Why building inspiring alternatives is necessary to counter authoritarianism
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7 replies
One of the most important aspects of this is that it gets people thinking in terms of what it takes to solve their problems, rather than strictly about the money.
I've been working with a community land trust. Houses take material, labor, and lots of planning to build. The easiest way to access that, of course, is with loads of money. But ultimately you can get it done with much much less money if you identify what you can actually do and then go do it yourselves.
My problems are the sewage company keeps dumping sewage on the beach. But it is illegal for me to start shooting execs in the company until behaviour improves. Our local MP voted to make it easier to dump sewage on the beach and people voted to keep her in.
Just collect the sewage you can (wear gloves and other PPE) into watertight envelopes and mail them to the MPs who voted yes and to the company.
Resorting to physical violence as the only answer is unimaginative.
That is not building an alternative though. You are only destroying the current system by shooting the execs and are merely hoping that things improve.
Building an alternative would be some way of dealing with sewage without dumping it on the beach. The main problem with that are usually combined pipes for rain water and sewage. So when you have heavy rain the sewage plant can no longer deal with all the sewage, as a lot of it is just rain water. The alternative for that is something like a sponge city, where the rain water goes straight into the ground and is not blocked by asphalt or the like. Other then that lowering sewage going to the company using say compost toilets might work or maybe buying up the company and turn it into a cooperative.
It could be argued that a sustained campaign of murders where the selection criteria was known to be "execs who exhibit this behaviour" would have effects beyond the murders themselves.
Less "hope" and more "a plan".
Not necessarily a good one, but a plan nonetheless.
That is a well thought out list of potential strategies.
And none of it matters to the companies dumping the sewage, unless it's going to be more profitable for them to adopt one of those strategies.
Alternatives to dumping raw sewage already exist, dumping it is more profitable, even with the added cost of buying the political influence to get laws changed.
I'm absolutely not saying we don't do all or some of these things, it does make a difference , but we need to acknowledge that it's fighting an uphill battle against an entrenched system with goals that are usually diametrically opposed to allowing this kind of thing to succeed.
And make decisions accordingly.
I dunno, making execs fear getting shot in the face sounds like it builds a positively reinforced pattern of not being awful humans, to me...
Heavy rain is often mentioned, that doesn't explain the sewage dumping during periods of drought.