A Solarpunk Fractal: Microservices
Let's return briefly to the central problem of government commons management (at least as a monolithic systems). We're going to restate it a bit differently here so that we can walk through a way to mitigate it. Let's start by returning to the basic forms of domination as outlined in Dawn of Everything:
- control over violence (sovereignty)
- control over information (bureaucracy)
- and charismatic competition (politics)
Government as a commons manager aligns with the second form of domination. Any organization that manages the commons has the power to restrict the commons. In order to keep such an entity from doing that, there may be restrictions placed on the organization. But whomever maintains and enforces the list of those restrictions could simply take over the system and bend it to their will, So there must be restrictions placed on the oversight group. This continues infinitely, thus there can be no real oversight. This is not a new problem, it was stated a thousand years ago as “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (Who will watch the watchmen?) But it dates back almost 400 years earlier still to concepts brought up by Plato in some of the earliest political writings.
Although this question points to the root cause of oppression and authoritarian collapse multiple times through history, it's largely ignored, suppressed, or treated as a curiosity. It is considered unanswerable, and thus rejected before consideration. In the previous section we solved this problem by inverting authority. This gave us the option to leave any system, which could then collapse it, if required. But it would be better if we could find a solution that doesn't risk systemic collapse.
Fortunately, there are additional steps we can take to mitigate the risk of facilitating coordination turning into a system of domination. In computer security, we think about the concept of “attack surface.” In essence, the more stuff a program can do, the more things can go wrong. The more complex a system, the harder it is to implement in a safe way. To reduce risk, we recommend minimizing the specific things any given application can do. We can, then, chain together small applications to make a larger application.
Rather than having to understand the whole system all at once, we can analyze each component as an individual piece, with specific focus interfaces. The more we can simplify interfaces, the fewer scenarios we need to analyze to determine the security of an application. An application that can do everything has an infinite attack surface and thus can never be secured. An application that can only do one very specific thing may be possible to not only secure, but to mathematically prove that security.
This is roughly the reason behind the concept of “microservices.” These are small and reusable systems that can be more easily understood than a large complex system. We can leverage a similar concept. In fact, this isn't even a new idea. It predates computers entirely.
The majority of the Netherlands is below sea level. Over the course of hundreds of years, the Dutch have reclaimed land from the sea and kept it dry using a series of pumps and dikes. Very early on people realized that water management was far too important to entrust in “normal” government. Political incompetence could wipe out entire towns. So, almost a thousand years ago, they created a distributed micro-bureaucracy with the sole purpose of managing water.
Because this micro-bureaucracy is extremely limited in scope, because it only exists to managed one shared resource, it can't really be leveraged for other power. But since it's outside of the normal government, it also can't be held hostage for other political projects (as Republicans hold SNAP and Social Security hostage to achieve their goals in US politics).
In the last section, we introduced a structure that included 4 such micro-bureaucracies:
- the dispensaryto provide consumable goods,
- the library, to provide access to shared durable goods,
- the works committee, to build, (own,) and maintain infrastructure such as housing, and
- the services committee, to identify and provide services, such as child care, for its members.
Using to the VSM (that we discussed earlier), these micro-bureaucracies would all be operational units of the social organizations (affinity groups, collectives, clusters, and federations) that we described in the last section. These organizations would themselves be systems with their own metasystemic functions (and the ability to autonomously create subsystems), while interactions between these systems would be managed at by metasystemic functionality at the level of the social organization.
Let's first talk through these micro-bureaucracies in a bit more detail, then talk through systemic interactions. Remember that these are only suggestions. Nothing that follows is to be taken dogmatically. These are based on my own organizing experience, historical research, and other sources. All of these have been filtered through my own perception. This list may not be complete. It divisions may be wrong for your situation. There may be any number of reasons these are not optimal. They should be considered a starting point for anyone who doesn't already have a better idea.
There can be no perfect recipe for every situation. You will always be the ultimate authority on what is best for you. Take what follows for what it's worth.
