kevin on exit and voice
exit and voice by kevin carson
via bsky [https://bsky.app/profile/kevincarson1.bsky.social/post/3lomdycot6k22]:
notes/quotes from may 7 2025 article:
Mainstream right-libertarianism has a long history of tending to prioritize what Albert O. Hirschman called “exit” (i.e., the ability to escape governance through relocation or circumvention) over “voice” (having a say in the governance process that one lives under).
first of graeber and wengrow freedom law
And left-libertarian — anarchist or libertarian socialist — visions of an ideal free society generally entail a healthy mixture of voice and exit. *The optimal mixture is to facilitate permissionless coordination wherever possible, through horizontal or stigmergic organization, while guaranteeing that, in all cases where some **agreed-upon policy is required, the decision be made democratically.
the thing is.. today we have the means to just do *this..
and anything compromising that.. ie **policy.. decision making.. all the cancerous distractionet al.. won’t get to the root of problem
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
The problem lies with those on the right, who are viscerally anti-democracy, and who embrace exit to the near or entire exclusion of voice. Despite the tendency of such people to identify as “libertarian,” *there is simply no way that a world organized along the lines of exit, with no democracy at the places where people actually exist at any given time, can be capable of genuine freedom. No matter how distributed, how permissionless or stigmergically organized a society, there will be some irreducible nodes — workplaces, public utilities or microgrids, cohousing units, etc. — that must be governed by a single policy. **The only alternative to voice is to turn each of those nodes into a feudal domain where all decisions reflect the will of the owner, and everyone else is a subject who can either submit or leave.
*we actually don’t know this.. because the thing we’ve not yet tried could/would make those irrelevant s
again.. the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
**hard to say an alt to voice.. when we haven’t yet heard/seen legit voice.. ie: everything to date has been whalespeak..
need 1st/most: means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs
*We can see this, in the real world, with the actual authoritarian tendencies of the biggest promoters of exit-based models. In practice, such models quickly devolve into techno-feudalism — if they’re not consciously planned as such from the outset.
*all we can/have seen to date: sea world.. we need to be like bruce alexander
ie: need hari rat park law
*A world of all exit and no voice is incompatible with genuine human freedom. Human agency and flourishing — real freedom — requires more than the right to decide which landlord or boss you find it least objectionable to live under. It means the right to a say in the decisions affecting your life where you live now.
*again.. the thing is.. if we had legit voice (itch-in-the-soul) as our ‘data’ .. desire to ‘exit’ would become irrelevant s
hari present in society law et al
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be you. 