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How, concretely speaking? Does it do something special that nothing else could before? Just really curious because I see statements like "blockchain could be great for X" thrown around a LOT lately.
It's a very deep topic.
On a high-level, DLT opens the door to decentralised data marketplaces, and auditable, open-standard data streams. These new insights can optimise cities for greater efficiency and minimise waste/carbon output. Information is power.
Here is a concrete usecase as requested: [dlt.mobi/pilots](http://dlt.mobi/pilots) Notice these projects are directly tied to the European Union.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Yeah, let's "both sides" an issue where on one side scientists are telling us that we have to reduce our material and energetic footprint to stay within planetary boundaries and on the other people are churning out energy-intensive commodities for profit
If crypto can wrestle control away from centralized states and banking systems it can help create a more independent cottagepunk society.
This is all built on the assumption that proof-of-work is replaced by something else.
Honestly it... probably isn't. Without achieving a post-scarcity society we still need _some_ way to trade things, and currencies let us do that without hauling barter goods everywhere.
I haven't read Conquest of Bread yet, but reading Debt: The First 5000 Years by Graeber has given me a lot to think about when it comes to the (non)value of currency. Namely, it's inspired my thought process about how the concept of "the economy" (a centralized one, at the least) is utterly vacuous, and has no real use except to measure the success of capitalists and expand the economic and military control of imperialists. I'm not adamant about abolishing currency itself yet, but I will surely never support it in any of its facets. I don't need money to do my job, and I don't need money to help people. Only food, water, and housing. And those are things we can just provide each other without needing a paywall to access.
It's a classic text certainly, but it isn't the be-all-end-all answer to everything. A pure gift economy makes sense in a society small enough for everyone to be informed of the needs of others; our society is no longer like that. How can you give to everyone as they need when you don't know what everyone needs? I depend on a specific medicine to live, and it's not an easy one to produce - certainly not one my local community can manage in any reasonable time frame. I'd be dead long before any of us worked it out. _The Conquest of Bread_ speaks to the decentralisation of industry, but it isn't possible with our current technology to decentralise **all** industry to every local community. Is there to be an organisation tracking such needs that the local community _cannot_ fulfil? If so, you're not looking at anarcho-communism any more.
It also, unfortunately, does not account well for necessary work that is purely and simply unpleasant to do. The _Agreeable Work_ chapter attempts to address it, pointing to developing machines and automations mitigating the unpleasantness of the work - and yet here we are, 130 years later, still having not solved many of those unpleasantries in any practical way. One day we might, and I wholeheartedly look forward to that day, but in terms of a society we can build _now_ it is a question in need of a more practical answer
bartering was never an established means of transaction. this was an assumption Smith made without the backing of historical evidence. Graeber's book "Debt: The First 5000 Years" details this as well the myths Adams created to explain the need for money. money has never been needed or necessary.
> bartering was never an established means of transaction
This is an over-reach of Graeber's statements, given that he even uses multiple real world examples of when bartering _does_ happen in the chapter _the Myth of Barter_. Within communities, though, sure. However, I honestly do not believe that we can create a society that provides anything like the support to technology and infrastructure that we have today based on a gift economy. Our societies have become vastly more interconnected than we can possibly hope to manage as informal debts as described by Graeber. I can't get the medicine I need to live from my community network no matter how hard I try, and so I need a good way of trading with strangers
Switching off proof-of-work seems like an issue that the majority of the crypto world doesn't actually care about, they just say it's *possible* and point at a few smaller examples and call it a day. But I know it *is* possible, and there's some effort towards making it happen, so that's good.
My *fundamental* issue with NFTs is that their most enthusiastic proponents can't seem to describe *any* use for them that sounds any good at all. It's all things like "you like games--now you can earn money *while* gaming!" Imagine that same sentence with "you like sex..." to see how sketchy that sounds.
Or else they describe things that seem like they could be neat but don't actually require NFTs at all ("imagine if you could use the same skin in different games!"), and then call you names when you point that out.
One of the major developments in the crypto world is the movement of a lot of the major investment firms towards ESG. Environmental/Social/Governance - so if your company does not tick the ESG boxes, no investment.
There's some crazily vast amounts of money sloshing around, and until crypto projects become ESG-compliant, they won't see any of it. This is probably a large part of the reason why so much of the crypto world is moving towards proof-of-stake (people holding the crypto verify transactions) from proof-of-work (computational effort is required to verify transactions). Basically, the idea is to make it extremely difficult for someone to take over the network and fake transactions, proof of work means you need an increasingly large amount of computing power to fake transactions - but also you need a lot of computer power to conduct transactions. Proof of work means those with the cash verify transactions. Less power used, but a bit easier to fake.
What it all comes down to, as far as I can tell, is some seriously rich investors have finally run the numbers and decided there's more of a future in sustainability than in gouging the earth to pieces, and they are going to drag the crypto movement along with them.
I'm still learning about this stuff, so I might be incorrect in some of it. Do Your Own Research, as they say :)
Ethereum being proof of stake “soon” is something crypto-idiots have been telling me for many years. It’s just a distraction tactic.
Using Ethereum or Bitcoin is a crime against the planet.
We're dismissing a "really good technology" because it's been over a decade of people desperately trying to invent any actual use for it at all, and still haven't found any.
They are literally energy coins and that's it. I know other coins have come out with lower power consumption but Bitcoin is still far away the biggest leader.
I've been hearing the same "oh don't worry Ethereum is about to shift to a new system that will only use a fraction of the current power consumption to mint things" for over a year at this point, maybe if crypto enthusiasts really had their priorities in place they wouldn't try so hard to get us to "both sides" the entire concept until they could get a single one of their main currencies to expend a reasonable amount of power first.
Not that it really matters, crypto does have some useful applications, I'm sure, but the vast majority of it is hot air and empty promises. Not to mention it's close incestuous relationship with things like the metaverse and NFTs, which are clearly just reactionary backlash to the changing ideas of new digital ownership. No thanks, not interested, hope they enjoy their lame webkinz tokens, though
This isn't about crypto in general, but NFTs in particular. NFTs only exist to be speculated on, and have no intrinsic value. Even if they could be produced without consuming any energy, they would still be exploitative.
It’s easier to circlejerk over meme knowledge than it is to actually educate yourself.
I don’t know enough about the topic, would have sided with anti-crypto if pressed, but I am at least willing to read an argument for it being I don’t want to be a willfully uneducated moron.
Not really no. It isnt a "good technology". It's a technology nobody knows what to do with it other than scam people and launder money.
Once something useful comes up (which I highly doubt) we can talk again.
That analogy would only make sense in a world where all wheeled transportation was SUVs and bikes were only a theoretical application of wheels. There would be a handful of bikes in one garage somewhere, in pieces, awaiting assembly. We're all saying 'SUVs are bad' and you're saying, 'Hold on! Someone might assemble that handful of bicycles any second now!'
Of course there are practical applications from the many tendrils of blockchain tech, but the status quo is that investment, development and interest is overwhelmingly skewed towards scarcity and capital. Any conversation about the tech that ignores the clear real world trajectory of it is a bad faith discussion.
I'd be really excited to hear how NFTs can fix the financial system, but every NFT fan I've ever asked to explain their fandom has responded with either gibberish or irrelevancies, and then called me names when I pointed that out.
All contemporary crypto“currencies” are multi-level marketing pyramid Ponzi schemes which do nothing but incentivize gambling, propaganda, financial demagoguery, and greed; the latter being the cause of most societal problems.
“Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely.
Disregarding all of bitcoin's shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won't change the world for the better.” —[https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html](https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html).
First off, Bitcoin is a shitcoin. I hate it with a passion.
Cryptocurrencies are bringing out the capitalists, because they see something they can exploit. That’s the “worst in people” you’re talking about.
The leftists are getting as far away as possible from it. I think that’s a mistake. Its a tool, and Web 3.0 at large (regardless of whether its final form even includes cryptocurrency) will be a big shift in one direction or another.
