Anarchy Bang: Introducing Episode Five - Urban vs Rural

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Anarchy Bang is a weekly anarchist call in show. It happens at noon PST on Sunday (3pm on the East Coast. -8 UTC).

This week we talk about the dream (for many many anarchists) of moving "back to land" and how it has worked out for those who have done it. Wouldn't getting away from all the shit be great? What is that shit? Are there more fun anarchist activities happening there rather than here? Or is it in fact the opposite? Are the libraries, cafes, and protests worth the high rent and commuting? Is getting work even possible in the country any more? We talk about the dream, the reality and what happens when the things fall apart!

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Sunday at noon (PST) at https://anarchybang.com/.
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There are 28 Comments

I have just had a look through AshesAshes.org which is even worse than JZ's Anarchy Radio is spreading the doom and gloom. Aragorn! would you consider an AnarchyBang on the manufacture and broadcasting of doom and gloom? AshesAshes is solely about doom and gloom. Is this the real true reality or more spectacle? Has this become a self-fulfilling prophesy? If someone came up with a solution, would that person be shot for ruining it all (irony)? I live in a semi-rural area meaning there is plenty of shops and local services with the mountains and coast right nearby too. The problem is more and more tourists each year and as tourism is the main income base, the area is putting on more and more weekend events making mid-week the only time, the 'natives' have the place to ourselves. I am actually thinking of moving further into the mountains due to the increase in numbers, traffic, general noise. Wildlife has little chance of making a life here due to disturbance. What I am witnessing is the ripple effect of people wanting some space, thus spending a few days by the coast to flee the noise of urbanisation and the likes of me having to move further into the mountains to flee the noise etc they bring with them! Interestingly, the tourist board promotes the area, the area is then subject to erosion, increased pollution etc etc And rents are increasing too, gentrification is taking place as the (over there) urban professional class, wishing to live somewhere more idyllic (over here), are willing to commute longer distances to work. BASTARDS!

Only in the @ ghetto can anyone describe anti-civ as "optomist". Your overton window slide right off the wall

John thinks humans have enough agency to attack the State and defeat the global regime. This is hopelessly optimistic no matter what way you cut it.

It wasn't perfectly intentional. I just exited a period of irresistible optimism. Hopeless optimism is like when you know you're dead meat but you say the opposite to feel better. Hopeless pessimism is like when you know you're dead meat and you say so to feel better.

AnarchyBang? Not only anarchists poo poo taxation but given we live in a money-based system, how else would public services etc be constructed, maintained and financed? It seems no one wants to pay tax but somehow (through magic) roads appear, libraries appear etc or everyone wants lower taxes but still want public services. Is tax really theft? Or is it probably the most efficient and convenient way to fund public services? Thanks. The episode on capitalism was the best so far. Congrats.

hey, maybe you're right! Why stop there? Isn't the state the most efficient way to centralize decision making and maintain law and order for business?

"Are the libraries, cafes, and protests worth the high rent and commuting?"

Simply, no.

I'd rather be engaging with people in the streets, parks or public transports. But what does it say about the more silent, contemplative people like me? If there's always the big/nice talkers going after people in the street, then that exudes a social pressure to do the same anyways, for how that become the only way to "getting a life" with others?

I mean as far as the "urban" has become suburban, I totally recommend against moving to the "rural", that may/may not be the suburban extension of your urbanity, depending on the poverty of your analysis of space occupation. Humans should better remain packed up, concentrated, no matter how that means dysfunctions and throwing shit at each other IRL. The problem with the social relationship around here is how humans aren't enough stuck together, not the contrary. They're allowed to spread and atomize, which means the impoverishment of the city centers that become filled with these robotic, alienated suburbanites commandeered by cell phones.

But we can create our own "town centers", you know? Just as some derelict rural town can be recycled, reoccupied and re-centered.

I miss so much the '80s North American city centers that were trashy and violent, yet full of life and freedom, where you'd frequently talk to anyone in the streets like if I'd be at some party... The best best solution nowadays appears to be creating "open small towns" outside of the suburban spheres (which means distant from the highway and maybe cell phone networks if possible).

Small geographic isolates that serve as open social aggregates, like the frontier town but mostly consisting of open communal houses each with different subcultures and sensibilities. Punk festivals, technivals, rainbow gatherings to be held at any point in these places. Allow to move beyond the spectacle of these events, and into the daily life. They'd be located somewhere in the Appalachian, the PNW, the N-E Atlantic, Midwest... Not too far from big cities, could be even inside their geographic areas, like on abandoned land, or of course buildings. I've seen some kids attempting these projects in very distant places, but they both overestimate and underestimate the geographic factor.

