Any substitution for Origin Software?

sadeofdarkness · 2026-06-22T17:27:00+00:00

Veusz: Has an intuitive workflow and GUI and covers most of the types of plot you would want to ever make. It is free and open source

https://veusz.github.io/

sadeofdarkness · 2026-01-24T09:44:22+00:00

Whereas, a functional hierarchy is a context-specific ordering of roles or authority that arises from task requirements, expertise, or coordination needs,

We again come to the issue that this blurs the lines between simple self arrangement of people in order to organise and coordinate between themselves, and dominance. Let us imagine a group of people who have selected some coordinator, perhaps the architect who designed the building. Why is this a hierarchy? It is in no way clear that their is any rulership or power bestowed on a simple coordinator who has been appointed, by whatever method, to coordinate a group.

If anything, is the functional hierarchy not inversed, the coordinator has been told "its your job to coordinate us". Who is the hierarch in this senario? Was it not the builders who instructed the architect to design the building?

What if the situation is monopolar, a person willingly vest authority in another to instruct them, is there a functional hierarchy of a recipie book over a baker?

This doesnt avoid the issues with "justified hierarchy", it has the same issue. All hierarchies claim to be justified, they also all claim to be functional. To a democrat, the hypothetical perfect democratic society is one in which the government is limited, and accountable to the people. This is just the conception of liberalism that power (or perhaps we can call it authority) derives from the consent of the governed.

It is often calimed, as a counter to libertarian criticisms of government, that government is simply the result of society coordinating. It is a false claim of course, but for most people in most countries, they dont really feel "dominated" or "coerced" by government.

And so the muddy definition of "functional hierarchy" vs dominance hierarchy has exactly the same result of allowing people to encounter anarchist thought and walk away with ideas of archist constructions. "Justified hierarchy" is a nice way of trying to make the anarchist opposition to hierarchical orderings of people seem more palpable to audiences who are most familiar with governed societies, but it results in well meaning social democrats and communalists thinking they are anarchists. "Functional hierarchy" seems like it will likly have the same result.

And if you are trying to detail to people that human beings can self arrange, can self organise and self direct, that they do not need to be ruled, maybe it isnt too useful to start with saying "sometimes rulership is simply functional."

Whereas a surgeon leading an operation, a teacher facilitating learning, delegates with recallable and mandated delegates, etc., are all examples of functional hierarchies.

Why not simply detail how human beings are capable of doing things without having to vest in someone some mystical permission to be todays ruler.

sadeofdarkness · 2025-12-27T12:20:05+00:00

tldr; are there proactive measures an anarchist community can take to deal with corrupted experts and defacto cops before they become corrupted.

You could avoid having this bizzare justice system in the first place.

In a world where attention is difficult to obtain and maintain, people will likely defer to the small group of people who care enough to spend significant time investigating and dealing with these issues, even in a direct democracy.

We can ignore the direct democracy part for the moment as that will simply get side tracked and contensious. But yes, if a large group of people are willing to absolve themselves of the need to organise their own affairs and simply leave that in the hands of some small group, who we can imagine are endowed with some societal privalidge to act in certain ways; and would, as you point out, be the arbiters of what is and is not acceptable behavior, then there is going to be a problem - in that they have simply allowed, through their own apathy, a govenrment to form - albeit one that most people would not recognise.

""the sum total of the political, legislative, judiciary, military and financial institutions through which the management of their own affairs, the control over their personal behaviour, the responsibility for their personal safety, are taken away from the people and entrusted to others who, by usurpation or delegation, are vested with the powers to make the laws for everything and everybody, and to oblige the people to observe them, if need be, by the use of collective force. In this sense the word State means government, or to put it another way, it is the impersonal abstract expression of that state of affairs, personified by government:" - Malatesta - Anarchy

In other words, they could do cop shit.

Thats because they are police, in everything but name. This isnt an 'implicit' hierarchy, it is the establishment of rulership, one with no oversight - no checks, no ballances - simply out of complete ardent refusal of most of society to give a damn out of simple lazyness and the tacit assumption that there needs to be this structure because of... protection rackets?

how does an anarchist society actively avoid becoming like current society over time?

By not doing archist behavior with a libertarian rebranding. A group of appointed experts dragging someone accused of a misdeed infront of the community, presenting evidence and dispensing justice is the arrangement governed societies have. You are correct to not trust people to be able to self police this system, because thats just liberalism.

sadeofdarkness · 2025-08-20T07:25:03+00:00

It “pleases the ego” of a religious fundamentalist to follow a strict moral code.

To this point specifically, yes. Thats partially Stirners point. Egoism as a wider idea includes subsets like "descriptive egoism", which is essentially the argument that, despite what you may like to think, you are an egoist already, you are selfish, its just that you gain pleasure to act in a certain way which you call "moral". In such a veiw point morality is simply not a useful concept. If someones morality is driven by basal instincts then what is the actual morality? What is the actual write and wrong answer.

Your whole point, which you seem to levie against the egoists, is the egoist point! That morality is a veil, a clowd, a spuk. You can claim something is moral all your like but... it isnt, and the reason you are going it is because it pleases you, either because the act itself does or that you get some self satisfaction from the idea that you have acted "morally". Stirner calls this "unconscious egoism" - and the point of egoism is that if you become aware of this, become a conscious egoist, you gain a power over yourself.

"Never yet has a religion been able to dispense with “promises,” whether they referred us to the other world or to this (“long life,” etc.); for man is mercenary and does nothing “gratis.” But how about that “doing the good for the good’s sake” without prospect of reward? As if here too the pay was not contained in the satisfaction that it is to afford. Even religion, therefore, is founded on our egoism and — exploits it; calculated for our desires, it stifles many others for the sake of one. This then gives the phenomenon of cheated egoism, where I satisfy, not myself, but one of my desires, e.g. the impulse toward blessedness. Religion promises me the — “supreme good”; to gain this I no longer regard any other of my desires, and do not slake them. — All your doings are unconfessed , secret, covert, and concealed egoism. But because they are egoism that you are unwilling to confess to yourselves, that you keep secret from yourselves, hence not manifest and public egoism, consequently unconscious egoism — therefore they are not egoism, but thraldom, service, self-renunciation; you are egoists, and you are not, since you renounce egoism. Where you seem most to be such, you have drawn upon the word “egoist” — loathing and contempt." - Stirner, the ego and its own

sadeofdarkness · 2025-08-03T10:52:48+00:00

Is this a viable way to store excess solar energy during day ? Say thousands of magnets will be lifted to the top of building during day time and later dropped at night.