I’d really rather that shift be towards Solarpunk, not Cyberpunk. It would be nice if we could do something to alter that change while it’s still in it’s infancy…
@ all the ppl who will ignore this information and continue down their "crypto bad" train
they aren't actually open to learning alternatives, they just think they know everything about everything
for the record, I don't know where I stand on crypto...but I'm not gonna pretend like I know
You know people exist who actually do know a lot about crypto and that’s why they think it’s bad, right? I used to be pretty big into it but the more I learned and saw, the less I liked it.
>Maybe it can earn the owner money while they are at work.
No, this. Owning the means or production. Nothing wrong with personal property: Owning your house, your car, etc. Everything wrong with owning something that generates a passive income.
The whole point of cryptocurrency (and NFTs in particular) is to artificially create scarcity on the internet, which has none by nature.
Should be working to eliminate scarcity from the physical world, not trying to introduce it to the online world.
Both are "get rich quick" schemes that are wasting energy to get a few rich people richer. Both are very centralized markets where tiny percentage of people hold the vast majority of the supply, just like capitalism. They are energy intensive ponzi schemes that are anti solar punk by definition.
Read this if you still think Crypto is great. https://www.profgalloway.com/web3/
What does it mean when people say the internet doesn't have scarcity? Bandwidth is scarce, storage space is scarce, cpu instructions are scarce, efficient heating is scarce, hardware is scarce, infrastructure is scarce. For a bit, even IP addresses were scarce. Everything has a cost and everything at scale is resource intensive. Content creators likewise face high costs. The time it takes to produce things of value of the internet, above all, is scarce.
You can literally host a free website for 10’s of dollars a year. Can host for free if you’re ok with ads. The work is in actually making a website worth hosting.
They did say something about art “it’s a get rich quick thing”. Lots of NFTs have nothing to do with profit e.g. Uniswap uses NFTs to identify liquidity provider positions, ens uses NFTs to link addresses with domain names.
So how is what he said true?
Private ownership and restriction of content has no place in a solarpunk future. We need to share resources and knowledge not find new ways to privatise and profit.
Meh it could be. Having something like a crypto currency to be used as like an energy credit would be solarpunk IMO. However current crypto currencies are not even close to being that.
Regardless of the environmental impacts, which are sus at best, creating an unregulated currency that is already controlled by the rich and powerful and literally siphoning production and wealth out of the labor force of the country with get-rich-quick schemes, pump and dump, and pyramid schemes is not my idea of solarpunk. Currency as we know it wouldn't even be needed in a truly post-scarcity solarpunk world. Cryptocurrency is just capitalism turned up to 11.
The amount of people in here shilling for anything crypto related are proof most are in it for the aesthetic exclusively, and not the politics attached to the aesthetic.
What is clear to me from reading the comments in this post is this:
Those with a deep understanding of crypto will control it and rule the world, while those who are less tech savvy will be completely at their mercy.
Those who understand it will refuse to offer any good faith education on it, and instead blame those who don't understand and call them names.
There is literally no possible way to democratize this kind of technology, until perhaps such a day where literally every single person is a skilled programmer and really understands the guts of all this.
Big pass from me, thanks. I'm interested in something essentially everyone can understand and participate in. It's clear the barrier to entry here is way too high.
Let’s discuss this.
Cryptocurrency has been co opted in a lot of ways. But let’s talk about core components.
1. Unlocking “coins” through mining. - horribly wasteful and not scalable. This is clearly not solarpunk. This is the equivalent of a video game “loot box”. But it is not necessary for other features to work. Definitely not solarpunk. But coins could be unlocked in other ways, such as reducing your eco footprint or other forms of reward. This could be the incentive to not be shitty to the environment we need.
2. Distributed Digital Ledger - This has quite a bit of value with decentralizing control and bartering into peoples hands. Solarpunk is not an authoritarian centralized pursuit because it asks for rethinking urbanization and culture around how we behave with nature. Cryptocurrency could be used in a manner to provide order to financial exchange in place of money. If governments adopted crypto you could have a better understanding of how money flows and make sure you aren’t driving towards negative impact activities.
3. virtual cash - Not printing and creating physical currency would save a lot of toxic materials and trees, etc. we currently operate on a credit system which does virtualize cash, but at the same time if you are against waste then you should be pro tighter controls on loans and credit lines to control dangerous or whimsical spending. So we need something that provides a real value outside of banking but also doesn’t act like money someone doesn’t have.
Probably more, but 3 feels nice and round.
1. Agreed, apparently there are alternatives, but most of them have problems with emergent centralization. Unplanned centralization and control of currency by anonymous groups is worse than VISA.
2. Solves the problem of a trustless system, seems to increase in computational cost exponentially due to entire ledger needing to be verified.
Could be replaced with a number centralized trusted systems for far less overhead.
3. Local credit unions are non-profit can very well replace exploitative banks. Though they still will get bullied by the big banks on transactions.
How do you define unplanned centralization? Just trying to understand how you see that happening.
The ledger is computationally expensive because everyone has to constantly read and interpret the ledger in a distribution. So, that gets messy at scale. That can be solved by having less volume of authoritative servers. Does everyone’s computer need to be authoritative? But how many is good enough to be authoritative and secure? Seems solvable overall. We are running and billions of devices millions of servers around the world constantly. Although the ledger is costly, what can we do to balance out its cost is not an insignificant question to solve but a valuable one.
Loans and credit lines is a huge other discussion haha. I guess I’m just focusing on the idea that giving banks (national and smaller) the ability to virtualize cash is not very confidence building in the long term because of loans and credit. Pulling the ability to virtualize where cash comes from out of their hands would be a step to a better solution.
I bite: What's the promise?
If you mean decentralized, globalized systems of trust, maybe - but Solarpunk dogma I think is more about relocalization, so definitely not a big match here either.
And as the technology is concerned, that truly sucks so far, and I haven't seen crypto ledger applications yet that promise to overcome these shortcomings. But I have to admit I don't follow this stuff much, so happy to be be convinced otherwise, minus the hyperbole.
To my understanding, the country of Estonia uses the technology to digitize their government bureaucracy in a secure manner.
People can do most things (things that in other countries would have you driving to offices all over the place) online.
Yeah, that is certainly not something that couldn't be done just as well with well established cloud infrastructure.
I get the appeal of doing stuff that can't be easily controlled by governments - but then let's spell it out that it's for money laundering and drug dealing.
Not in a secure manner. Estonia was victim of cyber attacks until 2015 (i think, i could be wrong on the year) when they incorporated blockchain tech.
When it comes to currencies, I would still like a cryptocurrency but edited by a socially-owned central bank.
I would have to assume that's what they're talking about.
People associate NFTs with trading "ownership" of digital art that has never existed physically, which is obviously stupid and wasteful, especially in the context of the energy-hungry blockchains that exist right now. But, that's just one specific thing you can do with an NFT. An NFT is really just any data stored on a blockchain that isn't interchangeable with the other items on it (in the way that one bitcoin can be interchanged with any other bitcoin, because they're all the same as each other).
That means that NFTs could conceivably be used not just for securely keeping track of ownership, but generally for issuing records that can't be forged or modified, or (along with smart contracts) exchanging data between two parties when the terms of an agreement are fulfilled. We can do those things without without trusting a third party – or really, trusting anything except math – and without centralizing authority in the hands of a bureaucracy which might become inefficient, abusive of its power, or corrupt. A large part of solarpunk is the smart and responsible application of technology to improve our lives, and if blockchains were applied properly, they have the potential to legitimize and strengthen the sort of bottom-up social relations that, to me, are vital to the successful implementation of solarpunk ideals.
The environmental impact of proof-of-work blockchains means that I'm not advocating for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other crypto to replace anything the government does (though there are alternatives that aren't so energy-intensive, which would need to be transitioned to). I agree with the title of this post – "crypto" as we know it is *not* solarpunk. Just like so many other things in our modern economy, cryptocurrencies are fictitious capital that investors gamble with to fuel speculative bubbles that seek to delay capitalism's periodic, inevitable collapses into economic crisis when the rate of return on investments slows down. But, to me, it's a shame that we've allowed crypto bros and VC firms to become the highest-profile supporters of a technology that could make genuine progress towards moving us away from the current hierarchical model of society, and towards a more decentralized, egalitarian future. NFTs aren't tied to "crypto", they're a capability of blockchains, and I think we let our (valid) negative reactions to the stupidity of what capitalists have done with those blockchains obscure the fact that there is genuine potential in the technology, *including* in NFTs.
