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originally shared at https://lafelabs.github.io/trashmagic.html, this document has evolved slightly.

Trash Magic: Political Philosophy

This philosophy is contained in my book, the Trash Magic Manifesto and Action Coloring Book, which is both a free e-book in pdf format and a hardcopy paperback sold at cost here.

My arguments in that work can be summarized with a set of over-arching ideas. I will attempt so summarize those here.

Numbers are the Problem

When I looked deeply into what I felt was wrong with our industrial system it all pointed to one major problem: the primacy of numbers over other types of ideas. The supposedly competing industrial/political/economic systems like "capitalism" and "communism" all agree that some type of numerical description of value is appropriate, be it hours of labor, ounces of gold, or dollars of bank debt. Ultimately once you believe that a number can describe value you get a very similar system to the other people who made that choice.

I argue that this is a choice we made as a species which was not necessary and can be un-made. I also argue that it is a deeply evil choice which is always based on either destructive extractionist industry (dig it up, set it on fire, and bury it) or human misery(the wage labor system, which is clearly based on extracting misery from others).

I claim that the beliefs of what are called "capitalism" or "economics" constitute a religion which involves a blind faith in the reality of numbers that is not supported by the observable ways of Nature.

Free Technology

The whole point of this thesis work is to create a set of guidelines for creating technology that leads to a better world. To that end, I describe a set of design rules for truly free technology using a much stricter definition of "free" than the so-called "free software" people from the "tech" industry. I put both of these in scare quotes because there is nothing free about technology that is so hard to use that no one can use it without relying on a technocrat priest class who answers to no one (the so-called "hackers" with their awful broken software and their useless 3d printers.)

The goal of free technology is to always create a "technological complete set", which is a concept I introduce here that is a set of interacting technologies which can be sustainably managed by as small a group of people as possible to provide all basic human needs in an advanced civilization including: food, medicine, clean water, waste processing, industrial fabrication, communication, transportation of people and goods,

As I mention above, part of what makes technology free is that it can be used by, modified by, and controlled by all users, not just a priest class. This means that the process of teaching people, especially children, all the underlying principles and practices to make, fix, and run that technology have to be an integral part of the technology itself.

Trash Magic

I reject the whole culture of the technocratic priesthood who currently control technology. As part of that process I reach back and take the ideas from outside of that which are called "magic", or "alchemy", etc. as better ways to describe the kind of technology I want to construct. This is in part a conscious choice to annoy members of the technocrat classes who worship modern science as a religion and get very agitated when presented with ideas that might be called "magic".

Trash refers to how all technology should be: rather than based on hoarding the products of mining, the feedstock for everything should be what is currently known as "trash". Part of what makes technology truly free is that not only does the input feedstock not cost money or need mining, but there is a stream of fresh material that is always available which can be used for future expansion. This is, for now, clearly true of what we call trash. Modern industrial civilization creates trash at an insane pace, which has an incredible bounty of valuable material. Even just the trash from the cell phone disaster is vast, consisting of billions of built-to-fail phones which have a staggering array of useful materials, chemicals and devices. Capitalism literally sows the seeds of its own destruction, and it's time to plant, cultivate, and harvest those seeds.

Post-Numerical Values

I argue that to get rid of numbers as the basis for value we must move to more of a story-based value system. By that I mean the physical things in society should be defined by their stories, which are divided roughly into two groups, which I call "tales" and "lore". The tales are the specific stories of how a particular object came to be: who made it and why, what they did, who they passed it on to, what they did with it and how and why. All things that have been used tell a story, and we as humans value stories very highly and in a way that is outside of numerical value and cannot be put in a spreadsheet.

"Lore" is the cultural value of a thing that is embodied in the methods for reproducing that thing, which all things should have. This is a combination of specific knowhow on building the thing itself which is physically integrated into the thing and pointers to other information which are useful for creating the rest of the technological complete set of which that thing is an element. Both tales and lore are to be encoded into physical things using the language tools of Roctal, Geometron, and Action Geometry, as I describe elsewhere on this site(that's the primary reason I'm developing those systems).

Return to the Oceans

I argue that for all their dangers, the oceans are where humanity should migrate. There is so much energy and nutrients out there, and private property does not encumber them as much in our current system, it only makes sense to move in that direction. Scalable permaculture at sea has already been shown to work. The current industrial system is on a path to flood most of its major cities already with ocean water. This should not be seen as a disaster but as an opportunity to start over, to bring nutrients and energy to all people in those places and eliminate the private property system which is currently the main source of structural violence in cities. Given enough time, the gangsters who currently rule society will find a way to apply private property to the flooded cities, and we must not let them get that time, and immediately build vast industrial systems outside their control before the floods happen, so that by the time the cities are fully flooded it's too late and the propertarians have lost all control over humanity.

What is the opposite of terrorism?

