10 ms·

Cheran: The town that threw out police, politicians and gangsters (2016)

162 points by sudoaza 6y ago

restalis 6y ago
This reminds me of "Cartel Land" movie¹, which depicted similar events (in the same Mexican state of Michoacán, BTW) a few years before, mostly around José Manuel Mireles Valverde². ¹ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4126304/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4126304/ ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Mireles_Valverde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Mireles_Valve...
elliekelly 6y ago
> Political parties were banned - and still are - because they were deemed to have caused divisions between people. What an excellent idea.
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  I'm embarrassed that I haven't thought of this much before. Imagine everyone running as independents and Congress being all independents. It could work.
  - frosted-flakes 6y ago
    It's how municipal governments in Ontario work, and the focus in the media really is on the individuals and their actions. Obviously, sometimes it's obvious which party a candidate would belong to if there were parties[1], but that doesn't really matter. Since there are no parties, there can be a larger variety of candidates with different viewpoints that can overlap, rather than just two extremes. And of course, councillors vote individually, which means the mayor has much less power than a party leader (each councillor is free to vote against the mayor at any time). I really like this system, and am curious how it would work on a larger scale. [1]: For example, Toronto mayor John Tory was leader of the Progressive Conservative party in the Ontario legislature from 2005-2007, so it's obvious he'd be a Tory.
    - wolco 6y ago
      But they end up voting in left or right blocks. Since the amount of has been reduced by half you see it more often. John Tory appoints people to positions with higher status and perks (like head of the ttc). To get these positions you agree to support Tory's plan. The few who cross him will get no plum roles if any.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    It doesn't work, because parties offer an advantage, and you can't truly ban them without banning freedom of association. At best, you can ban overt expression of affiliation, so all candidates are nominally independent - but it'll still be obvious who's who.
    - forgingahead 6y ago
      The idea is not to ban any alliances of any sort (which is what happens when independents team up) but rather to strongly avoid groupthink and the not-people-beneficial-but-default actions that a stronger bloc always takes.
      - int_19h 6y ago
        When independents team up for long enough, because they have enough in common, you get a party as well, with all the attendant features. Groupthink doesn't stem from formal affiliation - after all, most people in US who fall into it are not formally members of either party.
- smabie 6y ago
  It sounds like a good idea, but unfortunately it's mathematically unstable and doesn't form any sort of equilibrium (Nash or otherwise). Any participant can gain an advantage by grouping up with one other participant. Once everyone has grouped up into pairs, they will then group up again and again, ultimately creating a two party system.
  - derefr 6y ago
    Why even allow grouping (politically) into pairs? The town could just ban non-politicians from expressing political speech entirely (as a social norm, not a law.) Politicians could still speak politically in the form of campaigning; but they'd not be allowed to make reference to other politicians' positions on things; only to speak about their own beliefs on how things should be/how things should work. For anyone who isn't an actively-campaigning politician, the only political speech you'd be allowed would be (private-ballot) voting. Anything else would get you shunned by the community. (Yes, I realize how ridiculous this sounds.)
    - sbuttgereit 6y ago
      Yet, here you are, a non-politician according to your HN profile, engaging in political speech. To be fair, you're not breaking the law or even a social norm... but it's not consistent with your position. All of the sorts of reasons that motivated you to have an opinion enough to post here are reasons why this wouldn't work. Moreover, where do you draw the line between "layperson" and politician? How does one make the transition? I understand the desire, and appreciate that you see the unreality of the idea... all I can really say in conclusion is... well... nice try.
    - sfifs 6y ago
      If you disallow grouping openly, people will group surreptitiously and the impact will be much the same. Some form of power structure always develops in any grouping of people, whether it is open or hidden and this has been widely documented in anthropology. I think the most famous one was a write-up about power structures in women power movements in the 70s (I forget the author's name) another one more recently examining Valve software.
- irrational 6y ago
  Have you ever read George Washington's farewell address? https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-sources-2/article/washingtons-farewell-address-1796/ https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-sources-2/arti... "I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty. Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another."
  - dash2 6y ago
    Being against parties was a cliché of 18th century thought. Edmund Burke first pointed out that parties could be more than just conspiracies against the public interest: Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.... It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ them with effect. Therefore every honourable connexion will avow it as their first purpose, to pursue every just method to put the men who hold their opinions into such a condition as may enable them to carry their common plans into execution, with all the power and authority of the State. https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/796#Burke_0005-01_348 https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/796#Burke_0005-01_348 Slightly offtopic: it's unfortunate when people, perhaps technically brilliant people, come up with naïve solutions to political problems, showing little awareness that there are long and sophisticated traditions of thinking about these issues.
