What a beautiful morning.
Let's see what opportunities we have to stick a wrench into the gears of fascism with one hand...
...and commit acts of feeding, clothing, sheltering, and protecting people with the other.
Time to bring out the *punk* in Solar Punk.
While waiting for the paperwork to go through for that national food rescue org, I'm still going to do food rescue manually.
Another donut haul! I dont know how many donuts. Lost count.
Anyhow. had to find space in the free fridge for it. Folks had added even more fresh veggies and bread and salads, so I had to get creative making room for my deserts. 
Edit: Ignore the lighting in the fridge. It was night time and I used a flash. Makes things weird colors. Anyhoo.
The following link can change your world view.
Seriously, you need to read the linked post. If you worry that someone will take advantage of the system or get what they don't deserve, and that makes you angry, read the post for a dose of plain civilized thinking.
#economics #food #prosperity #basicincome #postscarcity #mutualaid
Hat tip to @floofpaldi
cc: @raccoon @tinker
Maria Langer (@mlanger ) asks a great question regarding "Free Fridges" and Post-Scarcity Mutual Aid Food Distribution:
Original Question and Thread: https://mastodon.world/@mlanger/113764511068543932
Question: "What worries me more is people putting tainted food into it. There are a lot of seriously fucked up people in this world. I'm old enough to remember the tainted Tylenol bottles that led to everything being safety sealed today. One nut who has it in for poor people can do a lot of damage."
Awesome question!
The short answer is THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME!!! OH NOOOO!!!
But not for the *reasons* you think.
People put in food that is past its "best use by" date all the time. In fact, food rescue is all about getting food that would otherwise be thrown out, past the "use by" date (but still good), sorting out which food is still good, and using that!
Heck, in traditional charity Food Bank / Food Pantry distributions, we get a pallet of fresh grapefruits and 10% will have "natural penicillin" (yuck!) or gets squashed in transit, and can't be given out. That's tainted food. We just set it aside and compost or throw it out.
I'll do you one better! Do you ever find molded tainted food in your grocery store? Of course you do. Do you ever hear about food recalls after people have gotten sick from listeria or salmonella from a corporate food manufacturer? Of course you do. Have you ever gotten food poisoning from a capitalist restaurant? Yeah, we all have.
We try to minimize it, but our current system is by no means perfect in keeping out "tainted food'. Heck... how many corporate manufacturers INTENTIONALLY SELL US tainted food just for profit? All. The. Freaking. Time.
So...
How we deal with this in our Free Fridges?
Twice a day, we have a cleaning and maintenance shift. It usually takes about ten minutes. Whoever has that time slot goes through and cleans up any spilt food (I had some busted eggs this week). We go through the food in the fridge and pantry and throw out anything that looks bad. The person cleans up trash and boxes , etc.
Also, just like you check your food at the grocery store before you buy it (go through that dozen eggs to make sure none are cracked... and put back the ones that are cracked to be taken care of by the grocery staff), when you take from the free fridge, you do the same. You conduct due diligence. Check for discoloration, broken seals, bad smells, mold, etc. Just like normal.
So far as someone putting in food that is intentionally or maliciously poisoned? That very rarely happens if ever. For one, a lot of the food is sealed. For fresh fruit, poisoning often destroys it. For home cooked food, the folks that do that often do it in bulk and label it - so you know who is doing it. If they poison it, they get arrested... just like normal... Anything unlabeled or generally suspicious is not taken by folks first off and is thrown away when noticed.
This is like razors in halloween candy. It's just not an issue.
Trash Panda (@raccoon) asks a great question regarding "Free Fridges" and Post-Scarcity Mutual Aid Food Distribution:
Original Question and Thread: https://hollow.raccoon.quest/notes/a2jvqqajuvif0aog
Question: "A thing that would worry me is people taking advantage of this and taking a shitload of food without needing it. Like, people who could just afford buying it, you know? Does it ever happen?"
Awesome question!
And it has a couple of answers or way to approach it. I'll try to answer it in those couple of ways.