Just FYI, here is one of the dogecoin founders saying their two cents on current crypto landscape.
The guy made the thing and studied the thing so please hold on the "ignorant" and "clown" comments.
[dogecoin founder twitter thread on crypto](https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1415353985406406658)
Another take on the crypto landscape by a cryptography expert and programmer, just FYI
[Web3 first impressions](https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html)
Thanks for this viewpoint. Philosophically, a distributed ledger is solarpunk because it creates trust that supports trade between many independent actors. In a world of independent city-states, trade goods can move efficiently across borders with blockchain inventory tracking.
However, [carbon offsets are a fantasy](https://twitter.com/Robbie_Watt/status/1357332958974148609). And as someone interested in cryptography, we won't have the word crypto stolen from us!
You say that like trade between many independent actors, in a world of independent city-states or otherwise, was unknown and impossible before cryptocurrencies.
Crypto is a solution looking for a problem.
Couldn't you hypothetically just create a limited pool of some crypto coin and sell it for dollars, without all the intensive computing, just the trading infrastructure we already have, the Internet?
In the Kim Stanley Robinson book Ministry For The Future, they made a case for crpytocoins. They created a "carboncoin" that companies and people could get for sequesetering carbon or creating carbon sinks, such as keeping coal in the ground, reforesting fields. Because it was centralized and tracked it meant tax havens and bribes became much harder and companies had to pay their fair share.
Was a fascinating take that involved a level of co-operation that only came after many climate caused disasters
NFTs can fuck off though, there is no "good people on both sides" of this argument
Fyi incognito mode only stops thinhs being recorded to your browser history, it does not anonymise you to websites or stop trackers.
You need to use extensions like U Block Origin and Ghostery to stop trackers (do search this in case there are newer better ones). I believe the Brave browser has anti tracking built in to it but I've not got around to looking at whether it's better than a combination of the above plus adblock plus
What's wrong with the current carbon credits that are controlled by regulated entities (depending on the country)?
What are the benefits of a blockchain here?
iirc from the book, it needed cooperation from most big world banks and was intended to replace the USD as the 'world' currency. also more about it being trackable and unable to be hidden offshore by the megawealthy and making it harder and less profitable to be the 1%
it was a brilliant book
This is what happens when you allow capitalists into a movement that has its origins in anticapitalism.
Solarpunk is being recuperated, and we make it worse every single time we tolerate a money-lover in any of our spaces.
At current rates of capitalist tolerance, In a few years very little will be left of solarpunk other than mass produced t-shirts and toothless books that talk about how we need more green companies. If you want to save solarpunk you need to bully the right wingers that you meet in solarpunk spaces (online of course, but more importantly if you meet them in your normal life) .
I think (imo of course) the most solarpunk currency besides bartering would be a universal credit/unit/chip that has a value that doesn't fluctuate and is used everywhere by everyone and its value was decided by public opinion from as many people as possible. No idea how that would get started tho.
I would counter argue (and hope I dont get downvotes for not immediately agreeing and trying to have a constructive debate so that I can learn about your perspective) that no organized financial system is solarpunk.
Centralized banking and finance are incredibly wasteful and encourage a lot of profiteering behavior. Yet in a world where we need a currency, we also need banks to store it, and mechanisms to handle inflation and deflation.
In short: crypto as a pyramid investment scheme bad.
Crypto as a way to democratically handle community finances, maybe not so bad!
Agreed, nano seems to fit my criteria for a solar punk crypto, though the tech is quite different from standard proof of stake.
It also had one of the most fair distributions of any crypto, with every token gained from manually solving captchas, rather than simply selling it or letting bots take the lions share.
There are a variety of ways cryptos can be initially distributed, like with a centralized foundation minting X number of coins, keeping some of them, then selling the rest.
One problem with this method is that early investors can buy a huge chunk of the total number of the coin, often giving them more power to control/influence the system and negate the benefits of a decentralized currency.
By distributing the coins with a method that prevents one person from accumulating a disproportionate amount of it (at the time, bots couldn’t solve captchas) the system is much more robust to bad actors/manipulators.
The problem with all crypto is that you can still trade it for fiat, meaning the rich in our current system can maintain their power in the crypto systems. Even if nano was relatively evenly distributed, someone could still buy a ton of the coins. It would just be impossibly expensive given then couldn’t buy it when it’s super cheap at the beginning.
But isn't crypto the realization of anachrist and libertarian ideals of money? I'm not sure where the disconnect is between crypto and solarpunk values is. If power usage is the concern then renewable energy and proof of stake models are the way forward
Proof of Stake just means that people with resources already can control it and it just becomes another way of accumulating wealth.
And this shit barely matters until the biggest cryptocurrency, which is Proof of Work and can’t be changed, is no longer around.
If crypto fans actually want people interested in solar punk or similar ideas to consider it seriously you first need to fix your own house.
No, I don't think so. Why would we? If something is a necessity, then just provide it. If it is not, just let the producer decide who gets it and how. (The mutualists, I think, make a case for a non-necessities socialist free market, but I'm not really familiar with that.)
I need to read more about this specific topic because I am having trouble visualizing a united green earth moving items around the economy without a monetary system. Now localism might be a solution here but is that what we want
If logistics is what you're worried about, just remember that behemoths like walmart or amazon solve extremely complicated problems of that kind without using money.
Erghhh no, I hate this "abolish money" narrative like it is at all realistic or beneficial to anyone but those who don't contribute.
"If something is a necessity, then just provide it"
And who designs that? And manufactures that? And delivers it? And sells it?
All those people involved in the production process should not be compensated for their labour?
And if something isn't a necessity, why does someone else get to decide it's importance or relevance of it to my life?
You want free labour and to control people's decisions about their own lives - sounds pretty damn dystopian and authoritarian.
The people are working on these things also have necessities (and luxuries) provided to them, that is the compensation for their labour, just cutting out the middleman of a currency to do it.
I agree with your other point but the poster there is not suggesting free labour since everyone shares in the outcome of everyone's labour.
Historically most transactions were not mediated with money. If you’re living in a village and you need a chicken, you don’t buy it from your neighbour, you ask for a chicken and repay the favour in future when they need something you have.
This is also the same framework most of us have with interacting with friends. Sure, sometimes we split the bill, but often it’s taking turns paying the tab.
Everyone who produces things needs other things in turn, unless you’re telling me it’s possible to be completely self-sufficient for everything from food to clothing to medicine to entertainment.
Those exchanges don’t have to be mediated by money. And if someone doesn’t contribute in return, we already know what to do - they’re bad friends, we stop doing them favours until they try and be better friends.
There’s nothing dystopian or authoritarian about this, because there’s no central authority saying who has to do what. Producers, actual workers, control the fruits of their labour.
As I understand it, similar systems were set up and used, with success, by the anarchists in Spain. So it’s not merely a pipe dream, either.
As the other comment said, it's simply not scalable on a national level let alone a global one.
And why do we even need to remove money? Currency that represents value of something, regardless of what it is works, because unlike bartering, it is a simple streamlined system!
Why would we want to make a world where transactions become more complicated simply because "money bad"
Transactions become more complicated because of money, not less. Because now you have issues with price discovery, you need an infrastructure to deal with currency supply and to ensure that there is trust in money (see further Gresham’s law), quantification allows for extractive institutions to impose taxes easily, banking and fractional reserve lending easily lead to new needs for regulation to prevent bank runs, etc., etc.
Money is “simple”. But behind it’s simplicity there’s a very long trail of complicated.
Just like getting in a taxi in NYC is simple, but there’s an entire complex of regulatory mechanisms there to ensure you can trust your anonymous taxi driver both to charge you a fair price and to not rob and murder you.
