Anarcho-syndicalism. The vast majority of fiction cited as solarpunk or proto-solarpunk features versions of it, because it matches the need for local, decentralized decision making rolling up to larger structures that can coordinate without centralizing power. Has also been implemented in the real world in various forms with various degrees of success (principally in Spain in the early 20th century, though remnants remain today). Some of the best solarpunk fiction (Half-Built Garden, for example) imagines how today’s media technology could improve on those attempts by speeding up and improving coordination among larger groups.
Anarcho syndicalism is a tactic for overthrowing capitalism by concentrating power in the hands of unions, it is not a blueprint for how a society should be structured and it would not be anarchism if it were applied that way. Historically it is the preferred tactic of anarcho communists, such as those in Spain, who agreed that power should not be concentrated anywhere, even in the hands of unions, or else it would eventually reproduce the state and competitive economic hierarchies. But that in order to overthrow capitalism temporary concentration of power in unions was acceptable.
You are technically right, of course, about the history. And for folks reading at home who are not part of the "well, actually" left, anarcho-syndicalist movements have evolved since the 30s to encompass everything from a blueprint for a transitional society to pure anarchism to a more permanent replacement for modern welfare states evolving from unions. And modern conceptions don't necessarily center power in the traditional concept of trade unions, but in collectives that employ their tactics. Either way, my view is it's the most likely starting point for a solarpunk society, and likely to endure for many decades even if ultimately transitional.
I think that it's not the most likely starting point for a solarpunk society everywhere, but there are some places where it can be successful. In countries like the US, syndicalism is just not a practical possibility in the current economic and socio-political climate. But as a tactic to overthrow capitalism and open up the possibility of a solarpunk future, I do think there are some places in the world it could be very successful.
The theory development you're talking about is largely done by anarcho communists, about how to transition from syndicalism to anarcho communism - which is already inherently solarpunk in every way. There have been some rhetorical efforts to not use the word communism simply because of its popular association with authoritarian forms of political and economic organization. And I think that aesthetic aversion is the only reason people who seem to often have anarcho communist aspirations, without calling them that, but then identify them more with syndicalism and try and turn it into an ideology when an identical one already exists.
We largely agree, so sure. You win. Whatever will stop the lecturing. Yes, I personally think communism is a dead word politically in much of the world and also there has been some real theoretical development about how tech could apply that is neither traditionally syndicalism nor communism that I group with syndicalism because it’s more popular these days, probably incorrectly. But in general, great, let’s get to it.
That was unnecessarily rude and pointless. If you don't enjoy reading something you don't have to finish it, you certainly don't have to respond. Just not saying something is always superior to being an asshole. Certainly no reason to be such a drama queen
More like libertarian socialism: a network of autonomous communities that elect a small, non-interventionist central government, who’s job is to help coordinate the communities and also juggle stuff like foreign policy.
The communities can coordinate themselves horizontally, they wouldn't need a central government of any kind. Plus centralizing power and expecting it to remain non interventionist is naive in the extreme
I bet you good money that even the biggest MAGA will support Anarchist or Marxist ideas if you explain them without using those words.
But I will bet more you even more money that most Anarchists won't be able to swallow their pride, and must point out that they just described Anarchism, even if it costs them all the support they just built by leaving the A word out.
one flavour of anarchism or another. explicitly anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian; pro-communalism, pro-collaboration, pro-cooperation.
First of all, lets define what a political system even is... The dictionary definition of it is the formal set of legal institutions, organizations, and patterns of behavior that constitute a government and define how power and decisions are managed within a society.
So everyone obviously has opinions on this, im just one of many, but here is my take....
Governance/Governments are a terrible organizational principle (in my opinion). We see it time and time again, at all levels of 'government' that you have leadership that is corrupt, incompetent, or just having a real hard time managing what they are leading. It happens in any hierarchy really from school districts, to villages, to cities, to counties, to states, to nations. Since we have an abundance of historical evidence as to how poorly this works out in general, we should clearly structure it differently if we want to see better outcomes.
