Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 1)

[benji]

Nepenthe’s Utopia sounds less communist and more like a bohemian wet dream. 

“I don’t want to be forced to work but I will have easy access to restaurants, clubs, pharmacies, etc.”

Feels more like she doesn’t want to work at all, her idea of “giving back to the community” is so fucking vague that may be “drawing furry porn”.

She's never asked the simplest question about her central premise: "where does the stuff come from?"

Think about it, where does Nepenthe, the furry artist, get the means to replace or supply the maintenance for the carrot she takes? She doesn't care even though she asserts:

You don't have a menial job to go to at a certain time anymore, working for a boss, although you are expected to reasonably pitch in towards the maintenance of the utilities and resources you want to access within your community. Ex. You take from a public garden then you better make sure you're putting back what you took for the next person who comes along somehow, either through time spent cultivating it or providing resources for its maintenance.

You have to supply the "utilities and resources" even if you're completely incapable. And I don't mean that you can't work (will she force Shreds to?), I mean that like literally I couldn't supply medical resources or electricity to the community. I can supply money because that facilitates the trade among those who can supply those things. But Nepenthe demands no trade in her system, that's capitalism.

Like Marx, she's getting rid of the thing that facilitates everything then trying to recreate it from scratch with some kind of ledger of everything you've ever done in your life. That the community has to monitor and force you to make good on.

She doesn't realize the next part of her "story" either has the same issue of supply:

Libraries of the commons would also be a more fundamental public service where you can have access to the tools and items you may need without having to necessarily go and buy them; people donate usable but unwanted "things" (cookware, furniture, lawn equipment, clothing, etc.) and you rent this like you would a book at a library, and bring it back when you're done.

Why assume the supply of things will match what people don't want instead of just being junk? Why allow "property" at all instead of just having a community supply of things? What happens if somebody doesn't bring it back? Or monopolizes it? Sure that might be them being greedy, but what if they're the best cook? Can I demand return of the cookware even though this harms the entire community if I cook instead of them? What if I want to use it to make what I want but he won't make? Look at the endless series of questions that need to be answered. Constantly. For everyone.

Btw, like all her suggestions over the years, these exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_things

She suggests property exists too in the next part:

Housing would be more mixed; closer quarters where most amenities (bars and restaurants, clubs, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc.) are within walking or biking distance. And so long as a spot or joint is free and fits your living needs, you can claim it as your home so long as you promise to abide by whatever community and/or local ordinances exist there.

Shouldn't "free" and "fits your living needs" and "claim it as your home" all be decided by the community? What about the amenities that aren't located within walking distance? What about factories or power plants or chemical plants? They simply don't exist, but yet the bars and restaurants and pharmacies are all supplied somehow. Even though all of those things have to take from the collective resources and somehow return them. So a bar has to both use and produce alcohol. That pharmacy has to supply medicine back to the community in equivalents to what it takes, so it needs its own supply of medicine? She says the "resources" but what resources? Can these places charge money? If they can charge money and trade what's the purpose of the collective storehouse and ledger? We're already back to capitalism with both trade and property?

But, oh, don't worry, she's "solved" all these questions too:

Political organization would be expressed through a consensus based form of representation. Everyone is encouraged to participate in local meetings to address grievances, and goals and demands are reached through discussion and consensus and delivered to a higher presiding body by a representative who is voted on by the chosen body.

This is literally gibberish. It's not a complete thought. What does "higher presiding body and chosen body" even mean? Why is there even a higher presiding body? To do what? Can it reject the consensus of the community? Then why even do all that? What happens when there's no consensus? If we need consensus then why can someone just take from the community storehouse? Why can someone take from the library of things? What if the consensus is that no, you don't need to take a carrot? Her decision making system has piled even more questions on top of our earlier questions.

You wake up, get yourself together, and essentially go about your day however you choose without the threat of coercive labor forcing you to do shit you don't really want to do. You wanna hang at the local bar with your friends, take a trip into the wilderness, etc. then go for it. Be merry. If you wish to use a public service in society, get groceries and supplies, or anything else, it is simply mandated that you maintain and use it responsibly and return it back for the rest of the community to use too. It's not too horrible, is it?

She doesn't even realize this is a threat of coercive labor. If you don't return to the community, they're obviously going to force you to. She doesn't say this either because she knows she has to either go with mass policing or she's simply too stupid to realize she needs mass policing for this. Based on her other posts about policing, I believe it's the latter. She imagines it's possible for everyone to just do whatever they want, take whatever they want and this to all somehow "balance" out in making sure the supply of everything is completely maintained exactly as global capitalism does now. That somehow the manna will continue to provide because that's just what happens.

In other words, like she said:

In many ways, it is like a lot of children's cartoons for the 80s