- konschubert 6y ago
  Political parties can be great for stability and continuity that survive changes in the political personal. Political parties are needed and if you want to enable politicians that aren’t rich and can pay a campaign out of pocket. Show me a country with drama-free, stable governance and i show you a country with strong political parties.
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  Perhaps a simpler move would be to stop party affiliation being published in the ballot paper. Then if you wanted to vote for your local Tory / Republican / whatever you have to look them up, find out their name - and even compare policies. This is not banning parties (Parties do at least have value as stability mechanism) but it discourages blind partisanship at least Edit : it is also testable - one could randomly do this on ballots across nations and watch the outcome. I doubt the null hypothesis is same results as ballots with party affiliation.
- INTPenis 6y ago
  Yeah but if the community comes together and decides to ban another group, aren't they now politicians? And if they then come together and actively drive out a criminal element, aren't they then the police?
  - ajb 6y ago
    Yes, IMO - the minimum possible number of parties is 1.
jrochkind1 6y ago
Anyone have an update of what has happened since 2016?
- int_19h 6y ago
  https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2019-10-07/mushrooms-cheran-mexico-indigenous-revolution https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2019-10-07/mushrooms-cher...
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    Damn, this is the kind of inspiring story I need right now, thanks.
- pjc50 6y ago
  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/after-long-fight-self-government-indigenous-town-cher-n-mexico-n906171 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/after-long-fight-self-go...
int_19h 6y ago
Their method of local organization is very similar to the Zapatistas, or more recently, Rojava - both also shift the focus of governance onto the local level, where it can be done by the community itself as much as possible. The details of the system in Rojava are better documented - they have a written constitution, for starters, but there's also more media scrutiny because of the war, producing some very detailed write-ups. Both can be fascinating to read: https://corporatewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Struggles-for-autonomy-in-Kurdistan.pdf https://corporatewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Strugg... https://www.scribd.com/document/441234886/Social-Contract-of-the-Democratic-Federation-of-Northern-Syria https://www.scribd.com/document/441234886/Social-Contract-of...
- clarkevans 6y ago
  They are treating the forest as a common pool resource; see "Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action" by Elinor Ostrom.
- cultus 6y ago
  These systems (most explicitly Rojava) are similar to Murray Bookchin's [0] ideas on libertarian municipalism. Basically, control over economy and environment is mostly devolved to the local level, with citizen's assembly and that sort of thing. It does seem to work well in practice, which is really encouraging. It's obvious now that we need a fundamental reorganization of our political economy for both material well-being and the climate. Something along these lines would probably be the best. The future will hopefully be much, much, more local in physical production and distribution. In such a scenario it would only make sense to keep power democratic and on the local level. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin
  - hippich 6y ago
    I see a lot of parallels between political organizations, organisms, computer systems, etc. A larger system with vertical integration is more efficient at producing the result. In our life it manifests itself in affordable mobile phones, being able to launch a satellite, small amount of time necessary to understand contractual expectations, etc. But the larger the system - higher are the stakes if something goes wrong - eg. economy in 2000 -> 2008 -> 2020. In nature usually there are external factors that seem to do well at keeping systems from growing too much. I wonder what could be an equivalent in the political environment (without Darwinism and constant death of many to find the fittest ones).
Nevada-Smith 6y ago
May as well throw out the lawyers too.
- justnotworthit 6y ago
  according to the latimes article they essentially did, punishing and making up law as they go.
pnako 6y ago
... with guns. Just sayin'
- fit2rule 6y ago
  ahem Machetes.
- huragok 6y ago
  “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”
- _bxg1 6y ago
  Last I checked the United States isn't an anarchy with roving bands of unopposed, murderous gangs.
  - pnako 6y ago
    Well, it depends who you ask. My original post is slightly provocative, I admit, but I think there is a real debate regarding this issue. To me, it seems to validate the need for citizens to be well armed, preferably before it's too late.
    - welder 6y ago
      They weren't armed. They only had machetes, "In those early days, we didn't know anything about using guns." I grew up with tons of guns, you don't have guns and at the same time know nothing about them. Had they guns they would have used em instead of shooting fireworks at the gangsters.
      - pnako 6y ago
        Sure, and that kind of confirms my point, doesn't it?
        welder 6y ago
        What? Are you trolling?
anigbrowl 6y ago
Expect to see this model spread in the years to come. It has a lot of potential, though I'm not sure it's easily adaptable to non-agrarian economies.
