Warning: As per usual, I likely have little to no idea about what I'm writing. My opinion may very well be wrong, so I advise taking my words with a grain of salt.

I find that, rather frequently, I read Sir Gerard the First's posts and end up writing comments thereon that are lengthy enough to warrant posts of their own. This is another one of those, this time on Permaculture (another topic of interest about which I know almost nothing, having only found out about it a couple of days ago at time of writing). What follows is in response to Sir Gerard's post titled Permaculture and the Change of the Operating System (linked in the "Resources" section below). Any quoted text without a reference is pulled from his writing. (I suggest you read it before reading my response, if you haven't already. Otherwise, this will likely make even less sense than it already does.)

"A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot system like democracy. At least he could tell the people he was their fault."
  — Sir Terry Pratchett (1948-2015); The Art of Discworld (2004); VG Ltd; ISBN-10: 0-575-07712-3

Christian democracy? Now, there's a contradiction in terms if ever there was one, IMO! I'm not a great believer in democracy, generally, but adding religion (particularly of an Abrahamic variety) to it doesn't strike me as a good idea if one wants to claim the ideology to be Leftist. (There tends to be a significant overlap between Christian thought and right-wing thought, at least in the USA, a country I consider to be Capitalism Inc.) I strongly suspect Churchill never tried Anarchy ...

"The type of government is not very important, because it is the corporations that raise, maintain, or lower the governors, senators, representatives, mayors, and other operators of this feudalism that is currently called "democracy."

Still, whichever way you lean, changing masters (operators, to use Gerard's analogy) doesn't make you free, as José Marti observed. Changing the OS to something more suited to oneself (or operating without one) does/might (a bit like ditching Windows for GNU/Linux, as nearly impossible as it is to do these days). An American ghetto under Republicans looks pretty much the same as one under Democrats, since neither party/administration does anything to benefit it.

"If they can give a 50% discount, it means that before they were stealing twice as much from us."

Yes, because they raised the price by 25% at a go over the previous two months and they'll drop it by 25% the month after, without most people noticing.

"... they care nothing about the sustainable maintenance of the ecosystem in which they live, much less people and competitors, whom if they could kill they would do so without the slightest remorse."

"A city of even half a million takes a hidden [and often neglected] army of farmers, fishermen and carters just to see it through the day. We have lost sight of that, now that food grows on supermarket shelves and there are bright kids whom don't know what 'ploughing' means. But a humdrum city day requires a thousand unseen things to happen like clockwork, because it is only a couple of meals away from chaos. To quote from Night Watch:

Every day, maybe a hundred cows died for Ankh-Morpork. So did a flock of sheep and a herd of pigs and the gods alone knew how many ducks, chickens and geese. Flour? He'd heard it was eighty tons, and about the same amount of potatoes and maybe twenty tons of herring. Every day, forty thousand eggs were laid for the city. Every day, hundreds, thousands of carts and boats and barges converged on the city with fish, honey, oysters, olives, eels and lobsters. And then think of the horses dragging this stuff, and the windmills ... and the wool coming in, too, every damn day; the cloth, the tobacco, the spices, the ore, the timber, the cheese, the coal, the fat, the tallow, the hay ... every damn day ..."
  — Sir Terry Pratchett; Ibid

I've worked for corporations. The executive management definitely cares nothing for the employees under them, at least not as anything more as named and numbered fuel cells that they'll drop without so much as a backward glance when they've burned them out and depleted them (which they will, in the fullness of time). What they forget is that the real MVPs of a company aren't (only) the arrogant executives with fancy titles making decisions or the engineers designing and building things in their white collar ivory tower(s), but the technicians and support staff whom keep the wheels greased and the engine running doing the daily grind. (I've published a post or two on that as well.)

"Everything enjoyable in life is expensive, bad for you or belongs to someone else."
 — Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert cartoon

The Death Star (in both iterations) may have been a fearsome, planet-destroying weapon (as was Star Killer base), but they all had their fatal flaws that ultimately resulted in their destruction. The trick is to find them and exploit them before one's planet gets eliminated by the super weapon. Capitalism may be the dominant/de facto OS, but it hasn't always been and won't always be so. While definitely a stumbling block, inertia can be overcome and systems can be replaced. (GNU/Linux was once installed on 0% of computers. It's now estimated to be installed on 2%. It's a small number, but the figure's growing and we could see the fall of MS Windows if only a significant number of people realised the error of their ways and the benefits of alternatives, much like with blockchain, Collapsology, Permaculture and tiny houses.)

"BTC fundamental value = 0"

That particular bit of FUD always amuses me (more than it frustrates me), most likely from the same people (centralised banksters and governments) pretending that fiat's fundamental value is greater than 0 (and that it doesn't devalue over time; it's more likely negative if you factor in that it's faith-based printed debt) and hoping they can still fool us ... Pull the other one; it has got bells on!

"Never mind in faith if you can't believe." — Scooter Ward

As someone whom has worked in an IT field for over a decade, I've come to realise that the central premise of technology (to help us and/or make our lives better in some tangible way) is a lie. We don't "progress", but trap ourselves in an unnecessarily complex/complicated system. The Khoisan people (previously known as Bushmen, often pejoratively) knew everything they needed to by age seven, their most sophisticated technology possibly being bows and arrows. Yet we, so-called "modern Western civilization(s)" spend about a quarter of our lives (more if you complete a degree/doctorate) learning how to survive in the concrete, glass and steel prison-industrial complex we've made for ourselves, having killed off most of the so-called "primitive" people who live like our ancient ancestors did (hunter gatherers, mainly). We need to rethink our approach/attitudes and soon. I'm not necessarily advocating for Anarcho-primitivism, because that might be a step too far back, but we certainly need to find some sort of mid-point to which to return, perhaps the time shortly before the industrial revolution (but without feudalism or serfdom).

See the violence inherent in the system!

Metric: Speed the Collapse

Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?

"This is the fundamental mission we have for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, especially when they ask us, what did you do?"

What did we do? We so-called "Westeners" went to war (particularly with indigenous/native peoples) and destroyed our mother. (Not me personally, because I've never been drafted and would likely be a conscientious objector if I was, but certainly my colonial and pro-Nats ancestors.) I hope, going forward, that we (collectively) can give a different answer to future generations. I'm fairly certain Gerard hopes so too. As things currently stand (the way the world currently malfunctions), Ich hab keine lus to bring life into it, to be responsible for the suffering and oppression of others.

I happened to stumble across permies.com a couple of days ago, looking for something that pretty much had almost nothing to do with it (A Terry Pratchett joke about computers, as it happened).The site is an interesting rabbit hole down which to dive. I spent a couple of hours on it and hardly scratched the surface of all it contains. I have a lot more reading to do, clearly. Such is the peril of being interested in a great many things outside one's field of so-called expertise and having ADD ...

Thumbnail image: British Propaganda war poster by Savile Lumley,  from Wikimedia Commons