These could serve as a way to rejuvenate old land projects. Wouldn't be too hard bringing new people in the midst, as far as sufficient outreach efforts are done in academia and farmer's markets in cities...

Right, just what the doctor order — more shit — more civilization. Just kill yourself. Problem solved. I'm sure there are some awesome solarpunx jus lyk u in the afterlife.

chill...breathe deeply...mindfulness, gratitude, love, self-care...you can be loved, you can share your love as well with people in this comment section...spread good bibes

tho wouldn't that make it too easy for you!? Don't tell me you're THAT lazy!

Or perhaps we can reach an agreement... on a duel? That'd sure be sportier and more fun than just offing myself. The winner has the lifelong respect from your milieu.

learn guitar and be in a band in the mid-70s in England. Now that the State allows for tax avoidance and evasion, austerity has cut those ways off. Do anarchists, particular the individualists, agree with corporations, celebrities, mega wealthy to swerve taxation?

Just deal with them directly by knee capping them or the discursive power formation that makes them possible. For the latter just abolish the 5 monopolies(land, tariffs, money, patents and infrastructure). Tucker and Carson.

is that it's strings attached asymmetrical aid. It's a carpet that can be yanked from under you as was the case in the late 70s and early 80s.

Tax evasion is illegal, and so, do the illegalists out there think this is cool? Well, many anarchists, on the site, work and pay tax... and pay more tax to meet the shortfall due to tax evasion. The USA is frauded out of billions of dollars annually - read Shaxon on tax havens. And the internet has enabled and increased this corruption; yes, the tech lovers out there who believe the internet brings democracy and equality (notnull?)! And the secrecy (the crypto crowd) many of you crave, well secrecy is key as to how all the evasion is enabled. Could these corporations: these defrauding entities be known as a union of egoists, of individualist illegalists? Let's cheer the fact that these entities bring austerity and poverty! Should we be applauding this behaviour as shafting the authorities, of capturing our lives? And regarding voting, would anarchists still hold out on voting if there was the possibility of a candidate who would try to clampdown on tax evasion? It's all well and good, SirEinzige, claiming just knee cap them... well go on Ziggy, what's stopping you???

Taxation represents a complication of human relations as it relates to resource use and exchange allocation. The bigger issue is property and the reified rules that come with it. There is something to the anti-tax discourse but it's marginal compared to say property not perennial. The real issue with rich people is the exchange intensive psychology that makes it possible. That's what you have to go after.

Social Democracy just replaces one problem with another via a corporatist state. Also, there are various reasons not to vote but a fairly game theory reason not to is that YOUR vote will never be the deciding vote. Voting success is determined by voting bloc bodies that have more motivated power then their opponents. Anarchist energy obviously goes towards different motivations then being part of a homogeneous psychological voting bloc.

Indigenous individualists would expect to receive taxes and gifts from the State, corporations, and foreign visitors.

07:59, I don't know what anarchists in general agree with, since it's a pretty diverse and disparate crowd. That includes of course the individualist who are yet more likely to agree with each other on a few principles than the usual Left factionalists. But I'd be expecting anarcho-individualists to be at least not paying/declaring their taxes. Tho for paying taxes you need some significant income, so I wonder how does that matter to anyone who's not a middle-class normie or anything above?

Assuming there is a market economy without the 5 monopolies Sir Einziege describes, which includes a distribution of surplus per capita, a voluntary maintainence of infrastructure.similar to the work done by Seattle's anarchists on roadwork would suffice,, that's also assuming that the society had evolved beyond the extravagant consumerist car and jet travel obsessed phase it is presently at.
Its not such a difficult move to slow down the maniacal progression towards the mythical transhumanist Utopia.

And the current dominant structures are nowhere leading towards the mythical transhumanist utopia of flying cars and vertical cities. That's for the upper caste techno-Nazis like Peter Thiel & Musk and their disciples who're like completely down the road of a restituted eugenics agenda, disguised as "transhumanism".

Instead, it is going toward the continuation of the horizontally-shaped society, which means plenty of niceties including and not limited to...

- "striated" and stratified social diffusion of capital,
- more highways and cars,
- moremoremoremore energy demands,
- more horizontal mambo for producing more hungry babies taught to be loyal to the commodity empire,
- more cops throwing you on the ground for tasing,
- more vicious trendies, from crypto-fascists to petulant liberals, burning lotsa cash in fancy bullshit restaurants and barber shops all across the city,
- more radiation spreading laterally for technological control and equal diffusion of middle capital.

Debord/Vaneigem are yet to be proven wrong: society is nothing else than accumulation of shit. Which produces, one generation to the next, the strata; as well as the thin buffer areas and the occasional striations in between.

Every time you use an apostrophe to indicate a plural, a puppy dies. Every time

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