(3 minute read)

I'm trying to provide historical justification for my alternate history world – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 – I say 'alternate history' but I really only designed an alternate present, and now have to fill in the history.

Overview

A tribal social structure existed all over the world – most of precolonial North America, the Tiv and Igbo, the Bedouin, the Celts, the Germanic tribes, the Eurasian nomads – many other cases, essentially universal – and what if that remained the social structure amid 21st century technology, instead of states being the predominant form?

Terran history: Crises weaken states

The Roman Empire was the most powerful state, and then it fell from The Crisis of the Third Century. Wikipedia says, "The Antonine Plague that preceded the Crisis of the Third Century sapped manpower from Roman armies and proved disastrous for the Roman economy.... From 249 to 262, the Plague of Cyprian devastated the Roman Empire to such a degree that some cities, such as the city of Alexandria, experienced a 62% decline in population." There were plagues and crop failures, and Rome fell, and tribal barbarians were also hit, but less strongly so, and ended up conquering Italy.

That's a map of 476, of the end of the crisis. Syagrius is a Roman remnant (a Romnant har har). Franks are on Roman Law. Apart from the Eastern Roman Empire, most other places are tribal confederacies. But straight after this map, Francia goes on an expansionist rampage, including the French conquest of Britain in 1066.

That's a map of 800 AD. See how Rome's children have reconquered a lot?

My worldbuilding goal is that the Celts, Goths, Suebi etc. are the guys who end up with good ships+good guns in the 1400s. That's the trick to winning the world: good ships+good guns in the 1400s.

Wikipedia on the Migration Period says: "The collapse of centralized control severely weakened the sense of Roman identity in the provinces....Ultimately, the Germanic groups in the Western Roman Empire were accommodated without "dispossessing or overturning indigenous society", and they maintained a structured and hierarchical (but attenuated) form of Roman administration..." [so my alternate history would have to hit Rome even harder than that] "...In contrast, in the east, Slavic tribes maintained a more "spartan and egalitarian" existence bound to the land "even in times when they took their part in plundering Roman provinces". Their organizational models were not Roman, and their leaders were not normally dependent on Roman gold for success" – the theme here is how adverse conditions, particularly plague and climate conditions that disrupt routine agriculture, give a competitive advantage to people who live a more resourceful, less civilised existence.

Much later, the Crisis of the late Middle Ages also followed a big plague, and it led to working class revolts. It's worth mentioning that the tribal areas of Europe, like the Basques and the Gaels, suffered less under the Black Death.

James C. Scott

Some themes in the work of James C. Scott

• His book Against the Grain argues as follows: grain-based agriculture is predictable, plannable, legible, so it leads to centralised power and centralised states. Hunter-foragers eat diverse unpredictable food and can't be taxed. The first states appeared in Mesopotamia when wheat was domesticated. It's not about abundance (forests are more abundant than wheat fields), it's about predictability/plannability/legibility-to-a-statist-bureaucracy. It follows that crop failures (e.g. caused by the dust of a volcanic eruption, or by solar cycles) would weaken states and shift the balance of power to Zomian-type peoples.

• His book The Art of Not Being Governed argues as follows: non-state societies are a phenomenon on the fringes, fleeing the evils of centralized states. And he often mentions epidemics as being one of the evils they flee. It follows that epidemics would weaken states and shift the balance of power to Zomian-type peoples.

The material effects of a plague

If I add another crisis like the 3rd century and the 14th century, say in the 1st century.... then Rome remains weaker, Rome only partly takes Gaul and Britain. When Rome falls in the mid 400s, the Franks and the Byzantines and other people who are on the Roman system do persist (same as Terra) but weaker. They are less successful in expanding up to 800. In 1066, they may take England, but reverse the outcome of the 1277-1283 England-Wales war (so Wales wins) and the 1296-1357 Scottish wars (Scotland wins).

Europe was able to really really pull ahead because it navigated both the Atlantic and the coast of Africa in the 1490s. It opened up the world to extractive exploitation. But what if instead, the Europeans who did this were on a mutual-aid mode of production? They open up the world to mutual aid, including martial.