The Dispensary
A dispensary provides consumable goods. It can start simply as a shared pantry, stocked with the products of guerrilla gardening or food preservation by canning or pickling. It can be foraging, processing, storing, and sharing horse chestnuts for soap and acorns for flour to make acorn grits and bread. It can be as easy as shared bulk purchases from restaurant supply or warehouse store, or as crust-punk as rotating dumpster run shifts. It could even start as small regular potluck or shared dinners. It could simply be an agreement between members to volunteer with a local chapter of Food Not Bombs on a rotating basis.
As your network grows, so can the dispensary system. A federation of four or five covens could start a coop for themselves. A federation of 20 may even be able to open a storefront.
As much as people would like to live their daily lives without inflicting suffering on ourselves and others, capitalism cannot seem to provide for the needs of people without committing atrocities. From sweatshops to toxic byproducts, union busting death squads, unnecessary packaging, micro-plastics, and landfills full of fast fashion, simple participation is a minefield of harm.
One reason many of us wish to escape is so that we can live our lives without inflicting suffering on others. Since no similar objective can exist within capitalist markets, operating a collectively owned dispensary as a coop style business for non-members offers a harm-reduction opportunity that capitalist markets cannot fulfill. We can do what the market cannot: offer products that people can buy without having blood on their hands.
Taking notes from the successes and failures of the Russian revolution, a group of anarchists (including Nestor Makhno, a Ukrainian anarchist militant who was critical in defeating the Tzar's army and who later also fought the Red Army) wrote a document titled “Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists.” This document came to be known as “The Platform.” It remains one of the most important first-hand revolutionary documents, outlining a clear revolutionary plan. The Platform identifies the problems of production and consumption as core to the success of a revolution:
Without doubt, from the first day of the revolution, the farms will not provide all the products vital to the life of the population. At the same time, peasants have an abundance which the towns lack.
Within the capitalist system, production, acquisition, transportation, and distribution (logistics) are all handled by markets. As we move away from this system, the dispensary system (perhaps with the support of the services committee) will need to address production and transportation logistics. Starting within the capitalist market provides a low-risk proving ground from which we can iterate and improve. If a social organization can operate a business within capitalism while planning beyond it, there's a good chance it will be able to transcend its capitalist roots.
The technology that made the short supply chain-based capitalism, which dominates the world today, also makes capitalism itself irrelevant. By attacking this problem as a swarm, we will come up with multiple competing solutions. Good solutions will merge or replace bad ones and the best solutions will spread across the federation. Like the open source software movement, we may, and probably will, end up with multiple systems. This is not a problem as long as those systems can interoperate with each other.
The Library
A library is a shared set of objects, often (but not always) located in a specific repository. Americans are most familiar with municipal library systems where the objects are books and occasionally other media. The simplest library for us to build is a tool library. A library consists of inventory and a way to track that inventory.
The simplest library can be ma e up of tools owned by members and a simple spreadsheet to track them. A library could create a shared bank account for purchasing new tools for the library. Libraries will also maintain objects that belong to the collective.
While give-away or free-stores exist and do work in some situations (they are not uncommon in the Netherlands), these can be exclusionary in the US context. They can be seen as “charity” or “for people less fortunate” rather than a shared resource. While a library can choose to operate in exactly the same way as a free-store (not tracking what comes in or goes out), the conceptual framework of a library is more aligned with American sensibilities (outside of existing punk and anarchist spaces).
A library also doesn't need to be specific to a given organization. This is something that can be organized first outside of a social organization, or something that could be managed by a social organization but have open membership. There's no reason not to have a tool library shared with your neighbors, even if they don't share your politics. There's no reason not to share a media library with your friends (you probably already share books).
If you're wanting to convince people that things could be better, there is no argument more powerful than proof.
The Works Committee
Works Committee is responsible for identifying, acquiring or producing, and managing infrastructure needed for the operation of the organization and the lives of its members. The mechanism by which it does this is up to the social organization. Management of infrastructure such as vehicles or housing may be handed off to the library system once acquired.
