keepthepace

Thanks! I did mess up!

I fixed the post link. And here is the link to the software and hardware:

https://docs.romi-project.eu/Rover/

I am not sure what it is, but I'll add a few rocks on the pile:

• One has to choose between the fight of a lifetime or a life of fights. I have chosen a specific fight but I will be a support or an ally where I can. I will never be an opponent or an obstacle.

• Anarchists praise praxis: practice as the best way to preach. Wherever possible, practice what you believe in and help create little bubbles of what "should be".

I don't think it's an all or nothing question, it's a matter of knowing where you are putting the cursor. And I think we agree that thinking in terms of punishment is counterproductive. I prefer to think in terms of incentives.

According to Graebber, we do have a lot of empirical data because primitive populations were basically using either gift economy or debt/reputation economies. Contrary to popular belief, barter was not a common way of doing transactions. Thing is, that was held by some sort of xenophobia where you can't really accept people from outside to partake in it unless they accept a ton of often pretty regressive social rules. So that's not exactly a model, but this is a lot of data we can examine.

I don’t really know cases of gift economies being tried and failing, but it’s possible that it often isn’t reported if it happens.

Anytime a non-profit stops for lack of volunteers, that's a gift economy that's failing. Whether it is goods or service that you are giving, that's part of a gift economy.

And many, many, many experiments since the 60s and the 70s have been done in that respect. And none managed to grow organically.

In terms of social predictive reasoning, you could make the argument that openly telling resellers “it’s fine if you resell it if you need the money but please donate or contribute if you can, and please tell people about us” is way more effective than turning it into a game of wits

One of the eye-opening themes that recently added a layer of depth to my views on anarchism was neurodiversity. I realized that the reasons that made me prefer anarchism and gift economies and reputation economies were mostly psychological and that not having them did not make people idiots or less moral than I am. Therefore, if I want to see a society where I am comfortable and where I fit, I have to make it work within a system where other psychological profiles are also comfortable.

A lot of people will naturally abide by rules that are given, even if they have no teeth. Some people like us will infer rules from a really free market about the fact that one should not resell things that are given. But I have met enough people to know that there is also a very common profile that considers that if you can get away with free stuff, you are smart. And the people who made these rules are dumb. And it's totally fine to "win" by taking away what you can.

These people exist. And it's not a rare profile. They are not going to be stopped by a sign that just says "please". And I don't want a system where we have policemen chasing them and beating them up if they don't obey the rules. It's unavoidable, we have to play their game of wits to some extent.

It is a constraint, but it is the same type of constraints that you have when you have to design something for colorblind people or to make it accessible to wheelchairs.

I don't know if I would call it teeth, but I think a sufficient incentive can simply be access. You want to participate in a gift economy? Yes? then welcome. You are partaking action that would destroy it? Then no, you're stuck to the less efficient capitalist system then, and we are only going to sell things to you that we have would have given to other people.

Thing is it requires some sort of tracking of the people or some sort of in-group.

Who would do the nastiest-jobs except for pay?

On that specific subject, I think that the question is biased. I think that some jobs developed to be particularly nasty because we have no shortage of people who are desperate to accept minimum wage. Otherwise, the nastiest job would be very high pay. I mean, it is more fun to be a programmer than a sewer cleaner. In theory, that would mean that the sewer cleaner's job would have higher pay.

If on the other hand we switch the question in terms of how can we attract volunteers, things change radically. I have been to a rice harvest event that were basically the social event of the village and that ended up with a party where everyone is exhausted but happy looking at the rice dry.

Many people take pride in their work and it doesn't take a lot to make it attractive to volunteers. Strangely, the highest paying jobs are often the most desirable and the most enjoyable to do.

Unfortunately, the amount of things you can achieve for free, possibly relying on donations, is very limited.

And yet here we are, with the internet running mostly on free software, the amount of work put into the linux kernel exceeding anything Microsoft could do and open source LLMs being serious competitors to companies investing 10B+ USD in research.

Open source is the biggest and most successful demonstration of what is technically an anarcho-communist effort. Communist: there is a collective ownership of the means of production (the source code) and anarchist: it is developed in the absence of a coercive structure, anyone is free to make a fork.

Are there any hybrid business models for funding tech developments, that eg. even allow the developed tech to be open source?

Public funding. Why is it always forgotten in these discussions? The funding that got us computers, space rockets, internet, deep learning is actually far more important than the "silicon valley" funding style that more often than not means "slap a nice UI on a result coming from a public lab"

In my opinion crowdfunding is indeed a core piece of a post-capitalist society.

In the end of the day, my goal is to keep stuff out of the landfill

A commendable goal and indeed you don't care much if people reuse or resell in that context. However if your goal is to create and grow a bubble of non-merchant economy, the problem becomes different.

I recognize that it is unavoidable that some people may resell and it should not be a show stopper, but it should be part of the thought around how to set it up.

If you give me apples, it is easier for me to give apple pies.

If you give them to someone who will sell them to me, it will be harder for me to give the pies for free.

If you are a farmer that gives away a lot of raw vegetables to people who cook them and give the meals away, including to you, it frees you time or money to give more. Someone who takes your vegetable to sell them exits them from the gift economy you try to create.

I am not saying it is useless, and it is actually inevitable that these things happen, but I am saying that this is a factor that prevents these markets to grow into something that allows people to free themselves from capitalism.

I have 3 anecdotal evidence from France:

• Not at this exact same type of event but there has been a trend for a few years in France to put old fridges in the street and transform them into drop-off bookshelves where people can drop and take books. They are not powered, but being watertight allows book to survive outside. Very quickly the books in a good state are removed and resold on second-hand online shops.
• There is a gift economy group in the city I go to to work. When you join you have to promise to not resell the things you get, because they had too much of it in the past.
• In flea markets, you will see some regulars at the opening times. They come and get all the good deals quickly in order to resell them online.

Don't mark me wrong: I am a huge proponent of the gift economy, but I think that within a capitalist society, in order to exist it has to be paired with some sort of reputations economics.

That's a totally fair mindset to have in these events.

However if your intent is to kickstart a gift economy, this phenomenon limits the possibilities of it taking off.

For some reason discord is the main medium open source AI groups use. There are plenty of them

The main problem these sort of things are confronted with is people who take free stuff and resell it. It limits them to low value items