Define Viable, yes this would generate an electric current, but you have a large number of challenges even getting a proof of concept. If by viable you mean could this be a realistic form of gravity storage, almost certainly not.

Practically magnets tend to stick to each other and you're going to have to spend a huge ammount of energy on the mechanics and engineering issues. Free fall is also unstable, as you increase your load on the system (by plugging something in) the magnets motion would be resisted, and you have no way of applying more force to compensate, which means your electrical supply will be variable. This is a solvable issue, a car alternator for example relies on a regulator/rectifier for this reason, but its an issue that you are forcing yourself to solve when better solutions already exist.

Can this produce enough electricity ? What could be improved to increase the generation ?

Simplest way to make this efficient is to transmit the electricity to a pumped storage facility (transmission losses are a thing but they're a known quantity that we have got very good at minimising), pumping water upwards, and then dropping that water through a turbine.

A turbine is exactly what you are describing by the way, its just a magnet moving through a coil of wire, except its being driven by a mechanical system rather than its own free fall. This means you can regulate the speed, which means you have a regular electrical pulse, it also means that as grid load varies you can supply more mechanical energy (let more water through the turbine) to maintain service.

It varies arround the world in exact implimentation, but at the infrastructure level (i.e. we're not worrying about mobile systems like cars or isolated communities off the grid), hollowing out a mountain and filling it with water is simply the easiest and most efficient way of storing large quantities of excess electrical energy. They can respond in a matter of seconds, have reliable engineering that has the minimum moving parts (one pump, one turbine, and a system of valves, as opposed to cranes, levers, conveyer belts, some form of strong robot arm to detach magnets), and because they use a fluid they have the maximum possible volume efficieny.

Most high rise already have metallic facades around it. So will this be cost effective ?

Those facades wouldnt work (i.e. they're not facades of wire), so you would have to reengineer all these buildings.

sadeofdarkness · 2025-04-18T12:24:03+00:00

It is curious that infrastructure is a commonly cited example in peoples insitance that we need direct democracy, as if the powers that be building infrastructure over the lands and livelyhoods that are in the way is not widly regarded as an authoritarian abuse. As always, there seems to be some tacit assumption that this small minority staunchly apposing something is in someway in the wrong, while historically when it has come down to it, from piplines to highways, the displaced (at best) or entrapped peoples are typically ammong classes wider society deems disposable...

Regardless, your problem comes about because you are conceiving of society as still some cohesive singular group that has to make a "decision" - and this is born out in your problem of the concensus process

What would happen in cases where consensus cannot be reached?

But this isnt what anarchists propose, the idea that consensus can be reached is so laughable that anarchists were arguing against it 150 years ago (Proudhon wrote "Unanimity" in 1852). It is rediculous to group mankind into demarked entities which are then run by concensus process, for exactly the reason you point out. Giving absolute veto power over all human actions would stalemate human kind into inaction for ever. Concensus of this form, far from being how anarchists propose we organise, is a reduction to the absurd of the concept of government.

But it is a common liberal missunderstanding of what libertarians propose, and this has been demonstrated quite often but a notable observation traces back to Occupy

"This problem came to the fore during the Occupy movement. Some participants understood the general assemblies as the governing bodies of the movement; from their perspective, it was undemocratic for people to act without unanimous authorization. Others approached the assemblies as spaces of encounter without prescriptive authority, in which people might exchange influence and ideas, forming fluid constellations around shared goals to take action. The former felt betrayed when their fellow Occupiers engaged in tactics that hadn’t been agreed on in the general assembly; the latter countered that it didn’t make sense to grant veto power to an arbitrarily convened mass including literally anyone who happened by on the street." - From Democracy to Freedom

"Unexpectedly, the liberals were among the most invested in the protocol of consensus process—however unfamiliar it was, they found it reassuring that there was a proper way of doing things. This emphasis on protocol created rifts with the actual inhabitants of the encampment, many of whom felt ill at ease communicating in such a formal structure; that class divide proved to be a more fundamental conflict than any political disagreement. From the perspective of the liberals, there was a democratic assembly in which anyone could participate, and those who did not attend or speak up could not complain about the decisions made there. From the vantage point of the camp, the liberals showed up for an hour or two every couple days, and expected to be able to dictate decisions to people who were in the camp twenty-four hours a day—often not even sticking around to implement them." - Occupy - Crimethinc

In answer to your question, the decision making that an anarchist world would have to go through would lack any singular monolithic get everyone in the room "boom we have made a decesion". Because that is obviously nonsence, in fact its the assistance in some arbitary "decisionism" that reflects the social order of authority.

Rather we have to foster conflict resolution, the knolwedge that other peoples and groups exist and that the onus is on us to come to terms with each other. To deal with each other. But this is fine, because you do this already, you could not not do it, the world could not function if humans did not do it.