Answer 1) Let them. Let them take as much as they want or need. We'll just produce more. We have the means. - There is often a worry of people "abusing" a system. This is a SCARCITY mindset. It worries that there's not enough to go around, so folks will abuse it and take from others.... BUUUUUT.... there IS enough to go around... you can take what you need, heck take more than you need, and it will be fine. We. Have. Enough.
Answer 2) Let's actually threat model this out. Like... Is this really a problem? If so... who would do it.
So the short answer is, it's not really a problem in practice. There are many free fridges already going. No one really "abuses" (in any meaningful definition of the word) the system.
So it's not a hypothetical. We can just look at what's actually happening. And it's not a concern.
Long Answer: When you grow up in scarcity and first encounter post-scarcity, it is NORMAL to hoard things.
Let me say that again.
It is NORMAL for people to take what they need NOW and then take more for what they think they will need LATER for security and even add a buffer on top of that JUST TO BE SURE!!!
Cool.
Let them.
After a while, they realize that they TOO are not consuming all they have and they start to FEED BACK INTO the post-scarcity input / output.
This is called healing.
Artificial Scarcity (read Capitalism) hurts people.
Post-Scarcity Mutual Aid heals people.
If part of that process is them using the post-scarcity system a lot until they heal and get used to having enough... then it's chill. Let them "abuse" it. It'll be fine.
Answer 3) If we give into this fear, we produce the result of the fear without the fear itself ever needing to be realized. To put it another way, if we worry people will abuse it and there won't be enough food for others, and we don't do it out of that fear... then..... there DEFINITELY isn't food for others. Lol! Out of a fear that the prophesy will come true, we have ensured that it came true. So... like.... just do it... and deal with any problems that come up when they do.
Answer 4) You mentioned "People who could just afford buying it" could take things they don't need.
Cool. Let them!
I don't want ANYONE to have to pay for food.
I want food to be free.
But this line of thinking that we ONLY GIVE TO THOSE WHO DESERVE IT leads to insidious things like "means testing' where we SPEND MORE MONEY AND TIME AND EFFORT to keep food out of the mouths of those who "might not need it" than if we just used that money time and effort to feed everyone including th
e "rich".
Post-scarcity means post. scarcity. It's not scarce. You can get free food even if you could afford to buy it.
Just feed people.
We have enough.
. @kechpaja - Au contraire, my friend!!!
Prepare yourself for a lengthy rebuttal! (And thank you for the opportunity to info-dump on you!)
So this *is* an example of post-scarcity infrastructure. But how and why?
High Level Definition of Post-Scarcity Food (so that we may agree on terms): Post Scarcity is where we produce more food than is consumed and distribute that food out. It can be universal or local - so unevenly distributed post-scarcity or the fact that one area has it and another doesn't, does not imply that post-scarcity in the place that has it does not exist.
Great.
In the *pragmatic* sense: Post Scarcity Food needs inputs and outputs. Contributions and Distributions.
Overview:
*Current* Contributions / Inputs (read: not ideal, not what is being built or hoped for, but how it is right now):
- Charity (which you reduced food rescue and free fridges down into)
- Food Rescue (not charity... not even mutual aid)
- Mutual Aid
Current Distributions / Outputs
- Centralized
- Decentralized
- Peer-to-peer
Detail:
Contributions / Inputs
- Charity: Examples of this include food drives, food banks, church food pantries. Charities are not ideal and often have conditions tied to them ("Means Testing" and the like). They rely on "people being kind and generous" as you put it. If all we had was charity, we would not be in post-scarcity. While charity is often a cover for artificial-scarcity (our current over-arching economic model), it CAN be used as an input into post-scarcity. You just can't rely on it and need to build it further infrastructure. I use it because its there, but it's more of a transition thing.
- Food Rescue: Food Rescue is not Charity. Food Rescue is not Mutual Aid. Current Food Rescue relies on a capitalistic model. A for-profit store/restaurant/bakery/etc makes food to sell. Cannot sell all of it. Instead of throwing it away, it "donates" the left over good food to be consumed elsewhere. Food Rescue is NOT out of the goodness of a corporation's heart. Corporations do not have hearts. They cannot be kind or generous. Instead, Food Rescue is applied to the bottom line / profit margin and is justified by things such as "lowering the fees for trash" and "having a tax-writeoff to a non-profit (again within a capitalistic system). But! While Food Rescue is not charity and relies on the current capitalist system, it absolutely shows that we produce MORE than is consumed. Ironically, an example that we have the MEANS for post-scarcity. I use it because its there and is a ready source of feeding people. While I push for post-scarcity, I care about feeding people *now*.
