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happy wrote

Great read!

Only nitpick i found was that solar panels generally have a lifespan of 25 years, not 10. Not to say they arent getting dumped after 10 years but i feel like some asshole might discredit everything because of that point.

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

I'll look into that, but my understanding is they start degrading after 10 years so you get increasingly less power from them from that point on.

You're so right that people will hone in on one perceived flaw and use it to discredit the whole piece. Happened to me so many times.

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happy wrote (edited )

Any credible solar panel will come with a 25 year warranty with a graph of % efficiency over time.

I think there was another nitpick I found towards the end but it felt more literary so I let it slide. I‘ll find it though and edit this post.

Edit: "CEOs dumping waste in a river in China." Because CEOs arent the ones literally dumping the waste. "CEOs choosing to dump waste" would sound better and I think more powerful imo.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote (edited )

I have a different standpoint because I don’t have a lot of experience dealing with authoritarians and collectivists in the way you do. Anyway, here are some notes up to the section “Capitalism & Communism Are Cut From the Same Globalized Exploitative Industrial Cloth”. (I'll try to do the rest when I get a chance) As usual they’re just for your consideration, it’s your piece to do with as you wish!

the history of collectivised industry and its devastating effects on the environment.

Needs references probably

Industrial production depends on non-stop growth

This is a key claim against reds, so it needs a reference or an explanation for those who are not already in the know

Workers won't vote to scale down their industry or its environmental impact as their livelihoods depend on their industry's growth.

This is not obvious to me, because I can see workers changing how they do things when they have freedom over their workspaces. I personally do think that industry would be scaled down in some or many cases, but that the systemic change necessary to escape the world-eating mode of existence called civilisation would not be achieved.

Indigenous people and anyone living off the land will effectively be seen by workerist-society as an undesirable out-group.

Developing on this point and how class-reductionist perspectives tend to maintain other hierarchies could be useful

the people parroting "no ethical consumption under capitalism" at you don't actually have any intention of curbing their destructive consumption, even under communism. If anything, they hope to increase their consumption by acquiring more spending power. With communism, they'll be able to consume as much as a middle-management boss does under capitalism because all workers will receive an equal share.

I think the is a great point. Maybe it could use teasing out. Pointing out how the worker’s dreams for a better life is very often framed in terms of being able to have things that are kept from them neglects how a world where everybody has these things likely guarantees the consumption of the ‘natural’ world.


I think harm reduction is meaningful but almost only as part of a broader more structural attack. That some harm reduction does make a difference, but it’s a bit like how anticiv people will say that challenging capitalism alone is not enough, you have to challenge civilisation. I think? Challenging capitalism does probably make a difference, but unless you are also attacking civilisation, you'll perpetuate the underlying problem and civilisation will find ways to coopt your mode of living.


container ships that transport imported food and other products are able to bypass any environmental regulations since they operate in international waters

is this true? So far as I understand, the nation’s flag that a ship flies in international waters is the set of laws it is bound to.

Primitive peoples

I feel like we shouldn’t call people primitive.

When someone chooses to not e.g. consume cow products, that directly creates less demand for cow products. So over that person's lifetime, less forest will be bulldozed to graze the cows that they didn't eat.

We’ve chatted about this before. I don’t think this is true. I think if I were a meat eater and I died today no supermarket anywhere would change how many steaks they order. This kind of action only works collectively, I think.

Workerists will tell you with a straight face that capitalism is to blame for the cruise industry's rampant polluting, and "after the revolution", the cruise industry would do no harm because it would be worker-managed.

It might be worthwhile to lead with some examples like this right at the beginning of the piece.

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

Is this true (container ships)

Yup.

Container ships run on the dregs of crude oil.

When all the higher quality fuels like petrol, diesel and kerosene have been extracted, you’re left with a black, tarry mess called bunker fuel. This is what container ships burn.

As you may expect, bunker fuel is incredibly polluting.

Back in 2009, confidential data was released showing one container ship produces as much pollution as 50 million cars.

https://www.exponentialinvestor.com/energy/a-single-container-ship-produces-more-pollution-than-all-the-cars-in-the-uk/

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution

https://newatlas.com/shipping-pollution/11526/

It's hard to find specific reference saying they're able to do this because they operate in international waters tho so I'll change it a bit.

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

I feel like we shouldn’t call people primitive.

Changed to "pre-civilized" to be safe, but I don't really see "primitive" as having a negative connotation in this context since anarchists (primitivists) use it positively.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Primitivists may intend to use it positively but enough of them fetishize the 'primitive' enough that it completely backfires, I think.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Comment part 2:

They see dumpster divers, illegalists, vegans, sustenance farmers, bike punks, squatters, naturists, communers and other "lifestylists" as a "distraction" from their driving singular desire to replace industrial capitalism with industrial communism. 