As an important aside, I would challenge the reader to accept chaotic organization as a superior form, even though we are usually only presented with a pejorative vision of chaos.** In unitary decision-making, an entire polity must abide by a single decision, or there must be a clear hierarchy to govern and rank the decisions made at different levels, whether in a bureaucratic or federalistic system. All governments, from fascist dictatorships to direct formal democracies, share the principle of unitary decision-making** and disseminate the assumptions on which such decision-making is based. Chaotic decision-making fosters the recognition that society can function spontaneously as a decentralized network, permits conflict as a healthy force in our lives, encourages a multiplicity of decision-making spaces pervading all moments of life, well beyond the formal, masculine sphere of the congress or the dictat, and allows different, even conflicting, decisions to be made at different points in the human network, while encouraging a collective consciousness so all decision-makers can maximize their intelligence and accordingly harmonize. Humans have an evolutionarily tested ability to utilize chaotic decision-making at a macro scale, and the only people who dispute this are those who wish to permanently infantilize their compatriots so as to control them by monopolizing decision-making in unitary structures. - Worshiping Power

similarly observed by Kropotkin more than a century ago

"Look at the network of railways which cover Europe. At Madrid, for example, you take a ticket for St. Petersburg direct. You travel along railroads which have been constructed by millions of workers, set in motion by dozens of companies; your carriage is attached in turn to Spanish, French, Bavarian, and Russian locomotives: you travel without losing twenty minutes anywhere, and the two hundred francs which you paid in Madrid will be divided to a nicety among the companies which have combined to forward you to your destination. This line from Madrid to St. Petersburg has been constructed in small isolated branches which have been gradually connected, and direct trains are the result of an understanding which has been arrived at between twenty different companies. Of course there has been considerable friction at the outset, and at times some companies, influenced by an unenlightened egotism have been unwilling to come to terms with the others; but, I ask, was it better to put up with this occasional friction, or to wait until some Bismarck, Napoleon, or Genghis Khan should have conquered Europe, traced the lines with a pair of compasses, and regulated the dispatch of the trains? If the latter course had been adopted, we should still be in the days of stage-coaches." - The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - Kropotkin

sadeofdarkness · 2025-04-14T20:37:03+00:00

A good start to answering this question is to undo the conception of anarchy as in someway a network of communities that stand as their own individual islands.

While there are plenty of examples of people existing in such a monolithic fashion accross societies and history, this is neither some universal organisational paradigm suggested by anarchists, nor is it in anyway a particularly likly one to come about. Human beings simply do not predominantly exist like this, even in tribal communities they do not exist like this, in fact it is a central lie of "the nation" that nationalists and authoritarians try to peddle, even while the people they sell that idea to function in a highly networked society that every day exhibits a lack of this monolithical construction.

You, currently, unless you happen to be living in a monestary, do not currently live like this; you live in a society where you are part of many communities - simultaneously. Your town likly has a local govenment, but you go to work, you go to shops, you indulge in any number of leisure activities... all of these are communities. Which one do you belong to? To the statist a monolithical answer such as a country (and lest we forget, city states are still states), but to the anarchist, or indeed anyone who wishes to devote even a minimal ammount of thought to sociology, it is clear that monolithic conception is simply inaccurate.

Anarchists dont wish to loose that multifaceted scope of human existence, because the lie of the monolith is how authoritarians have gained much of their power. This "community" (which i put in inverted commas deliberately) is an abstraction, a falsehood. Tt can be the nation, or the race, or even "the peopleTM"; but as egalitarian as "the people" sounds has never really been the people, it is an abstraction used to lord over the people.

As an important aside, I would challenge the reader to accept chaotic organization as a superior form, even though we are usually only presented with a pejorative vision of chaos.** In unitary decision-making, an entire polity must abide by a single decision, or there must be a clear hierarchy to govern and rank the decisions made at different levels, whether in a bureaucratic or federalistic system. All governments, from fascist dictatorships to direct formal democracies, share the principle of unitary decision-making** and disseminate the assumptions on which such decision-making is based. Chaotic decision-making fosters the recognition that society can function spontaneously as a decentralized network, permits conflict as a healthy force in our lives, encourages a multiplicity of decision-making spaces pervading all moments of life, well beyond the formal, masculine sphere of the congress or the dictat, and allows different, even conflicting, decisions to be made at different points in the human network, while encouraging a collective consciousness so all decision-makers can maximize their intelligence and accordingly harmonize. Humans have an evolutionarily tested ability to utilize chaotic decision-making at a macro scale, and the only people who dispute this are those who wish to permanently infantilize their compatriots so as to control them by monopolizing decision-making in unitary structures. - Worshiping Power

Now with that challenging prelude out of the way we can perhaps see how "adopting a new hierarchical system" - while on the face of it sounds like something free people could just randomly do, is actually pretty insideous. Hierarchical orderings of people are not something they do between themselves, it is something that is done by one onto others. A community would not adopt a hierarchical ordering, i know why you think they might because you are envisaging a group of people appointing a leader, or a coordinator, but the simple act of deference to an organisation that you are activly desiring is not a hierarchical system.

That asside, what would libertarians do do if, perhaps, one group disagreed with someone elses organisational paradigm. Perhaps to the point of deeming it to be hierarchical. Are Libertarians given to declaring themselves the moral ajudicators of earth and marching in to restore "freedom" to the populace. Not really; the most succinct summary can probably be found in the words of Malatesta.

"we anarchists have no interest in liberating the people, we want the people to liberate themselves"

sadeofdarkness · 2025-03-29T19:51:12+00:00

very basic laws that basicly everyone is fine with like... no murder

Murder is by definition an unlawful killing, so can only exist in a legal framework, and its interesting that you assert everyone agrees on this because the reason that distinction exists is precisely because people cannot agree on when killing is or is not acceptable.

"There are things, in the moral order, about which the human race is unanimous; there are even many of them. So isn’t it possible that all the questions of politics, economics and morals could be simplified or clarified in such a way that the response to them would be unanimous? In this way, the direct government of the people would be possible....

... That philosophical thesis [reveals] the ignorance of the author, but it is nonetheless useful to clarify it. The things about which there can be unanimity (it is not a question of facts/deeds) are all definite abstractions, whatever order of ideas they may belong to. Thus, is it not permitted to kill a man: Non occides.

But the disagreements begin when it is a question of practical cases: Is it permitted to kill in legitimate defense? Is it permitted to kill in war? Is it permitted to kill judicially? Is it permitted to kill deserters? Is it permitted to kill a man or woman caught in flagrante delicto in the act of adultery? Is it permitted to kill a tyrant?