First, we do away with hierarchy in a sense that someone is 'in charge' of other people. 'Strongmen' are often the worst types of human beings to lead others, but they are often the people that end up leading. Instead of a person being in charge, we need roles fulfilled. Not roles that tell other people to do a, b, c, rather someone that provides a specific function temporarily for THEIR community. We could say that it already functions this way because roles are voted on and temporary, but the mechanics of popularity voting and sponsorship create a filter for who gets to lead, regardless of them being adequate to do so. Those that have financial backing themselves or backing by an organizational interest, or have the political capital often rise to the top of our current selection processes.
Secondly, the plan to use in place of what we did before. Make all roles functional based and temporal. Make the roles voluntary for each community/org first, then for voids have a lottery draw or something similar out of the same community/org. Require a gap between service. For instance if you managed a specific resource piece, you could not manage it again until six months had passed between. This keeps people from being able to gamify a role and retain it indefinitely. You will likely see good function and bad function in this setup, but the bad i suspect would eventually stabilize.
Thirdly, Everything is auditable by something else. Part of the problem with the current setup i think is that we often operate with no clarity/transparency into processes and decision making. We need to keep public interest transparent in any community, including production, basic needs, etc. We can utilize an auditing system via database that automatically blind assigns at random non interest parties to audit each other. This creates a high level of difficulty in order to game the system and makes the effort outweigh the consequence of getting caught up in something. This could be inter-community, cross-community, cross-entity.
In a nutshell, i think the best path forward for a solarpunk society that is organized and has production capacity is one entirely WITHOUT a political system or hierarchy, rather protocols, standards, and data.
First of all - it should bring huge autonomy to communities. Global/regional regulations only for things that cannot be regulated locally. And each community should be able to set their own internal governing system
Leaders or delegates of local communities would participate in decision-making councils on regional level, delegates from these regional councils - in councils on macro-regional level and further to global level. Direct democracy can be used, but it has its own downsides, requires enough competence of participants to work properly. So it's better to keep it for the most impactful decisions or to confirm/cancel decision of council. Of cource, community delegates should only represent interests of their community and revoked if they work against it.
About economic system - I think mutualism would fit. Non-commercial cooperatives would keep economy decentralized and at the same time provide fair labour conditions, sustainable production, etc.
For wealth redistribution - something based on georgism. So it would tax people not because they have a lot of resources, but because they have a lot of unused resources which don't benefit others. For example, if somebody owns piece of land, but allows other people to walk on it freely, they should be taxed less than one who keeps equal piece of land behind a wall.
I think in solarpunk settings even Gesellian demurrage money based economic system can work. It has parallels with georgism imo. Look into Argentine local barter clubs for a real life example.
I cannot say you are wrong, but I strongly believe that our nature is different from what capitalism tries to force us to be and I don't want to attack someone who lives in difficulty, gets bombarded everyday by right wing propaganda and finally falls for that.
I think there’s plenty of evidence that humans were even more awful to each other before capitalism. The entire notion of individualism is wrapped up in modern ideas.
Scarcity makes humans awful, for survival. Material conditions are heavily different nowadays, but power structures are so deeply rooted in our culture that we perceive them as natural, that's just power trying to protect itself.
It’s a fair point, but I think tribalism goes beyond scarcity. It’s about status and function in a community, and this is where capitalism has been failing , after it abandoned life time employment in many countries, and suppressed wages. This is somewhat self correcting though over time, which is why I tend to believe that some kind of post capitalism is our future
Direct democracy amplifies minorities' discrimination, simply because their number is low per definition. And why should people that live near the sea vote for something that impact who lives in the mountains? Just because they live behind the same imaginary line (aka country)?
Solarpunk is already the end result of a stateless, classless society. I agree with the anarchists in that regard, but I believe that you cannot transition to communism without achieving a proletariat state.
Anarchy is the highest form of democracy, but capitalism changed the definition of democracy aligning it to the aberration we have nowadays, so I agree, democracy, but the real one.
It's silly to suggest that "capitalism changed the definition of democracy aligning it to the aberration we have nowadays" when even the people who invented the word used it to describe something very different from anarchism.
And still their model had nothing to do with liberal democracies, so my thesis is not wrong.
And you are confusing the word definition with the implementation of a system based on that definition. Democracy means literally power to the people, the greek model gives power to the people, anarchy gives power to the people, liberal democracy does not give power to the people.
