@Blue Republic @Blue Republic
comment, and your discussion of Shockwave Riders, Hutterites live in small communist groups they call "colonies". They generally eschew excessive interaction with folks outside of those colonies (the hockey game pictured above generated a bit of controversy for that reason), and emphasize a localized "we're all in this together" ethic.

Their colonies are generally sited in relatively "remote" rural parts of western Canada (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta). When a colony gets "too big", a subgroup will be selected to split off and form a new one elsewhere, to ensure that the community is always small enough that everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows everyone's business.

Edited for elaboration: A Hutterite colony is not similar to an Amish community. A colony is small enough, for example, that the members take shared meals in a community dining hall. And they really are communist -- there is scarcely any private property at all. Most particularly, all of the land, all of the buildings (including their homes), all of the farming equipment, all vehicles, and to my knowledge, all of their household furnishings, are owned by the corporate entity of the colony.

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a serious answer.

Isn't being a "techo-Luddite" oxymoronic with using computers, institutionalized programing modalities, and supporting modern manufacturing techniques?

I don't think so.

Because the Luddites were not opposed to technology and innovation as such, but it's employment in ways that were destructive to people's communities, independence, livelihood and general well-being. The Amish, Hutterites and similar hold similar views, but are not much given to activism. That doesn't mean they will refuse to drive their buggy down the road just because the pavement is asphalt and laid down by machines.

I quite agree that reducing the reliance on fossil fuels, plastic and such is an excellent idea - fracking, in particular, is a disaster. And for living in a first-world urbanized area I maintain a pretty low carbon footprint and would like to lower it further.

That said, I think grand, top-down centrally implemented plans tend to enhance the power and wealth of those overseeing them than to solve real problems and the Green New Deal appears to fall into that category.

Calling something "green" hardly makes it so - around here, as this is the the best location for solar in Japan, and one of the top ones for wind, a nuke plant's worth of solar panels have gone in in recent years - owners of homes and other buildings could lock in high rates at which the local power company would purchase the output. But, those who are renting have no opportunity to participate and end up subsidizing the high rates paid to solar producers.

Plus, large-scale installations have gone in on what were originally wetlands, some of which had been in agricultural or aquaculture production. With no plan in place for what to do in 20-25 years when all those panels will be so much difficult to dispose of waste.

Sure, it's a better use of energy than driving a Hummer to the convenience store for a six pack and bag of GMO junk food, but...

One of my favorite books ever is The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner, published in 1975. Semi-famous as a precursor to cyber-punk and for Brunner's eerily accurate anticipation of things like the Internet, computer viruses and such.

One of the things going on in the early 21st Century America setting of the story is that there is an enforced recycling and energy saving mandate prevailing in much of the US - which has much of the population living in urban apartment blocks - along the lines of what you might see flying into Seoul or any big Chinese or Japanese city and much in the way of monitoring and social control.

But, on the west coast there has been a catastrophic earthquake so devastating that the government has created "Paid Avoidance" zones where it has essentially given up on rebuilding and restoring power and other services - basically ceased administering and taxing those areas.

And it is in some of those areas that people have created their own communities, more autonomous and ecologically sound than the bureaucratically administered ones.

I'm down with the former (which is why I was Green for many years) but very much associate the latter scenario with the Green New Deal.

So let's hear it for localism.

We’re led to believe we have representatives in D.C. that actually represent us and we just need to elect the right people to have our voices heard. This sounds good, but we all know by now it’s a lie. These largely rural Americans are finally starting to give up on this lie and are looking to local solutions because they have no other choice. It’s hard overstate how important this is. It demonstrates a new degree of political realism in the face of disconnected and unresponsive governments far removed from where they live. It’s people finally realizing they’re much better off connecting and working within their own communities to change things rather than groveling to self-interested, professional political crooks.

Importantly, this is how it should be. If we’re going to crawl out of the mess we’re in it seems clear we need a different approach. Pretending all we need to do is “elect good people” to Congress or the Presidency is a slave mentality. The system itself is so completely corrupt and so explicitly rewards criminal and evil behavior, we need to start thinking and acting differently, which means focusing on what’s closest to home. Get your own house in order before trying to save the world.

And for decentralization and de-globalization

To repeat, the lessons of COVID-19 are far older than the century-old Spanish flu: complex interconnected systems may produce what look like superior outcomes/returns in the short-term, but they also greatly increase underlying risks that will eventually emerge at far greater cost. These are multiplicative and exponential rather than additive and linear.

"Of course everybody had to be given a personal code! How else could the government do right by its citizens, keep track of the desires, tastes, preferences, purchases, commitments and above all location of a continent of mobile, free individuals?"

The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (1975)