how would an anarchist society take care of the sewer system?

Question

an anarchist society would have no capitalism to reward people with private property and no state to pass laws obliging people to take care of it(either making them work or making them pay for it)how would the infrastructure be organised.

Comments

our main toilet is currently backed up and unresponsive to snaking, so this question is suddenly relevant to my interests.

Answer 1

ever heard of a composting toilet?

Comments

idk, the outhouse = too much technology, so these are out. from The Ecocentric Viewpoint, perhaps a hole under a tree where fruit drops into one's hand on a regular basis so as the 'person' acts as both a break-fall for the fruit and a speedier method of composting for the tree. human life as compost tube. no relationships of domination...except, maybe the hole digging? (gulp!)

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Haha, i actually like the idea....well, if the prol said "fuck my job" all the sudden and forced everyone i knew to de-technologize, id be the last to bitch about doing stuff like that, compost toilets arent too pleasant anyways. try building one without a hardware store

but how the fuck would we fight the cops (who are getting more militarized for profit everyday) or the asshole rednecks(also buying more guns) with rocks?!

i guess thats when we declare anarchism a beautiful failure and sing we will overcome while they rape our little piggy butts next to the river we kayak down?! OH GOD LETS STOCK UP!

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composting toilets are bourgie rustic bullshit. all plastic, need venting, turning mechanisms, all that good shit (pun intended?).

i have an outhouse with a comfy toilet seat over a bucket. i dump the bucket into a humanure bin (with other stuff to create good compost). i wouldn't use it on food (at least not for several years), but it's great on all kinds of non-edible plant life.

or for making gifts for enemies.

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we already know there's mud-hut and rat haters lurking on @101. gawd, wut will they say about outhouses and humanure?

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outhouses are fucking blue that's what ill say about that...i mean, that pretty much encompasses all my feelings about them.

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oh and all seriousness...my asshole fucking chafes if i don't wash it thoroughly on a regular basis...w/o running water would be unpleasant at least for a while :-/ its all because i have such a harry ass i think...

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Using human poop as a fertilizer is fairly safe after composting it. I suppose treating it would make it more safe. I've never used it myself, but the Chinese have used it for thousands of years. It's sometimes referred to as "night soil," but I forgot why.

@rs666 have you tried baby powder? It may cut down on the chafing and leave you smelling fresh!

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@rs666: lol! you gave me a great laugh, even after i realized harry is not someone with a model ass.

but what do you mean by "blue" in this case? outhouses make you sad?

 

@human: exactly, humanure takes longer to fully compost (if one is being safe), due to all the additional pathogens (etc) in human shit. it's gotta cook like a motherfucker!  i have seen humanure that became the most beautiful black dirt i ever saw. you can also do various things to speed up the process, but i am a lazy fuck, so i just let it cook. i don't know about "treating it", never done that (nor would i).

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No its cuz i think of those gross outhouses at cocerts and shit, but i realize you mean constructed ones

oh and the chaffing...it really only happens in the summer it has to do with the sweat, but not showering would suck...

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oh also @funky: would boiling it work?

also, i just realized something funny....when i commented on this answer, i was actually thinking of a composting toilet as an outhouse where you use the shit
As compost....i remembered earlier that i saw a picture of it in my "sustainable development" class in college, no matter i was confused when you all said it was techno and bourgie!

That sust dev class was horrible! One time she handed out an essay where an arrogant college student said his radical counterparts in the env movement and ppl should just work with tge institutions

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"ppl should just work with tge institutions"

this is the kind of bland middle-class (non-compostable) crap which is spread on anything radical budding where i live as well. sustainability= (sanctioned) liberal ngo's + governmental bureaucracies - smashysmash - honest appraisal of the dire situation at hand + heaping handful of progressive back-patting. mckibben's kids through and through. irritating.

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While composting toilets are a technology well suited to anarchy (as sewer systems are well suited to states), I don't think this answer sufficiently addresses the issues at hand, if only because it's limited in scope by the circumstances of different environments. Additionally the body of the question seems to want a broader discussion of public goods (this seems like the common phenomenon where an aggressive interlocutor poses a specific question meant to address a general phenomenon, but many solutions are not generalizable. The questioner assumes no answer exists because their focus is on a, perhaps misleading, generalization). Surely there are plenty of discussions on this site where the problem of infrastructure is addressed in a more encompassing way. Does anyone have a favorite? Perhaps it's time for a new discussion of what technologies are enabled by what types of organization?

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and that student was braggin because he convinced the school president to have organic food in the cafeteria. During that class, i said that you need to bring up the bigger more root issues in order to change things, and the teacher and the students chimed in and said we need to go through "the proper channels", as if that's some sort of response to what i was saying!

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also, i want to add that such a position on changing the world by working with institutions is pretty much like saying "it's best to change the world by not complaining about what's wrong with it, and accepting things as they are", which is pretty absurd double think logic logic. Basically, our only position in life is to be sweet little submissive worker bees who can only ask for things politely, and always be satisfied with our master's desires.

Not only was the teacher in the class delusional, she also was a very harsh grader and I failed the class (which says a lot, cuz even though I never spent much time on studying, I only failed two college classes and i don't think i ever failed a class in high school). So....delusional, and very adament about the importance of her delusions! At least it doesn't directly lead to the murder thousands of black people like for the cops.

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@rs666:  lol! those blue porta-potties! yeah, not exactly what i think of as an outhouse. those are basically chemical toilets, best i recall.

as for boiling, that might work (i forget what temperature is ideal for killing pathogens), but why? for that matter, how? typically humanure has other stuff in it, like lime, straw, ash, toilet paper, other compost, etc. boiling a 5 gallon bucket (or more) of all that doesn't sound like fun. especially when nature will take care of it just fine, given the time and minimal conditions.

Answer 2

my anarchist world would not have sewer systems.

sewer systems are one of the most egregious wastes of water on this planet (perhaps only surpassed by golf courses). they are only necessary due to the "perpetual growth" and "economy of scale" paradigms that underlie capitalism, and lead humans to cluster so unhealthily into cities.