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I think you are very right about dangers of power and our need to oppose it generally, but very wrong about tech. Let’s take a few largely centralized technologies and see how they don’t have to be that way.

There is nothing magical about commercial or government internet service providers that makes them necessary to run the internet. America has hundreds of community owned internet service providers that are largely faster and cheaper than the commercial options: https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3np4a/new-municipal-broadband-map

Now that we have established the idea that we can own and control the internet, why not just own and control social media ourselves? https://itsfoss.com/mainstream-social-media-alternaives/

Oh and let’s not forget Linux - arguably the worlds best operating systems are Linux, and they are free open source made by hippies for everyone.

Now let’s talk about some more serious technological monopolies. What about energy? Well, green energy lets us all own our own power plant if we have a house, and we can get into a community energy trust in an apartment. Not only can you buy solar panels and wind turbines, but you can make your own cheap wind turbine https://opensourcelowtech.org/wind_turbine.html or make your own ethanol at home or with your neighbors https://survivallife.com/how-make-own-ethanol-gas/ Now we have our own energy - green energy as primary, and ethanol to fill in the gaps.

Now let’s really piss of the rulers - we don’t need them to manufacture our medicine. Sure, patent law and the FDA to send us to prison if we make our own, but it’s very possible to do so. https://openinsulin.org/ and https://fourthievesvinegar.org/ are examples of people doing that. Make your own cure for hep C or your own insulin - yeah, you can do that. Don’t need big pharma either.

They can try to take away our guns, but we can make those too. https://ghostguns.com/product-category/3d-print/

How about the money monopoly? Crypto is already a massive success and the blockchain options just keep expanding.

I could go on, but the point still stands; nothing about modern technology is necessitating that we have centralized power controlling it. On the contrary; we have more power than ever to live high tech lives without centralized manufacturing, control, ownership, or authority. I think the rulers are really afraid we will figure this out - it’s important that they label everything I just talked about as something for libertarian crazies, because they are scared to death that it spreads and we take control of our own economic and technological lives.

Great book on the subject - https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kevin-carson-the-homebrew-industrial-revolution

Sep 1, 2021
at
12:37 AM