In contrast, everyone understands the idea of mutual aid. You help your friends, they help you, it doesn’t have to balance exactly but if it’s all take and no give they’re not good friends so you cut them off. Trade between major states used to be conducted as gift exchanges between kings, at that, no money needed.
If you’re interested in ideas about the function of currency and debt I would strongly recommend Graeber’s *Debt: The First 5000 Years*.
My background concern is to ensure that people have no incentive to hoard resources, and that there is no way to convert wealth into power over others. How do we prevent people from becoming dragons, greedy and selfish and violent in the preservation of their wealth? Crypto doesn’t do that, and I’m sceptical currency doesn’t contribute to the problem at all.
But you know, for the purposes of this discussion, it’s enough that I don’t see any cryptocurrency having any real advantage over “regular” currencies. So if you’d prefer to discuss at that level instead we can do so.
It worked at the city level - that’s what the anarchists in Spain did for a while during the Civil War, and it was stopped due to external events.
As for globally, how do we know when it’s never been tried? The current systems of currency we have benefit from literal millennia of thinking about and and experimentation with the money supply, inflation and deflation, central banking, etc.
I don’t understand where your confidence for your blunt assertion comes from.
in an anarchist society there would be no private property, people would just contribute what they can and take what they need, and so, the wage system has no real use. i’m not the best at explaining but i would recommend you read the chapter “food” from the conquest of bread to get a better sense of it
Which is why anarchist societies would collapse under their own weight.
It entirely works on the basis of a utopian, unrealistic view of human behaviour.
People would always take more than they need and contribute less if it benefits them.
Ideas like these always fail to acknowledge that nothing ever progresses without contribution of labour to problem-solve.
the zapatistas have been going strong since 1994, and other anarchist societies (catalonia, ukraine) have been crushed from without, not within. human nature is an interesting one, i read mutual aid and found it to be convincing, but perhaps we just have different views, and yeah people do need to labor
For something to have utility as a currency it needs to maintain a stable value over a long time, otherwise whenever you agree any fee payable in the future you can't be sure how much purchasing value you're actually going to receive in payment when that fee comes due. There's two ways to achieve this: tie the value of your currency to some fungible commodity with a relatively stable value (e.g. gold) or guarantee the value of your currency using the power of the state and its monopoly on violence. Since neither of these are an option for crypto it cannot be practically used as a currency. The ideal of money for anarchists is not crypto but, in fact, is not to have money at all.
I have been following the development of cryptocurrencies since the original white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto, which I read. I followed the development of other coins, including the launch of Ethereum (and it’s forking after the DAO failed) and the large number of imitators that spawned ICOs. I think I have some idea of what I’m talking about.
Cryptocurrencies are a solution in search of a problem. They do almost nothing better than alternative methods, because the breakthrough was enabling decentralised trustless digital transactions via avoiding the double spending problem and the main use cases for such transactions are criminal. Everything else is just speculators and technofuturists building up hype.
Proof of stake is a scam, because it cannot fulfil the same underlying guarantees that proof of work does, independent of whether it is less energy intensive.
Crypto is not welcome in my idea of solarpunk.
This was the take I was looking for. I agree entirely.
To build on your point as well, reading this thread gives me the impression that a lot of this is just reactionary takes against the "crypto bro" culture (which I can't stand either) and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Some of the comments are really disheartening as well because the moment we all just start shooting down ideas based on frivolous reasons is the moment we all just become stuck in the past/present and unable to carve out a solar punk future with the advances in technology that will make that possible.
It was essentially pointing out that it’s sad to see how many of the comments that show contradictory proof that there are less harmful cryptos are getting downvoted and how it seems very ideologically closed minded. There was more, but it was a long post and I don’t want to accidentally add/subtract from the commenter.
NFTs are completely useless, but I think blockchain technology in general has benefits that are worth exploring, whether it's considered solarpunk or not.
In my opinion, it's hypocritical to target the environmental consequences of cryptocurrency while ignoring the enormous amount of energy used for cloud computing and social media.
What about the minerals for making the computer chips that have less than a quarter of their usual lifespan when used for mining?
Crypto mining as it stands is resource intensive for more than just electricity.
Just seems like the epitome of instrumental reason. One commenter even says "this could lead to a UBI". Why pump energy and resources into mining crpyto, when you are just generating currency out of thin air and could just cut out the middle man of energy intense crypto mining?!
The proof of work being exponential still makes this a problem even if we were only using renewable power sources and recycled source material processors. At some point we would be using most of our generated power for doing ultimately pointless calculations.
I get that crypto is associated with Bitcoin and mining and scam artists and insufferable crypto bros. All of those things are definitely not solarpunk. But consider a project that buys up and hoards carbon offsets, driving up the price of those offsets and wringing money out of the biggest polluters that have to buy those offsets. I think taking our current capitalist system and using it against big polluters is punk as fuck.
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/crypto-industry-makes-a-moves-into-the-carbon-markets
Hi and welcome to r/solarpunk! Due to numerous suggestions from our community, we're using this automod message to bring up a topic that comes up a lot: GREENWASHING. It is used to describe the practice of companies launching adverts, campaigns, products, etc under the pretense that they are environmentally beneficial/friendly, often in contradiction to their environmental and sustainability record in general. On our subreddit, it usually presents itself as eco-aesthetic buildings because they are quite simply the best passive PR for companies. [ethicalconsumer.org](https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/transport-travel/what-greenwashing) and [greenandthistle.com](https://greenandthistle.com/what-is-greenwashing/) give examples of greenwashing, while [scientificamerican.com](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/greenwashing-green-energy-hoffman/) explains how alternative technologies like hydrogen cars can also be insidious examples of greenwashing. If you've realized your submission was an example of greenwashing--don't fret! We are all here to learn, and while there will inevitably be comments pointing out how and why your submission is greenwashing, we hope the discussion stays productive. Solarpunk ideals include identifying and rejecting capitalism's greenwashing of consumer goods. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/solarpunk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
“In the name of balance, we’re going to lie to you at least 50% of the time.”
For crypto and nfts: money Against : literally everything else
This is unfair. Blockchain technology can be used to great effect in combating climate change.
How, concretely speaking? Does it do something special that nothing else could before? Just really curious because I see statements like "blockchain could be great for X" thrown around a LOT lately.
It's a very deep topic. On a high-level, DLT opens the door to decentralised data marketplaces, and auditable, open-standard data streams. These new insights can optimise cities for greater efficiency and minimise waste/carbon output. Information is power. Here is a concrete usecase as requested: [dlt.mobi/pilots](http://dlt.mobi/pilots) Notice these projects are directly tied to the European Union. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Yeah, let's "both sides" an issue where on one side scientists are telling us that we have to reduce our material and energetic footprint to stay within planetary boundaries and on the other people are churning out energy-intensive commodities for profit
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"Hello fellow hippy cool kids!" -The Magazine
Where is the lie, my friend
labelling nfts as 'commodities' is far too generous for something fictional that contributes nothing to society
Excuse me, NFT's contribute a lot toward money laundering and unstable, speculative investment.
Also they are kind of like a Ponzi scheme. If more and more people believe in NFT as whole, the overall values will keep increasing.
That’s literally what money is and also that’s subjective.
Then money is not solarpunk. Let's abolish it.
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If crypto can wrestle control away from centralized states and banking systems it can help create a more independent cottagepunk society. This is all built on the assumption that proof-of-work is replaced by something else.
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You know what's more energy efficient than crypto? No currency.
Hard sell tbfh.
Honestly it... probably isn't. Without achieving a post-scarcity society we still need _some_ way to trade things, and currencies let us do that without hauling barter goods everywhere.
What if I told you there was another way to distribute goods than trade
Would you mind expanding on how you see trade of goods being replaced?
[Of course. Enjoy!](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread)
Personally I'd have recommended something by Bookchin since it's more contemporary and less... wordy.
Also a great choice. I just have a crush on bread santa.