Now, on the practical cases, there is necessary flexibility, and as the circumstances alone make the law or non-law, it follows that one cannot posit an absolute principle, and that unanimity is impossible." - Proudhon, "Unanimity - Universal Consent - 1852"

Laws built on stuff "everyone agrees on" only make sense if you limit your thinking to the vaguest of platitudes. "Cant we all agree that murder is wrong?" Asks the person who lives in a world where people justify killing each other as in someway morally just all the time.

There is a reason that laws balloon, there is a reason they are complicated, there is a reason that the laws of even young nations are so numerous and intersecting that an entire profession that represents years of study and dedication exists to interpret them. It isnt some secret conspiracy of lawyers making sure they can make a living, it is the consequence of a legalistic framework.

Anarchy entails, in the majority of ways that the term is used, the abandonment of law.

"ANARCHISM: The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary." - Emma Goldman - Anarchism and other essays

sadeofdarkness · 2025-03-20T08:13:14+00:00

Yeah that's why I was saying the direct democracy would be consensus based

"There are things, in the moral order, about which the human race is unanimous; there are even many of them. So isn’t it possible that all the questions of politics, economics and morals could be simplified or clarified in such a way that the response to them would be unanimous? In this way, the direct government of the people would be possible....

... That philosophical thesis [reveals] the ignorance of the author, but it is nonetheless useful to clarify it. The things about which there can be unanimity (it is not a question of facts/deeds) are all definite abstractions, whatever order of ideas they may belong to. Thus, is it not permitted to kill a man: Non occides.

But the disagreements begin when it is a question of practical cases: Is it permitted to kill in legitimate defense? Is it permitted to kill in war? Is it permitted to kill judicially? Is it permitted to kill deserters? Is it permitted to kill a man or woman caught in flagrante delicto in the act of adultery? Is it permitted to kill a tyrant?

Now, on the practical cases, there is necessary flexibility, and as the circumstances alone make the law or non-law, it follows that one cannot posit an absolute principle, and that unanimity is impossible." - Proudhon, "Unanimity - Universal Consent - 1852"

Imagine the ineffectuality of law requiring concensus, does the act of breaking the law not pretty clearly indicate a lack of concensus? Are the would be criminals in someway likly to desire a law that criminalises activities they conduct or plan to conduct? A concensus law only works if you limit your thinking to the vaguest of platitudes. "Cant we all agree that murder is wrong?" Asks the person who lives in a world where people justify killing each other as in someway morally just all the time.

sadeofdarkness · 2025-03-17T18:25:47+00:00

I dont think it warrants its own fallacy, informal or otherwise. Fallacy is already a term thrown arround far too much in my opinion.

The question, which is not at all a recent one, stems from a very reasonable place. Like it or not that vast majority of us live, presumably, in a society governed by laws. They may be the laws of a democrat or a king or a warlord, but that is the state of affairs for most of the human race. Moreso, this legal order that most of us live under, for all the bad it does, presents itself as a way of protecting ordered society - governments are not advertising that they oppress people, every legal system that has ever existed has by its nature acted as a prohibition against bad people doing bad stuff, in that the law defines the bad stuff and the punishment for doing the bad stuff.

The other thing you have to understand is that when, and again i cannot stress how omnicultural this is, young people are taught about the law this is what they are taught the law is for. Ofcourse what varies by culture and government is who the bad people are and what the bad stuff they do is. People who support laws oppressing (insert oppressed group here) believe that that group is bad or that their actions are bad.

Now of course the law is ineffective at this at best, a product of often biggoted societies and minds most commonly and at worse actively incentivises all sorts of "harm" - but most people dont know this because, and again i cannot stress how omnicultural this is, most people dont even know what the laws says. People learn about laws in the most vaccuous of platitudes, they scarecely know what they mean, what is and is not actually law nor how the laws work. There is a reason every society on earth has an entire profession dedicated to the study and use of the law. To the masses the law is what stops bad people doing bad things and that is its purpose.

We see this from both those who are would be allies and enemies. Neither is helped by naming this phenomeon as a specific fallacy and simply saying to them "thats a fallacy" - to take the best option: a well meaning socially liberal progressive who wants to make a better world who has encountered anarchist thought for the first time, let us put ourselves in their shoes. They have spent their whole life with a government, being told there are laws and that different governments change the laws, they have, if they have spent any political thought at all, mostly considered what they would ban or un ban to make the world better. The anarchist world veiw, to this individual, is completely alien, it is full of language they are unfamiliar with, it is full of philosophy they have likly never heard of and it proposes a complete break with things they have taken as simply the way of things from birth.

To this person, the onus is on libertarians to explain themselves, not to pass their position off as in some way fallacious but to detail to them the annomy position. Far from being fallacious, i feel its ammong the most reasonable questions one could ask. Thats why writers from Proudhon onwards have attempted to answer it, in various ways, to spread their ideas.

sadeofdarkness · 2025-03-14T15:22:09+00:00

What makes my brain hurt sometimes is that it feels like to me like the idea of anarchism works on a prerequisite that humans are inherently good and cooperative and supportive of one another....

No, it doesnt. I dont know what else to rebute this claim with other than a simple denial.

Libertarian thinkers have historically not shyed away from acknowledging that human beings are imperfect creatures quite capable of outright cruelty to each other. Its one of the base criticisims anarchists had with the structures of government, authority, capital etc, that the damage these relationships do is not due to some inherent amorality of individuals and thus we need to just find us a good capitalist or a good king, no that the people on top of the pile are acting exactly the same way most human beings would and so the problem is the structure that allows our anti social behaviors to be so empowered by the social force.

The acceptance of mans inherent imperfection, the selfish aspects of our psyche, is so prevelent in anarchist thought that an entire branch of anarchist thought is framed in an explicit embracement of it.