pjc50 6y ago
Radical, indigenous, feminist, anti-colonial, self-organising. I think that's the real lesson, that almost all the problems were brought in from outside by exploiters and that the armed decolonization of the town was the real liberation. It's not an ideal situation: you can't have a zero party state, that always turns into a one party state. The actual situation of control will turn out to be a set of family relationships embedded in the matriarchy running the town, but analysing this will be impossible for journalists. It's also why it's very difficult to replicate.
- asdkjh345fd 6y ago
  >Radical, indigenous, feminist, anti-colonial, self-organising. According to the BBC's laughable propaganda. Not according to any of the people actually involved. Even then there's nothing colonial about Mexican cartels stealing from Mexicans. >The actual situation of control will turn out to be a set of family relationships embedded in the matriarchy running the town What a bizarre notion. Why and how would that suddenly occur?
  - joshuaissac 6y ago
    >According to the BBC's laughable propaganda. Not according to any of the people actually involved. Also not according to the BBC, since the article does not contain any of the words you attributed to its propaganda, except "indigenous".
    - asdkjh345fd 6y ago
      It doesn't need to contain the words. It clearly and repeatedly portrays this as some kind of women's movement, when it is not.
      - joshuaissac 6y ago
        That the uprising was started by women is corroborated by other, older sources as well,[1] and is not a misportrayal by the BBC. That Cheran is populated by the indigenous Purépecha people is also supported by other sources, including the Mexican legal system that upheld the town's autonomy. I cannot find anything else in the article that would support what you are saying. Can you provide some quotations? 1. https://www.wired.com/2013/05/cheran-uprising/ https://www.wired.com/2013/05/cheran-uprising/
shadowprofile77 6y ago
The commentary here seems to miss a certain basic point about the situation with Cheran (and many other regions of Mexico, where I live, that are controlled by autodefensas groups and other types of local vigilante security groupings). What the people of Cheran did is worthy of applause, because it brought some measure of peace in the middle of a desperate situation of insecurity, extreme violence and governments that at both the federal and state level are almost catastrophically corrupt on guaranteeing security. However, for this very reason it's a sad thing to see. The single most basic debt to society that a government owes in return for paying taxes and agreeing to its rule is a monopoly on violence that's fair and sufficient enough to prevent rampant criminality, yet Mexico suffers from the latter so severely that large swathes of the country are firmly outside the government's supposed rule of law, and make small towns and regions have no choice but to take measures like these. Who knows how sustainable this is, or its long term ramifications. What it definitely does do is further weaken that same government's capacity for reestablishing its main responsibility. The government of Mexico of course knows this, and so do the state governments that supposedly have authority over places like Cheran. For this reason (and for reasons of extreme corruption) they not only resent vigilante efforts like these or any attempts by private citizen groups to defend themselves with weapons or by other means, but also often actively, violently try to impede them "legally" despite not being able to replace these localized security measures with a useful reformation of their own. This is done under the pretext that non-state armed security groupings are dangerous to public safety, but curiously, the same efforts at curbing heavily armed groups outside the law seem to evaporate when it comes to curbing the power and rampant impunity of cartels that also control whole regions much more viciously. One of the reasons why? Unlike the people of Cheran or many private citizen defense groups, these cartels are typically colluding with the same politicians that claim armed vigilante activity as dangerous. The cartels also have their own similar reasons for disliking armed civilians who tend to retake peace from corrupt gangsters and politicians.
baybal2 6y ago
From my experience growing up in Russia, I can say that no organised crime can exist without somebody providing them legal cover. Think this way: even a single caught gang member can spill the beans on the whole group. Eventually, as the gang grows, it happens.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  I always thought organized crime works in such a way that, at any given layer, a person could only provide evidence of criminal activity of their peers at the same layer, and maybe a bit of dirt on their bosses a layer above - but they couldn't bring enough legally admissible evidence to impact the higher layers. So if a random bottom-tier gangster starts to testify, everyone above them on the ladder just denies knowing them (and each other). The legal system can't proceed, and meanwhile someone from the gangster's family suffers a fatal "accident".
  - baybal2 6y ago
    > legally admissible evidence to impact the higher layers. This does not prevent the police from getting on their tail, putting them under intense surveillance, and effectively neutralising them.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      If a single testimony could cause everyone mentioned in it to be subject to intense government scrutiny, then society would stop working because griefers would abuse it.
      - pjc50 6y ago
        Ah, you've heard of swatting and the Church commission. (The secret is that police have a huge "bayesian" filter for who they consider likely to be a criminal, so little or nothing can trigger intense scrutiny for some people whereas blatant criminality by "respectable" people is ignored)
Proven 6y ago
Excellent private government story