The Works Committee is responsible for organizing work parties to maintain infrastructure. One easy example is a garden party where organization members design and implement a garden either on property they own or via guerrilla gardening. The Works Committee would then be responsible for regular maintenance, harvest, and delivery of goods (harvest, processing, etc) in coordination with the dispensary.
In most cities horse chestnuts (buckeyes) trees are common in parks. The nuts contain chemicals that can be used as soap. Four of these crushed and thrown in a sock can be used in place of commercial detergent. In the fall, these nuts are easy to collect from sidewalks and parks.In the spring and summer, their leaves can be picked and processed into hand soap. Many other soap producing plants are common, and invasive in much of the US, such as English ivy. A works committee could organize foraging and processing parties to make things for the dispensary.
The Services Committee
The two most critical permanent purposes of Services Committees are to coordinate leadership of regular meetings, either by a specific appointed member or by rotating ordination, and to organize collective defense. There may also be a third critical service if the social organization is also a legal entity: accounting. The committee must ensure taxes are filed on time and correctly, that any shared expenses are paid, and that all money has been accounted for.
Beyond these, the Services Committee identifies the needs and capabilities of its members to provide services. The Services Committee should operate on the principal “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.”
The most important goal of any entity that wishes to continue to exist is reproduction of itself. Therefore, the most important objective of the organization must be supporting the reproductive labor of the collective, especially supporting members with children.
For organizations with children, rotating childcare eases the burden on families, making the organization more stable, and setting an example for members too young to start their own organizations. Some members may have technical skills and can provide tech support or automation of tedious tasks performed by others. Those with mechanical skills may be able to repair objects for The Library.
Within an urban area, municipal services take care of many things that rural people have to take care of themselves. Trash collection and disposal may make sense for a rural organization where it wouldn't be imagined by an urban coven outside of a disaster.
As an affinity group grows to a collective or federation, new services will become available. At each coordination level, it becomes more and more important to provide a mechanism to discover capabilities and protect people with specific skills from being overburdened.
A Services Committee of a large enough federation could provide much more complex services that further free it from the constraints of capitalism. Insurance pools, banking via credit unions, and other services can all be organized by a Services Committee of a big enough federation.
As with the Dispensary, services may also be externalized to offer things unavailable under capitalism. A services committee may decide to take on organizing protests, gatherings, or other events where other community organizations are not taking on the task. The Services Committee may also identify external organizations that organization members can coordinate with to fulfill organizational objectives and fill operational gaps.
Systemic Interactions
Each of these operational units, these micro-bureaucracies, exist to fulfill specific objectives that align with the greater objective of the organization. In cybernetic terms, the (system 5) identity of each of the above organizations aligns with the (system 5) identity of the social organization.
As described in each section, these systems have a lot of interaction opportunities. But they can also conflict. There is a set amount of time that members have, so it's important to keep some kind of shared calendar to make sure actions of one don't conflict with others. There may be shared money, which could be claimed by one or another group, so they also may need to keep a shared budget.
The very most basic mechanism to support this type of coordination is a regular (perhaps weekly) meeting. Each operation unit gives a brief report on what they've done, a high level status of anything worth noting (low inventory, some blockers, etc), and any requests they have (money, time, etc). This must be kept short. Humans tend to lose focus after 90 minutes, so meetings over that tend to rapidly lose productivity. Most things should be handled locally, so there shouldn't be a lot to report. Anything beyond a high level report back must be something that requires action. Including the action as part of a request can make sure everyone understands what's being asked.
In the next section we will describe the metasystem in greater detail, including some recommended meeting outlines and structures.
Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists
Dielo Truda (Workers’ Cause) Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists 1926 First published France 1926. First Irish edition published by the...The Anarchist Library
A Fitness Function for Liberation
The system is dying, consuming itself and everything else to keep going. Even though we all see this plainly, we can't seem to change things because the system keeps adapting. The system is thinking, and it has the ability to out think any individual human. But now we have the tools to build an adaptive system, a genetic algorithm, to move faster than the system can adapt.Now we return again to where we started. We need to escape capitalism. If we can build the new system inside the shell of the old, then we can pivot out. But what do we do to build such a system? We will see in a bit that the answer somewhat implied by the question.