Celts and Suebi from Europe's Western fringe are in conflict with Imperialist European enemies like the Franks and the Byzantines. They meet Mayan Tlaxcalan who are having a similar conflict with the Imperialist Aztecs. Together they ally and crush their enemies. This concludes the Middle Ages, the Modern Period then starts, but under a mutual-aid mode of production.

[Posted September 27th, edited into a better and more succinct version Sept 29th]

The world I have been describing – 1, 2, 3, 4 – is governed by democratic councils.

Small councils make local decisions. A bunch of those glom together into something more powerful but less intimate. For some decisions, this can even be global, an anarchist version of the United Nations General Assembly.

The Anarchist FAQ says "anarchists have very clear ideas on what to “replace” the state with (namely a federation of communes based on working class associations)."

So I had to worldbuild a system of confederated democratic groups.

Anarchist governance in my solarpunk world work like this –

Tribes. A Māori hapū. A Greek δῆμος. A Mapuche lof.

Think of this as being about 2500 to 4000 people, but don't worry about the number too much, it doesn't affect the democratic arithmetic if the tribe is bigger or smaller.

This is the smallest unit with official bureaucratic existence. Some have territory marked by boundary-stones or similar, others are totally nomadic, and some only have a rough idea of their territory. The tribe has its website. It has its code of law.

It might also have a totem of some sort that represents it. Maybe it is a standing stone covered in bronze. Customary Law of the Haya Tribe states: "Every clan has its totem". Of course, the most famous totems are the wooden poles of the Tlingit and Salish. The English word totem derives from the Algonquian word odoodem [oˈtuːtɛm] meaning "(his) kinship group".

Registering members is a special responsibility of the tribe, that will become important when we start looking at confederations. It's basically a big family with a roll book.

In Terra, the unit that tracks citizenship is faceless: the country/nation-state that issues passports and accepts or denies citizenship applications. In this world (which I am thinking of naming Mandala) membership is tracked by something much more like a family.

• It must keep track of births, marriages, deaths.
• Membership is by birth in >80% of cases
• This tribe is what recognises the marriage. Marriage brings one more person into the family.
• People can be adopted into the family, like becoming a naturalized citizen of a Terran nation-state.
• From the 1990s onwards, all this is tracked digitally.
• They must let neighbouring tribes audit their census. If they are accused of inflating their numbers for political power, a larger assembly rules on the matter. If found guilty, they lose all representation for five years.

Imagine yourself now. Take a deep breath of unpolluted air through your nostrils. You are wearing the traditional clothing of your ancestors. Your mind thinks in their ancestral tongue. You know that within a 5 minute walk, you have 200 friendly cousins ready to support you. You have your responsibilities to them too. But technology has made life not-too-hard. Imagine it.

Kinship rules vary from place to place, as anthropologists have written about. There are tribes all over the world, but no centralised rule for how they're run. They are sovereign and follow their own ways.

Restorative justice is seen all over the world: Somali xeer law that gives a payment called a mag to victims. Germanic Law gives a payment called wergeld.

The tribal assembly has the power to settle disputes among its members through such restorative justice. It can hold court, pass judgement. If the assembly did choose to put someone to death no authority could tell them no: no police or state stands above the tribe. But customary law is normally restorative and the punishment is transfer of property. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid discusses this. What about crimes that are not internal to one tribe? We're getting to that.