162 points by sudoaza 6y ago

This reminds me of "Cartel Land" movie¹, which depicted similar events (in the same Mexican state of Michoacán, BTW) a few years before, mostly around José Manuel Mireles Valverde². ¹ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4126304/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4126304/ ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Mireles_Valverde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Mireles_Valve...

elliekelly 6y ago

> Political parties were banned - and still are - because they were deemed to have caused divisions between people. What an excellent idea.

Waterluvian 6y ago
I'm embarrassed that I haven't thought of this much before. Imagine everyone running as independents and Congress being all independents. It could work.
- frosted-flakes 6y ago
  It's how municipal governments in Ontario work, and the focus in the media really is on the individuals and their actions. Obviously, sometimes it's obvious which party a candidate would belong to if there were parties[1], but that doesn't really matter. Since there are no parties, there can be a larger variety of candidates with different viewpoints that can overlap, rather than just two extremes. And of course, councillors vote individually, which means the mayor has much less power than a party leader (each councillor is free to vote against the mayor at any time). I really like this system, and am curious how it would work on a larger scale. [1]: For example, Toronto mayor John Tory was leader of the Progressive Conservative party in the Ontario legislature from 2005-2007, so it's obvious he'd be a Tory.
  - wolco 6y ago
    But they end up voting in left or right blocks. Since the amount of has been reduced by half you see it more often. John Tory appoints people to positions with higher status and perks (like head of the ttc). To get these positions you agree to support Tory's plan. The few who cross him will get no plum roles if any.
- int_19h 6y ago
  It doesn't work, because parties offer an advantage, and you can't truly ban them without banning freedom of association. At best, you can ban overt expression of affiliation, so all candidates are nominally independent - but it'll still be obvious who's who.
  - forgingahead 6y ago
    The idea is not to ban any alliances of any sort (which is what happens when independents team up) but rather to strongly avoid groupthink and the not-people-beneficial-but-default actions that a stronger bloc always takes.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      When independents team up for long enough, because they have enough in common, you get a party as well, with all the attendant features. Groupthink doesn't stem from formal affiliation - after all, most people in US who fall into it are not formally members of either party.
smabie 6y ago
It sounds like a good idea, but unfortunately it's mathematically unstable and doesn't form any sort of equilibrium (Nash or otherwise). Any participant can gain an advantage by grouping up with one other participant. Once everyone has grouped up into pairs, they will then group up again and again, ultimately creating a two party system.
- derefr 6y ago
  Why even allow grouping (politically) into pairs? The town could just ban non-politicians from expressing political speech entirely (as a social norm, not a law.) Politicians could still speak politically in the form of campaigning; but they'd not be allowed to make reference to other politicians' positions on things; only to speak about their own beliefs on how things should be/how things should work. For anyone who isn't an actively-campaigning politician, the only political speech you'd be allowed would be (private-ballot) voting. Anything else would get you shunned by the community. (Yes, I realize how ridiculous this sounds.)
  - sbuttgereit 6y ago
