Anarchy and the Establishment

Treeshepherd

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Oct 17, 2014
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Today, many people avail themselves of peer-to-peer services, like ride sharing with Uber and Lyft, or they find accommodations through Airbnb. This trend of democratization, or grassroots cooperation, borders upon anarchy. The Establishment (taxi cartels and the hotel industry) fights back with ferocity.

As the tag line states on USmessageboard, this is a place where everyone’s voice can be heard, even the voice of cultsmasher down in the USMB Badlands. In this sense, USmessageboard borders on anarchism. The Establishment is ever bent upon internet censorship. I remember the days when you could download any movie or song from some website in Poland, or what have you, and the days of Napster and Limewire. I remember when the internet was the realm of pirates and wizards. Now, our struggle is to prevent the internet from becoming another Establishment tool of State-sponsored propaganda. A pessimistic man might say that we merely serve as speedbumps upon the road to internet hegemony.

We see opinions changing about the legalization of marijuana, and the writing upon the wall, and we see a reflexive response by the Establishment to pass laws which in a sense legalize the herb, but in another sense seek to regulate and raise taxes in the wake of the inevitability of legalization. The Establishment seeks to dictate who can be licensed to sell marijuana, and the flunky grower who turned on the lights in the garage and made a living from a pound per month is put out of business.

We see opinions changing about homosexuality, and we see the Establishment capitalize upon marriage and divorce fees, rather than a homosexual movement that rejects Statism, needing not the sanction of government approval.

It is a cliché; When the people lead, the leaders will follow. That is normally true. But, the Babylon System swoopes in to dictate the terms of inevitable change. There is ever a struggle between anarchy and authoritarianism.

“Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.” ~ Edward Abbey
 
The whole point of the Internet is connectedness, yes? Anarchy and the web are like oil and water. They shouldn't mix.

Why would you think that anarchy is antithetical to connectedness?

Because it is. Do you remember the "US out of Humboldt County" bumper stickers? The FBI thought the Unibomber was from Humboldt County before his brother turned him, on account of Humboldt County is so anarchist-friendly. I miss it. I lived there once. I really miss the ocean. I knew some anarchists too. Real ones.
 
That bumper sticker is now nearly extinct. US out of Humboldt County. I love that. But what you miss is the community, the connectedness, how there was a guy on every dirt road that had a grader to smooth out the road, and they didn't need civil servants, and KMUD community radio would send alerts that the Fed helicopters and trucks were coming up Salmon Creek Road, or up to Island Mountain, or wherever, to bust the growers, and how neighbors would depend upon one another. My friend, anarchy depends upon connectedness, if it is to be viable.

Reject the definition of anarchy as disorderlyness. The true definition of the word is simply 'without rulers'.
 
I'll add the Solar Uprising to my list of examples above. You can see the same dynamic at play, where individuals by the droves are beginning to produce their own electricity. Today, a new PV installation in the US is completed every 4 minutes. Growth in rooftop solar is exponential. It's already causing disruption in the utility industry, and that trend is likely to increase over the next decade.

Utilities are fighting back in a variety of ways. The most obvious is to squabble about having to pay for surplus energy that homeowners supply back into the grid.

New permitting laws add soft costs to solar installations, and regulations make it nearly impossible for the homeowner to legally work on his own system. Adding additional panels to an existing array requires re-permitting. Consequently, the cost per watt of installations is significantly more expensive than it is in Germany.
 
PG@E is California's public utility distributer. Since they are a publicly owned monopoly, the rules prohibit them from discriminating who they buy wholesale energy from. Basically, if a wholesale energy producer is hooked up to the grid, PG@E has to buy their energy.

Those are the rules. If you want to say that the system needs to be privatized, that's another argument.

If you want to say that homeowners are being overpaid for their surplus energy, there are some valid points to be made.
 
PG@E is California's public utility distributer. Since they are a publicly owned monopoly, the rules prohibit them from discriminating who they buy wholesale energy from. Basically, if a wholesale energy producer is hooked up to the grid, PG@E has to buy their energy.

Those are the rules. If you want to say that the system needs to be privatized, that's another argument.

If you want to say that homeowners are being overpaid for their surplus energy, there are some valid points to be made.
If they are publicly owned why do you assume they have an antagonistic relationship with themselves?
 
PGE has a monopoly as a distributor, but not as a producer. PGE has an antagonistic relationship with homeowners who produce surplus power and sell that power to back to to PGE.
PGE would like to pay them less, or not at all, because PGE is also a producer of energy. So now they are seeing increased competition.

The more people produce their own power, the more PGE has to raise rates for conventional customers, because they have investments to pay off, and fewer paying customers. And the more they raise rates, the more people decide to go solar. It's what is known at the utility death spiral.
 
PGE has a monopoly as a distributor, but not as a producer. PGE has an antagonistic relationship with homeowners who produce surplus power and sell that power to back to to PGE.
PGE would like to pay them less, or not at all, because PGE is also a producer of energy. So now they are seeing increased competition.

The more people produce their own power, the more PGE has to raise rates for conventional customers, because they have investments to pay off, and fewer paying customers. And the more they raise rates, the more people decide to go solar. It's what is known at the utility death spiral.
Well that may be true but I wouldn't call it antagonistic since they are wanting to keep fees lower for everybody else. So it's a double whammy for them, they sell less to the solar panel guys (which are possibly subsidized by government?) and have to buy the excess energy. So in reality, they are fighting to stay alive so they can continue to provide a service.
 

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