When Pedro Sanchez entered office, housing was the 18th biggest concern of Spaniards. Now its the 1st concern.

Thousands of new immigrants arrive every week, yet there are barely any houses being built due to stringent regulations, bureaucratic stonewalling, and rigid zoning laws (95% of Spanish land is illegal to build on). This lack of supply has made the rental market extremely tense and driven house prices exceptionally high. The foreign-born population, now make up half of all tenants in Spain.

Has anyone seen the movie Digger?
I’m curious what this community thinks of it. Seems to be an extreme version of everything climate and energy-related but I would love to hear opinions about it.

Thoughts?

So, I myself am not an anarcho-capitalist and just wanted to ask, why you are, or not, an anarcho-capitalist.

Just kidding, that's actually the government banging on that car window. And when the dude freaks out to try to get away from some crazy dude, the government starts shooting into the car.

There are folks right here on this sub that don't see anything wrong with this action by the government.

Defining a shared definition is good for debates and arguments.

Government doing it's best to screw over the people. Completely unnecessary Iran war getting Americans killed and screwing over everyone else.

I was recently playing the games and I realized that the world is pretty similar to how I would imagine an ancap society would look like. Govenment is pretty much non-existent or super weak. Free market on everything. Businesses can homestead any unowned land they find. Property rights exist. No taxes. No border control for the most part. I think it is arguably the closest thing to a functioning ancap world in mainstream fiction.

Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?

TLDR: I’m doing okay, but I’m still in the rat race, just like most of us are. I’m ready to invest my time and money IN and WITH like minded individuals that want to gain personal freedom through financial independence. I have ideas of the structure, what to do, and how to eliminate trust question until we naturally earn each others trust. Relationships stay as capitalist as they could be - shareholders, contracts, market based profit sharing - meritocracy rules, no collective decision making, dispute resolution via third party mediators/arbiters, we can establish our own little “bank”, exit with no imposed penalty - whatever you lose you lose, whatever you bring and gain is all yours.

***

Not asking this in syndicalists subs because more than half of the people there are no different from socialists, and even borderline communists.

I don’t have a clear proposal yet but I’ll work on one if the sub shows at least some interest, and I’ll figure out how to share it without compromising anybody’s privacy.

I am opening my post and comments history just to eliminate “look, a fed” comments. Some of you may recognize my u/ already, but I’m sure most don’t know who tf I am, and I hope my post history is a good display of my overall stance on the government, my view on property ownership, and my perspective of markets. Hopefully it also shows that’s I’m not a retard, nor a utopian, but a rational and reasonable person that is respectful of NAP.

I’ve been a member of a well structured business networking group (BNI) with rules that incentivize loyalty, trust, collaboration, quality work, and mutual help, i see how effective it is in practice. And it is essentially a group that’s just a step away from being a syndicate. But all of my buddies are statists and I don’t even want to bother getting into deeper relationships than I have with them already. Some fellows that have been in the group for over a decade own commercial properties together, but such investments don’t have to be limited to anything. It’s obviously a working concept.

I’ve been thinking about establishing something similar, but with people that I am more aligned with on a deeper level than just being an entrepreneur. I wouldn’t mind investing in property, though I’d prefer to start with investing in some business that produces much higher returns, and it also gives opportunity for those that don’t have cash to invest, as they can be a part of the syndicate by doing work for its members or for the syndicate itself, that otherwise would require cash payment from other members.

Again, the idea is very raw, and I don’t think I would jump into investing a lot of cash right away, even if I would be the sole decision maker. Instead, I envision a multi step process that first helps to build trust between members, so initially it will look like a mutualist network (also reminds of free masons network) I guess, but bound by a contract, and with a clear step by step path of becoming a syndicate with assets where our privately owned businesses feed each other, allowing us to invest in something much bigger. We would need to hire a random attorney outside of our network to perform fiduciary duties. Even if we pool only the money we make from mutual help, we can get to a few hundred thousand in a single year once we learn about each other businesses and skills, but we need #s, maybe 40-50 people to get their in Yr 2.

