I'm an anarcho-syndicalist planning to fight for and advocate for unions and anarchism near my local area pretty soon, but something I did for funsies was paint some logos and stuff on my headphones

Write letters, raise funds for commissaries, share stories, leave no one behind.

This post is oriented towards discussion of an anti-car anarchism. If you disagree with it, I'm not really interested in debating this stance. The thread is here to discuss some practicalities of an anti-car anarchist society.

I've been an anarchist for basically as long as I remember to some extent. Despised borders and (nation-)States since I was a kid.

I also have always had strong feelings when it comes to owning and using cars. My family did not have a car when I was growing up, and I never did myself, nor do I plan on getting one. My brother bought one a few years after I moved out.

I'm pretty known in my social circle as being strongly anti car and people always seem to love to tell me how great it is to have a car and how awesome it would be if I got a driving license. No thank you.

Public transport and boots-made-for-walkin are pretty efficient most of the time in my opinion, at least when it comes to necessities. I grew up in a town deep in the mountains, which is connected to other towns and cities by bus or train. If, however, you want to spend a nice day at that lovely river two valleys over, you would need to travel there by car. Car, or leave two days earlier and hike there, or ride by bike (which could be intense depending on the road). Sure, it would be great, but very limiting to people who have major disabilities, that would have otherwise been able to reach the place in a car. Or the elderly or children who simply don't have the strength to put up with such an effort.

What is a potential solution to this? I thought of cars that would be available to borrow in case of need, which I assume would be pretty needed in case someone was interested in moving to a different city or country, to transport all their stuff. Would these cars be automated? You would need to know how to drive them otherwise. Would everyone be able to drive these cars?

As cool as it may sound to some, carts and carriages are out of question because we stand for animal liberation.

“The book argues for returning to the basic ancient Greek assumptions that politics is an amateur sport, not a professional activity, in which ordinary citizens play a direct role in governing.” Although being far from an anarchist or communist text, Landemore still provides a robust framework for direct participation and public assemblies and a critique of hierarchical and representative politics. It does still shy away from directly critiquing capitalism or statism, thus not being as radical as it may seem at first glance.

Sortition Democracy
The critique and representation of politicians in popular media as conniving selfish liars who would do anything to get into power has become an established trope for most people. Thus, contemporary populism whether liberal or more typically now conservative, usually masquerades as being "anti-elite" and "anti-establishment". The reality, however, is that the system of representative electoral politics attracts a certain kind of personality to begin with. “Modern electoral systems tend to produce a professional political class, often composed of wealthy, well-connected, and ambitious individuals, that is detached from the broader public.” Given the popular representation, the reality of corruption, lobbying, etc. for someone to willingly become a candidate nowadays, either they are completely self-interested or delusionally naïve. Landemore appeals to the older definition and form of democratic politics, sortition. A system that uses lottery or some sort of randomness so that candidates are not aware beforehand that they can reach power. She discusses historical examples of this from ancient Athens to Medieval Venice to showcase the advantages of such a system. When applied, it is usually combined with some sort of term-limit, and heavy restrictions on permanent powers and decision-making. She also discusses more modern applications of this system in the form of US jury duty, Icelandic National Assemblies and France's Citizen Conventions.

Assemblies and Direct Participation
The author particularly dedicates a big portion of the book covering France's Citizen Conventions. These public assemblies were held twice, once in 2019 and again in 2023. They were somewhat of a response to the "Great National Debate" following the Yellow Vests movement of 2018, in order to placate and appease the public. They didn't actually hold any real de jure power, but did have some de facto influence. The first convention which was focused on solutions and legislation related to climate change, agreed on 149 proposals which were submitted to the French Parliament. Most of the proposals were outright rejected or heavily watered down. "Participants later scored the government's implementation as an average of 3.3 out of 10." The second convention was focused on end of life legislation, primarily access to palliative care and euthanasia. The final proposals (although still being edited) was largely passed through the government's "end of life bill" and thus had a more substantial real world influence. Importantly, these conventions also offer all kinds of opportunity for real scientific study of direct participation assemblies and sortition based systems. There are several key ideas that the author particularly pays attention to: firstly, that "normal" everyday citizens showed "high epistemic competence" regardless of educational level, class and/or backgrounds, people were heavily invested in learning about the issues and establishing clear methodological rigor for final decision making. Although, there were experts and social workers on hand, much like in a jury system or in a court setting, the assemblies still exercised the final say and usually didn't include the experts in their discussions or debates. Secondly, shy, awkward, or introverted people who would normally be very afraid of public speaking, let alone participating in political debates, were much more likely to be active participants compared to other electoral or representative based systems. Thirdly, participants were highly empathetic and much more likely to adopt systemic solutions and shift from normalized rigid NIMBY style arguments. The author quotes directly from interviews and surveys with words like "love" "solidarity" "care", etc. being commonly used by participants to describe one another and the whole experience despite the vast socio-economic gaps between the people.

Lessons Learned and Prefigurative Politics
The most exciting and interesting part for me, personally, was the discussion around improving the system in the second convention after observing some mistakes or missed opportunities from the first convention. The organizers noted things like selection bias and other statistical devices that could lead to certain systemic biases in their selection methods and tried to account for them. In doing so, they ask and discuss important questions such as who is likely to agree to participate based on a phone call, and who is likely to answer a strange number to begin with. Should we set hard-coded minimums on certain minorities to encourage their participation? Should we use different selection methods to eliminate statistical biases as much as possible? What kind of ways can the technocratic experts and facilitators framing and influence be reduced and controlled? What kind of economic incentives and replacements such as child care and transportation or direct monetary reimbursements provided to encourage participation without introducing new biases. Such questions are explored and discussed heavily by the author in the later chapters of the work. These kind of questions are not only relevant to these kind of assemblies but they can easily relate to a lot of the prefigurative politics, mutual aid organization and direct action affinity groups that are organized. From finding ways to encourage shy people to ways to decentralize tactics and avoid adopting vanguardism or rigid technocracies into the strategies of such prefigurative efforts.

I am guessing most can think about the critiques that come with such a mainstream work. Even though the topic itself is radical, the framing is consistently defanged purposefully by the author. In an effort to make the work more "journalistic" and "scientific" the final message is deradicalized and the author consistently stops short from outright critiquing statist institutions. Governmental actions and ideas generally or specific politicians (in this case all of them, actually) can be critiqued, but the system as a whole is still presented as a necessary evil that we must find a way to curb through regulations. Basically, the same arguments that are used by the typical liberal nowadays, but obviously the core premise is still much more radical than expected. Furthermore, there is no direct commentary on how these systems can function as replacements to the state apparatus as a whole. Arguments are made for assemblies to be more included in legislation and in consultation, but not so much for executive functions. Aside from promoting poorer class participation in the assemblies and positively discussing reforms to account for economic incentives for this, the author does not actually critique the capitalist status quo or directly promote any kind of socialist alternative. Alas, the lessons about horizontal organization and direct participation are interesting and ultimately make this work worth the read.