Category Archives: Politics

Solarpunk: A decentralized society

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“Ginko tree” by tree-species via a Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 license

Decentralization

One of the most important things for solarpunk society is decentralization. Most major complaints about society can be traced to over-centralization of power. In the United States, I’m feeling especially conscious of how our country was founded on the belief that power should be distributed among the people, not concentrated into the hands of the elite.

To continue this dream of protecting people’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the best protection against overly-powerful central governments and corporations is decentralization. Recent developments in decentralization include blockchain, mesh networks, platform cooperatives, decentralized social media, and the growth of grassroots democracy.

Blockchain

Blockchain has opened up the door for decentralization of many different services. The most obvious example is cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but other projects include data storage (FileCoin, Storj), computer processing time (Golem), genetic data management (Nebula), and global UBI. If you’re interested in learning more about blockchain, check out this Blockchain 101 episode of Unchained with Laura Shin.

Mesh Networks

NetworkTopology-Mesh by Foobaz

Mesh networks work by connecting people to each other in a non-hierarchical way. Mesh networks are more robust since they are not dependent on a single central device such as a cell tower to connect all of the devices in the network. This allows for increased redundancy during natural disasters as well as communications in areas that don’t have any infrastructure like National Parks or developing countries. Current implementations include the mesh network going up in Detroit, Serval and GoTenna for cell phones, and the Althea Mesh for building decentralized ISPs.

Platform cooperatives

Platform cooperatives are what the sharing economy was supposed to be before Uber and AirBNB ate everything. Governed by the actual service providers (hosts, drivers, etc.) the rules and profits are determined more equitably. The P2P Foundation and the New School’s Platform Cooperativism are good starting points for more information. If you prefer audio, Team Human has episodes with both Stacco Troncoso of the P2P foundation and Juho Makkonen of Sharetribe. Robin Chase’s Peers INC is a great book on the power of platform cooperatives.

If you are ready to start you own platform cooperative, Sharetribe makes an open source platform designed to help get things up and running. Forbes and Yes! Magazine have both covered platform cooperatives and Shareable covers them along with the more traditional “sharing economy” companies. Some platform cooperatives in the wild include Open Bazaar (shopping/commerce), LibreTaxi (transportation), Stocksy (stock photos), and your local credit unions. More services can be found at the Platform Cooperativism Directory.

Decentralized Social media

If you’re concerned about how Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies handle your data, Scuttlebutt and Mastodon are two options that are not controlled by any one entity. Their user bases are much smaller at the moment, but it costs nothing to join the party. In The Mesh, a decentralization news site, has more here.

Grassroots democracy

Grassroots democracy is a group of political ideologies based on the idea that decision making should be left as local as possible since the people impacted by policies should be the ones who vote on their implementation. Subsidiarity, which is practiced by the European Union, is one example wherein the EU may only pass laws when an issue comes up that can’t be adequately addressed by separate legislation in its member countries. ROAR Magazine, a great resource for grassroots democracy news, has an excellent piece about how municipalism empowers women and others typically left out of the political process.

What do you think? Is centralization the enemy of democracy and free agency? Leave your thoughts below!

Law in space…

Being FOR something

More butts on bikes

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Bike ride

The Shift Up Bicycle Podcast is about getting “more butts on bikes” and recently launched a series called “Bridging the Gap” to discuss the issues facing female and female-identifying cyclists. As of now, 75% of trips by bike are taken by males, and since human-powered transit is an important part of a solarpunk future, growing the number of trips taken by bike is critical, especially for underrepresented communities.

Arleigh, AKA Bike Shop Girl, meets with guests each week to talk shop, discuss advocacy tactics, and encourage people to find ways to bring more people into the cycling fold. You can find more information at her new website, Bike Here, which is particularly aimed at the new cyclist.

Some other great resources for both new and veteran cyclists are Just Ride by Grant Petersen, and Bikenomics by Elly Blue. Just Ride is a refreshing take on the important parts of riding a bike, dispensing with the helmet and Lycra-clad image that intimidates many new cyclists. Bikenomics makes a case for how bicycle infrastructure can quickly pay for itself by increased economic activity and wellness. I’ll add them to the Resources Page, but you might also want to cruise around Microcosm Publishing as a lot of their books and zines are particularly applicable for solarpunks regardless of your interest in bikes.

Image is “Bike ride” by Jaime González via a CC-BY 2.0 License

The Rules: Capitalism, UBI, and the Blockchain

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The Rules Blog recently posted an excellent piece about the relationship between extractive capitalism, universal basic income (UBI), and blockchain technologies. Climate change, pollution, and exploitation of the workforce are largely a function of the incentives baked into the current version of centralized currency and capitalism that we have today. Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies offer a beacon of hope that by wresting control of money away from centralized governments and big banks we can remake the economy in a way that serves the people instead of the current system where people serve the economy.

While governments dicker about the merits of UBI and small-scale experiments are starting in some jurisdictions, the blockchain community is already developing some cryptocurrencies with UBI built in. The people writing at the Rules Blog have connections to one of the solutions, Circles, but many others exist such as Manna* and UBU. A short list can be found in this Reddit post.