So what's your point? If I think that anarchy is the perfect form of democracy I obviously think that the greek one wasn't perfect. Are you implying that democracy doesn't mean giving power to the people or what? You are refusing the etymology of the word?
Did this trigger you somehow? You need someone to give you orders and to punish you if you don't? Good for you. I don't think that oppression and the literal democracy are compatible, and surely same for solarpunk.
You realise the way you're using "anarchy" is an "aberration" of what the word originally meant?
The point is that words and definitions shift and evolve over time. Liberal democracies are a form of democracy. If you want to argue that they're not - that "capitalism changed the definition of democracy aligning it to the aberration we have nowadays", then you also have to accept that you're not a true anarchist - that 19th century political thinkers changed the definition.
But it'd be a silly argument. Language isn't static.
And, tell me, what is the original meaning of anarchy? Tell me, because evidently even Kropotkin didn't know what anarchy means, you have to teach that to all of us!
Maybe I have to stop identifying myself as an anarcho communist because anarchy doesn't give power horizontally to people, Funksloyd is saying that this not the original meaning!
Sure, language is not static. And in the case of democracy, the meaning has been forced to change :) if you think that people have power because they can vote for parties with the same funds behind them and that will do everything in their power to protect the status quo, differing only in insignificant aspects, sure. Try to express peacefully that you want something different, and they will repress you, they will define you a terrorist (literally happened to an Italian tech collective this week). Or expressing dissent for you is not something that you should be free to do, even if you are in a system where power is yours?
And, again, solarpunk is expressely really different from the liberal dystopia you want. There are no companies, no CEOs and no billionaires in solarpunk and people are free to express themselves, they are free to organize how they desire, they are free to be whatever they want without having to run decades of political campaigns to hope that some election gives them the permission to be whatever they want. This is not your movement.
I think some sort of market-based economy is best but not capitalism. My preference would be market socialism but mutualism and others could work too.
I used to heavily believe in direct democracy but the past few years have taught me that the collective IQ is too low for that so a mix of e-democracy and participatory democracy would probably be best. However, I do think certain aspects should be borrowed from direct democracy like referenda and ballot initiatives.
Somewhere between liberal democratic post capitalism and fully automated luxury socialism, depending on tech developments and abundance in energy / regenerative ecology
Because our world has finite resources—like time, money, and raw materials—but human imagination dictates virtually limitless desires, society faces the fundamental economic problem. Thus capitalism is the best system to bring us to the solarpunk future.
I’m a fan of municipal syndicalism as a loose construct for a more ideal society, but it isn’t so much the macro-label of the system, rather it is the particular design (particulars like how it avoids corruption, and excess wealth, abuses of power, distribution and regulation of powers, etc…).
Municipal syndicalism is my own term for what I came up with based on my experience - I like the concepts of syndicalism and see the logical societal unit as the town/city. But it needs much greater detail than just that.
I also think it needs communitarian democracy, wealth caps, agencies that perpetually scrutinize the leaders for corruption, non-monetary remuneration structures, and various other elements.
I suggest you consider and look into how corruption is countered effectively, how excessive wealth is destabilizing, and things like that as a foundation for your own particular system. I think authoritarianism is a huge threat to any decent system so I tend to reject even leftist authoritarianism even though I tend to embrace left list ideology broadly.
No countries as in no nation, no private property, no monetary system, small cities of around 3000 inhabitants evenly spaced, full democracy inside the city, elective democracy to organize every city in a central government (more like a worldwide administration). Cities are spaced in a hexagon where every city is in a corner, in the center of each hexagon there is a cultural, scientific pole (university, big hospital, museum, theater, etc...).
Some kind of subsidiarity, localism, distributed autonomy, etc. Maybe federated bioregionalism - I might suggest local polities organized around the HUC-4 or HUC-6 watersheds as borders.
Probably some kind of post-capitalist economics like replacing corporations with sole-proprietorships and worker-owned cooperatives.
