I might be biased, but, I'm curious to know if there is any specific part of the Permacomputing Principles page that stands out to you as particularly political above the rest. I don't think the intent is polarisation by any means, but I can see how this sort of movement would be a difficult pill for most to swallow. I still see plenty of value in laying down those grassroots for a future moment when the necessity for permacomputing may become much greater from a survival standpoint, or in the very least, maintenance of some sort of status quo of having people connected and with enough computing resources to continue meaningful work or maintain precious data.
> [...] permacomputing is an anti-capitalist political project. It is driven by several strands of anarchism, decoloniality, intersectional feminism, post-marxism, degrowth, ecologism.
Fair, I was only looking at the page linked in the HN submission.
I guess at this point, I think it's fair to say:
1. They're not the central authority on permacomputing. You can implement the principles however you like. 2. If you find the principles objectionable simply because you saw an explicit statement of political alignment on their main page, maybe that's worth examining within yourself.
That is not on the linked page. Where is it?
https://permacomputing.net/
so tackling emergent discussions on equality and justice of our bloody past is a non-go... why do you think "permacomputing" started to exist in the first place? to make rich people have more durable products? /s
Discussions on colonialism and sustainable computing are completely unrelated topics by themselves (as is post-marxism).
You can advocate for sustainability, right-to-repair, privacy etc. while being strongly capitalist just fine.
The point is that the page puts "correct" political alignment very prominently, excluding a large intersection of people otherwise interested in the non-political parts of the movement.
>You can advocate for sustainability … while being strongly capitalist just fine. […] excluding a large intersection of people otherwise interested in the non-political parts
the far-right is literally trying to make it illegal for companies to say they're taking environmental concerns seriously (i.e. ESG bans in tx, fl, etc). in 2026, sustainability is not apolitical.
(it's _never_ been apolitical but i will spare you that lecture.)
Most of the far-right are idiot contrarians (my personal view) and they have no claim on capitalism.
Just because far-righters are against sustainability does not mean you have to be a post-marxist anarchist (or w/e) just to be for it.
This is probably more of an attempt to make computing relevant to that “intersectional” subset of people who only consider a topic to be relevant if it relates to colonialism in some way.
I mean, not really. You could be somewhat capitalist I suppose, but certainly not "strongly" if for no other reason than that "capitalism" is defined by goals that are inherently misaligned with the others listed (sustainability, right-to-repair, privacy). You could only be capitalist insofar as you believe that companies pursuing those claims will perform better in the market, and even that gets blurry around "right-to-repair" because the word "right" would mean its something the market wouldn't be allowed to alienate you from, so a force outside of capitalism would be enforcing that.