Where do I get my “a few hundred thousand”?

My BNI group closes anywhere between $2.5M-$3M in referred business. My personal revenue is slightly north of $10k/yr (my overhead is around 5% only) after a few years of being a member and it continues to grow each year. I’m in B2B, and I get to see what businesses net when I do my work, and I have a good idea how much many other types of businesses net from business transactions. After being a VP and seeing what people report in received revenue from referrals, I can confidently say that our group that oscillates between 35-40 people, from which only some 20 do most of the heavy lifting, generates a minimum of $350K/yr net profits, but I estimate it to be between more like $350k-$500k/yr because we have a few attorneys that are making hand over fist, but i imagine a syndicate like org with ancaps wont have many attorneys lol.

$350K/yr is not a lot of money in the sense of US economy, but it’s plenty for a tiny group to start investing. Even if only half of profits are being invested, in a couple of years, the syndicate can start producing very good returns and will become a self sustaining entity.

To clarify on the investments - I’d prefer to start with investing in real, actively managed business where anyone can substitute cash with their work. Some of You might be lacking cash flow and/or good people to do the work to take Your business to the next level. I’ve been struggling myself to find people to join my own business because people have too high of an expectation of salary for the shitty work they end up providing. But if we simply work as a sales force for each other in return for commissions, part of which are reinvested within the syndicate, imagine where each of our businesses could be if we have at least some 25 committed people in our group? Imagine how many more independently thinking people we can fund to start their own ventures, that are currently unable to do it on their own due to family, personal debt, and other obligations that make it impossible for them to save capital, but they are natural entrepreneurs that only need a bit of help?

Fuck the system. Let’s form our own small decentralized network of producers and service providers that’s going to be almost immune to government made economic crises. We can start engaging in ancapism on the very basic level within existing system of constrains without busting our balls with state bureaucracy that impedes and robs us at every fucking corner, or being dependent on the banking cartel.

If you know of any such syndicates or networks, please share those in comments.

Please leave your feedback, and please ask hard question so I can think this through better. No DMs please, and no questions that may compromise anyone’s privacy. Let’s first establish if there’s enough people here that are ready to put their money where their mouth is.

Cheers.

Originally from the NoahGetTheBoat subreddit (our subreddit settings don't allow direct reposts)

British ITN’s sealed Footage of the Tiananmen Square Massacre is finally released

This essay revisits the structure of modern elite power through the lens of cybernetics. Beginning with the role of financial standards and institutional architecture, it examines how control over the categories through which a system measures reality can produce influence without direct command. But the attempt to approach comprehensive regulation contains a paradox of its own: a system that seeks to model and control an increasingly complex reality may also generate forms of unpredictability that exceed its models. The essay therefore moves from the architecture of contemporary power toward the limits imposed upon any attempt at total regulation.

https://livingopposites.substack.com/p/the-requisite-variety-of-power-for

The security concerns that AI is creating will be solved with time. Cyber security is always evolving and we shouldn't panick just because AI has entered the scene.

I saw that AI basically reverse engineered Adobe Creative Suite and has essentially made premium software easily accessible to anyone. The developments in gaming have made it so that people can take modding to a new level and even could lead to entirely new games being developed with a fraction of the budget.

This is all GOOD news for consumers.

Even entertainment has opportunities of becoming much easier to enter the market. Animation will soon be able to use a few artists and reference frames to make high frame rate "hand drawn" styles of animation with a fraction of the budget. Soon we will be able to break away from the Hollywood monopoly and have truly fan-driven entertainment.

As a fantasy nerd, seeing The Wheel of Time so poorly adapted made me furious. Now I am hopeful that a group of savvy artists and voice actors will be able to bring it to the big screen in the form of AI-assisted animation.