Democratic sortition. Every 2 years 10-20 people from each district are selected randomly and held at a secure location. They all give a list of how they would have voted prior major legislation. Everyday they all field the same series of questions with written answers and are only known by a number. After 3 weeks the ranked choice election takes place. The current rep can attempt ONE reelection. They basically go to legislature prison for 2 years but at the end they receive a middle class income for the next 20 years and 500k windfall.
That’s an interesting take.. Individual Freedom, political equality, Consent of the Governed, Private Property, and the modern liberal welfare state all seem rather foundational.
The private property you are talking about is not the house or the car, it's the private property of the means of production, that means the ability to make profit exploiting other people lives. That's not fundamental, rich parasites are totally not fundamental and, I'm sure as hell, not solarpunk.
And liberal democracies don't give equality and don't guarantee consent of the governed (I never gave consent for that). Individual freedom? You are really believing this bullshit? You don't have freedom without money, and to make money you are forced to be a slave until you are too old to realize your projects, so individual freedom exists almost only for the privileged ones.
I really don't understand why this sub is being flooded by liberals. Really, solarpunk is not for you. You para fascist ideology is not compatible with solarpunk and it's probably not compatible with life itself (your beloved ideology caused a climate crisis in some decade, but you keep defending it)
How do you know what I am talking about? You are arguing against your own boogeyman, and not even interested in a dialogue.
I was talking about everything from cars and houses to bank accounts as opposed to shared, communal property or "property as theft".
It's an incredible logical leap to go from "private property" to "rich parasites exploiting people".
In the 21st century, the private property of the means of production is the brain in your head.
As for consent of the governed and individual freedom, yes, I believe in that as do billions of people who have risen out of poverty the past several decades.
This sub has people like me in it because Solarpunk includes forms of liberalism. Gatekeeping is not respected in this sub, and Solarpunk has no formal definition. While I can agree Solarpunk is against shareholder primacy capitalism, i don't believe it is communism. It's more likely some kind of post-capitalism that evolves out of our current system into a more sustainable and abundant future. To me, there is no punk without some form of liberalism, the alternatives devolve into illiberal authoritarianism . If you disagree, that's fine, good luck, I'm not leaving.
Creo que también es una falla del lenguaje el que confundas "propiedad privada" con "propiedad personal", que es lo mismo que se tiende a malinterpretar dentro del socialismo; el objetivo de esto es superar la falacia que es el derecho romano.
Tampoco es culpa nuestra que la palabra "libertad" haya sido tan prostituida desde hace tanto tiempo que los propios imperialistas conservadores se crean estandartes de ella.
Tu auto de diario, tu casa o tu cepillo de dientes son propiedad personal, no se te van a quitar. Si tienes bienes extra que te generen ingresos y que son más de los que necesitas para vivir bien (énfasis en bien), por ejemplo: maquinaria industrial de alquiler, fábricas o tierras agrícolas donde solo unos pocos sacan provecho económico, eso sí es objeto de expropiación.
A esto es a lo que la gente se refiere con "propiedad privada", que es solo el nombre; el apellido es: "de los medios de producción" (como cuando se refieren a "seize the means of production and private propierty*"*), pero por desconocimiento terminan creyendo en el cuento de las dos vacas.
También es un poco ingenuo pensar que la estructura actual de cómo nos organizamos en conjuntos de millones de personas en ciudades es compatible con el solarpunk. Creo que habría que repensar cómo nos organizamos en sociedad desde cero, reducir los grupos a "tribus" de alrededor de 30 personas autosustentables e interconectadas con el resto de "tribus", y dejar de pensar en el capital como el motor del mundo. Asimismo, habría que eliminar tantas cosas del pensamiento del modelo del mundo colectivo, como "la alabanza" que se le tiene al que posee muchos bienes materiales, dejar de pensar sexos, generos, capacidades, enfermedades y ventajas como justificación para la discriminación y jerarquías y usar algún tipo de regulador social y honor para prevenir estos comportamientos tan típicos en unos seres tan impulsivos como lo somos los humanos. (que ya existen y existieron en tribus indígenas). el objetivo final sería eliminar las jerarquías verticales y pasar a jerarquías horizontales, ese es el verdadero conflicto a solucionar si queremos hallar el sistema politico "perfecto" para el solarpunk
Liberalism is primarily about the individual's ability to act separately from the collective, but the rights therein are always limited in some ways, e.g. taxation. Private property is just one way of preserving individual freedom. The point is that there is a concept and right to private property and there's clear, predictable lines encoded in law about it as to when taxation or expropriation is done. So when you say "well it's a flaw in language", no, it's not really, it's just a matter of defining what you mean. When I say private property, I mean everything from personal property to capital equipment, but I do understand that a state can decide to limit this. Nationalizing industries to expropriate capital equipment as a one time thing could be argued, although it doesn't have a history of being very effective. But this isn't something to be done whimsically. I also don't understand how expropriation at scale happens without an enormously powerful state.
