the issue with saying to have e.g. a nation-state is okay as long as it only serves to uphold these two points is that they’re up to subjective interpretation. “harm” and “basic needs” are up to a lot of interpretation and reinterpretation until you’ve got a value system that’s cruel and detached from reality; and that’s practically inevitable with centralized governance, democratic processes while a good thing can only do so much to offset it. the solution is to decentralize so that decision-making happens on a personal scale, without a detached single person or class making decisions on behalf of a whole population

@hsza a loose oversight committee is a form of representative governance.

@hsza i love how any means of structuring society that isn't hierarchical just magically 'doesnt work' for some reason (but of course having hierarchies 'works' .. .. except it doesn't;)

also lol wtf you mean decentralization scales really well, centralized environments scale terribly and result in a single points of failure that when they break down or are overloaded or whatever, causes everything to break down, decentralized systems are also more resistant to authoritarian control and such;

I never implied that I supported a government that aims to regulate people’s lives, only that I believed the concept of representative governance is necessary.

you do appear to be in support of regulating people’s lives if the two points in the OP are used as justification for it

maintaining a large colony either on the moon

keyword large. why large

even if just to coordinate trade between smaller sub-sections.

why does trade between moon colonies have to work any different to trade on earth

@hsza you could setup a anarchist communes on the moon or mars; where everyone goes and does stuff that actually works for them instead of trying to force them all to live under the same system for some reason; you could also just have a flat system where no one explicitly has power over anyone can can do things how they want,

also i dont think you can go on about 'social contracts' that i never signed and 'enforcement & policing' of them; and not have it 'regulate peoples lives' but sure ..

@steff @hsza

no no, dont you see?

a better world is impossible!

..

what i think is funny is that hierachical social structures literally decentralize in order to stay even remotely afloat; otherwise thered be one single hospital, one single food store, and one single library, we decentralize everything; they largely operate independantly from all the others too; but when it comes to structuring people and de(structuring) power, now suddenly it cant possibly work --

meanwhile in centralization land you get half the internet going down whenever google/amazon/etc's servers break;

decentralization scales; the people in power just want to stay in power-

how does violent thugs harming everyone involved even more help any

@hsza
i disagree their the same thing, a 'contract' implies a "consentual agreement" which doesn't exist, (this is also considering that 'contracts' are generally a tool for manufacturing consent to do coercion)

and if its the exact same thing just called something else then i would reject them for the same reason;

i reject the state and all authority for the same reasons too,

(i also somewhat disagree that they would always exist to some extent (though if not having them is desirable is another topic some other time-)

its like saying the only possible way to scale anything is by building hierarchy lol

but also- tbh id be more likely to help people by choice, if you try to force me im likely to try avoid doing it, likewise if you try force me to not hurt im more likely too hurt you

instead of appealing to ableism to excuse prisons- and trying to force me to work; you could just, have a culture of actually understanding and working on things;

but obv thats impossible /j

@steff @hsza i mean i think im maybe a bit less kind to this kind of thing;

and just consider alot of "anarchism cant work" rethoric as just dismissing anything that isn't hierachical power structures, and to itself be just another way to enforce such power structures

(especially when you say its "either just creating a mini-state or that" implies you've heard ppl explain how you'd it and just gone 'no' and decided to reject it as "unattainable"-- or whatever, like what even constitutes 'working' in this case ???)

it reminds me of a lot of 'capitalism is the only system that works' level shit;

(also tbh; DNS is i think a poor example mainly in part because its run by a few 'regististars' who have to have 'iCANN' permission;

its a mildly decentralized thing but power is still centralized; which was kind of my point, it does scale, (heck centralized powers do not scale well at all xS-) .. they just want to stay in control-)

@Li @hsza Again, I don’t disagree with you. DNS is a good example, because it was/is meant to be distributed, but still hierarchical; however, the greater social structures created a centralized authority management because they couldn’t imagine anything else. Contrast this with the of RFC system in which working groups designed and specified services and protocols for the Internet without a central authority. Again, I believe a significant portion of the problem lies in imagining anything beyond the capitalist or per-capitalist hierarchies we are all immersed and rationalized into from birth.