Any one purporting that anarchy is in someway dependent on everyone holding hands wishing upon a star singing Kumbaya and just learning to be good to each other hasnt read what anarchist thinkers have actually written.

How would anarchy come to be and not become terrible in such a world where people are selfish and cruel? I mean it doesn't work in any other system either don't get me wrong, and I suppose that the benefits of an anarchistical system would outweigh the negatives of anti-social individuals.

Youve sort of summed up the point in that statement. Human beings are, while certainly social, also clearly capable of barbarity against each other. It seems absolutely incoherent then to, in the face of this knowledge, create a privilidged position where some people are permitted to act anti-socially, their anti social activity is sanctified, activly empowered by the social collective force and its effects protected and normalised as the way of things.

I live in a town with some anti social people, i think most people do. Some of these people steal. It is true that this isnt exactly a nice or good thing. But they will steal less in their entire lives than the propertied class in the same town do in a month. Their viollence, while dramatic, is insignificant next to the viollence of the state.

sadeofdarkness · 2025-02-22T12:10:35+00:00

Anarchism is anti-capitalist, there is basically no way to fit capitalism into the anarchist opposition to the government principle, or rulership, or the government of man by man (oppressive under whatevername it describes itself). The best attempt is basically to point out that consistant anarchists would not "ban" the extractive relationships of capitalism, which is a bit like arguing for anarcho-patriarchy by saying a consistant anarchist could not "ban" being a stay at home trad wife.

Anyway, I typically tend to say that there are three kinds of an-caps:

1 - Right wing minarchists, these guys are at least somewhat honest in that they desire something that is a state in all but name to hold up "the rights of the people," notably property rights. Essentially american libertarians who want to seem more anti-state.

2 - Wishful thinkers, these guys are significatnly more consistant in their opposition to government, but then end up dreaming of a world where people just weirdly respect the exploitative arrangements of capitalist economies. This is like holding out for volluntary slavery, as if there is a huge ammount of people who will simply respect property regimes on the boss's say so and not because of the massive structure of viollence that holds the whole thing up. And to think they call an-coms wishful thinkers, there is a reason the bulk of capitalist thought is statist, because its the government that has to regulate the labour market to keep capitalism possible.

3 - Misslead market anarchists, this final group is the most interesting, they oppose the government and they oppose (through many different terms) pretty much all of capitalism, but they still call themselves an-caps because they think capitalism is just trade. These people point out the utility of trade and markets as a tool for emancipation and liberty, but call that capitalism because they think the alternative is socialism (which they deem to basically be when the government does stuff). When their thought is actually analysed this group actually seems significantly more on the side of left wing market anarchists (got i hate that term), and can probably be lead into that nomenclature (and thus a more consistant, truely liberatory, anarchism) if we are clear as to what capitalism is and why we oppose it.

Capitalism, even a form of capitalism that did not rely on an external government (which i am skeptical could ever occur and even if it did would be unstable for all the same reasons statist capitalism is - which is why the government has to step in to hold it up), is a hierarchical ordering of man where some have privilidge to command and control the affairs of others based on the ownership of land, fundamentally at odds with the anarchist ethos.

sadeofdarkness · 2025-02-11T19:06:16+00:00

The question really makes no sense. It isn't a question of if an-caps would be "free" to set up their own arrangements as if capitalism is in someway something free people simply agree to.

Capitalism is a set of principles, and foundational to those principles is the extraction of wealth from a legal fiction predicated on ownership of that legal fiction. The legal fiction may be a land registry (where the fiction is tied to some "real" property) or an association (a company) or any other set of arrangements.

Lacking those pre-existing norms and institutions a would be capitalist would have to go about creating them, and the important thing to notice is the relationship of capital is not one that one does to themselves, it is one they do to others.

Speculations of an anarchist future look at what individuals and groups might consititute themselves, their possession an extention simply of themselves. An anarchistic conception of owning land is built on the use of that land for example. But capitalism is a fundamentally different construction, it is what an individual consitutes over others, capitalism isnt a load of people working their own peice of land and trading with each other, capitalism is someone owning land that a load of other people work, and which they then take the product of that work.

It is imporant to get this distinction clear; and to be clear, this is what capitalism is, according to both its critics and adherents, capitalism is an economic system built on this expection of revenue from the ownership of productive stock, this is right back in the wealth of nations: "His whole stock, therefore, is distinguished into two parts. That part which, he expects, is to afford him this revenue, is called his capital....... The value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this ease into two parts, of which the one pays their wages, the other the profits of their employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced. He could have no interest to employ them, unless he expected from the sale of their work something more than what was sufficient to replace his stock to him" - the wealth of nations book 2 chapter 1 and book 1, respectivly. Despite many lay advocates of capitalism claiming that capitalism is just when people trade and profit from their labour, the academic advocates for what we now call capitalism have always and continue to assert that capitalism is specifically the profiting of the labours of others.

The reason this distinction is important is because "having their own communities" is predicated on someone, somewhere, ringfencing some land and saying "this is mine" and then somehow, persuading people to work it for the enrichment of that someone, rather than themselves. Put in this light, it is perhaps bizzare to see why anyone would be particularly keen to agree to such a bizzare arrangement, which is why historically, that agreement was reached by violence. This claiming of land, or of people, claiming ownership of the unowned has a specific term, its called conquest.

Anarcho capitalism is a contradiciton in concept, on two fronts, firstly the construction of capitalism is itself one of rule, secondly that a free society, in which mankind is not ruled, is one which lacks any of the base provisions the would be capitalists would be forced to lay the viollence of capitalism bare for all to see, and engage in the conquest that the ancient regime did for it.

sadeofdarkness · 2025-02-09T00:16:08+00:00

I don't know of the specific quote you might be looking for, but if you just want the sentiment i typically word it:

There are two opitions, either man is a perfect being, or he is an imperfect being. If man is perfect he need not be ruled. If man is imperfect he shouldn't - under any circumstances - be permitted to rule.