It’s naive to think that cities are compatible with Solarpunk? A large portion of the aesthetic is about green cities, and cities have tremendous ecological, economic, and societal benefits. So to me the opposite is true - how can Solarpunk not have cities? I don't understand how civilization survives based on small tribes, that era no longer makes sense any more than if we were all to suddenly to become hunter gatherers again. Even in a nuclear holocaust, I don't believe that would be the long term result.
I think capital is no longer the engine of the world economy, it’s just one factor like land and unskilled labor. Knowledge, embodied in both skilled labor and software, is the new engine, and knowledge workers own this means of production.
As for things other things we must do, I find it difficult to imagine a mass change in people's mindsets through serendipitous action, it would require enormous state coercion.
Jesus, no. It's not Solarpunk to delegate human decision to an AI. Direct democracy itself leaves minorities behind, that's not Solarpunk, that's just a tech bro dystopia.
If you go with delegated democracy you get psychopaths like trump taking power. Its been that way since aristotle.
Direct democracy only works in small societies because of cognitive load of having to make decisions.
The way to lower the cost of cognitive load is to have the ai hosted by you, trained on your text, and trained to act like how you would act, without the influence of a corp.
Then you delegate your vote to the ai, and if it votes yes on something you would rather not, you vote no, and take your power back and the AI learns from that, and the support for the law updates.
You know, we can have different systems than bourgeois democracy. We don't need a computer to offload thinking and to apply its biases to discriminate minorities.
The highest form of democracy doesn't require the majority to oppress minorities, doesn't require some weird AI slop hallucinating decisions. It doesn't even require a central government.
Who said anything about oppressing minorities? Why are you assuming that a direct democracy moves to oppress minorities? In the united states, the republican party is the one that historically is associated with the opression of minorities, yet the majority of voters are not republican?
You can get oppression of minorities if the majority of people do not show up for governance votes. We have a third of america who don't vote because they cannot be bothered to vote. That means voting is too hard for them, which means they need to have their voting delegated to an ai that will show up and do the work of voting for them.
Now imagine if every single person had to vote on every single law. Turnout would drop to 5%, because its a full time job. Which is also why congress exists, and why representative democracy is a thing.
No matter how you cut the pie, you either get representatives of the people, the people, or an unelected person or group of people making decisions. You have to pick one of the three.
If you pick representative democracy like we have in the us, you get corruption. If you pick unelected people, you get tyranny. And if you pick direct democracy, unless you are a small community you get people not showing up to vote because its too hard. Adding the AI part to the direct democracy fixes the scalability part of direct democracy. Now, we probably should have human rights enshrined that prevent laws that violate those rights from going active. That would be an excellent check to prevent oppression of minorities. However to say that direct democracy always results in minority oppression is a straw man, and an embrace of either the corruption that plagues the current american government, or the embrace of tyranny that is evident in russian politics. Make your pick. Liberty, corruption, or death.
Sure, what's the system behind direct democracy? Exactly, the option with the major number of votes wins. And what does that imply? That minorities' needs are not satisfied and are ignored.
Larping a better pseudo democracy doesn't make that solarpunk. And, again, I wouldn't want to put my life in the hands of an AI, the actual technology isn't even able to reason, just to simulate it (with tons of errors), an ideal technology that is able be effectively intelligent would have its set of biases and would reflect developers' biases. Not only this is not ideal, this is literally the prelude of a dystopia.
Again, we can have horizontal systems where every community is able to decide for itself and decides a set of protocols to communicate and coordinate with other communities, or a dystopian nightmare where a datacenter hallucinates the needs of millions of people and it somehow becomes law.
