Collapse

i think about these things quite a bit.

Im more interested in building ones that can exist within our current system that allow people to flourish while simultaneously removing power from the incumbent system, in a way that will produce better outcomes for the populations within during the decline/collapse.

Its worth it to start at a human and tribal scale then scale up from there and iterate.

the top down models are failures best to let them fail and hasten that process while carving out some refugia that provide standdard of living for participants in them while establishing "best practices" that could be rapidly franchised out as more people want to exit the system as much as possible.

one of the problems people dont want to talk about is people abdicating personal responsibility and societal coordination to sociopaths out of sheer laziness and apathy. Nothing good works unless people want it. and people seem to be willling to trade any amount of freedom or justice or even money away to avoid the tiniest bit of inconvenience in the moment.

Best thing to do is hunt down other people that want to build alternatives now and start working with those people , fuck everyone else.

I like where your head is at but… there are a lot of “projects” with the goal of designing a different political system. Currently, we are seeing Project 2025 being implemented which is rapidly turning our democracy into a totalitarian regime.

In regards to more hopeful projects, check out Solar Punk.

Living by sovereignty is the way for me. I live my life as I see fit, and uphold the rights of others to do the same. I try to take the path of least sovereignty violation. If I need to defend myself, I attempt to do so in a way that simply removes the other's desire or capability to interfere with me. Barring that, I can use their methods against them.

Although this may come across as isolationist, the reality is that if you like community, you should pursue it - and the community which respects the individual has the potential to be the strongest.

There are some community currencies that allow time/hour exchanges / banking / bartering. I think an explicit idea of these systems is to allow for a local area to strengthen/harden its resources and community. For example someone can help watch children but get a home improvement in return...the ways that these exchanges work all invest in the community.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_community_currencies_in_the_United_States

Another one that comes to mind is/was the Occupy movement. Particularly in the emergency response to hurricane Sandy, Occupy actually took on providing the services of government and was more effective than the real government agencies that were distributing aid.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Sandy

Quite a few intentional communities have tried to become a test tube / model for a greater reorganization of society.

Here is a mini documentary about a large intentional community...the founder speaks about how they navigated all the administrative and legal hurdles. They also talk about how the governance works.

https://youtu.be/n-uH36w9xg8

In general, I think that all systems transform when they are replaced. If there was an alternative option then I think the bigger system could fall away, but actually I think thats unlikely to be possible until collapse is well under way. A major feature of the current paradigm is that it's a comprehensive global system -- the bigness and all encompassing capitalism would be hard to come up with an alternative for...and basically if there is a new system where you can't get a widget from a foreign land where you don't know anybody and dont have that currency and dont speak the language, that system makes our lives harder. Our current system does that with zero effort now.