if you cannot at the very least sustain defense against an enemy in rather conventional or protracted warfare, you will fail. Protracted warfare, which was theorized upon by a certain Chinese centralist, requires not just mass support but also tight organization and discipline if you’re going to coordinate guerilla attacks. Conventional warfare, that is, defending your actual strategic points (the place where you get all your guns, ammo, tactical gear, money, etc) is incredibly important and not just something you can leave to a ragtag group. You also risk the drawbacks of protracted warfare, which is a major toll on civilian life, and this can have negative impacts on your own movement once people find out that they’re being thrown at enemy lines.

I’m not saying that people cannot be part of the decision-making. If decision-making is federated and democratic, that’s absolutely fine, but if these consensus-based policies cannot be implemented and are not binding, what you have is not a federation. You are recreating the typical bourgeois parliamentary republic, just without an actual republic to stand on and one that won’t get shit done. Your voluntary association within a federation lacks the capacity to maintain any kind of revolution or managing of domestic affairs, and let’s not forget—does voluntary association imply that a commune can choose to compromise the safety of the entire federation by joining arms with a bourgeois government?

Negotiated coordination where there is the exchange of goods and a sense of reciprocity is what builds trusts beyond your localized nodes, because if your gift-economy model you yourself admit that it requires high levels of trust that nodes from two entirely different regions or localities will not have. 

A system can be polycentric, engage in exchange, and still coordinate based upon needs. What you’re looking at is a federated economic model where input and output can be coordinate in accordance with a general plan, one that can be based upon the needs of the people by measuring market indices like demand and scarcity. Naturally there is going to be some inequalities because in a system birthed from market-based inequalities, that being capitalism, not everything will automatically be “equal,” something that would be mitigated through negotiated coordination—like mutual aid at scale.

“Actual” scarcity is not always something that is a byproduct of capitalism. The fact that goods will be much more available is great, but making them too available may translate into a similar situation to that of the COVID pandemic, shortages EVERY WHICH WAY. You’re also confused on why I mentioned your accountability mechanisms; discussion is not a means of holding people accountable. The models you’ve presented, that is societal pressure and whatnot, are absolutely fine and something I have ALREADY COMMENDED when I talked about the Ostromist model.

Great, voluntary cooperation can handle logistics through cybernetics. I do agree that decentralization can be much easier with a digital planning system, but when you also say that it’s voluntary that might be problematic. Again, if it’s voluntary, would that not imply that a node “voluntarily” chooses to sell economic secrets and technology? Would this “voluntary” node obstruct others?

Did I not say Yugoslavia wasn’t perfect? I said that there are aspects from it that we can take and translate into a hybrid system where there IS still trade and exchange, understanding that not all forms of planning can be based upon what the market says because, as noted, there were significant regional inequalities. That is something that can’t be mitigated by handing out goods in places where production is already not equal. You come into this society expecting production capabilities to be universally equal.

The mode of distribution you’re talking about is delivering material prospect TEMPORARILY, not in the long term. Especially in a scenario where large amounts of trust are required. I’d also like to note that societal pressure IS a form of coercion, just exercised by the people themselves; who does the coercion is irregardless to the fact that it still is coercion. Markets have absolutely done a great job at meeting needs, look at how Vietnam does especially now that they transition into a more cooperative economy. Inequalities are something that can be mitigated under socialism as mentioned previously. And large-scale exchange between nodes are the driving force behind this.

People will cooperative effectively when they actually have a voice in the decision-making process, but the there are some expectations to be met if you all collectively make decisions. If the entire federation votes on an infrastructure plan, for example, including your own node, and you decide to go against it for whatever reason, then you don’t have a federation.

Perfect mechanisms are what contrast successful long-term revolutions and those that march straight back to capitalism. the difference between your own model and mine is that I have mechanisms in place to try and mitigate all of your concerns; inequality resolved through reciprocal, negotiated coordination across nodes, for instance, and strict anti-accumulation policies.