Hello Reddit,
My name is Alexis Zeigler. In November of 2010 eight people and myself acquired 127 acres of land in rural Virginia in order to create an intentional community (otherwise known as commune) focused specifically on living sustainably and off-grid. Prior to this, I had had some experience building conventional off-grid houses for a number of friends and, having seen how costly, high-maintenance and error-prone these systems were (most of those friends went back on-grid after only a few years), I decided I wanted to try and find better approaches to off-grid technology.
Today our community (it's called Living Energy Farm, you can find our website here: livingenergyfarm.org) has twelve members, including children. We are currently completely energy self-sufficient on the residential level, using a setup that has been running with very low maintenance costs (both in terms of time and money) for many years.
There are two key ways in which our system differs from conventional off-grid technology. The first is that we primarily store energy in forms other than electricity, allowing us to function with much smaller solar panel rigs than are possible with conventional systems. Our solar space heating system is a good example of this. Rather than have a solar panel connected to a large battery bank and run a space heater off of that battery bank, or keep a wood stove running constantly, we heat our house during the winter with passive solar and a combination of solar thermal hot air collectors and DC blowers that are connected directly to our solar electric panels. On a sunny day the solar hot air collectors heat air, which the blowers then push under the floor so the heat can radiate up through the house. To make the most of this heat we have a heavily insulated house (our walls are around a foot thick, insulated with straw bales) that cools very slowly, allowing us to stay warm even after multiple days without enough sun to run our blowers. The entire heating system operates without any electricity needing to run through a battery or inverter, which allows us to get away with much lower battery capacity than other off-grid systems. We run many tools directly off our solar electric panels, such as a winnowing fan, grain grinder, drill press, metal-cutting lathe, belt grinder, air compressor, to name a few. We refer to the way in which our equipment runs primarily off of a solar electric panel as Daylight Drive.
The second way in which our system
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Freetown Christiania, also known as Christiania (Danish: Fristaden Christiania or Staden), is an intentional community and commune[1][2][3] of about 850 to 1,000 residents, covering 7.7 hectares (19 acres) in the borough of Christianshavn in the Danish capital city of Copenhagen.[4] It was temporarily closed to visitors by residents by consensus in the plenum in April 2011 and a later occasion, but later re-opened.
Christiania has been a source of controversy since its creation in a squatted military area in 1971. Its cannabis trade was tolerated by authorities until 2004. Since then, relations between Christiania and Danish authorities have been strained. Since the beginning of the 2010s, the situation has been somewhat normalized and Danish law is now enforced in Christiania.
What are opinions of Anarchists on this place? Has anyone ever been there, is it still Anarchisty ?
What do socialists think of this hippy nonsense?
Some thoughts:
While seeking to transform urban spaces arguably impacts more people, given the many restraints, should more energy be placed on developing anarchist communes in more rural areas? Perhaps the two can be linked through educational centres in urban spaces?
Does anyone else find them impossible to play? I never see the AI win with them either. There are so many forts along the border it is impossible to break through, there is no oil and if you want to build refinerys that means say goodbye to making lots of factories. On top of that you're not just fighting Germany, but 60 other countries that spam the border to the point where it's impossible to get through with any sort of equipment. I really don't understand how to play them.
Basically the title. The Commune of France should have a larger motorization focus that it does currently.
The COF should not start war with Germany without a set plan. The COF is a revanchist and belligerent state that had been conspiring to bring down Germany since the interwar period, wouldn't it be logical that they would have some type of strategy to pierce into Germany? And they wouldn't ever considere a copied WW1 Germany strategy of running into the enemies' defenses until they break. Trench warfare became a thing of the past after WW1, specifically because of the advances made during and close to the end of the war. More accurate targeting systems for artillery pieces, better recon from planes, a greater reliance on shock troops to quickly disorganize the enemy and create holes to pour through, etc. So the way the WK2 is fought as of right now is unrealistic in both a political and military scope.
My suggestion is, since France cannot fight a war of attrition against Germany, and the French commands knows that, France would devote more to a blitzkreig tactics. They try to focus on engagements that would encircle large portions of the German and Reichspakt armies using motorized divisions rather than directly engaging them. This adds to France's manpower pool somewhat as they could utilize these prisoners of war for manual labor. This is not to say that France would replicate the German strategy of completely collapsing France within a week, but rather the Germans should be surprised and pushed back toward the Rhine or further by Communard forces. There the Germans may have a chance at regrouping and holding off Communard advances, but that leaves France with a more open way around through the Netherlands, to try and quickly bypass the Rhine. It would actually give the AI the opprotunity to use the focus around Luddendorf, and give the feeling of tactics and doctrines evolving spurred on by two great powers locked in warfare.
Simply by making the war more dynamic and less static, it would definitely emit an atmosphere of
what should be anurgent and like a global conflict of two ideologies coming to blows, rather than an unmoving frontline. When its 1941 and neither side has taken a single tile it makes me wonder why the French started this war when they clearly could not feasibly win.
Communes are essentially communism on a small scale, and while yes communism is supposed to be a global system, they are owned and run exactly the same way a global system of communism would run. And as to be expected communes are poverty laden and donβt scale well, which really makes one wonder about communism being able to scale to 7 billion people. How do you explain these failures and why should we assume that a global system run exactly like a commune would be any better than these small scale experiments?
On a somewhat unrelated note, market socialism is likely the best version of socialism due to the fact that markets and the price system is preserved, but even with that system most workers have shown through their demonstrated preference that they would rather take a paycheck from an employer than to put any of their own money on the line and take on more responsibility, so I really donβt see how youβll change the minds of the majority of pro-capitalist workers without offering enough benefits to outweigh the additional costs.