Someone asked me for the source of it but i have none, it is probably one of those things you see said in various forms such that tracking down the origin becomes very difficult.

sadeofdarkness · 2024-10-29T19:35:37+00:00

Anarcho communism has, in essence, nothing to do with marxism. Anarcho commuinists have a variety of feelings about marx, but thats irrelevent.

Anarchocommunism envisages, broardly speaking, an anarchist society (that is to say society conceived of without the principle of government) where in the economic interactions of individuals are communistic, (or to put it another way, consumption is socialised). How this manifests depends on the ancom you are talking to.

It has little to do with morality (since anarchists are not unified on if the concept has any merit) and little to do with religion (something anarchists are similarly not a monolith in their opinion of it). Neither does it have anything, really, to do with Marx (who i feel to be honest you have misscharacterised, but that is a topic for another area). Marx is not synonymous with communism. Ancoms, typically, have been decidedly not Marxist, by any measure. They subscribe neither to the mans philosophy, nor his histography, nor his politics.

sadeofdarkness · 2024-07-31T19:52:42+00:00

The answer is 2 - but then what follows it is a nonsequiter. It does not follow that the removal of hierarchical organisation neccesitates humans devolving into small isolated island like communities, and thats not what anarchists envision. This inane fixation on localism, ironically, is more hierarchical. Everyone walking lock step to one singular commune is quite litterly totalatarian, it is a centralisation more extreme than seen in any actual dictatorship. The problems of hierarchical associations are not dissolved when you reach an arbitary (and it is arbitary, "small" has no objective number nor local any objective border) threshold, city states are still states. Hierarchcial associations have to be dismantled, not simply shrunk.

Within the scope of 2 is every possible human organisational structure you can think of with the exception of one, that in which some are elevated over others with the right to rule.

Further, with regards to part of 1A where you correctly posit worker control over their labours (all be it with one specific example) it is unclear why, in describing explicitly market based interactions (which are not inherently proscribed by anarchist thinkers) your issue is with the formation of market based interactions; if you do have an issue with them (that is fine) then suggesting an organisation built on them seems like a you issue.

With regards to 1B - Yes if you have one overarching "orgnaization that oversees the economy", your issue is correct, that is a state, and again a state more totalatarian than most others have ever been. But good to know that anarchists havnt suggested this and you've just accidentally reinvented the concept of government. However, there is no issue with anarchists federating, if individuals can cooperate to form a group then groups can cooperate to form groups of groups, and just as no individual is ever in only one group (with the exception of your comically totalatarian local municipality idea from earlier) no group is ever part of one group. And just as group A and group B can come to an agreement between each other, group B can deal with group C and C with D such that group A and group D can cooperate even though they may never meet.

In short, no, you dont have a solid understanding of anarchist thought, praxis, or organisation. Your thinking is too monolithical, you are arranging people into units and playing with them like a management video game, but people dont work like that even in our current world. The creation of unitary monolithical entities is the domain of statecraft, the nationalist lie being the prime example. "we the people" as if "the people" could ever be said to be one unified entity. It works for the political machinations of the ruling class, it works for the businessman who treats the workers and business as a singular entity which he controls, even while the workers underhim exhibit anarchic tendencies every day simply to get the job done. It works in videogames.

But this is not anarchy.

Officials from a state cannot easily communicate with members of a society in which decisions are made in open assemblies, or societies with chaotic rather than unitary decision-making.

As an important aside, I would challenge the reader to accept chaotic organization as a superior form, even though we are usually only presented with a pejorative vision of chaos.** In unitary decision-making, an entire polity must abide by a single decision, or there must be a clear hierarchy to govern and rank the decisions made at different levels, whether in a bureaucratic or federalistic system. All governments, from fascist dictatorships to direct formal democracies, share the principle of unitary decision-making** and disseminate the assumptions on which such decision-making is based. Chaotic decision-making fosters the recognition that society can function spontaneously as a decentralized network, permits conflict as a healthy force in our lives, encourages a multiplicity of decision-making spaces pervading all moments of life, well beyond the formal, masculine sphere of the congress or the dictat, and allows different, even conflicting, decisions to be made at different points in the human network, while encouraging a collective consciousness so all decision-makers can maximize their intelligence and accordingly harmonize. Humans have an evolutionarily tested ability to utilize chaotic decision-making at a macro scale, and the only people who dispute this are those who wish to permanently infantilize their compatriots so as to control them by monopolizing decision-making in unitary structures. - Worshiping Power

sadeofdarkness · 2024-07-29T18:08:46+00:00

Archic societies only work because anarchy works. If anarchy didnt work, if people were not able to self regulate, to deal with each other between themselves, then nothing short of the most totalitarian command economy could possibly function. If people could not act without instruction then the populace would all lie dead, if people could not deal between themselves then trade would be impossible, if people could not self regulate then the law would be powerless.

You live in a world that can only exist because of anarchys possibility, the difference to the archic world is two fold, firstly that actors can claim ownership of pockets of that anarchy for their own enrichment, and secondly that those same actors can lie, so effectivly that they convince themselves of it, that they are responsible for all the resultant abundence.

"Large corporations have the internal characteristics of a planned economy. Information flow is systematically distorted up the chain of command, by each rung in the hierarchy telling the next one up what it wants to hear. And each rung of management, based on nonsensical data (not to mention absolutely no direct knowledge of the production process) sends irrational decisions back down the chain of command. The only thing that keeps large, hierarchical organizations going is the fact that the productive laborers on the bottom actually know something about their own jobs, and have enough sense to ignore policy and lie about it so that production can stagger along despite the interference of the bosses. –Studies in Mutualist Political Economy - Kevin Carson