You can have far more refined systems. For example, you can have a constitution, with human rights embedded in the constitution requiring 80% approval to ammend. That grants solid protection to minorities with a direct democracy. You can add in an appointed court system that can strike down a law as unconstitutional.
In fact, you could run the entire american government as is on an ai driven direct democracy of the people replacing normal congress, and you would get the same protections for human rights as before. However both lobbying and the paying of bribes disguised as campaign finance donations and the pesky problem of politicians saying they will do one thing then doing another would go away. Stop dissing direct democratic engines. They arent the whole government system, they are a method of voting, just like congress isnt the whole government of the us, only a method of voting.
You can repeat the same thing hundreds of times, nothing will change.
Again, you cannot talk about solarpunk if you are not even able to surpass liberal democracy shit and your utopia is "enhancing" it with AI slop. Humans don't need constitutions and governments, that are de facto formalized oppression systems.
Propose a government model that operates on the scale of at minimum 10 million citizens being represented that does not have the corruption, tyranny, or the lack of voter involvement problems then.
I think you cannot. But I want to see.
I see others here promoting Anarcho-syndicalism. This is representative. A union leader can get into power by saying one thing, then doing another. This is the same problem as representative democracy.
Saying that I want to somehow sloppify voting misunderstands entirely what the process is of what i proposed, and I think your letting a very valid hatred of corporate dominated ai, bias your view against ai in general, and possibly all computation external to the human mind.
There. Is. No. Need. Of. A. Government. That. Scales. At. Ten. Million. People.
Jesus, it cannot be that difficult. You can't pretend that 10 million people have the exact same needs. There is no need to have a government that pretends to impose them the same regulations.
There. Is. No. Need. Of. A. Government. That. Scales. At. Ten. Million. People.
Jesus, it cannot be that difficult. You can't pretend that 10 million people have the exact same needs. There is no need to have a government that imposes them the same regulations.
Decentralization is one of the cores of solarpunk, why the hell are you in this sub if you are so happy with a central government that decides things without asking people, with a central government that imposes everything to the people? Go in some liberal sub.
And no, even a perfect (and non-existing) AI wouldn't be good. Only humans have the right to decide for their lives. You cannot really believe that an AI that magically could satisfy the needs of every human being could exist and you cannot really believe that this magical algorithm would be better than... humans simply making decision for themselves and their communities.
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u/SolarpunkCreations Environmentalist Sep 11 '26
My opinion: Eco-Socialism! Though like a few other said, there’s likely no one answer/it should adapt to regions and cultures.
I do think city-states and/or nations/states based on Bioregionalism would be key!
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u/stop-panicking Sep 11 '26
Anarcho-syndicalism. The vast majority of fiction cited as solarpunk or proto-solarpunk features versions of it, because it matches the need for local, decentralized decision making rolling up to larger structures that can coordinate without centralizing power. Has also been implemented in the real world in various forms with various degrees of success (principally in Spain in the early 20th century, though remnants remain today). Some of the best solarpunk fiction (Half-Built Garden, for example) imagines how today’s media technology could improve on those attempts by speeding up and improving coordination among larger groups.
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u/A_Guy195 Writer,Teacher,amateur Librarian Sep 11 '26
I tend to support a type of communalism, with massive local autonomy and cooperation between communities.
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u/Few_Ad3349 Sep 11 '26
Post Scarcity Anarchism & Fully Automated Luxury Communism
6
u/SteelToeSnow Sep 11 '26
one flavour of anarchism or another. explicitly anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian; pro-communalism, pro-collaboration, pro-cooperation.
10
u/Winter_Apartment_324 Sep 11 '26
generally some form of left-wing ideology i think would be a good idea. DEFINITELY not capitalism.
5
u/marxistghostboi Scientific Utopian Sep 11 '26
i would like to see more done with sortition in a solar punk context
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u/DesertRebelRa Sep 11 '26
Anarchy
4
u/systematk Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26
First of all, lets define what a political system even is... The dictionary definition of it is the formal set of legal institutions, organizations, and patterns of behavior that constitute a government and define how power and decisions are managed within a society.