@Li @steff Steffie already pointed this out, but when I say you need at least some kind of hierarchy, this does not imply centralization, and I'm not entirely sure why you think it does. It's simply a consequence of needing to keep group size to several hundred members in order for them to be able to discuss things sensibly, which always implies some form of representative governance. It can still be distributed.

@Li @steff hierarchy here is to solve the problem of having 50000 members of a single decision making body because it's impossible for the 50000 members of that body to come to any decisions directly, so it breaks into inevitable subgroups with representatives that debate things at the highest level, and then confer with their representatives when necessary. Large groups already display this behavior naturally because having layers of decision making is the only way to scale things. It doesn't imply centralization.

@steff but hierachy is just centralized power structures .. and you do not actually need any hierarchical structures to do anything

@Li @steff this keeps happening, I keep saying "what if you need a bunch of people to decide something" and the response is "why would you want to do that"

there are plenty of reasons! Even a small city of 50000 people has to decide whether or not to invest in a recycling center for plastics or whatever. Many actions inherently require the cooperation of lots of people and potentially require making many decisions that will affect everyone, like the size of the standardized recycling bins so that the recycling machine can come pick it up.

@steff (i am mainly saying this as a plural system, whoever ends up in front for awhile ends up practically making decisions for stuff; sometimes they try to ask the others what they want about stuff (uh, i do this(?)) but we also sometimes just kinda go do our own thing at a time-

anyway none of us really holds power over anyone, so its not really a hierarchy its kinda just we do things when they come up,

perhaps you could have some luck talking to polyfragmented plural systems here-)

but to an extent i think this might be an issue with trying to have 50,000 people trying to make a single decision making body for them; in general-

like why are you making decisions for 50,000 people? that is itself a kind of power structure to begin with

like just let them make their own decisions??

i think the issue might be that your trying to scale what is basically a hierachy to begin with which like; why are you trying to control what they do- exactly? -- the real issue i think

@steff

hm,you could have anyone person make decisions in any given moment, like i dont know just whoever ends up having an answer first or just whoever actually goes and does the thing or .. something ends up deciding that way there is no implicit power structures are not a given,

.. also dont think we naturally do this,; but ig that'd come down to what counts as natural and that isn't something im too interested in discussing tbh, as it wouldn't be too useful-

@Li @steff i mean my entire point here is that I think this is a disagreement over semantics.

@steff why are you talking about a city of people as if its just one people though .. ? why are you conflating organizing with hierachy and control those are different things;

people who want to build a recycling center can go build a recycling center the people who do not want to build one can not do that; and cooperation without any given power structures behind them happens all the time;

the size of the thing is just whatever largest number someone says, since larger will inevitably fit everyone elses usecase in this situation anyway (or better yet, actually have some tolerances on the machine so you can go off standard a bit- if needed ;)

also last i checked recycling is largely a scam by plastics companies and ends up not really solving alot- it ends up using more resources than it actually saves,

we should just build things that are meant to be disposable out of bio-degradable materials

anyways

as usual; if it cant be done consentually, then it shouldn't be done-

@steff (also at what point are you just describing 'authority of the bootmaker' -- (i.e the person who makes boots, gets to decide how the boots are made-)

which tbh i have always thought it just a bit of wordplay because i kinda feel like these are different concepts (its like comparing say, cops,to a directory tree on a computer, which is technically 'hierachical'; in the sense that there is an 'upper' tree and a 'lower' part of the tree,

but .. no folder is treated as 'greater' or 'more important' than the other folders, i.e there is no 'power' to any of them-)

(like e.g; i could always build my own boots, or i could not wear boots, as there is no real enforcement of it-- and if there isn't really enforcement then )