt in other contexts. But if a coffee shop only sells salted coffee, the burden is definitely on them to understand why they have so few customers. (And for my part I’ve seen enough shops that claim to be coffee shops but are actually salt shops).

[beepbooptheory]

Sure, but you're the one saying that you've actually never tasted salt either way, that salt is "underdefined," so I guess I don't know why the coffee shop should care or how they could even anticipate what you project salt to be.

And I gotta say, its just so telling that we jump here so naturally to a metaphor of an enterprising business and its customers. Like could there be anything that exists in the world where you are not a patron whose tastes must be catered to? Not everything you have a strong opinion on needs to be socketed into the genre of Google review.

[wfurney]

Exactly, their introduction seems broadly applicable:

> Whether you are a tech specialist, someone who uses a computer for daily tasks, or deals with technology only occasion, there are steps that you or the group you are involved in can take to reduce the environmental and socio-economic impact of your digital activities.

Sounds great to me, but then they have these:

> To mitigate this situation, this principle calls us to step outside the capitalist model of perpetual consumption and growth.

> The history of computing is deeply intertwined with capitalism and militarism. From playing a role in warfare and geopolitical power struggles to driving the automation of labor, computing has significantly contributed to the increased use of resources and fossil energy. The latest example of this trend is the construction of hyperscale data centers for running generative AI. Despite the promise of increased efficiency, the Jevons Paradox applies: higher efficiency tends to lead to greater resource use. Efficiency is often presented as a technical solution to a political decisions about how and why we use computing —without questioning the extractive business model.

The authors here (fairly or not) signal their in/out group preference. And the implication is that "those not willing or unable to step outside the capitalist model are not able to sufficiently apply the principle to affect change in the way we are wanting."

They're smuggling in an omission of technologists who recognize the benefits of a capitalist system compared to a collectivist one. It reads like they are trying to be careful, but still end up significantly limiting their potential audience.

People with strong capitalist beliefs may be willing to volunteer their time at a repair cafe or in taking other action to incrementally move their communities in the direction they're advocating for. But it seems to me like they would not even want those people to be a part of their movement. If I recognize the historical injustices that marginalized groups have faced but I still believe that a capitalist system is generally preferable to a collectivist one, would I be supported by this movement? I think that I doubt it.

EDIT: I missed on this on their homepage:

> With that said, permacomputing is an anti-capitalist political project. It is driven by several strands of anarchism, decoloniality, intersectional feminism, post-marxism, degrowth, ecologism.

> Permacomputing is also a utopian ideal...

Utopian? No thanks. I expected this to be a technological movement first with politics snuck in, but it sounds like it is the opposite.

[iamnothere]

Much of fringe politics is a social club/hobby. You can really see this in action when fringe groups stumble upon an opportunity to grow support among the mainstream, but then they choose to squander it on counter-signaling to drive away people who aren’t perfectly aligned.

The “Just Stop Oil” people are a great example of this. There’s a lot of headwind behind green energy and moving away from oil, but the activists suck all that air out of the room with destructive stunts and focus the story on themselves.

[bccdee]

The way people talk about Just Stop Oil is interesting. People often say, "Just Stop Oil is doing activism wrong," but I never hear anyone talk about orgs that "do activism right" because the public never talks about them at all.

Like them or not, Just Stop Oil is very good at making headlines and stirring up controversy, which is their goal. If you go into a party with a megaphone and shout about beavers, everyone will eventually be talking and thinking about beavers. Conservatives use this strategy to manufacture controversies like "critical race theory" all the time. As a radical group, simply being in the headlines benefits them.

[iamnothere]

At least in recent years, conservatives don’t usually do radical stunts like throwing junk on paintings, which may be why their activism has been more effective lately. Conservative activists do often say things that cause controversy, but the public seems more forgiving of words alone versus things like defacing art or blocking traffic at random.

Note that I said blocking traffic at random. Targeted roadblocks are actually effective (such as in the ICE protests/interventions) and were also used to great effect by Canadian truckers. (Speaking of the Canadian truckers, maybe you noticed how the useless and constant honking was the thing that turned the public against them.)

This idea that attention alone, even negative attention, is enough is one of the worst mistakes of modern activists, particularly on the left, and it’s completely derailed their effectiveness in many cases.

[hdndjsbbs]

What would an apolitical "permacomputing" look like? The premise is to reduce consumption and conserve resources. It's about recognizing the externalities associated with technology. You can't just do that in a vacuum.

If you just want "MacBook with socketed RAM" there's already other people doing that. You don't need this to be that.

[myrmidon]

You can recognize externalities and deal with it just fine without abolishing capitalism. See leaded gas or CFCs for example.

[stackghost]

Neither leaded gas nor CFCs were eliminated because of capitalism. They were eliminated in spite of it. Companies got dragged kicking and screaming into compliance because of regulatory oversight, which is anathema to pure capitalism.

[myrmidon]

Neither leaded gas nor CFCs were eliminated by communism, nor did communist governments do a particularly good job at eleiminating their use in an extraordinarily expedient way or anything.

In fact, leaded gas and CFC elimination in communist regimes happened exactly the same way (via regulation/treaties).

Regulations are universally needed to account for negative externalities-- just look at soviet superfund site equivalents (like lake Karachay) and tell me with a straight face that communist administration solves those problems by itself "without dragging anyone kicking and screaming".

[wfurney]

Thanks for your comment. I’m not very familiar with permacomputing so am trying to understand it more. I wouldn’t say im advocating for an apolitical movement necessarily, as much as it being open to incremental (instead of revolutionary) change. If permacomputing is fundamentally an anti-capitalist movement then obviously it doesn’t make sense to include capitalists in it, but I’m not sure it needs to be. I guess I disagree with the idea that capitalist systems are unable to reduce consumption/conserve resources.

It seems like this site had a “neoliberal” wiki entry but it got removed, or I at least I can’t access it, I would be interested to see it

[beepbooptheory]

I just want to say, I appreciate you directly getting to the actual ideological disagreement here. If you want to conceive of and fight for a neoliberal permaculture.. well that's something different than what this site is about for sure but I personally would be ready to find some common ground here.

[wolvesechoes]

> I expected this to be a technological movement first with politics snuck in

Then you are naive. Everything that is concerned with how people organize themselves, where and how they allocate resources, how they are supposed to make decisions, what values they should uphold etc. is politics.

[wfurney]

Thank you for your comment. I certainly am not familiar with permacomputing, so I accept your characterization and understand I have more to learn. With that said I feel like you haven’t really engaged with my argument, just sniped at me with a borderline insult.

The goal of my comments on this site is to learn more by engaging with others who may know more than me. Here I tried to point out ways in which the movement may be alienating itself it by excluding capitalists. If it makes me naive to not realize that was its core purpose, so be it