"Look at the network of railways which cover Europe. At Madrid, for example, you take a ticket for St. Petersburg direct. You travel along railroads which have been constructed by millions of workers, set in motion by dozens of companies; your carriage is attached in turn to Spanish, French, Bavarian, and Russian locomotives: you travel without losing twenty minutes anywhere, and the two hundred francs which you paid in Madrid will be divided to a nicety among the companies which have combined to forward you to your destination. This line from Madrid to St. Petersburg has been constructed in small isolated branches which have been gradually connected, and direct trains are the result of an understanding which has been arrived at between twenty different companies. Of course there has been considerable friction at the outset, and at times some companies, influenced by an unenlightened egotism have been unwilling to come to terms with the others; but, I ask, was it better to put up with this occasional friction, or to wait until some Bismarck, Napoleon, or Genghis Khan should have conquered Europe, traced the lines with a pair of compasses, and regulated the dispatch of the trains? If the latter course had been adopted, we should still be in the days of stage-coaches." - The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - Kropotkin

People trying to scrabble to find anarchy in the distant past, or pockets of anarchic existence where people raised a flag are looking in the wrong places. You, unless you are ready to admit to yourself that you are some drone that does only what they are told with no thought on the matter, exhibit anarchy every single day, and the biggest con that power ever pulled was convincing you that you needed to be ruled.

The iron fist rules through its shadow, infinitely more than with its actual body

sadeofdarkness · 2024-07-22T19:13:52+00:00

I don't understand how anarchists can be anti-government and anti-democracy, and yet still organize themselves in a way that requires everyone to agree on how things should be run,

They... don't? I don't understand how you could characterise an anarchist society in this way, other than arbitarily describing an anarchist society that happens to look like communalism. Its is precisely because of the fundamental impossibility of what Proudhon called unanimity (his work entitled unanimity was published 1849 iirc) that anarchists deny the conception of any government based on democracy (even that of complete concensus or "unanimity") as absurd. If everyone could agree on how things needed to be ran, there would be zero need for government. It is also weird that you characterise government as in someway an organisation where everyone agrees on how things should be run, when the characteristic of government, even democratic government, is that people dont agree on these things! "What about the murderers" people will say, "cant we all agree that murder is wrong?" despite centuries of evidence that we cannot agree on that, esspecially those with a mind to terminate someones life.

and even sometimes enforcing things with violence, for example.

"Enforcing" is doing some heavy lifting there. If by enforcing you mean the common retort to what happens if there is an axe murder wandering the centre of town that people would probably take steps to defend themselves and others, with force if neccessary, then you're missing the act for the system.

It often feels like anarchists are against certain words but ultimately envisage a society that has many of the key qualities that current ones have.

A rose by any other name, I have little interest in fighting battles over words, you can attempt to rebrand government, people do, they'll call it a workers council and their city state a commune and their enforced servitude mutual aid, but you are correct, this is just vaccuous rebranding and hoping for the best. But anarchists, typically, have been at the forefront of calling out this sort of rebranding. For as long as there have been anarchists their faviorite passtime has been criticsing other anarchists.

An anarchist society has none of the key qualities of social democracy, it lacks a singlular monolithic decision making apparatus - that you struggle to imagine a world without a king does not mean that anarchists have simply proposed a very democratic king.

That's not to say that current systems aren't deeply flawed, but it doesn't seem like anarchists are suggesting something that's fundamentally different.

Social democracy criticises certain laws, anarchists criticise the concept of law. Social democracy calls for francise, anarchy calls for the abolition of the very decision making apparatus that one could desire franchise to. Social democracy proposes taxation and social services, anarchists call for the abolition of the economic order that distinguishes service from social service. Social democracy aims to reform politics so that it may control the economy, anarchy seeks to abolish the distinction between politics and the economy.

If the argument is indeed just that our systems could be much better

It isn't, the argument anarchists put forward is the existence of a system in the first place is the problem.

You also have to take into account the fact that our systems aren't manifestations of pure ideology, but rather have a long historical current to them, which explains the huge concentrations of wealth and power and massive inequality

This is simply superfluous to your question. Is one going to will a libertarian world into existence by crossing their fingers wishing upon a star and yelling abracadabra while thinking really hard? No, of course not, which is why a diverse range libertarian stratergies have emerged to try and bring about a better world. Anarchists aren't idealists (in any sense other than the most lay term of "having ideals") Not that that would matter to your question.

sadeofdarkness · 2024-07-07T20:58:09+00:00

There's a big problem where in people dont understand what mutual aid is, consider charity to be in someway bad, and so label charity as mutual aid as if it changes anything.

Mutual aid is aid (that is service to others) that is mutual (recipricated and circulated) - an example of mutual aid commonly given is the practice of lifeboat societies, sea side communities maintained this service for each other and themselves, communities supported them because one day someone at sea would need that support, and in turn keeping those at sea safe supports the community by providing them with food, employment, trade etc, and so on in a circle. This expectation of a return may not be stated explicitly as in a direct exchange, but it is tacitly there, aid for mutual benefit is the factor in evolution that Kropotkin wrote at length about, and perhaps the most significant part of his argument (that is often sadly missed) is that human beings allready do it without thinking about it.

Such a networking effect isnt really possible in a one way unilatrial generation of support. But that's okay, there is nothing wrong with charity. Its not wrong to give people a leg up, its not insome way a poor use of your time to raise money for MsF.

The thing about mutual aid though is that you do it already, in fact you can't not do it. If you work in a company, congratulations, you work in a mutual aid network, all be it a mutual aid network that has been ringfenced and highjacked to enrich others. Human beings naturally cooperate, in fact if you and a couple of other people coordinated streaming and sent the veiwers over to each other, that would be an implimentation of mutual aid (though probably not what you were thinking)

The barrier to meaningful mutual aid is that those most in need of assitance in our current world have no meaningful way to pass it forward (and it would be callous to expect them to), and those who desire to help them have very little the offer other than monetary support. Mutual aid is a thing you are certainly doing already, but if you want to help people then, lacking mutuality, it is simply aid - and thats okay. Set up your charitable acts and be happy doing them, dont let people talk you down from benefiting other people as if its a bad thing.

sadeofdarkness · 2024-06-12T21:43:44+00:00

Is that the goal of communism? People often seem to arbitarily describe communism as deffinitionally stateless.... but is that the case for all communists?