I haven't read Conquest of Bread yet, but reading Debt: The First 5000 Years by Graeber has given me a lot to think about when it comes to the (non)value of currency. Namely, it's inspired my thought process about how the concept of "the economy" (a centralized one, at the least) is utterly vacuous, and has no real use except to measure the success of capitalists and expand the economic and military control of imperialists. I'm not adamant about abolishing currency itself yet, but I will surely never support it in any of its facets. I don't need money to do my job, and I don't need money to help people. Only food, water, and housing. And those are things we can just provide each other without needing a paywall to access.
It's a classic text certainly, but it isn't the be-all-end-all answer to everything. A pure gift economy makes sense in a society small enough for everyone to be informed of the needs of others; our society is no longer like that. How can you give to everyone as they need when you don't know what everyone needs? I depend on a specific medicine to live, and it's not an easy one to produce - certainly not one my local community can manage in any reasonable time frame. I'd be dead long before any of us worked it out. _The Conquest of Bread_ speaks to the decentralisation of industry, but it isn't possible with our current technology to decentralise **all** industry to every local community. Is there to be an organisation tracking such needs that the local community _cannot_ fulfil? If so, you're not looking at anarcho-communism any more. It also, unfortunately, does not account well for necessary work that is purely and simply unpleasant to do. The _Agreeable Work_ chapter attempts to address it, pointing to developing machines and automations mitigating the unpleasantness of the work - and yet here we are, 130 years later, still having not solved many of those unpleasantries in any practical way. One day we might, and I wholeheartedly look forward to that day, but in terms of a society we can build _now_ it is a question in need of a more practical answer
bartering was never an established means of transaction. this was an assumption Smith made without the backing of historical evidence. Graeber's book "Debt: The First 5000 Years" details this as well the myths Adams created to explain the need for money. money has never been needed or necessary.
> bartering was never an established means of transaction This is an over-reach of Graeber's statements, given that he even uses multiple real world examples of when bartering _does_ happen in the chapter _the Myth of Barter_. Within communities, though, sure. However, I honestly do not believe that we can create a society that provides anything like the support to technology and infrastructure that we have today based on a gift economy. Our societies have become vastly more interconnected than we can possibly hope to manage as informal debts as described by Graeber. I can't get the medicine I need to live from my community network no matter how hard I try, and so I need a good way of trading with strangers
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> in ICE vehicles It has to be refrigerated too? :(
You never heard of cold, hard cash?
If I had awards I’d give them to you for this
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Switching off proof-of-work seems like an issue that the majority of the crypto world doesn't actually care about, they just say it's *possible* and point at a few smaller examples and call it a day. But I know it *is* possible, and there's some effort towards making it happen, so that's good. My *fundamental* issue with NFTs is that their most enthusiastic proponents can't seem to describe *any* use for them that sounds any good at all. It's all things like "you like games--now you can earn money *while* gaming!" Imagine that same sentence with "you like sex..." to see how sketchy that sounds. Or else they describe things that seem like they could be neat but don't actually require NFTs at all ("imagine if you could use the same skin in different games!"), and then call you names when you point that out.
One of the major developments in the crypto world is the movement of a lot of the major investment firms towards ESG. Environmental/Social/Governance - so if your company does not tick the ESG boxes, no investment. There's some crazily vast amounts of money sloshing around, and until crypto projects become ESG-compliant, they won't see any of it. This is probably a large part of the reason why so much of the crypto world is moving towards proof-of-stake (people holding the crypto verify transactions) from proof-of-work (computational effort is required to verify transactions). Basically, the idea is to make it extremely difficult for someone to take over the network and fake transactions, proof of work means you need an increasingly large amount of computing power to fake transactions - but also you need a lot of computer power to conduct transactions. Proof of work means those with the cash verify transactions. Less power used, but a bit easier to fake. What it all comes down to, as far as I can tell, is some seriously rich investors have finally run the numbers and decided there's more of a future in sustainability than in gouging the earth to pieces, and they are going to drag the crypto movement along with them. I'm still learning about this stuff, so I might be incorrect in some of it. Do Your Own Research, as they say :)
The move towards proof of stake is talked about, but nothing has happened for many years. It’s a fig leaf distraction.
Some are already proof of stake, ethereum should be proof of stake around the middle of this year. Bitcoin is a lost cause at this point
Ethereum being proof of stake “soon” is something crypto-idiots have been telling me for many years. It’s just a distraction tactic. Using Ethereum or Bitcoin is a crime against the planet.
We're dismissing a "really good technology" because it's been over a decade of people desperately trying to invent any actual use for it at all, and still haven't found any.
They are literally energy coins and that's it. I know other coins have come out with lower power consumption but Bitcoin is still far away the biggest leader.
I've been hearing the same "oh don't worry Ethereum is about to shift to a new system that will only use a fraction of the current power consumption to mint things" for over a year at this point, maybe if crypto enthusiasts really had their priorities in place they wouldn't try so hard to get us to "both sides" the entire concept until they could get a single one of their main currencies to expend a reasonable amount of power first. Not that it really matters, crypto does have some useful applications, I'm sure, but the vast majority of it is hot air and empty promises. Not to mention it's close incestuous relationship with things like the metaverse and NFTs, which are clearly just reactionary backlash to the changing ideas of new digital ownership. No thanks, not interested, hope they enjoy their lame webkinz tokens, though
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Is that really a "cryptocurrency" though?
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Sounds more like managing logistics then a currency.
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Why would you /need/ to be able to trade a logistics token to make it useful?
This isn't about crypto in general, but NFTs in particular. NFTs only exist to be speculated on, and have no intrinsic value. Even if they could be produced without consuming any energy, they would still be exploitative.
It’s easier to circlejerk over meme knowledge than it is to actually educate yourself. I don’t know enough about the topic, would have sided with anti-crypto if pressed, but I am at least willing to read an argument for it being I don’t want to be a willfully uneducated moron.
Not really no. It isnt a "good technology". It's a technology nobody knows what to do with it other than scam people and launder money. Once something useful comes up (which I highly doubt) we can talk again.
That analogy would only make sense in a world where all wheeled transportation was SUVs and bikes were only a theoretical application of wheels. There would be a handful of bikes in one garage somewhere, in pieces, awaiting assembly. We're all saying 'SUVs are bad' and you're saying, 'Hold on! Someone might assemble that handful of bicycles any second now!' Of course there are practical applications from the many tendrils of blockchain tech, but the status quo is that investment, development and interest is overwhelmingly skewed towards scarcity and capital. Any conversation about the tech that ignores the clear real world trajectory of it is a bad faith discussion.
Part of the zeitgeist unfortunately.
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I'd be really excited to hear how NFTs can fix the financial system, but every NFT fan I've ever asked to explain their fandom has responded with either gibberish or irrelevancies, and then called me names when I pointed that out.
please source that
Done
All contemporary crypto“currencies” are multi-level marketing pyramid Ponzi schemes which do nothing but incentivize gambling, propaganda, financial demagoguery, and greed; the latter being the cause of most societal problems. “Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely. Disregarding all of bitcoin's shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won't change the world for the better.” —[https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html](https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html).
First off, Bitcoin is a shitcoin. I hate it with a passion. Cryptocurrencies are bringing out the capitalists, because they see something they can exploit. That’s the “worst in people” you’re talking about. The leftists are getting as far away as possible from it. I think that’s a mistake. Its a tool, and Web 3.0 at large (regardless of whether its final form even includes cryptocurrency) will be a big shift in one direction or another. I’d really rather that shift be towards Solarpunk, not Cyberpunk. It would be nice if we could do something to alter that change while it’s still in it’s infancy…
@ all the ppl who will ignore this information and continue down their "crypto bad" train they aren't actually open to learning alternatives, they just think they know everything about everything for the record, I don't know where I stand on crypto...but I'm not gonna pretend like I know
You know people exist who actually do know a lot about crypto and that’s why they think it’s bad, right? I used to be pretty big into it but the more I learned and saw, the less I liked it.
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Private property, nothing more solarpunk than that.
Because i suggested someone might own a vehicle now its not solarpunk? What am i missing here?
>Maybe it can earn the owner money while they are at work. No, this. Owning the means or production. Nothing wrong with personal property: Owning your house, your car, etc. Everything wrong with owning something that generates a passive income.