Who are these people? It’d be great if you pointed to some real-world examples. Because I worry you’re pitching against a straw man.

wearing their officially licensed V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask

I’ve never heard of a communist doing something like this; so it gives me the sense that you’re not giving a good reading of your opponents. It’s kinda tied to the previous point I made.

Protesting is just another cog in the democracy machine. The illusion of choice. It accomplishes far less than an anarchist choosing to live as ethically as possible in their lifetime.

Personally I think that both protesting and ‘lifestyle choices’ are to a large degree coopted by the system and completely within the range of what the system can endure. addressing the ways that lifestyle choices are limited also will pre-empt the kinds of responses you’ll get.

farcical promises of "post-scarcity", "Star Trek replicators" and "space mining"

It’s probably worthwhile to address (or link to) why at least ‘post-scarcity’ is farcical.

And the Africans who complain when mountains of worn-out solar panels

Generally worthwhile never to refer to Africans where you can say specific countries.


I like that you’ve started addressing more ecologically-minded versions of the positions you’re critiquing. I feel like this is both more interesting and allows you to address the core failures of these positions. I would have liked this to be the focus of the piece, with some throwaway attention given to simple old-school reductionists.

These greeny-reds get the least attention; I don’t know if they need the most. I guess it depends on your target audience.


Time and time again, voters have successfully used their vote to deny rights to migrants, sex workers, trans and gay people, and anyone they see as differing from their normative standards.

I like where you’re going with this. I think giving some solid examples would be ideal. But I’m not sure about talking about voters though, since they’re distinct from red revolutionaries.

Communists

Sometimes its unclear who you’re critiquing. Initially, you seem to be critiquing “anarcho-communists, syndicalists and other industrialist-anarchists” - red-focused anarchists.

But you’re saying stuff focused on communists, and workerists, and these aren’t the same.

I guess making clear the links between red-anarchists and communists etc so that you can compare them is good. Because red anarchists can point to the differences in their positions from communism to dodge your criticisms of communists.

This "land-owner" class includes indigenous peoples living off of their ancestral lands and exploiting no one, but again and again socialists have targetted them for genocide for not fitting into their ideological framework

I didn’t know the point up until before the comma, and I think that you could use references for the part after the comma

a worker collective, and telling them they need to kill everyone outside their group so they can seize power and take an equal share of industry's spoils is not something that has ever led to anything good

I’m really skeptical that this happens in this way. I don’t have knowledge of the examples you list afterward; were they actually cases where worker groups were told to kill all but workers, and where ‘workers’ refers to just people who work and not a more general group of the exploited.

You use the example of the Kazakh nomadic herders - i think that it’s important to speak more about what happened so that the reader has a fuller grasp of what happened and how it links to collectivist ideology.

Setting up living, breathing alternatives to the industrial system

This is cool, but some lifestyle choices aren’t doing this, I think. Like veganism.


Cool. I'm happy to discuss any of this stuff further if you like.

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

It's gonna take a long time to make all these changes, will reply later. One thing though -

This is cool, but some lifestyle choices aren’t doing this, I think. Like veganism.

Like I emphasized in the piece, things don't happen in a vacuum. When someone is vegan, other people are inspired by it and also go vegan. It's never one vegan, it's a movement that grows and spreads so even if one person's vegan diet makes little difference, all the people they inspire to be vegan and the people those people inspire quickly add up and this does drop CO2 emissions a lot. Meat consumption is still the most CO2 intensive pursuit there is, so the fewer people consuming meat, the better it is for everyone. Being vegan is the easiest anti-exploitation lifestyle change anyone can make and it has wide reaching results when you combine it with anarchy and self sufficiency. Culture can't change overnight, but the more individuals there are living lives that minimize oppression, the more impact on wider society it has.

I'm also intentionally equating ancoms with authcoms because I'm not sure there's really a difference in practical terms in regards to the collective asserting its authority on everyone.

I avoided going over the kazakh genocide again since I covered it in my tankies: left unity scam piece, but I guess I can touch on it briefly.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

When someone is vegan, other people are inspired by it and also go vegan

Ideally yes. But veganism's worst ally is often vegans with their self-righteous moralisms, snootiness etc.
I've talked to a lot of people about veganism but for the most part I can't say I've inspired anybody to do the same.

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ziq OP wrote

That's more of a white yuppie problem than a vegan problem. You don't see Hindus acting like they're hot shit for abstaining from meat. The way those vegans act is no different than white communists or white hippies or white atheists or white etc. It's all ideology.

I'm still going to make all the changed you suggested btw, I actually haven't been happy with this piece at all so it's hard to get around to working on it when I don't even like it.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

One more thing is that I don't think the word "scapegoat" is right. Probably something more like 'cop-out' works.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

I'm just now realising there's a difference between a proof-reader and what I've done. I hope what I've done is ok.

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