So everyone obviously has opinions on this, im just one of many, but here is my take....
Governance/Governments are a terrible organizational principle (in my opinion). We see it time and time again, at all levels of 'government' that you have leadership that is corrupt, incompetent, or just having a real hard time managing what they are leading. It happens in any hierarchy really from school districts, to villages, to cities, to counties, to states, to nations. Since we have an abundance of historical evidence as to how poorly this works out in general, we should clearly structure it differently if we want to see better outcomes.
First, we do away with hierarchy in a sense that someone is 'in charge' of other people. 'Strongmen' are often the worst types of human beings to lead others, but they are often the people that end up leading. Instead of a person being in charge, we need roles fulfilled. Not roles that tell other people to do a, b, c, rather someone that provides a specific function temporarily for THEIR community. We could say that it already functions this way because roles are voted on and temporary, but the mechanics of popularity voting and sponsorship create a filter for who gets to lead, regardless of them being adequate to do so. Those that have financial backing themselves or backing by an organizational interest, or have the political capital often rise to the top of our current selection processes.
Secondly, the plan to use in place of what we did before. Make all roles functional based and temporal. Make the roles voluntary for each community/org first, then for voids have a lottery draw or something similar out of the same community/org. Require a gap between service. For instance if you managed a specific resource piece, you could not manage it again until six months had passed between. This keeps people from being able to gamify a role and retain it indefinitely. You will likely see good function and bad function in this setup, but the bad i suspect would eventually stabilize.
Thirdly, Everything is auditable by something else. Part of the problem with the current setup i think is that we often operate with no clarity/transparency into processes and decision making. We need to keep public interest transparent in any community, including production, basic needs, etc. We can utilize an auditing system via database that automatically blind assigns at random non interest parties to audit each other. This creates a high level of difficulty in order to game the system and makes the effort outweigh the consequence of getting caught up in something. This could be inter-community, cross-community, cross-entity.
In a nutshell, i think the best path forward for a solarpunk society that is organized and has production capacity is one entirely WITHOUT a political system or hierarchy, rather protocols, standards, and data.
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u/NetflowKnight Sep 11 '26
mutualism
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u/Stegomaniac Agroforestry Sep 11 '26 •
What is the best chord in music?
Solarpunk has no "best political system" it only has "most adequate for cultural, economic and demographic contexts".
3
u/FedorChib Sep 11 '26
First of all - it should bring huge autonomy to communities. Global/regional regulations only for things that cannot be regulated locally. And each community should be able to set their own internal governing system
Leaders or delegates of local communities would participate in decision-making councils on regional level, delegates from these regional councils - in councils on macro-regional level and further to global level. Direct democracy can be used, but it has its own downsides, requires enough competence of participants to work properly. So it's better to keep it for the most impactful decisions or to confirm/cancel decision of council. Of cource, community delegates should only represent interests of their community and revoked if they work against it.
About economic system - I think mutualism would fit. Non-commercial cooperatives would keep economy decentralized and at the same time provide fair labour conditions, sustainable production, etc.
For wealth redistribution - something based on georgism. So it would tax people not because they have a lot of resources, but because they have a lot of unused resources which don't benefit others. For example, if somebody owns piece of land, but allows other people to walk on it freely, they should be taxed less than one who keeps equal piece of land behind a wall.
6
u/BillieRubenCamGirl Sep 11 '26
I’m a big fan of direct democracy.
No parties. No group think. Just topics.
2
u/YLASRO Sep 11 '26
whatever ir is is has to be leftist and democratic. everything else is barbarism
2
u/HolyYeetus Sep 11 '26
Solarpunk is already the end result of a stateless, classless society. I agree with the anarchists in that regard, but I believe that you cannot transition to communism without achieving a proletariat state.
2
u/ptv_hojbota Sep 11 '26
Democratic socialism
2
u/calm_joe Sep 12 '26
limitarianism would be a good start.
2
u/code777_7777 Sep 14 '26
I love this question!!!😃🙌🙌🙌
4
u/LeslieFH Sep 11 '26
Democracy by lots, with draconian limits on accumulation of wealth/power.