Confederacies of different sizes, and the decisions they have to make

• Groups of a few tens of thousands up to about 150,000 people – These correspond to the Māori 'iwi', the Mapuche 'aillarehue', the Greek 'πόλεις'. A group this size should have its own small hospital with a few hundred beds, and that hospital will need to be assigned resources. Library too. If it is by a bay, it will have an open ocean farm. It may manage a lake or a forest as a commons and will control the hunting season or fishing limits of the commons. It will cut deals with various guilds (see https://hexbear.net/post/596720) to supply it with WiFi, with bicycles, etc. in exchange for nice houses and good food.
• Groups of more than about 150,000 people but under a million – This might be a small city or a good-sized rural region. It will need a more complex, specialised hospital with an emergency ward, so it will have to assign resources to that. It might maintain a shipyard. A city of 750,000 people will have to run urban transport networks, shared bicycle schemes. Will also arrange contracts with guilds. It might arrange a barter-contract with another tribal unit: for example if this tribe lives on the coast, and 50 miles inland there is another tribe; we have too much fish, you lot have too much milk, let's arrange a barter contract for one year. How many kg of fish per litre of milk? That will have to be negotiated.
• Groups of millions of people – These include nations you have heard of: the Scots, the Serbs, the Danes, the Finns, the Dinka, Bosnians, Armenians, Moldovans. The Nilotic peoples have a total population of 8 million, including the Dinka (2 million), Nuer (1.8 million), and Maasai (1.2 million). Groups this size will also arrange contracts with guilds. Maintains important websites like wikis and maps. Organise sporting contests: who's the best high-jumper in Serbia? Organise seasonal festivals; tourists come from all over the world to these. A unit this big will need a train system and that will have to be managed and allocated resources. It will have to cut a deal with the microchip-fabrication guild to get a chip fab in their territory, make sure the citizens have electronics, and in return give the guildmasters perks like nice houses. Most assemblies pay the Electricians' Guild in nice food and nice homes, but this one over here is lucky: they have a copper mine on their land, so they swap copper for Electricians' services – the council is what negotiates this sort of contract. Owns and maintains a top-level hospital with every kind of medical specialist. Declare war.

Here's a screenshot from a pdf on FIFA's website –

So a million-man confederacy must staff and clean and maintain a 35-thousand seater stadium and so on. This is an example of how small population-groups run small humble facilities, big groups run big facilities. Same with small local libraries versus big libraries, etc.

• Groups of tens of millions of people – Now we are talking about the world's major ethnolinguistic groups. There are about 150-200 such in the world. Each such federation sends a team to the World Cup and the Olympics. Korea, Italy, France, Afghanistan, Australia, Taiwan, 'the Norsemen' as a whole, 'the Celts' as a whole, the Fula, Yoruba, Igbo, Amhara, Zulu. The Tokyo Metropolitan Area has a population of 41 million in Terra; in this world it's less (the world is less urbanised) but still around 27 million.

The major cultural zones of North America, e.g. the Plains Indians, each form confederacies of a few tens of millions –

Groups of near a billion people – These might run something as ambitious as a space program. Here are the main ones (though see below about fluidity) –

• Black Africa
• All the Arabs, Turks, and Semites together
• Pan-American
• The white race
• Hindu South Asia plus bits of West Asia
• Buddhist East Asia plus bits of Oceania
• Austronesia and Australia

Fluidity and fixity

The tribes, the ones of about 4000 people, those are fixed. You're not a member of one tribe today and a different one tomorrow.

But assemblies can be called to make decisions for any group, it need not be a standing organisation. Examples of fluid group-formation:

• A Blackfoot Indian volunteers for an assembly of the Americas one month, and then the next month an assembly of the world's nomads where they discuss issues that affect nomads.
• An Inuit from the north of north America volunteers for an assembly of the Americas one month, and then the next month a polar assembly where he meets with Siberians and they discuss doing a deal with a guild that builds seasonal thermal energy storage, a solarpunk technology for places with long cold winters.

☝️there's the circumpolar federation – they have things to talk about sometimes☝️

Now that's not to say the edges of the confederacy changes every issue. Rather, it means that the edges don't constrain people from forming whatever assembly they choose. Most the time, assemblies follow the same natural boundaries. For example the 150-200 groups of tens of millions of people mentioned above – those each meet as a matter of regularity.

Assemblies as courts. Different levels of dispute

A fight between two neighbours is settled by the tribe. They give their ruling.

A fight between two tribes is settled by a larger confederacy. The confederacy must be large enough to impose their ruling. Yet it wouldn't tend to be much bigger: no point involving people on the other side of the world. A Māori iwi might have about 80 hapū within it. If two of those are having a fight (maybe about land, maybe about revenge), the assembly of the iwi could give a ruling. The land belongs to this hapū not that one. Instead of blood revenge, you must transfer this list of goods to settle the matter. If the hapū rebel against the iwi's judgement, force may be used.

If it's a major war, like between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the World Assembly may be the ones to rule. This is analogous to the U.N. sending peacekeepers.