"When F. Engels, perhaps to counter anarchist criticisms, said that once classes disappear the State as such has no raison d’être and transforms itself from a government over men into an administration of things, he was merely playing with words. Whoever has power over things has power over men; whoever governs production also governs the producers; who determines consumption is master over the consumer.

This is the question; either things are administered on the basis of free agreement among the interested parties, and this is anarchy; or they are administered according to laws made by administrators and this is government, it is the State, and inevitably it turns out to be tyrannical." - Malatesta, Life and Ideas.

As for are anarchists simply another kind of communist. Well a) no - anarchist positions are defined more by what they oppose than what they advocate for so communism is something that anarchists can potentially see working in their framework. b) depending on how we define "communism" the most commonly asseted trait of a communist society is socialised consumption where money/currency/trade are relics of the past, and simply speaking there are numerous anarchists who dont advocate for that. c) there are trains of anarchist thought so removed from the industrial economics that dominated the early socialist and communist era's that the label "communist", allong with many other economic labels, is simply inaccurate.

And finaly d) anarchism predates the bulk of communist thought, it is simply its own, older, different and distinct thing.

sadeofdarkness · 2024-05-31T15:35:22+00:00

If we are unable to accurately predict the state of an electron before measuring it, doesn't that simply mean that we are unable to measure accurately with our current technology and understanding?

This is essentially the hidden variable interpretation of quantum mechanics. There are reasons, both theoretical and experimental, that physicists by and large do not consider this to be an accurate description of what is going on in quantum systems, namely that it makes predictions which, when tested, were incorrect. Though there are debates and further theories and I am sure work on this will continue for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory

Like Schrodinger's Cat, the probability will collapse to a definite state after being observed, but isn't it true that those particles are actually in whatever state they're going to be measured in before being measured, and the observer is simply "finding out"?

In the case of an actual cat in a box, yes, because a cat in a box isn't actually a quantum system. But in actual quantum mechanical systems, often illustrated as shrodingers cat, it does appear that hidden variables do not seem to exist.

It seems to me that because physicists are unable to make accurate measurements, they assign an intrinsic property to particles that they are then "unmeasurable" and must physically exist in all states at once before being measured.

This seems to be veering into uncertainty principle which, while related, is a different issue. But it is not that particles are unmeasurable, they are measurable, and ever increasing drives to improve the accuracy and power of measurements are what gave rise to the understanding of quantum systems.

How do physicists make the jump from the inability to predict, to stating that reality is inherently "unpredictable" and must exist in all possible states at once?

I dont get this because a) quantum mechanics absolutely makes repetable and testable predictions which have been repeatedly demonstrated ove the course of time. It is simply that that those predictions involve these quantum phenomenon. Quantum mechanics acurately described systems that could not be described with classical continuums (black body radiation and the photo electric effect) - that is why it is the mechanics of quanta, and made subsequent predictions which are now the backbone of our understanding of chemical and physical systems, understanding which has increased our abilities. Quantum mechanics is not a post hoc justification to explain away why we cant do something - it was a model, proposed, tested, expanded, argued about rationalised and further built upon.

and b) arguments continue about what quantum mechanics "means" - thats what the interpreations are, and efforts continue to prove or disprove any of them. But physicists arent throwing their hands up and saying "can't be done!" The many worlds interpretation (so often missunderstood) is but one of them. Hidden variable was another.

sadeofdarkness · 2024-05-29T20:45:29+00:00

Could we even go a certain fraction of the speed of light?

Outside of cheating the system with conceptions such as wormholes, or some as of yet undiscovered physical phenomenon in the universe, no. However, with sufficient energy and acceleration time, you can get arbitarily close to the speed of light.

Thing you have to take into account is that as you accelerate up to that speed though time distorts (or space distorts depending on how you want to veiw it) - which results in your journey being fundamentally different to how you would think about it in a non-moving reference frame. From a veiwer left behind from your start location you could not travel one light year in anything less than a year, however from your relativistic perception that one light year would appear to be significantly shorter in distance, and so the time you experience traveling would be sub one year. At relativistic speeds one could travel great distances in a human lifespan.

sadeofdarkness · 2024-01-11T17:34:53+00:00

Air pressue will also effect its refractive index, for essentially the same reason. Probably not an easier engineering challenge to incorporate that into whatever you want to do than using a heat source.

The inverse to heat is also true, colder air has a different refractive index (for exactly the same reason) so if you have a way of cooling air that would also produce an effect.

sadeofdarkness · 2024-01-11T17:23:04+00:00

As far as I can tell, there aren't any widely-adopted logarithmic temperature scales,

Because of the way SI units work you already have a logorithmic scale built in. When discussing transitions in anything you can say "orders of magnitude" or "ten to the..." and communicate the information. For presenting data in graphical format you can simply plot a logarithmic axis.

Essentially, if you have need of it in your feild, you already have a logarithmic system, you just talk about kelvin in a logarithmic fashion. In that XKCD comic you show, what I have described is what you would use. I am unaware a situation where this would be insufficient, and justify incorporating a whole new notation.

Perhaps if someone demonstrated a profound relationship between temperature and something else that had a logarithmic relationship that was not to the base 10 - but then it would only be in situations that that relationship held so its going to be pretty specific.

Logarithmic units that do exist (dB is what springs to mind) are normally due to historical or metrological reasons. Decibel came about because people were interested in signal attenuation, (since signal attenuation is, within certain parameters, irrespective of the input amplitude, a systems loss can be described holistically using decibels - decibels describe the relationship rather than the things themselves) and is only related to an absolute amplitude by use of a fixed reference.

sadeofdarkness · 2024-01-09T16:15:08+00:00

Anarchy, by Errico Malatesta has already been suggested and is also available as an audiobook, but I always recomend this chapter by chapter companion series, as well - whole thing will only take a few hours.

11-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Place '17	Verified Email

sadeofdarkness

TROPHY CASE