    Yet, here you are, a non-politician according to your HN profile, engaging in political speech. To be fair, you're not breaking the law or even a social norm... but it's not consistent with your position. All of the sorts of reasons that motivated you to have an opinion enough to post here are reasons why this wouldn't work. Moreover, where do you draw the line between "layperson" and politician? How does one make the transition? I understand the desire, and appreciate that you see the unreality of the idea... all I can really say in conclusion is... well... nice try.
  - sfifs 6y ago
    If you disallow grouping openly, people will group surreptitiously and the impact will be much the same. Some form of power structure always develops in any grouping of people, whether it is open or hidden and this has been widely documented in anthropology. I think the most famous one was a write-up about power structures in women power movements in the 70s (I forget the author's name) another one more recently examining Valve software.
irrational 6y ago
Have you ever read George Washington's farewell address? https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-sources-2/article/washingtons-farewell-address-1796/ https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-sources-2/arti... "I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty. Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another."
- dash2 6y ago
  Being against parties was a cliché of 18th century thought. Edmund Burke first pointed out that parties could be more than just conspiracies against the public interest: Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.... It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ them with effect. Therefore every honourable connexion will avow it as their first purpose, to pursue every just method to put the men who hold their opinions into such a condition as may enable them to carry their common plans into execution, with all the power and authority of the State. https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/796#Burke_0005-01_348 https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/796#Burke_0005-01_348 Slightly offtopic: it's unfortunate when people, perhaps technically brilliant people, come up with naïve solutions to political problems, showing little awareness that there are long and sophisticated traditions of thinking about these issues.
konschubert 6y ago
Political parties can be great for stability and continuity that survive changes in the political personal. Political parties are needed and if you want to enable politicians that aren’t rich and can pay a campaign out of pocket. Show me a country with drama-free, stable governance and i show you a country with strong political parties.
lifeisstillgood 6y ago
Perhaps a simpler move would be to stop party affiliation being published in the ballot paper. Then if you wanted to vote for your local Tory / Republican / whatever you have to look them up, find out their name - and even compare policies. This is not banning parties (Parties do at least have value as stability mechanism) but it discourages blind partisanship at least Edit : it is also testable - one could randomly do this on ballots across nations and watch the outcome. I doubt the null hypothesis is same results as ballots with party affiliation.
INTPenis 6y ago
Yeah but if the community comes together and decides to ban another group, aren't they now politicians? And if they then come together and actively drive out a criminal element, aren't they then the police?
- ajb 6y ago
  Yes, IMO - the minimum possible number of parties is 1.

jrochkind1 6y ago

Anyone have an update of what has happened since 2016?

int_19h 6y ago
https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2019-10-07/mushrooms-cheran-mexico-indigenous-revolution https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2019-10-07/mushrooms-cher...
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  Damn, this is the kind of inspiring story I need right now, thanks.
pjc50 6y ago
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/after-long-fight-self-government-indigenous-town-cher-n-mexico-n906171 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/after-long-fight-self-go...