How assemblies work

• People volunteer to be members. A volunteer must be seconded, and thirded. Anyone with this becomes a candidate. Candidates' names are put into a random draw. (This excludes totally incompetent people. An objection to anarchism is "we need smart people ruling, not random people!" This system is some check that you must be a passably functional grown-up before you can be on the council.)
• Remember how tribes maintain a population-registry? The population under the assembly is counted up from these. Children are included in the count.
• 100 names are picked at random. One hundred is a nice number for deliberation, everyone gets speaking-time, not too noisome.
• A two-thirds majority can pass a decision.

Ensuring minority rights in the random draw

The population of France is 68,250,000, so 100 representatives are picked at random.

3.36% of Frenchies live in the Lyon Metropolitan Area.

In a perfectly fair draw, they'd usually get 3 seats. However, about 19.5% of the time, Lyon will end up with 0 or 1 seats (that's a binomial calculation to figure that out). That's a problem. What if some big decision gets made that affects them?

To avoid this, the people of Lyon (i.e. their city assembly), demands formal recognition from the French body. When it gets that recognition, it can overrule any draw that robs it of more than one seat.

Any population-group that constitutes 2.5% or more of a larger body has the right to demand this recognition.

A recognised cell must accept any draw that gives them ([the closest whole number to their proportion]-1). But they reject any draw where their seats are two below the median.

These rules are restrictive. It'll take about 3000 draws to get one within the bounds of acceptability for all of 30-40 cells. But doing 3000 random draws is something a computer can do in under one second.

The World Council

The World Council meets to decide things like –

• Should we allocate resources to eradicate mosquitoes? Let the council hear from various scientific experts about the pros, cons, likelihood of success, amount of required resources.

• Should we embark upon building a global vactrain network?

• Should we embark upon building a space elevator?

• Should we send a global peacekeeping force to stop Armenia and Azerbaijan from fighting?

The heading 'How assemblies work' describes how all assemblies work from the tribe to the continent-sized ones. However, for the World Council, there are two tweaks to the rules –

• Two meetings run in parallel. So 100 people meet, deliberate, and vote, and so do 100 more people over there. Two equal assemblies, and both must pass the motion.
• After the World Council has made its decision, that is then passed down to the continent-level assemblies. Each of these has veto power. Even a very populous Asia should not be able to dictate to Africa. The formal rule is: any assembly speaking for more than 10% of the world's population can veto a decision made by the World Assembly.

We know how the representatives are picked and how they vote, but who can PROPOSE a motion?

Popular vote: If a proposal goes out on the Internet, and 1% of the population of that unit sign it, the council must consider the proposal. e.g. the world has 8000 million people, so if 80 million people sign a petition saying 'fuck mosquitoes kill em all', the World Council must consider that. Or for a city of 1,000,000, the initiative would have to be signed by 10,000 people to get in front of the council.

Briefing is important

Stanford University run a Deliberative Democracy Lab to explore councils of citizens debating and deciding things. Their system is lame, and I'm about to tell you why. Here they had Meta (i.e. facebook) get a deliberative assembly together to discuss tech policy and it says "A distinguished Advisory Committee vetted the briefing materials for the deliberations and provided many of the experts for the plenary sessions."

Here's the problem. You get random assemblies of neutral, fair citizens, put them in a room to deliberate. Good start. Then you spoonfeed them propaganda materials from facebook inc. upon which to base their decision, that is undue influence from facebook inc.

The councils will need to hear from experts on medical systems, ecology, trains, etc. They deliberate and make informed decisions. Just like the way the assembly is picked and votes is democratic, the system for picking briefing materials must be equally democratic.

Who can brief the council?

Same deal: popular vote:

• People want an expert/group/intellectual to have the right to give briefing materials, so they vote for him to get part of the briefing. The briefing materials could be written or video. The person/group with the most votes is given a chunk of speaking time (I'm not sure, maybe 2 hours). Then the 2nd-most popular person, then the 3rd. This continues until the speaking time (I'm not sure, maybe 24 hours) is used up.

Here, btw, is where a powerful, influential person might gain political sway. The heavy use of sortilege blocks influential politicians from appearing in the system. But if you had an influential public intellectual like Noam Chomsky, everybody would vote for the council to have to listen to his brief.

This would often include guilds: like if its a medical issue obviously people want to hear from the medical experts and they medical guild should have no problem getting votes.