Let's go back a bit though. We're trapped, this much we know. But can we describe how we're trapped, or what we should do about it? The classic response to such traps, to authoritarian overreach, was to establish some kind of bill or declaration of “rights.” This is a list of supposed restrictions on governmental power. Of course these restrictions are almost always ignored, sometimes without ever being enacted in the first place (such as “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” from the French Revolution that was ignored until hundreds of years later).
But, as Graeber and Wengrow pointed out in The Dawn of Everything, a lot of freedoms really just boil down to some variation or incomplete specification of the three fundamental freedoms:
(1) the freedom to move away or relocate from one’s surroundings; (2) the freedom to ignore or disobey commands issued by others; and (3) the freedom to shape entirely new social realities, or shift back and forth between different ones.
None of these freedoms are fully recognized by any existing government, and perhaps they can't be. The very nature of government and national sovereignty necessarily limits these, especially the third. If we invert our perspective, we see that the entirety of the BITE model is basically just a list of ways systems of authoritarian control violate these freedoms.But if we change our orientation away from individual freedom and constraint and towards systemic constraint, we can actually resolve these freedoms all back to one single constraint. This one constraint determines the difference between a free system and an authoritarian one:
For a system to be free, participation must be optional for all members.
We can immediately see that freedom to move is one type of participation and freedom to disobey is another. A system is a description of relationships, so exiting one system necessarily requires entering another. One can't exit all systems any more than one could create an object that's not made of any sort of matter. A system is defined by its participation, thus to not-participate is to exit. To exit a system is to create or enter another system, thus the third freedom is also contained within this constraint.
It can be hard to believe that one single constraint can really be the difference. What about all those rights. Surely this one single constraint couldn't take an authoritarian system and suddenly make it free, or a system with a large number of rights suddenly authoritarian. Let's illustrate the difference that this one single constraint can make by two examples.
The rules of Simon Says are maximally authoritarian. You must perform any action ordered, with the only restriction that the authority must say “Simon says” first. Were you forced to stay in this system, it would be the most despotic autocracy possible, completely subject to the wills of one person. This is one step away from literal slavery. But it's not. It's a silly game. The difference is that you can leave at any time.
Let's flip this and imagine a room. During a specific period of time you will have absolute control over everything in this room. In this room you have total freedom. This is not even the limited freedom, the coordinated freedom, the compromising freedom of civil society. You could, without consequence, perform any action you wish in this room. You could say anything, destroy or steal any object, order any individual to perform any action, kill any person in the room with you and take anything they own. This is the sovereign freedom, the absolute freedom, of dictators and kings. The only restriction is that you are not allowed to leave the room while you have this freedom. In fact, you really only have this level of freedom because the room is actually empty other than for you. I am, of course, talking about solitary confinement, a form of internationally recognized torture common in US prisons (including against children).
But, surely, if you simply have enough protections, a complete enough bill of rights, you don't really need this constraint. Surely, with the right structure, with the right checks and balances, with the right list it must be possible to preserve freedom without including this one requirement that people be allowed to exit the system.
No, and I can prove it.
- There will exist actors in a system who will wish to take advantage of others. Evolution drives survival and one strategy for increasing survival in an altruistic society is to become a parasite.
- Expecting exploitative dynamics, a system needs to have a set of rules to manage exploitation.
- If the set of rules is static it will lack the requisite variety necessary to manage the infinite possible behavior of humans so the system will fail.
- If the system is dynamic then it must have a rule set about how it's own rules are updated. This would make the system recursively defined. If you can change a system from within that same system, then you add to it an enumeration of all known mathematical axioms. Any system that can contain mathematics is at least as complex as mathematics. Any system at least as complex as mathematics is necessarily either incomplete or inconsistent (by Gödel's incompleteness theorems).
- If the system is incomplete, then constraints can be evaded which then allow a malicious agent to seize control of the system and update the rules for their own benefit.
- If constraints are incomplete, then a malicious agent can take advantage of others within the system.