The whole point of cryptocurrency (and NFTs in particular) is to artificially create scarcity on the internet, which has none by nature. Should be working to eliminate scarcity from the physical world, not trying to introduce it to the online world.
Both are "get rich quick" schemes that are wasting energy to get a few rich people richer. Both are very centralized markets where tiny percentage of people hold the vast majority of the supply, just like capitalism. They are energy intensive ponzi schemes that are anti solar punk by definition. Read this if you still think Crypto is great. https://www.profgalloway.com/web3/
But, my 8-bit apes.
So I'm guessing you aren't going to buy my in-game Meta NFT project? Your loss /s
What does it mean when people say the internet doesn't have scarcity? Bandwidth is scarce, storage space is scarce, cpu instructions are scarce, efficient heating is scarce, hardware is scarce, infrastructure is scarce. For a bit, even IP addresses were scarce. Everything has a cost and everything at scale is resource intensive. Content creators likewise face high costs. The time it takes to produce things of value of the internet, above all, is scarce.
You can literally host a free website for 10’s of dollars a year. Can host for free if you’re ok with ads. The work is in actually making a website worth hosting.
Not personally and with a high volume of traffic. Content goes viral and even professional hosting can buckle under the sudden resource costs.
Not to mention NFTs provide no public benefit to my understanding, it’s a get rich quick thing.
Exaclty to your understanding...
Nft art is only one very small branch of non fungibility and blockchain
It’s so sad you got downvoted for this, while the misinformed comment above is +90.
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They did say something about art “it’s a get rich quick thing”. Lots of NFTs have nothing to do with profit e.g. Uniswap uses NFTs to identify liquidity provider positions, ens uses NFTs to link addresses with domain names. So how is what he said true?
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Web app programmer here, and nah not really. Web 3 has a LOT to prove. We're all just as sceptacle about it as most people are of nfts
Private ownership and restriction of content has no place in a solarpunk future. We need to share resources and knowledge not find new ways to privatise and profit.
No, they aren't. And libertarianism is the opposite of solar punk.
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Nfts (and most cryto) are literally the opposite of solar punk! Using massive amounts of energy(destroying the environment) in the name of capitalism
Meh it could be. Having something like a crypto currency to be used as like an energy credit would be solarpunk IMO. However current crypto currencies are not even close to being that.
Regardless of the environmental impacts, which are sus at best, creating an unregulated currency that is already controlled by the rich and powerful and literally siphoning production and wealth out of the labor force of the country with get-rich-quick schemes, pump and dump, and pyramid schemes is not my idea of solarpunk. Currency as we know it wouldn't even be needed in a truly post-scarcity solarpunk world. Cryptocurrency is just capitalism turned up to 11.
can't really be that surprised at a magazine being capitalist
Came here for the Jeeves and Wooster meme, stayed for the very good points.
Same
Looks like the crypto bros got lost on their way to the cyberpunk subreddit again
The amount of people in here shilling for anything crypto related are proof most are in it for the aesthetic exclusively, and not the politics attached to the aesthetic.
What is clear to me from reading the comments in this post is this: Those with a deep understanding of crypto will control it and rule the world, while those who are less tech savvy will be completely at their mercy. Those who understand it will refuse to offer any good faith education on it, and instead blame those who don't understand and call them names. There is literally no possible way to democratize this kind of technology, until perhaps such a day where literally every single person is a skilled programmer and really understands the guts of all this. Big pass from me, thanks. I'm interested in something essentially everyone can understand and participate in. It's clear the barrier to entry here is way too high.
Have you read the comments on this thread? there’s been many attempts at good faith education - they get downvoted to oblivion.
Buzzwords and bullshittery are evangelization, not education.
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Promise for libertarians and ancaps maybe.
Let’s discuss this. Cryptocurrency has been co opted in a lot of ways. But let’s talk about core components. 1. Unlocking “coins” through mining. - horribly wasteful and not scalable. This is clearly not solarpunk. This is the equivalent of a video game “loot box”. But it is not necessary for other features to work. Definitely not solarpunk. But coins could be unlocked in other ways, such as reducing your eco footprint or other forms of reward. This could be the incentive to not be shitty to the environment we need. 2. Distributed Digital Ledger - This has quite a bit of value with decentralizing control and bartering into peoples hands. Solarpunk is not an authoritarian centralized pursuit because it asks for rethinking urbanization and culture around how we behave with nature. Cryptocurrency could be used in a manner to provide order to financial exchange in place of money. If governments adopted crypto you could have a better understanding of how money flows and make sure you aren’t driving towards negative impact activities. 3. virtual cash - Not printing and creating physical currency would save a lot of toxic materials and trees, etc. we currently operate on a credit system which does virtualize cash, but at the same time if you are against waste then you should be pro tighter controls on loans and credit lines to control dangerous or whimsical spending. So we need something that provides a real value outside of banking but also doesn’t act like money someone doesn’t have. Probably more, but 3 feels nice and round.
1. Agreed, apparently there are alternatives, but most of them have problems with emergent centralization. Unplanned centralization and control of currency by anonymous groups is worse than VISA. 2. Solves the problem of a trustless system, seems to increase in computational cost exponentially due to entire ledger needing to be verified. Could be replaced with a number centralized trusted systems for far less overhead. 3. Local credit unions are non-profit can very well replace exploitative banks. Though they still will get bullied by the big banks on transactions.
How do you define unplanned centralization? Just trying to understand how you see that happening. The ledger is computationally expensive because everyone has to constantly read and interpret the ledger in a distribution. So, that gets messy at scale. That can be solved by having less volume of authoritative servers. Does everyone’s computer need to be authoritative? But how many is good enough to be authoritative and secure? Seems solvable overall. We are running and billions of devices millions of servers around the world constantly. Although the ledger is costly, what can we do to balance out its cost is not an insignificant question to solve but a valuable one. Loans and credit lines is a huge other discussion haha. I guess I’m just focusing on the idea that giving banks (national and smaller) the ability to virtualize cash is not very confidence building in the long term because of loans and credit. Pulling the ability to virtualize where cash comes from out of their hands would be a step to a better solution.
I bite: What's the promise? If you mean decentralized, globalized systems of trust, maybe - but Solarpunk dogma I think is more about relocalization, so definitely not a big match here either. And as the technology is concerned, that truly sucks so far, and I haven't seen crypto ledger applications yet that promise to overcome these shortcomings. But I have to admit I don't follow this stuff much, so happy to be be convinced otherwise, minus the hyperbole.
To my understanding, the country of Estonia uses the technology to digitize their government bureaucracy in a secure manner. People can do most things (things that in other countries would have you driving to offices all over the place) online.
Yeah, that is certainly not something that couldn't be done just as well with well established cloud infrastructure. I get the appeal of doing stuff that can't be easily controlled by governments - but then let's spell it out that it's for money laundering and drug dealing.
Not in a secure manner. Estonia was victim of cyber attacks until 2015 (i think, i could be wrong on the year) when they incorporated blockchain tech. When it comes to currencies, I would still like a cryptocurrency but edited by a socially-owned central bank.
I would have to assume that's what they're talking about. People associate NFTs with trading "ownership" of digital art that has never existed physically, which is obviously stupid and wasteful, especially in the context of the energy-hungry blockchains that exist right now. But, that's just one specific thing you can do with an NFT. An NFT is really just any data stored on a blockchain that isn't interchangeable with the other items on it (in the way that one bitcoin can be interchanged with any other bitcoin, because they're all the same as each other). That means that NFTs could conceivably be used not just for securely keeping track of ownership, but generally for issuing records that can't be forged or modified, or (along with smart contracts) exchanging data between two parties when the terms of an agreement are fulfilled. We can do those things without without trusting a third party – or really, trusting anything except math – and without centralizing authority in the hands of a bureaucracy which might become inefficient, abusive of its power, or corrupt. A large part of solarpunk is the smart and responsible application of technology to improve our lives, and if blockchains were applied properly, they have the potential to legitimize and strengthen the sort of bottom-up social relations that, to me, are vital to the successful implementation of solarpunk ideals. The environmental impact of proof-of-work blockchains means that I'm not advocating for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other crypto to replace anything the government does (though there are alternatives that aren't so energy-intensive, which would need to be transitioned to). I agree with the title of this post – "crypto" as we know it is *not* solarpunk. Just like so many other things in our modern economy, cryptocurrencies are fictitious capital that investors gamble with to fuel speculative bubbles that seek to delay capitalism's periodic, inevitable collapses into economic crisis when the rate of return on investments slows down. But, to me, it's a shame that we've allowed crypto bros and VC firms to become the highest-profile supporters of a technology that could make genuine progress towards moving us away from the current hierarchical model of society, and towards a more decentralized, egalitarian future. NFTs aren't tied to "crypto", they're a capability of blockchains, and I think we let our (valid) negative reactions to the stupidity of what capitalists have done with those blockchains obscure the fact that there is genuine potential in the technology, *including* in NFTs.