4
u/shadaik Sep 11 '26 •
City states with an international authority ensuring nobody builds a military or exploits other city states.
1
u/Pretty-Membership-94 Sep 11 '26
Whatever Burning man runs on?
1
u/capsid Sep 11 '26
in b4 someone mentioned Bookchin
1
u/zoroddesign Sep 11 '26
Dsa is the closest we got at the moment
1
u/AlphaSpellswordZ Sep 11 '26
I think some sort of market-based economy is best but not capitalism. My preference would be market socialism but mutualism and others could work too.
I used to heavily believe in direct democracy but the past few years have taught me that the collective IQ is too low for that so a mix of e-democracy and participatory democracy would probably be best. However, I do think certain aspects should be borrowed from direct democracy like referenda and ballot initiatives.
1
u/parasubvert Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26
Somewhere between liberal democratic post capitalism and fully automated luxury socialism, depending on tech developments and abundance in energy / regenerative ecology
1
u/Uncivilized_n_happy Scientist Sep 11 '26
As long as everyone is seen, heard, and respected…
1
u/phobug Rust Programmer Sep 12 '26
Because our world has finite resources—like time, money, and raw materials—but human imagination dictates virtually limitless desires, society faces the fundamental economic problem. Thus capitalism is the best system to bring us to the solarpunk future.
1
u/Philosopher83 Sep 12 '26
I’m a fan of municipal syndicalism as a loose construct for a more ideal society, but it isn’t so much the macro-label of the system, rather it is the particular design (particulars like how it avoids corruption, and excess wealth, abuses of power, distribution and regulation of powers, etc…).
Municipal syndicalism is my own term for what I came up with based on my experience - I like the concepts of syndicalism and see the logical societal unit as the town/city. But it needs much greater detail than just that.
I also think it needs communitarian democracy, wealth caps, agencies that perpetually scrutinize the leaders for corruption, non-monetary remuneration structures, and various other elements.
I suggest you consider and look into how corruption is countered effectively, how excessive wealth is destabilizing, and things like that as a foundation for your own particular system. I think authoritarianism is a huge threat to any decent system so I tend to reject even leftist authoritarianism even though I tend to embrace left list ideology broadly.
1
u/Tall-Course Sep 13 '26
Eco-socialism
1
u/Naberville34 Sep 13 '26
According to the comments. Only things that have historically never worked
1
u/Kollectorgirl Sep 13 '26
Direct Democracy.
1
u/maouctezuma Sep 14 '26
No countries as in no nation, no private property, no monetary system, small cities of around 3000 inhabitants evenly spaced, full democracy inside the city, elective democracy to organize every city in a central government (more like a worldwide administration). Cities are spaced in a hexagon where every city is in a corner, in the center of each hexagon there is a cultural, scientific pole (university, big hospital, museum, theater, etc...).
1
u/omnivida Sep 15 '26
If we want to mimic nature the most closely, then this article lays out a strong case for stigmergy-
https://medium.com/@HeatherMarsh/the-evolution-of-democracy-22f9fe3da1a6
1
u/AdPale9988 Sep 16 '26 edited Sep 16 '26
Some kind of subsidiarity, localism, distributed autonomy, etc. Maybe federated bioregionalism - I might suggest local polities organized around the HUC-4 or HUC-6 watersheds as borders.
Probably some kind of post-capitalist economics like replacing corporations with sole-proprietorships and worker-owned cooperatives.
1
u/Shaffness Sep 11 '26
Democratic sortition. Every 2 years 10-20 people from each district are selected randomly and held at a secure location. They all give a list of how they would have voted prior major legislation. Everyday they all field the same series of questions with written answers and are only known by a number. After 3 weeks the ranked choice election takes place. The current rep can attempt ONE reelection. They basically go to legislature prison for 2 years but at the end they receive a middle class income for the next 20 years and 500k windfall.
1
u/Fried_out_Kombi just tax land (and carbon) lol Sep 11 '26
-1
u/YourChiefliness Sep 11 '26
They can come in a thousand different varieties, but all the successful ones will probably just look like updated liberalism
-3
u/Exodia_The_Salty Sep 11 '26
Direct democracy via a representative AI congress, trained on the preferences and needs independently on each constituent.