int_19h 6y ago

Their method of local organization is very similar to the Zapatistas, or more recently, Rojava - both also shift the focus of governance onto the local level, where it can be done by the community itself as much as possible. The details of the system in Rojava are better documented - they have a written constitution, for starters, but there's also more media scrutiny because of the war, producing some very detailed write-ups. Both can be fascinating to read: https://corporatewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Struggles-for-autonomy-in-Kurdistan.pdf https://corporatewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Strugg... https://www.scribd.com/document/441234886/Social-Contract-of-the-Democratic-Federation-of-Northern-Syria https://www.scribd.com/document/441234886/Social-Contract-of...

clarkevans 6y ago
They are treating the forest as a common pool resource; see "Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action" by Elinor Ostrom.
cultus 6y ago
These systems (most explicitly Rojava) are similar to Murray Bookchin's [0] ideas on libertarian municipalism. Basically, control over economy and environment is mostly devolved to the local level, with citizen's assembly and that sort of thing. It does seem to work well in practice, which is really encouraging. It's obvious now that we need a fundamental reorganization of our political economy for both material well-being and the climate. Something along these lines would probably be the best. The future will hopefully be much, much, more local in physical production and distribution. In such a scenario it would only make sense to keep power democratic and on the local level. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin
- hippich 6y ago
  I see a lot of parallels between political organizations, organisms, computer systems, etc. A larger system with vertical integration is more efficient at producing the result. In our life it manifests itself in affordable mobile phones, being able to launch a satellite, small amount of time necessary to understand contractual expectations, etc. But the larger the system - higher are the stakes if something goes wrong - eg. economy in 2000 -> 2008 -> 2020. In nature usually there are external factors that seem to do well at keeping systems from growing too much. I wonder what could be an equivalent in the political environment (without Darwinism and constant death of many to find the fittest ones).

Nevada-Smith 6y ago

May as well throw out the lawyers too.

justnotworthit 6y ago
according to the latimes article they essentially did, punishing and making up law as they go.

pnako 6y ago

... with guns. Just sayin'

fit2rule 6y ago
ahem Machetes.
huragok 6y ago
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”
_bxg1 6y ago
Last I checked the United States isn't an anarchy with roving bands of unopposed, murderous gangs.
- pnako 6y ago
  Well, it depends who you ask. My original post is slightly provocative, I admit, but I think there is a real debate regarding this issue. To me, it seems to validate the need for citizens to be well armed, preferably before it's too late.
  - welder 6y ago
    They weren't armed. They only had machetes, "In those early days, we didn't know anything about using guns." I grew up with tons of guns, you don't have guns and at the same time know nothing about them. Had they guns they would have used em instead of shooting fireworks at the gangsters.
    - pnako 6y ago
      Sure, and that kind of confirms my point, doesn't it?
      - welder 6y ago
        What? Are you trolling?

anigbrowl 6y ago

Expect to see this model spread in the years to come. It has a lot of potential, though I'm not sure it's easily adaptable to non-agrarian economies.

pjc50 6y ago

Radical, indigenous, feminist, anti-colonial, self-organising. I think that's the real lesson, that almost all the problems were brought in from outside by exploiters and that the armed decolonization of the town was the real liberation. It's not an ideal situation: you can't have a zero party state, that always turns into a one party state. The actual situation of control will turn out to be a set of family relationships embedded in the matriarchy running the town, but analysing this will be impossible for journalists. It's also why it's very difficult to replicate.