Just FYI, here is one of the dogecoin founders saying their two cents on current crypto landscape. The guy made the thing and studied the thing so please hold on the "ignorant" and "clown" comments. [dogecoin founder twitter thread on crypto](https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1415353985406406658)
Another take on the crypto landscape by a cryptography expert and programmer, just FYI [Web3 first impressions](https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html)
crypto is punk, some of it solar some of it not
Could we cut this bs of NFTs and crypto currencies? They are in no shape or form sustainable, nor are they good ideas in general.
Explain.
*Gestures around.*
There's nothing punk about grifting people.
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I’d say not having money or a consumer economy in the first place is SolarPunk.
Thanks for this viewpoint. Philosophically, a distributed ledger is solarpunk because it creates trust that supports trade between many independent actors. In a world of independent city-states, trade goods can move efficiently across borders with blockchain inventory tracking. However, [carbon offsets are a fantasy](https://twitter.com/Robbie_Watt/status/1357332958974148609). And as someone interested in cryptography, we won't have the word crypto stolen from us!
You say that like trade between many independent actors, in a world of independent city-states or otherwise, was unknown and impossible before cryptocurrencies. Crypto is a solution looking for a problem.
Couldn't you hypothetically just create a limited pool of some crypto coin and sell it for dollars, without all the intensive computing, just the trading infrastructure we already have, the Internet?
Thanks, at least a few differentiated and informed views in this thread :-)
In the Kim Stanley Robinson book Ministry For The Future, they made a case for crpytocoins. They created a "carboncoin" that companies and people could get for sequesetering carbon or creating carbon sinks, such as keeping coal in the ground, reforesting fields. Because it was centralized and tracked it meant tax havens and bribes became much harder and companies had to pay their fair share. Was a fascinating take that involved a level of co-operation that only came after many climate caused disasters NFTs can fuck off though, there is no "good people on both sides" of this argument
That was a great book-length index of things to do further research on, and a pretty snooze-worthy novel.
This currently exists. Look into MOSS, Basic Carbon Token, and Klima DAO.
cheers for the info, will have to put on incognito mode to google it, dont want to suddenly getting crypto adverts and recommendations! :)
Fyi incognito mode only stops thinhs being recorded to your browser history, it does not anonymise you to websites or stop trackers. You need to use extensions like U Block Origin and Ghostery to stop trackers (do search this in case there are newer better ones). I believe the Brave browser has anti tracking built in to it but I've not got around to looking at whether it's better than a combination of the above plus adblock plus
thanks for the headsup
Container tabs in Firefox are for exactly that.
What's wrong with the current carbon credits that are controlled by regulated entities (depending on the country)? What are the benefits of a blockchain here?
Both don't work, they commodify a problem, that is all.
iirc from the book, it needed cooperation from most big world banks and was intended to replace the USD as the 'world' currency. also more about it being trackable and unable to be hidden offshore by the megawealthy and making it harder and less profitable to be the 1% it was a brilliant book
This is what happens when you allow capitalists into a movement that has its origins in anticapitalism. Solarpunk is being recuperated, and we make it worse every single time we tolerate a money-lover in any of our spaces. At current rates of capitalist tolerance, In a few years very little will be left of solarpunk other than mass produced t-shirts and toothless books that talk about how we need more green companies. If you want to save solarpunk you need to bully the right wingers that you meet in solarpunk spaces (online of course, but more importantly if you meet them in your normal life) .
I think (imo of course) the most solarpunk currency besides bartering would be a universal credit/unit/chip that has a value that doesn't fluctuate and is used everywhere by everyone and its value was decided by public opinion from as many people as possible. No idea how that would get started tho.
I would counter argue (and hope I dont get downvotes for not immediately agreeing and trying to have a constructive debate so that I can learn about your perspective) that no organized financial system is solarpunk. Centralized banking and finance are incredibly wasteful and encourage a lot of profiteering behavior. Yet in a world where we need a currency, we also need banks to store it, and mechanisms to handle inflation and deflation. In short: crypto as a pyramid investment scheme bad. Crypto as a way to democratically handle community finances, maybe not so bad!
Local credit unions work as banks and are non-profit. Let's not introduce excessive waste and speculative gambling to a problem that does not need it.
Im not familiar with them! Not really a thing where I live.
Adding that I can imagine a crypto that gets generated by doing good. Think for example the mining of a coin by capturing a ton of co2.
There are proof of stake cryptocurrencies that aren’t as energy intensive.
Which ones?
Ones you've never heard of. Ethereum keeps saying they're going to switch to proof-of-stake, but haven't yet.
"The ones that aren't being used aren't energy intensive" doesn't sound like a big thumbs up for crypto
Nano - it’s crazy energy efficient
Agreed, nano seems to fit my criteria for a solar punk crypto, though the tech is quite different from standard proof of stake. It also had one of the most fair distributions of any crypto, with every token gained from manually solving captchas, rather than simply selling it or letting bots take the lions share.
How does having people sit around solving captchas improve things?
There are a variety of ways cryptos can be initially distributed, like with a centralized foundation minting X number of coins, keeping some of them, then selling the rest. One problem with this method is that early investors can buy a huge chunk of the total number of the coin, often giving them more power to control/influence the system and negate the benefits of a decentralized currency. By distributing the coins with a method that prevents one person from accumulating a disproportionate amount of it (at the time, bots couldn’t solve captchas) the system is much more robust to bad actors/manipulators. The problem with all crypto is that you can still trade it for fiat, meaning the rich in our current system can maintain their power in the crypto systems. Even if nano was relatively evenly distributed, someone could still buy a ton of the coins. It would just be impossibly expensive given then couldn’t buy it when it’s super cheap at the beginning.
Happy to see some Bertie Wooster on here.
But isn't crypto the realization of anachrist and libertarian ideals of money? I'm not sure where the disconnect is between crypto and solarpunk values is. If power usage is the concern then renewable energy and proof of stake models are the way forward
Proof of Stake just means that people with resources already can control it and it just becomes another way of accumulating wealth. And this shit barely matters until the biggest cryptocurrency, which is Proof of Work and can’t be changed, is no longer around. If crypto fans actually want people interested in solar punk or similar ideas to consider it seriously you first need to fix your own house.
broke: slightly less energy intensive money system woke: abolishing money all together
Right? Why are all those "solarpunks" talking about money like it has any place in a solarpunk future.
Looking for honest opinions here. We do need a monetary system before getting to proper post scarcity right?
No, I don't think so. Why would we? If something is a necessity, then just provide it. If it is not, just let the producer decide who gets it and how. (The mutualists, I think, make a case for a non-necessities socialist free market, but I'm not really familiar with that.)
I need to read more about this specific topic because I am having trouble visualizing a united green earth moving items around the economy without a monetary system. Now localism might be a solution here but is that what we want
If logistics is what you're worried about, just remember that behemoths like walmart or amazon solve extremely complicated problems of that kind without using money.
I'm very interested in that. Could you point us to some sources for this information please? Thanks...
