[xantronix]

I might be biased, but, I'm curious to know if there is any specific part of the Permacomputing Principles page that stands out to you as particularly political above the rest. I don't think the intent is polarisation by any means, but I can see how this sort of movement would be a difficult pill for most to swallow. I still see plenty of value in laying down those grassroots for a future moment when the necessity for permacomputing may become much greater from a survival standpoint, or in the very least, maintenance of some sort of status quo of having people connected and with enough computing resources to continue meaningful work or maintain precious data.

[myrmidon]

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

[xantronix]

Fair, I was only looking at the page linked in the HN submission.

I guess at this point, I think it's fair to say:

1. They're not the central authority on permacomputing. You can implement the principles however you like. 2. If you find the principles objectionable simply because you saw an explicit statement of political alignment on their main page, maybe that's worth examining within yourself.

[jamilton]

That is not on the linked page. Where is it?

[myrmidon]

https://permacomputing.net/

[luqtas]

so tackling emergent discussions on equality and justice of our bloody past is a non-go... why do you think "permacomputing" started to exist in the first place? to make rich people have more durable products? /s

[mathgladiator]

I'd be happier with more durable products!

[myrmidon]

Discussions on colonialism and sustainable computing are completely unrelated topics by themselves (as is post-marxism).

You can advocate for sustainability, right-to-repair, privacy etc. while being strongly capitalist just fine.

The point is that the page puts "correct" political alignment very prominently, excluding a large intersection of people otherwise interested in the non-political parts of the movement.

[jefurii]

Sorry to break it to you, but computing is totally related to colonialism. Where do you think the materials that go into a modern computer come from? It'd be nice if all that was mined in the good ol' U.S. of A but it's not, and that's where we get connected to colonialism. Not to mention labor.

[myrmidon]

What do you mean by colonialism? If industrial production/mining in lower wage countries is "colonialism" to you, then I strongly disagree, and so would most dictionaries.

Colonialism, to me, implies exerting direct political control over a territory (without allowing it democratic participation) and ressource/value extraction against the will of the local population.

Assembling phones in China/buying silicone in Brasil does neither.

[xantronix]

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893...

If that's not colonialism, I don't know what is.

[Barrin92]

>You can advocate for sustainability, right-to-repair, privacy etc. while being strongly capitalist just fine.

you really can't. I mean I get the point that maybe anarchism or feminism are more contingent when it comes to their idea of perma-computing, but you cannot advocate for radical ecology and long-lived computing under the logic of capital.

The entire point of capitalism is to constantly shove new things into your face, that's how you get fast fashion, new phones, more energy consumption, capital reproducing itself. You won't get a computer that runs a thousand years on a solar panel so to speak under the logic of the market economy.

I think intersectionality goes a bit too far sometimes but the degrowth aspect is central to what they're advocating, and there's no degrowth capitalism. See also Kohei Saito's book on the topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Anthropocene)

[myrmidon]

The entire point of capitalism is to incentivise people to do things that other people are willing to pay for.

Induced demand is a second order effect of that at best, and both ecological concerns and negative growth are demonstrably compatible with capitalism: Just consider leaded gas/CFC and per-capita primary energy consumption as direct examples.

The big problem with sustainability/climate change in general is not that countermeasures/solutions are incompatible with a capitalist system, the problem is that too many people are too selfish to sacrifice any form of past/present/elsewhere observed luxury in order to achieve that goal.

[Barrin92]

Demand, mass society and mass consumption/production aren't just a second order effect. Payment and incentives you have in pre-capitalist society. What defines the modern world is capital accumulation, hence the name. And capital will never go where it cannot grow. There is no VC company that funds a degrowth social media platform that has the explicit goal of slowing communication down and reduce the commercial value of its investment.

It is true that right now you de-facto have places that experience degrowth and are capitalist at the same time, but that's transitory. Firms do not go where they shrink, debt will increase, labor will emigrate, privation will increase, and then you'll have a crisis. You can't stand still or shrink under the current regime. If a perma-culture is something you want to pursue you'll need a new form of social ownership and production.

[mrtesthah]

This is probably more of an attempt to make computing relevant to that “intersectional” subset of people who only consider a topic to be relevant if it relates to colonialism in some way.

[packetlost]

I actively don't want these people infecting spaces they shouldn't be though. If that's all they care about out they should be in spaces about that

[mrhottakes]

I think you don't want to engage with the political implications of technology and computing. That's fine, but it's not on the permacomputing folks, and it doesn't make the topics irrelevant to sustainable computing.

[phillmv]

>You can advocate for sustainability … while being strongly capitalist just fine. […] excluding a large intersection of people otherwise interested in the non-political parts

the far-right is literally trying to make it illegal for companies to say they're taking environmental concerns seriously (i.e. ESG bans in tx, fl, etc). in 2026, sustainability is not apolitical.

(it's _never_ been apolitical but i will spare you that lecture.)

[myrmidon]

Most of the far-right are idiot contrarians (my personal view) and they have no claim on capitalism.

Just because far-righters are against sustainability does not mean you have to be a post-marxist anarchist (or w/e) just to be for it.

[phillmv]

> does not mean you have to be a post-marxist anarchist

if you oppose a far-right project, what are they going to call you? lol. here is your membership card for the cultural marxist party, welcome aboard comrade!

i just think it's folly for people to complain that "not destroying the environment" is a partisan issue in 2026. being a nice person is a partisan issue in 2026.

[monkaiju]

I mean, not really. You could be somewhat capitalist I suppose, but certainly not "strongly" if for no other reason than that "capitalism" is defined by goals that are inherently misaligned with the others listed (sustainability, right-to-repair, privacy). You could only be capitalist insofar as you believe that companies pursuing those claims will perform better in the market, and even that gets blurry around "right-to-repair" because the word "right" would mean its something the market wouldn't be allowed to alienate you from, so a force outside of capitalism would be enforcing that.

[tekne]

To be fair -- IP is a regulation (it is not, in fact, natural to be able to prevent someone copying data on their own hard drive) -- so one could imagine variants of a free market which are less regulated and yet more (or less) friendly to repair/modification/hacking.

A lot of our current state of affairs is as much a symptom of regulation as of deregulation (most laws are really regulation) -- and it's unclear whether the world would be better off with more or less overall (the answer is probably "it depends" -- though I myself lean towards less)