- Mutual Aid: This is the ideal and the model for a full post-scarcity economy, and we're already building this out. Community Farms / Ranches (Centralized), Community Gardens / Local Small Scale Ranches (Decentralized), and Home Gardens / Home Ranches of various forms (peer-to-peer) are ways that we produce for ourselves, our neighbors, and our towns. This is post-scarcity mutual aid and does not rely on the people being kind and generous. It relies on us taking care of our neighbors AND ourselves (call it selfish if you like). Mutual means mutual.
Detail:
Distributions / Outputs
- Centralized: The charity model uses food pantries / churches / mobile pantries to distribute out food from a food bank. We can utilize that now, but we are absolutely not (nor should we be) limited by it. Instead, Free Stores are the Centralized model of post-scarcity mutual aid.
- Decentralized: Free Fridges & Community Pantries - This is where my fridge above fits in. It's not charity by any means. It's a node in a distribution network.
- Peer-to-peer: The simplest form of this is one person handing it to another. A neighbor asking for sugar. Handing off your extra squash on your street corner. You can scale this up using things like mobile apps such as Olio to coordinate this across larger areas.
Great, so we laid out inputs and outputs for post-scarcity food.
To give a specific example, see this post: https://infosec.exchange/@tinker/112582425833711424
There I show how I used the Input of a Mutual Aid Home Garden and the Output of a Decentralized Free Fridge.
None of that was charity. None of it was "kind and generous". Instead it was building the infrastructure for post-scarcity mutual aid that I use myself.
I take from the free fridge all the time. I drop off at the free fridge all the time. I produce for the community. I consume from the community.
We have the tech & the means. We have built infrastructure already (see the original post). We are now scaling it out.
Someone dropped off a massive food rescue haul to our free fridge and community pantry today.
They're not part of my program and we're not sure who's doing it. This is awesome. It means there are others outside of our volunteer group that does maintenance on the fridges and outside of the group that I'm working with to build out our formal food rescue program.
This is huge.
This means we have successfully built post-scarcity *infrastructure*!!!
Folks are using our fridges both to contribute and to utilize. Folks that have nothing to do directly with the core group of maintainers. Wow.
We need to build more free fridges. This one is running out of room.
#FWakeSecrets #FWakeConcealment
#NothingChangesJanuary
#PostScarcity #FWakePostScarcity
How much is humanity in total avoiding post-scarcity by secrets and concealment? Nations, corporations locking up information and even poisoning public information?
#FWakeIncentive incentive to hide progress?
Ok! I snagged the domain https://fxbg.food
Put up a landing page. Will update later.
I get to buy a new domain name and spin up a new web site for our food rescue & free fridge group!!!
I *LOVE* New Domain Day!!!!
Brainstorming Request! - I need help coming up with a name.
So some solarpunks and anarchists and mutual aid folks and food folks are coming together in my town and we need a group name.
Two constraints:
It needs to be: FXBG <something>
FXBG is the local town branding for Fredericksburg. So we have FXBG Hackers, FXBG Solarpunks, FXBG Winery, FXBG Arsonists, FXBG... well you get the idea.
The other is we want it do be food related. Mutual aid related. Sort of thing. So something that encapsulates food security, free fridges, food rescue / gleaning. Buuuut... its not the only mutual aid group in town, so it can't be too overarching. Like no FXBG Mutual Aid or similar.
What are your (and I mean you... the one who read all the way to the bottom of this post) thoughts?
"FXBG Free Fridge & Food Rescue" is too much of a mouthful.
"FXBG Food" is too generic
"FXBG Gleaners" isn't specific enough
"FXBG Food Rescue" doesn't include the free fridges.
I need help!!!!
Seen in one of my discord chats:
(Note: This isn't my town, but its a larger city near by that does food rescue. I just love the interaction!)