asdkjh345fd 6y ago
>Radical, indigenous, feminist, anti-colonial, self-organising. According to the BBC's laughable propaganda. Not according to any of the people actually involved. Even then there's nothing colonial about Mexican cartels stealing from Mexicans. >The actual situation of control will turn out to be a set of family relationships embedded in the matriarchy running the town What a bizarre notion. Why and how would that suddenly occur?
- joshuaissac 6y ago
  >According to the BBC's laughable propaganda. Not according to any of the people actually involved. Also not according to the BBC, since the article does not contain any of the words you attributed to its propaganda, except "indigenous".
  - asdkjh345fd 6y ago
    It doesn't need to contain the words. It clearly and repeatedly portrays this as some kind of women's movement, when it is not.
    - joshuaissac 6y ago
      That the uprising was started by women is corroborated by other, older sources as well,[1] and is not a misportrayal by the BBC. That Cheran is populated by the indigenous Purépecha people is also supported by other sources, including the Mexican legal system that upheld the town's autonomy. I cannot find anything else in the article that would support what you are saying. Can you provide some quotations? 1. https://www.wired.com/2013/05/cheran-uprising/ https://www.wired.com/2013/05/cheran-uprising/

shadowprofile77 6y ago

The commentary here seems to miss a certain basic point about the situation with Cheran (and many other regions of Mexico, where I live, that are controlled by autodefensas groups and other types of local vigilante security groupings). What the people of Cheran did is worthy of applause, because it brought some measure of peace in the middle of a desperate situation of insecurity, extreme violence and governments that at both the federal and state level are almost catastrophically corrupt on guaranteeing security. However, for this very reason it's a sad thing to see. The single most basic debt to society that a government owes in return for paying taxes and agreeing to its rule is a monopoly on violence that's fair and sufficient enough to prevent rampant criminality, yet Mexico suffers from the latter so severely that large swathes of the country are firmly outside the government's supposed rule of law, and make small towns and regions have no choice but to take measures like these. Who knows how sustainable this is, or its long term ramifications. What it definitely does do is further weaken that same government's capacity for reestablishing its main responsibility. The government of Mexico of course knows this, and so do the state governments that supposedly have authority over places like Cheran. For this reason (and for reasons of extreme corruption) they not only resent vigilante efforts like these or any attempts by private citizen groups to defend themselves with weapons or by other means, but also often actively, violently try to impede them "legally" despite not being able to replace these localized security measures with a useful reformation of their own. This is done under the pretext that non-state armed security groupings are dangerous to public safety, but curiously, the same efforts at curbing heavily armed groups outside the law seem to evaporate when it comes to curbing the power and rampant impunity of cartels that also control whole regions much more viciously. One of the reasons why? Unlike the people of Cheran or many private citizen defense groups, these cartels are typically colluding with the same politicians that claim armed vigilante activity as dangerous. The cartels also have their own similar reasons for disliking armed civilians who tend to retake peace from corrupt gangsters and politicians.

baybal2 6y ago

From my experience growing up in Russia, I can say that no organised crime can exist without somebody providing them legal cover. Think this way: even a single caught gang member can spill the beans on the whole group. Eventually, as the gang grows, it happens.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
I always thought organized crime works in such a way that, at any given layer, a person could only provide evidence of criminal activity of their peers at the same layer, and maybe a bit of dirt on their bosses a layer above - but they couldn't bring enough legally admissible evidence to impact the higher layers. So if a random bottom-tier gangster starts to testify, everyone above them on the ladder just denies knowing them (and each other). The legal system can't proceed, and meanwhile someone from the gangster's family suffers a fatal "accident".
- baybal2 6y ago
  > legally admissible evidence to impact the higher layers. This does not prevent the police from getting on their tail, putting them under intense surveillance, and effectively neutralising them.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    If a single testimony could cause everyone mentioned in it to be subject to intense government scrutiny, then society would stop working because griefers would abuse it.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      Ah, you've heard of swatting and the Church commission. (The secret is that police have a huge "bayesian" filter for who they consider likely to be a criminal, so little or nothing can trigger intense scrutiny for some people whereas blatant criminality by "respectable" people is ignored)

Proven 6y ago

Excellent private government story