- Therefore, no social system can possibly protect freedom unless there exists a single metasystemic constraint (that the system must be optional) allowing for the system to be abandoned when compromised.
Interestingly enough, Gödel is known to have identified an “inner contradiction” within the US constitution in 1947 (called Gödel's loophole). This contradiction could allow the country to be turned into a dictatorship. Following from the logic we've thus far already explored, there are two such vulnerabilities:
- The logic of the constraints on the system are defined within the context of the system that is intended to be constrained and all constraints within the system are mutable.
- Power over the constraint logic enforcement mechanism is within the system, thus the system can fail to or choose not to enforce constraint logic.
The first of these matches closely with the most popular argument that this refers to “Article 5.” Gödel is known to have only explained the issue to Einstein, and the two agreed to not divulge the vulnerability. This is known today as “security through obscurity.” It violates a well established cryptographic principal called “Kerckhoffs's principle,” which was restated by a contemporary of Gödel, Claude Shannon, as “the enemy knows the system.”
Gödel found problems that can't be solved in a field of math called “typographical number theory.” But his theorems were so strong they impacted all of mathematics forever. Not only could “typographical number theory” not solve the problems it set out to solve, Gödel proved that these problems were not possible to solve in any way and under any conditions.
The problems I've described here similarly cannot be fixed. There can exist nothing that operates like a government which can be so constrained as to not become a dictatorship. There are infinitely many ways to write rules that prevent it, and infinitely many ways to circumvent these rules.
Of course neither of those theoretical vulnerabilities matter much anymore, since we watched a proof-by-example exploitation executed in real time. But when the time comes to rebuild, you will be told that the system can be constrained, that it can be fixed, that we can do better. This is a lie. The logical proof of this sitting right on this page. Any system that cannot be abandoned at will is a dictatorship waiting to happen.
But there is good news, and that good news is that same logic works in reverse (though I will leave the formality to someone else and present it as a corollary). Any system with the complexity to handle humans has infinitely many vulnerabilities that allow people to escape from their constraints. Ultimately, all social systems are optional. The question is only the level of work necessary to execute this option.
Oh, you might say, but this just means you have to infinitely abandon systems to retain freedom. Yes, that may be true. But there's an evolutionary advantage to cooperation so there's evolutionary pressure to not be a malicious actor. Thus, a malicious actor being able to compromise the whole system is likely to be a rare event, especially if there are other controls in place. (There are also other ways to mitigate this threat that we'll go in to in another seciton.) Compromising a complex system can be a lot of work, so the first thing a malicious actor would want to do is preserve that work. They would want to lock you in. The most important objective for a malicious actor compromising a system would be to violate that one metasystemic constraint, to make the system mandatory, or all of their work goes out the window as everyone leaves.
And, perhaps, now you understand why borders exist, why fascists are obsessed with maintaining categories like gender, race, ethnicity, etc. This is why even Democrats like Newsom are on board with putting houseless people in concentration camps. And this is why the most important thing anarchists promote is the ability to choose not to be part of any of that.
The implications are interesting enough when we apply this to systems like capitalism or national governments, but there are other very interesting implications when applied to systems like race or gender. Like, as a cis man the only way I can be free to express and explore my own masculinity is if the masculinity I participate in is one which allows anyone the freedom to leave. Then I have an obligation to recognize the validity of nom-masculine trans identity as a necessary component of my own. If I fail to do this, then I trap myself in masculinity and allow the system to control me rather than me to be a free participant in the system.
But if it's OK to escape but not enter, that's it's own restriction that constrains the freedom to leave. It creates a barrier that keeps people in by the fear that they cannot return. So in order for me to be free in my cis masculine identity, I must accept non-masculine trans identities as they are and accept detransitioning as also valid.
But I also need to accept trans-masc identities because restricting entry to my masculinity means non-consensually constraining other identities. If every group imposes an exclusion against others coming in, that, by default, makes it impossible to leave every other group. This is just a description of how national borders work to trap people within systems, even if a nation itself allows people to “freely” leave.