This is the first Appendix to my Introduction. A good way to get to know me is to know what's important to me, and with these I'll introduce those topics and projects that are. They'll remain as pinned posts on my profile so I can refer people to them should the topic ever come up.
The first and most important thing in my life is something called Technocracy. Most likely you haven't heard of it before, and if by some chance you have, what I am talking about here is most likely not related at all to what you've heard before. So what is it exactly? Keeping in mind that it is a topic large enough that it is normally taught in a study course, and any less than that risks what might be called "Blind Men and the Elephant Syndrome", in short Technocracy is a proposal for a sustainable, post-scarcity economic system.
To describe how it works, the shortest description would be "Technocracy is a system where machines do all the work people don't want to do." This is of course a big oversimplification, but it gets the essential point across, and that is that our society has reached a point, technologically speaking, where most work is obsolete. And our continued attempts to maintain an economic system that requires human labor is not only holding us back from a better future, but is indeed making things worse. That is why an essential part of Technocracy is to separate a person's labor from their ability to consume. Only by doing this can we let machines do what they do best, and free the rest of us to pursue better lives for everyone. As for how exactly it accomplishes this, there's more to it than can be put in any social media post. Anyone interested in learning more can visit www.technate.org and/or talk to me about it. I'll also be posting more about it from time to time here.
1/-
Headcanon: People from Earth in the United Federation of Planets will still have expressions like "this is why we pay you the big bucks" even though they moved beyond currency and salaries, just like we will say "my brain is not firing on all cylinders today" way after we all moved to EVs and trains.
This smooths over any inconsistencies people perceive between TOS and TNG+DS9+VOY with regards to the Earth economy.
Ok! Had a technical demo of the web app for food rescue.
I think we're going to go with them.
Solid desktop app that scales well for mobile.
Its a lightweight org with a small budget but they're doing a lot with it. Feature rich currently and does everything i need it to do so far as coordinating between the food rescue sites, the food distribution sites, and the gleaners connecting the two.
Once we get it up and running officially, i'll post it here.
#Regenerative #design is the material HOW of #degrowth.
"From the degrowth perspective, the social-ecological transformation means not only the democratization of the economy and a radical redistribution of resources, but also a profound restructuring of the material-technical basis of society, as called for by the critique of industrialism and technology."
—The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism
https://makeinplace.medium.com/no-solution-moves-forward-in-isolation-bcb9c4416f79
This is an amazing concept....
Open Sourced "3D Printed" Pharmaceuticals
Build your own pill printing machine. Feed it an open sourced "recipe" / medical chemical compound instruction. Add some base ingredients. And make your own medicine.
This is an exceedingly solarpunk idea and could be a core aspect of a post-scarcity world as it relates to healthcare.
They have information about abortion medication (Misoprostol), ADHD medication (Vyvance), and more.
There are obvious issues - especially around quality control, safety, effectiveness, and application. And the makers address this - but wow. Just wow.
I very specifically have not verified any of this. But I'm incredibly interested in diving in and learning about it and its feasibility.
The anarchist collective behind this venture, Four Thieves Vinegar Collective (@4thievesvinegar), spoke at this last DefCon 32. See @mixael's talk here (via Peertube): https://kolektiva.media/w/uvD1wWTRoh7HEto8zeSswr
Here is a @404mediaco article by @jasonkoebler : https://www.404media.co/right-to-repair-for-your-body-the-rise-of-diy-pirated-medicine/
Here is their main website: https://fourthievesvinegar.org
Here is are the open sourced instructions (along with parts list - both purchased and off the shelf along with 3D printed parts): https://github.com/FourThievesVinegar/solderless-microlab
Definitely something to follow and learn more about. I'm excited and hope this is effective and grows.
(HT @aeischeid for highlighting the article and HT my dear friend for telling me about it after going to their DefCon talk!)
@rightardia so electricity is free in this #postscarcity economy?
Ok, this was as we were setting up. Had about double the people show up to hand out food and many folks showed up to feed their families.
We had a bit left over that went into the community fridge afterwards.
We gave out carrots, eggplants, oranges, apples, carrots, potatos, cheese blocks, onions, acorn squash, and much more!
#solarPunk #mutualAid #foodSecurity #postScarcity
