Machine pistols require far MORE training to use compared to a standard pistol. They are downright dangerous to use without proper training, both for the user and the people around them.
Society came very close to realizing the beginnings of a decent state in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. George Orwell faught in it, and wrote about what he saw that society achieving in his book, Homage to Catalonia.
It's not that hard for a new idea to look good for a couple short months/years. Building an ongoing, self-sustaining society that doesn't go completely off the rails is a whole other thing. There's a reason all these idyllic examples people give (Catalonia, Pre-USSR Ukrainian socialism, Paris Commune) were short-lived. If the Bolshevist revolution had been quashed in 1919, it would be idealized today.
> If the Bolshevist revolution had been quashed in 1919, it would be idealized today.
I don't think so. Pretty much all the negative things about Bolsheviks were already prominently there by 1919. Anti-democracy, mass terror, torture, concentration camps, you name it.
I guess 1919 is a bit late for rose colored glasses--though there's a shocking number of people who are still nostalgic for Bolshevism after _everything_.
You get my point, though. It's one thing to propose an idyllic society. It's another thing to try to implement it. In all cases where there's been a serious attempt at implementation on any scale above local and short-lived, we view the results with horror.
They never collapsed from anything innate, though. They were always destroyed from outside forces. When your society represents actual freedom, you become the enemy of everyone, from capital to stalinism.
Centralization of power has so far made every society deeply flawed or even hellish. The three societies you mentioned are the only ones where power was purposefully decentralized, and that seems to be the most promising path forward that was never allowed to stretch its legs.
I would argue that Rojava is one modern case that still shows hope. Although not as decentralized as those other examples, perhaps this is also why they're still there 11 years later.
I agree. Though unfortunately there have been reports of them slowly centralizing power away from community councils toward the military over time. Even still, it's offering far more freedom and diversity than any of the surrounding countries. I'm rooting for them to succeed.
Ehh, I would put it differently: purposefully decentralized societies are ineffective, and create a power vacuum that tends to be quickly filled. Assuming they would have worked requires a view of human nature that I just don't buy. Along comes a Lenin, or a Mao, or a Trump, or a Robespierre, who starts giving rousing speeches about how dangerous forces are rising against the movement, and next thing you know you've got concentration camps, guillotines, mass shootings, and so on. And that environment rewards authority and tyranny.
Labor organizing is the only way for the working class to wield political power, as all political parties, and indeed the entire system, is corporate captured.
Leaving aside any discussion about what you said, that political power has not been consistently wielded in favor of the climate. And somehow I don’t see Drew as the next Eugene Debs.
I think a better solution than a side hustle, is to gather your friends or coworkers to propose to create, collectively, a worker owned co-op (of whatever idea seems profitable).
As it's being done collectively, there's more of a chance of it getting off the ground, as people could take turns working on it in their spare time instead of a side-hustle dominating your time.
Once it's established, those people could then quit their job and work at the coop.
There are credit unions that could help with startup costs, as well as guides on how to structure it based on other successful coops.
I am a big fan of alternative ownership/governance structures in businesses, and this approach might work.
Potential issues: employers don't tend to like it if they get wind that a group of employees are doing something on the side, and may find reason to take ownership of said effort (which your contract might allow them to do).
Proton (custom WINE by valve) is so good now thanks to Vulkan, you generally only lose about 5% performance compared to Windows, with a 10% difference in rare cases.
It's very easy to be a hardcore gamer on Linux now, outside of a handful of online games that gave yet to flip the switch to let their anti-cheat run on Linux.
Many games only work on Windows because their anti-cheat is kernel-level, and even if you ignore these games, you will still run into all sorts of issues with proton or rendering APIs. I would even go as far as asking how many games from the top 100 played games on Steam actually run on Linux natively, without compatibility layers. So no, Linux is not quite viable.
Only AAA games with that anti-cheat crap don't work on Linux, most stuff does. Whether or not it needs compatibly layers is irrelevant, many Windows games also use compatibly layers to some extent, you just don't notice it.
There's no shortage of games you can install through Steam on Linux. You need windows for GTA6 or the latest CoD or whatever, but saying Linux isn't viable at all is silly.
Some people prioritize freedom and privacy over being able to play the latest mindless clone game of what came before with slightly better graphics, but for those that don't, Windows and needlessly invasive AAA games are indeed a good option.
That's not true at all. AMD cards and drivers exist and are often competitive with Nvidia cards. Not to mention, the difference in FPS is often not as noticeable as you probably think.
AMD might be "competitive" but it's objectively worse. Also some games don't even support AMD's equivalent of DLSS. Also AMD sucks at inference, not even close.
> AMD might be "competitive" but it's objectively worse.
Nonsense. Their drivers are better and there cards have beaten Nvidia cards depending on the generation.
> Also some games don't even support AMD's equivalent of DLSS. Also AMD sucks at inference, not even close.
I don't think you really know what you're talking about here, and I don't think you would notice the things you think you would in practice. In short, you're making very poor excuses.
It's OK to say you're scared to make the leap and/or don't care about privacy so much as you do being able to play the latest crappy CoD installment.
If you're installing untrustworthy, closed source, proprietary third party kernel modules into your untrutworthy, closed source, proprietary operating system, why even bother with LibreWolf? You have a unambiguous revealed preference of not caring about your privacy or your security at all, regardless of what your stated preference is.
You seem to care about privacy to the point you risking Firefox selling your data based on a misinterpretation of a badly worded TOS, but have no problem letting random closed source binaries hook into the lowest level of your closed source OS which itself is known to be a privacy nightmare and not at all trustworthy.
The reason solarpunk aren't hopped up on nuclear is that nuclear is an incredibly slow process that requires governments to fund it, corporations only run it if it's profitable (the Vermont Yankee power plant was shut down due to not being competitive with the price of natural gas even though it was emission free), and there's just too much red tape and delays and lack of public goodwill in comparison to Solar, which in comparison scales down to where individuals can afford it and make a difference RIGHT NOW, without waiting for the stars to align with government funding or cost overruns, licensing, etc.
Solar with battery storage is the cheapest, quickest, and most effective source of power currently on the market, and it can reduce our emissions when time is of the essence.
That's not to say solarpunk would advocate to shut down existing nuclear plants or stop construction of ones already underway, but most in the movement have decided solar and wind as the most expedient and decentralized way of achieving energy independence and emissions reduction.
You can even skip storage in many cases, which brings the cost of an installation down dramatically. Low-tech magazine has a great article on the concept.
Housing co-ops would be incentivized to implement those features. Our society should make it easier for co-op of all types to be created and thrive (such as through taxes), but especially worker owned and housing co-ops.