As I mentioned before, the best chance for UBI in the United States is the FairTax. I think that circumventing the ponderous bureaucracy of government will probably result in a more expedient and fair system than anything we would get from Washington. The other advantage of blockchain-based systems is that they will be truly international and not locked down by the draconian laws of any one given government.

What do you think? Is blockchain over-hyped? Is it the next big thing? Sound off below, and thanks for visiting!

*Affiliate link – I may receive extra Manna if you sign up for the Manna UBI project through this link

Re-purposing malls as solarpunk co-housing

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One of the best ideas for solarpunk co-housing I’ve seen is Bluelightning42’s post about re-purposing malls on Tumblr. While there has been the mixed use redevelopment of the Arcade in Providence, Rhode Island, and NewLab, an incubator+housing in Brooklyn, I’ve seen little else done in regards to this concept.

Bellevue Square Mall courtesy of Debs (ò‿ó)♪

Business Insider ran a story last year as part of it’s “Death of Suburbia” series talking about the roughly 25% of shopping malls in the US at risk of closing. I think the main issue is that most malls aren’t in particularly easy to access areas, but with a large enough community, I think you could get a public transit stop (if there isn’t one already) and car-sharing to provide off-site transportation. If you want to see the really cool architecture in some of these malls, Seph Lawless has been getting amazing photos of abandoned malls.

Rezoning the mall (where needed) as mixed-use would allow some small stores on-site for groceries and other small items. I know that I would love to be able to just walk down the hall to grab some Swedish fish out of a bulk bin in the middle of the night (I’m so healthy). You could leave the food court going too with shared communal kitchens and restaurants run by the people living there.

Garden courtesy of cuprikorn

Most of the parking lots could be reclaimed as greenspace, leaving a small area for car-sharing vehicles and the bus stop. A community garden could spring up where there was once only asphalt. Depending on the bike infrastructure in your city, you might also be able to build spur trails from the mall to other interesting parts of town.

Most malls have some natural lighting, so why not make some of the skylights stained glass to keep up the solarpunk vibe? With the huge roofing area of a mall, you could generate power for residents by adding solar panels and small wind turbines. There might be enough area that you would qualify as a small-scale renewable power plant. I would want to update the HVAC system to heat/cool with a geothermal heat pump to maximize the efficiency of the building along with the other requisite insulation and lighting efficiency upgrades.

Stained glass in Kaohsiung City courtesy of MiNe

So, do you have any ideas about how a repurposed mall could be a great place to live? Are there any concerns that you have regarding the idea? Sound of in the comments and let us know!

Photos are from Flikr users under a Creative Commons License

Prettyy!! Want! {Nature/ 1 of 3} by Debs (ò‿ó)♪
MiNe-KissX_103-0082RG by MiNe
Garden by Cuprikorn (this picture is under a different license: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Solarpunk, taxation, and universal basic income

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Universal Basic Income (UBI) is one of the big ideas I’ve seen floating around the solarpunk community. To learn more, I read some of the more scintillating chapters of Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy, and apparently there haven’t been any studies big enough to see what the true impact of a basic income would be on society. The authors suggested that a good starting place would be a baby step toward UBI where everyone got a small stipend.

The Adam Smith Institute recently published a paper on the market case for UBI and outlined the reasons why people should be supporting a move toward UBI. One of the main reasons is mounting concerns over technological unemployment with the rapid rise of automation and AI-driven production. For instance, truck and taxi operators are expected to be displaced by autonomous vehicles in coming years. Many other jobs will be at risk as well as computer systems get better at taking over tasks once performed by humans.

One proposal that I’ve been following that was mentioned in the book was the Fair Tax (HR 25) which eliminates the Federal Income Tax and replaces it with a Federal Sales tax. Where this gets interesting is that as a function of switching to a Federal Sales Tax, everyone in the country is given a “prebate” to account for income disparity at the lower end. This could be considered a sort of light UBI as everyone in the country will get the same “prebate” regardless of their income.

Another bonus of the Fair Tax is that it is only implemented once on an item. Used items are not taxed meaning that we can incentivize conserving resources while giving us a nationwide test of how to implement a full-scale UBI.

Perhaps the best part is that the Fair Tax eliminates the IRS and the current loophole-ridden Federal Income Tax system. I think we all know that the current system has more than its fair share of problems. Every time a new tax “reform” bill is brought up in Congress, we see how much of a losing game the income tax system is.

The Fair Tax is not perfect, but it seems like a workable solution with widespread existing support in the US Congress. More information is available about the Fair Tax at http://fairtax.org/faq.

Sound off in the comments if you think UBI is the way of the future or if you have any thoughts on the Fair Tax. Thanks for stopping by!

Some of the text for this article is recycled from my Tumblr post on the subject: https://solarpunk-gnome.tumblr.com/post/163921938517/taxation-and-solarpunk-a-few-thoughts

Image is “Taxes” by 401kcalculator.org via a Creative Commons license.

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