For sure. It’s a fair question whether the taxes that government collects are actually distributed appropriately. And it should probably not be the average citizen paying more taxes to fix potholes.
I’m not opposed to people fixing problems by themselves, even just to make the point that the government is neglecting infrastructure. I just question whether individual action could ever replace the role of bureaucracy entirely (without becoming a bureaucracy itself).
I don’t know how we can know that, given that every attempt at something even remotely based on the theories are usually strangled in the crib.
Never even heard of that film. I’ll have to check it out. I do like him as an actor, regardless of him being restrained or acting over the top. I just know that some people have an intense dislike for his brand of humor.
The principles behind the “ism” such as encouraging self-management and advocating mutual aid sound sensible enough to me.
It’s the propaganda and gratuitous sloganeering of some of the “ists” that sometimes make me cringe.
So, this whole pothole thing is controversial among anarchists in that it’s paradoxically symbolic action in favor of direct action. Maybe controversial is a strong word. It is seen largely as “those liberal PDX kids,” with varying degrees of indifference.
That’s true. I’m not in love with they YPG/YPJ and honestly think Bookchin is the worst possible theorist to hang your hat on. I’m particularly impressed with movements in Algeria and Papua, though, and their efforts to avoid recuperation by the capitalist left or the state communists.
Progress needs the stock market to climb, the cities to sprawl, the forests to fall. Progress is dominating the existent to make it safe for capitalist terror. It has its own destruction written into its DNA, but it wants to take us with it.
C’mon, you’ve read George Orwell. The Spanish Civil War isn’t some footnote of history. The thing is, anarchists know that we’re history’s losers. We always will be, because we have no taste for power. But we’re fucking right, and it’s worthwhile to advocate for a world that isn’t completely fucked.
I guess my question is, why assume they don’t know what they’re doing? If the city won’t fix the roads in their community and they know how and the city won’t legitimize it because they’re not part of its bureaucracy, are they just supposed to suck it up and accept roads full of potholes.
“We don’t think the city should exist; we are only limited by our capacity and our imaginations…"
That statement can be either be seen as something to worry about, or peculiarly cool. I perceive both simultaneously.
Yeah, that’s not how anarchism works. The words means no rulers, not no communities.
Not to people who facilely swallow the casual misuse of the the word, no. To those who actually study it, it has plenty to offer.
Obviously, one could only read your comment after you posted it, so – yes – you are in the past.
As I now am.
And here, too.
I don’t see what that has to do with my statement that Barcelona is not an anarchist society. If you take issue with the claim “anarchy doesn’t scale up well” then the best way to change my mind would be to point to an example of a time or place when it did actually scale up well.
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on how anarchist societies on a national scale would deal with many of the things that are currently fucking up our world, like externalized costs and global warming and such.
Wild guess. But do you think random Portland anarchists are going to be qualified road workers? If they are then great, but i’m not going to put my confidence in some random people so highly.
IF SO then maybe they’ll learn from their mistakes and do a better job in the future?
Like everybody else?
In Oregon PAVING THE ROADS IN THE FIRST PLACE is not considered essential.
A significant fraction of the streets in my neighborhood — inside the city limits, near the airport, in the largest only metro area in the whole state — are gravel.
So patch road, create much much bigger road damage, go back, fix it, hope it works, make more damage, repeat ad nauseum until they’ve repaved a road or completely destroyed it? Also what if there’s utilities under the road and they’re going around repairing roads by trial and error? And as some mentioned above, are they making themselves legally and financially available when they inevitably fuck up someone’s car? You can make a city liable for something, random group of activists? Not so much. Especially if they’re patching stuff anonymously.
I’m disinclined to assume either way. But you’re frank about it being a guess, so that’s good.
I realize that might sound sarcastic. I’m not trying to be sarcastic.
You’ve posted many words to this effect with so far no evidence.
Shirley Surely you can’t imagine randos can repair public roads to code.
Though in seriousness, i don’t care about these guys filling in potholes. I think they’re idiots if they believe they’re actually creating a solution. Engage with the city, vote appropriately instead.
I can imagine it, but I wouldn’t necessarily expect it.
I Shirley can. I have no reason to assume they lack expertise in road repair.
Evidently it was the failure of that very approach that led them to this point.
Look, for all I know they’re morons fucking up the roads worse than they are. What I disagree with is the assumption that people who aren’t employed by the city can’t have the necessary expertise to fix the problem their elected government refuses to. And if they do, then I say good on them because the idea that communities should be held hostage by remiss officials is blind bureaucratism.
Exactly!