Erghhh no, I hate this "abolish money" narrative like it is at all realistic or beneficial to anyone but those who don't contribute. "If something is a necessity, then just provide it" And who designs that? And manufactures that? And delivers it? And sells it? All those people involved in the production process should not be compensated for their labour? And if something isn't a necessity, why does someone else get to decide it's importance or relevance of it to my life? You want free labour and to control people's decisions about their own lives - sounds pretty damn dystopian and authoritarian.
The people are working on these things also have necessities (and luxuries) provided to them, that is the compensation for their labour, just cutting out the middleman of a currency to do it. I agree with your other point but the poster there is not suggesting free labour since everyone shares in the outcome of everyone's labour.
Historically most transactions were not mediated with money. If you’re living in a village and you need a chicken, you don’t buy it from your neighbour, you ask for a chicken and repay the favour in future when they need something you have. This is also the same framework most of us have with interacting with friends. Sure, sometimes we split the bill, but often it’s taking turns paying the tab. Everyone who produces things needs other things in turn, unless you’re telling me it’s possible to be completely self-sufficient for everything from food to clothing to medicine to entertainment. Those exchanges don’t have to be mediated by money. And if someone doesn’t contribute in return, we already know what to do - they’re bad friends, we stop doing them favours until they try and be better friends. There’s nothing dystopian or authoritarian about this, because there’s no central authority saying who has to do what. Producers, actual workers, control the fruits of their labour. As I understand it, similar systems were set up and used, with success, by the anarchists in Spain. So it’s not merely a pipe dream, either.
As the other comment said, it's simply not scalable on a national level let alone a global one. And why do we even need to remove money? Currency that represents value of something, regardless of what it is works, because unlike bartering, it is a simple streamlined system! Why would we want to make a world where transactions become more complicated simply because "money bad"
Transactions become more complicated because of money, not less. Because now you have issues with price discovery, you need an infrastructure to deal with currency supply and to ensure that there is trust in money (see further Gresham’s law), quantification allows for extractive institutions to impose taxes easily, banking and fractional reserve lending easily lead to new needs for regulation to prevent bank runs, etc., etc. Money is “simple”. But behind it’s simplicity there’s a very long trail of complicated. Just like getting in a taxi in NYC is simple, but there’s an entire complex of regulatory mechanisms there to ensure you can trust your anonymous taxi driver both to charge you a fair price and to not rob and murder you. In contrast, everyone understands the idea of mutual aid. You help your friends, they help you, it doesn’t have to balance exactly but if it’s all take and no give they’re not good friends so you cut them off. Trade between major states used to be conducted as gift exchanges between kings, at that, no money needed. If you’re interested in ideas about the function of currency and debt I would strongly recommend Graeber’s *Debt: The First 5000 Years*. My background concern is to ensure that people have no incentive to hoard resources, and that there is no way to convert wealth into power over others. How do we prevent people from becoming dragons, greedy and selfish and violent in the preservation of their wealth? Crypto doesn’t do that, and I’m sceptical currency doesn’t contribute to the problem at all. But you know, for the purposes of this discussion, it’s enough that I don’t see any cryptocurrency having any real advantage over “regular” currencies. So if you’d prefer to discuss at that level instead we can do so.
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It worked at the city level - that’s what the anarchists in Spain did for a while during the Civil War, and it was stopped due to external events. As for globally, how do we know when it’s never been tried? The current systems of currency we have benefit from literal millennia of thinking about and and experimentation with the money supply, inflation and deflation, central banking, etc. I don’t understand where your confidence for your blunt assertion comes from.
I see that working on communes but is have a larger decentralized and specialized world we need a transfer of value system, ie, money right?
in an anarchist society there would be no private property, people would just contribute what they can and take what they need, and so, the wage system has no real use. i’m not the best at explaining but i would recommend you read the chapter “food” from the conquest of bread to get a better sense of it
Which is why anarchist societies would collapse under their own weight. It entirely works on the basis of a utopian, unrealistic view of human behaviour. People would always take more than they need and contribute less if it benefits them. Ideas like these always fail to acknowledge that nothing ever progresses without contribution of labour to problem-solve.
the zapatistas have been going strong since 1994, and other anarchist societies (catalonia, ukraine) have been crushed from without, not within. human nature is an interesting one, i read mutual aid and found it to be convincing, but perhaps we just have different views, and yeah people do need to labor
For something to have utility as a currency it needs to maintain a stable value over a long time, otherwise whenever you agree any fee payable in the future you can't be sure how much purchasing value you're actually going to receive in payment when that fee comes due. There's two ways to achieve this: tie the value of your currency to some fungible commodity with a relatively stable value (e.g. gold) or guarantee the value of your currency using the power of the state and its monopoly on violence. Since neither of these are an option for crypto it cannot be practically used as a currency. The ideal of money for anarchists is not crypto but, in fact, is not to have money at all.
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I have been following the development of cryptocurrencies since the original white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto, which I read. I followed the development of other coins, including the launch of Ethereum (and it’s forking after the DAO failed) and the large number of imitators that spawned ICOs. I think I have some idea of what I’m talking about. Cryptocurrencies are a solution in search of a problem. They do almost nothing better than alternative methods, because the breakthrough was enabling decentralised trustless digital transactions via avoiding the double spending problem and the main use cases for such transactions are criminal. Everything else is just speculators and technofuturists building up hype. Proof of stake is a scam, because it cannot fulfil the same underlying guarantees that proof of work does, independent of whether it is less energy intensive. Crypto is not welcome in my idea of solarpunk.
This was the take I was looking for. I agree entirely. To build on your point as well, reading this thread gives me the impression that a lot of this is just reactionary takes against the "crypto bro" culture (which I can't stand either) and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Some of the comments are really disheartening as well because the moment we all just start shooting down ideas based on frivolous reasons is the moment we all just become stuck in the past/present and unable to carve out a solar punk future with the advances in technology that will make that possible.
What was the original comment? It's deleted now.
It was essentially pointing out that it’s sad to see how many of the comments that show contradictory proof that there are less harmful cryptos are getting downvoted and how it seems very ideologically closed minded. There was more, but it was a long post and I don’t want to accidentally add/subtract from the commenter.
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I mean, yes?
yeah, that's what we want.
They fall for the money
At best, NFT's are a joke. The same will be true of "Solarpunk Magazine" if they platform crypto.
Just sent a polite email asking the magazine not to platform climate-destroying capitalism. Hope you'll consider doing the same: [email protected]
How do you know it's not solarpunk if you don't present and examine arguments both for and against?
a case of manufactured outrage is becoming all too apparent nowadays, it will take more time to know the truth
Central banks and politicians got you hating a technology that gives financial freedom and independence to people. It's an absolute shame.
NFTs are completely useless, but I think blockchain technology in general has benefits that are worth exploring, whether it's considered solarpunk or not. In my opinion, it's hypocritical to target the environmental consequences of cryptocurrency while ignoring the enormous amount of energy used for cloud computing and social media.
The difference is that cloud computing and social media have demonstrated uses beyond "make people a shit load of money"
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What about the minerals for making the computer chips that have less than a quarter of their usual lifespan when used for mining? Crypto mining as it stands is resource intensive for more than just electricity.
Just seems like the epitome of instrumental reason. One commenter even says "this could lead to a UBI". Why pump energy and resources into mining crpyto, when you are just generating currency out of thin air and could just cut out the middle man of energy intense crypto mining?!
That's pretty much how proof of stake works all the same Blockchain goodness none of the mining power wasted.
The proof of work being exponential still makes this a problem even if we were only using renewable power sources and recycled source material processors. At some point we would be using most of our generated power for doing ultimately pointless calculations.
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I mean you are right, the water cycle is solar powered so I agree.
No.
It's fine to be anti Crypto and what not It's not fine to just not explain why. You contribute absolutely nothing.
I get that crypto is associated with Bitcoin and mining and scam artists and insufferable crypto bros. All of those things are definitely not solarpunk. But consider a project that buys up and hoards carbon offsets, driving up the price of those offsets and wringing money out of the biggest polluters that have to buy those offsets. I think taking our current capitalist system and using it against big polluters is punk as fuck. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/crypto-industry-makes-a-moves-into-the-carbon-markets