So then, a free masculinity is one which recognizes all configurations of trans identities as valid and welcomes, if not celebrates, people who transition as affirmations of the freedom of their own identity (even for those who never feel a reason to exercise that same freedom).
But you don't need to accept the trap of authoritarian masculinity on logic alone, the proof is right there in male influencers like Andrew Tate and their followers. These dipshits get so obsessed with gatekeeping they don't realize that the gates they're tending keep them in, that the more walls they put up to protect their privilege, the smaller their identity can be. They huddle in tiny pens, terrified of crossing imaginary bounds that they imposed on themselves.
They have built their own torture chambers and locked themselves inside, and for what? They turn themselves into dragons, hoarding what they see as valuable while repressing every emotion including joy. And if they let themselves experience joy, they would, perhaps, realize that all these privileges are inconsistent with it. They might, perhaps, recognize that they have built up these privileges so they don't have to admit that their suffering and fear are not, in fact, admirable. They might have to face the fact that they have lived lives that are deeply pathetic, might have to face the fact that only empathy can give one access to deep satisfaction, might have to face the fact that they have lived their whole lives on a treadmill, going nowhere.
But I assume that they won't ever do that, because to do so would force them to face the enormity of the emotional debt, the pain and suffering they have inflicted on the world, and those are big feelings. It's far easier to hide in a hole, forever alone, making up silly rules to keep everyone inside scared and keep everyone outside from seeing in.
Well kept borders on any system trap everyone, those on the inside and on the out. Then we must add a corollary to our constraint:
A free system can only be kept free if one can freely leave; the freedom of a system is defendant on the existence of other free systems.
Or, to adapt an MLK quote:
Un-freedom anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere.
The most irritating type of white person may look at this and say, “oh, so then why can't I be <not white>?” Except that the critique of transratial identities has never been “that's not allowed” and has always been “this person didn't do the work.” If that person did the work, they would understand that the question doesn't make sense based on how race is constructed. That person might understand that race, especially whiteness, is more fluid than they at first understood. They might realize that whiteness is often chosen at the exclusion of other racialized identities. They would, perhaps, realize that to actually align with any racialized identity, they would first have to understand the boot of whiteness on their neck, have to recognize the need to destroy this oppressive identity for their own future liberation. The best, perhaps only, way to do this would be to use the privilege afforded by that identity to destroy it, and in doing so would either destroy their own privilege or destroy the system of privilege. The must either become themselves completely ratialized or destroy the system of race itself such being “transracial” wouldn't really make sense anymore.
But that most annoying of white person would, of course, not do any such work. Nevertheless, one hopes that they may recognize the paradox that they are trapped by their white identity, forced forever by it to do the work of maintaining it. And such is true for all privileged identities, where privilege is only maintained through restrictions where these restrictions ultimately become walls that imprison both the privileged and the marginalized in a mutually reinforcing hell that can only be escaped by destroying the system of privilege itself.
Let's go back to the “fuzzing” metaphor. The point of security testing is to find ways to intentionally violate system constraints in ways that threaten the viability of the system. Tests are often prioritized by how great of a threat they are to viability. Being able to delete a patient record in a medical system is extremely bad, but not nearly as bad as being able to expose all those patient records or modify them. There are occasionally single, critical, vulnerabilities that allow an attacker to completely compromise the system.
And there we have it. The most important constraint an authoritarian system has is the constraint against leaving. The most important thing about an authoritarian system is that it absolutely, under all conditions, MUST be mandatory. To violate this constraint is to fundamentally break the control of the system.
Now we return to our earlier question, but restated a little differently: what is the fitness function we use to evolve a system that can find and exploit a vulnerability in an authoritarian system so that we can escape? The fitness function now presents itself:
Maximize the number of people you can help escape from the dominant system, and keep them out of the dominant system, while these people are still able to leave your system.
This doesn't exactly give us a clear solution, but it does restate the problem in a useful way. Oh, but there are three things we need to do. We need a fitness function, we need a recombination (“breeding” is the technical term, but I'm going to try to avoid that) function, and we need an initial population. We have one of these. Next we'll talk about the other two.
