Item — HN Reader

I’m conflicted. Firstly really like this project and its open source and community empowerment ideals. My concern is around how these tools essentially accelerate planetary resource extraction, with from what I can see no discussion or attempt to addesss this potential impact/dynamic.

In addition to bringing about greater freedom and community empowerment the project would benefit from being explicit on how it limits or seeks (even through principals) to limit excessive plantary resource extraction.

There’s a plastics project that illustrates what I mean, they help people make machines that recover and recycle plastic. Circular resource use, make that part of your front and center.

3 comments

The project seems to be about bootstrapping a civilization after collapse, and you’re worried about... accelerating resource extraction?

None of these machines are cost-effective in the current day world. Actual resource extraction operations are going to use massive machines made by big manufacturers. Small scale hobby miners and such will just order equipment from AliExpress or refurbish old equipment. There is literally zero risk of this project accelerating global resource extraction.

The project seems to be about bootstrapping a civilization after collapse...

leads to: Small scale hobby miners and such will just order equipment from AliExpress

good to know that AliExpress will have the staying power to survive the collapse of civilization. we can all sleep easier knowing that while food/water/fuel will be available to those that can take it, your cheap shit from far away lands will still be a web order away. /s

Neither hobby miners nor large mining companies would be expected to survive civilizational collapse. Hence the desire for a project like this one. I’m not sure how you could misinterpret my reply so completely.

> My concern is around how these tools essentially accelerate planetary resource extraction, with from what I can see no discussion or attempt to addesss this potential impact/dynamic.

You can't meaningfully address that at a grassroots level because of the tragedy of the commons.

You have to engage with that problem at a higher level of organization. (National/Transnational).

The commons were actually fairly well regulated by community norms that were well documented and established. The creation of the notion of the tragedy of the commons was quite possibly propaganda so that large land owners could consolidate and enclosed the commons under the guise that they could manage it better especially after traditions were disrupted.

> The commons were actually fairly well regulated by community norms that were well documented and established.

Not really. You are correctly citing the enclosure acts as a historic example, but that was not beginning or the end of history. It was just a recent, location-specific historic moment when big English landlords won in the millenia-old power struggle between peasant and landlord.

Control of the commons - land and the resources buried in it - has been a point of contention and bloodshed for as long as recorded human history. It's a pendulum that swung back and forth, but has always had bad actors making personally-profitable, socially-impoverishing decisions.

For an alternative example of how things have gone in other places, look at the blood feuds between ranchers and farmers[1] in the American west, concerns over upstream and rainfall water rights in literally any part of the world that relies on irrigation, or, the varied situations where existing landlords politically won the struggle... Or lost it in the 20th century.

As for well-established[2]...

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[1] The enclosure acts echo this farmer/rancher dichotomy, actually. Feudal lord/serf relationships have the lords derive wealth from having ever more serfs doing ever more labour-intensive agriculture on their land. The enclosure acts, however, were intended to drive the peasants from their land, because in the case of England, the lords figured out that they can derive way more wealth from turning over their land to low-labour grazelands for sheep. And the way they could do that was to use the law as a cudgel to drive out their tenants at sword and gunpoint.

[2] They were only well-established for particular points in history. Prior to William the Conqueror arriving in England, and stealing all the land in it for himself and his mercenaries, there were also 'well-established' land use norms - that greatly limited the power and ownership-of-land granted to lords and petty kings. The Norman conquest turned all that over - into a different 'well-established' equilibrium - that was then, again, turned over into a 'well-established' equilibrium after the passage of the enclosure acts.

Someone only has to take part in a makerspace to see tragedy of the commons in action.

Precisely.

A few decent folks try to start up a great idea. More join. Some dont share the ideals.

More join, less ideals shared.

More join. Cool, free shit! (Not really, but this is when the commons is shit on and good will starts being lost.)

Group starts cracking at the scenes. Factions form. Badness sets in. Thefts spike. Abuse and vandalization of equipment is the norm.

I left my local makerspace for these above reasons. And I made my own. Cost more, but my equipment works and is right there.

Sadly there's a lot of truth there. Generally it's a bad idea to lend tools to people that don't know how to use them. I don't lend my tools to friends, although I make exceptions when I 100% trust the guy. This is based on experience.

But I'm happy to help, either by me going there or the friend bringing his stuff to my workshop.

It's extremely self-limiting compared to the real industrial processes that we're actually using.