Discussions about scarcity and anarchism that I’ve seen online seem to always talk about “scarcity in the large”, i.e. how does an anarchist society allocate production, food, labour, materials etc.
I’ve a question about anarchism and scarcity in the small. Say, a really nice location, eg. a breezy location in a very hot climate, or the room with the nice windows in the community centre, or Bag End at the top of the hill. Say, an anarchist community has decided to use the location for purpose X, but a minority wants to use it for purpose Y. Maybe an even smaller minority wants to do Z, and a bunch of other people have their own little ideas about how to use it. Some are transient and could be accommodated (you get it on Tuesdays 5-7) but others might not be (“our sculpture project needs to dry out in that specific spot for the next 4 months, we know it blocks the view but it’s the only place the breeze hits just right!”) or could be contradictory (the siesta people vs the loud backgammon players can’t both use the spot at high noon) or antagonistic (the teenagers who want to party late vs the new parents who need quiet for the babies). And dis-association doesn’t really help here because that’s the nice spot for many kilometers around or there is literally no way to create another beach for our small island community because that’s literally the only place on the island where sand exists, so we can’t just off and leave. (* Many of these examples are imagining a hot summer in an anarchist Greece, sorry it’s almost August.)
It looks to me like a simple non-life-and-death scenario like this could potentially completely poison and destroy a community and in the face of that it would be the little death of anti-authoritarian organizing. Like yea, when life and death matters are at hand, anarchists will band together and conquer the bread. But petty small-scale little shit where it’s managing annoyances and small grievances, I don’t think non-authoritarian decision making can solve. And I suspect it’s crap like this that has killed off many intentional communities and experiments or made them veer away from non-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian organizing.
Have anarchist thinkers seriously thought of this?
Practical answer here: Overall, the aim is to not prevent someone from doing something, so you’re actually checking with everyone if it’s OK to use a space for Purpose X. If a subset want to use it for Purpose Y, they have a meeting with a facilitator. The facilitator does the hard work (there are guides) but overall people just talk about their interests and what they want to achieve. Basically everyone talks until there’s an agreement in place, and this must be unanimous (otherwise people keep talking).
Here’s an example video of a meeting in action, though the aim is there not to make decisions.
Thank you.