Kind: Notes

"If the cost of gas from a West Siberian giant goes up, so too does the cost of electricity from a lone wind turbine on an independent West Yorkshire farm. It’s how the energy market works, or doesn’t work, depending on your point of view."

?

I’m impressed by latest newsletter from Good Energy (UK energy provider). A lot of talk about decentralisation of energy.

"We’re enslaved to a centralised system that has a bias towards big. Big countries. Big governments. Big industries."

"we continue to lead the dramatic shift towards decentralised energy. Our role will evolve, moving from power supply to help customers […] sell – or give – surplus energy to others."

Good stuff.

I’d much rather you set up a blog category with an RSS feed and I control my subscription to your updates, than you set up an email newsletter, ask for my email, and you control my subscription.
I’m a fan of libertarian municipalism. The construction of isolated pockets of revolutionary efforts at city/town/village level that eventually join up. But isn’t a municipal-level revolution just as prone to being snuffed out as a country level revolution? Maybe more so? Or maybe it’s less so, as it flies under the radar a bit more.

Also isn’t municipal revolution actually really just reform? It’s very unlikely that a city will ‘collapse’ under capitalism and transform into socialism.

Also from the Russian revolution it seems one of the ways it went wrong was lack of contemporary revolutions that were expected in other countries.

Obviously a descent into authoritarianism is where it went most grievously wrong. But seems posited that the shift towards national communism came somewhat from being isolated and turning inwards.

Hard to imagine revolutions bubbling out around countries now though, any rumblings get quickly quashed from outside. (Burkina Faso, Chile, etc etc)

Seems like a good deal of discontent of those struggling at the bottom of society is being successfully diverted with much misdirection towards ‘the other’ – it’s immigrants causing economic strife. It’s China causing climate change. The system would be working fine for you, if these outsiders weren’t corrupting it. Outside of that, working class networks and organising was pretty well dismantled by Thatcher et al. Plus, there’s not industrial revolution levels of destitution.
From what I’m reading of the Russian revolution, it seems like there was a lot of discord across society, like a box of fireworks just waiting for a spark. I imagine that’s the case in most revolutions. For me in the UK, it doesn’t feel like that is the case. The middle classes probably have a vague feeling of malaise, but anything really bad, it’s mostly happening somewhere else in the world. They’re generally OK in their bubble. Even climate change is ‘somewhere else’. No need to revolt.