If terrorism is using violence to enforce ones world view on others, the opposite of that is giving away free life-giving technology to anyone who wants it (but no one who doesn't want it) regardless of their world view or religion or politics. And that is our goal here. It is also, ultimately the best way to fight terrorism. To move beyond old cycles we must base a movement entirely on building new, free stuff, and making that stuff so much better technically than the existing stuff that everyone chooses to move on simply because the new stuff works better.

WHAT IS TRASH MAGIC?

If we know how to make something useful and cool from free parts that are easy to get, we can make as many as we want, all for free.

If those items somehow hold their own blueprints or copying instructions, then the items become "self-replicating", like DNA.

They are built for free and given away for free. When a community of people publish all their free blueprints for building free stuff on a free website, then the entire library of blueprints is available anytime to anyone in that community or on that network.

Here's how to make your own free website:
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Make a GitHub.com account (your username will be your website name), and upload your own blueprints to share with others. You can copy this website to use as a template by clicking the download buttons at the bottom.
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Upload to a GitHub repository with the same name as your username. Your site will live at (YOUR_USERNAME).github.io and index.html will always be your homepage.
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Show your friends so they can make their own. Add links to each others' websites.

Recycling and free-sharing have always been part of being human. But we are in a special period. For the first time in history, all the chemicals, technologies and materials that we need in order to live well (as well as the tools needed in order to work with them) are spread all over the globe. Almost anyone can get almost anything almost anywhere.

The biggest change of all, however, is digital networks. We now have a great density of intercommunication and material transport (plus overflowing waste streams and pollution as a result). But being online doesn't have to cost money. Three people with any sort of wifi circuit or LoRa chip can make their own network for free. So can three hundred, three thousand, or three million.

Our new internet ought to be a digital archive of all the things that matter to us IN THE REAL WORLD. The new internet becomes like an augmented-reality-game-map, showing users all the places around town they can meet cool people or get free stuff. The free stuff has a label that links to its website on the library-map showing how it replicates itself for free. The new internet should simply be a digital library/map of the free community, having dedicated pages for all important physical things like rivers, dumpsters, and farms. The purpose of the library/map is to help people live good lives WITHOUT SPENDING MONEY.

Trading USB drives with each other is a kind of internet. Share memes. Design social circuits. Create physical social media. Instead of a post online, trying sharing a cool or useful thing with a real person irl. Even better if that thing contains its own instructions for making more of itself for free!

All of this can be done while still living with capitalism and obeying the law, making it a good option for everyone to participate in. Additionally, every time anyone adds a single blueprint to their personal library, it makes it easier for everyone else in the network to live for free. All of the items and places point back to the online pages where their blueprints are shared. This is the same network on which all the rest of our blueprints are shared, just like DNA in any cell contains the blueprints to recreate all the rest of your body.

If anything has been built thrice for profit, then it's obviously possible to build for free. If somehow the people who had the necessary materials spoke with the people who were already experienced in assembling, growing, or producing it, they could find a way for free materials in their surrounding environment to be crafted into that free thing. If they can repeat this process consistently, they have designed a social circuit. It is the social circuits which connect us and make up our new free world, not just the online networks. We want everything to be free for everyone, everywhere, immediately. The free world will recycle the capitalist world the way that fungus recycles a log.

Don't assume it would be impossible to build things just because there's no money circulating. If the people who provided the materials and the people who built it catch the vision of Trash Magic, then it can be built for free consistently. Everyone in the Trash Magic network is incentivized to do and give what they can for free because they themselves are benefitting so much from others' free gifts to them.

Due to habits of pollution and consumerism, we live in a very unusual age. For the first time in history, all the elements, technologies and materials that we need in order to live well are spread all over the globe. Almost anyone can get almost anything almost anywhere. The consequences of this have been horrific, but we must find a way to recycle all of this waste. We can make good use of basically everything that we usually just throw away. So much has already been thrown away that everything is already everywhere. The tools to work with these materials are also thrown away everywhere. We are free to be creative here. Almost all unwanted stuff could work very well if it was repurposed into something new. Experiments always take time, go easy on yourself!

The new internet should simply be a digital map of the local free community, having dedicated pages for every important physical thing like medicine, waste reuse streams, and food providers. The purpose of the map is to help people live good lives WITHOUT SPENDING MONEY. All of this can be done while still living with capitalism. It is intended to be done as close to free as possible and the whole system scales at a negative marginal cost.

this means everytime anyone posts anything on the Trash Magic network, it increases the strength and density of the whole network, making it easier for everyone else to connect however they like to the network.

it gets easer for everyone anytime anyone shares ANY Trash Magic, because participation in the network to any degree strengthens the momentum of the whole network. soon an inevitable thermodynamic shift occurs, pouring energy into the Trash Magic network in a movement that will make the most agile blitz-scaling of the venture capitalists look hesitant and ponderous.

Right-click anywhere and select "Save Page As" to download just this blueprint-page. This works on lots of websites.

Download the whole website and all blueprints by clicking HERE

Download and Read the Trash Magic Manifesto PDF by clicking HERE