One week term-limits lmao

A paper describing traditional West African governance says "In general there were no officeholders; only representatives of groups" and that is my ideal here. You don't become a representative for a four-year term or a one-year term; you represent your people at ONE meeting. Then the lottery happens again for the next meeting. This prevents ego, keeps things nice and anarchist.

This is the most democratic, most anarchist thing I can think of. It's inspired a bit by Council Communism, a bit by Bookchin/Öcalan's democratic confederalism, a bit by traditional tribal systems, a bit by deliberative democracy, a bit by mathematics.

The solarpunk tribal world is detailed here, here, and here.

I built the world because it's what I wanted to see in the late-20th to early-21st century. But it's weak on the question of how that came to be. So I thought some theory-experts might be able to mutual-aid me 😉

Why did this world come to be?

• Economically: A moneyless world where labour is organised by kinship obligations and local cultures are self-sufficient for the basics.

• Politically: Öcalan-style democratic confederalism: your local folkmoot or veche makes local decisions. They send representatives to the country-level popular assembly, they in turn send representatives to the continent-level popular assembly, and they in turn send representatives to the world-level popular assembly which does things like stops wars from escalating. Russian doll democracy.

Ok I think I've laid out the question well enough now: why did the economy become/remain moneyless and clannish, and why did democratic confederalism become powerful? And how can this be explained in terms of class struggle? Let me know if there's confusion and I'll edit.

Now, towards an answer –

• Actually a lot of the inspiration for it all came from Mutual Aid Among the Barbarians, and less so Mutual Aid in the Mediæval City: clans living together helping each other. Comrade K mentions "The Teutons, the Celts, the Scandinavians, the Slavonians, and others", and the chapter is largely about the Russian mir. So should I say they struggled against Roman/feudal systems and won, beating out manoralism that later became enclosure and capitalism?

• Another thing I could use: around 1100AD in America, Hiawatha creates the Great Law of Peace and the Iroquois Confederacy with five tribes and later added a 6th.... What if in the alternate history this confederated more and more tribes and became really huge? But that's not historical materialism.

• The first reply I ever got said, "I feel like, at first, you need to address a kind of Columbian Exchange"... but what if instead of crossing the Atlantic, they cross the Pacific?? So it's an exchange between say Chinese societies and ones like the Tlingit.

• I have lots of other little historical tidbits that could force to the tribal side of the dialectic: Pashtun with their jirga assemblies, Chechens as free and equal as wolves, the stateless Igbo, and many others.

Most of the cultures in the non-colonial solarpunk universe – written about here, here, and here – are also in your crappy universe. The Merina, the Marra, the Māori are all there – but with more dignity, able to look anyone in the eye as an economic and cultural equal.

Yet technology has also created newer cultures not seen on Terra. These new groups couldn't but follow the only pattern they know: living in mutual aid groups self-sufficiently within the ecological limits.

One such neo-tribe is the Cloud Nomads. Sky Truckers. They emulate the traditional nomadic groups that surround them, but with the new addition of solar-powered airships.

Their ships are solar-powered, taking advantage of the higher solar irradiation found at high altitudes. The typical ship is similar in size to the LCAT60T airship in your universe. That means is has about 60 metric tonnes of lifting power. About 65% of this is for hauling cargo. The rest? That's home. Your home in the clouds. An airship might be home to about 22 people: their bedroom, bathroom, shared kitchen all lightly lifted by a helium-hydrogen mix.

Everything must be light. We love balsa wood. Some furniture is made using tensioned bits of fabric and rope. Light and airy. As a crew member, you are allowed 1000kg (less on some ships) for everything: that's your bed, your water ration, your body, everything. Better bring an e-reader.

We like silk, it's is a part of our lifestyle. From the year 2031 onwards, we start to use a lot of spider silk the biopunk guild has learned how to produce. We use it for clothing and rigging, and in the construction of our ships. Spiders are creatures of the sky.

Karl Marx said: "Trading nations, properly so called, exist in the ancient world only in its interstices, like the gods of Epicurus in the Intermundia, or like Jews in the pores of Polish society."

This world doesn't depend on trade much, yet there is some. Sky Truckers play an important rôle in that trade: bringing goods to spots that aren't easily reached by sea or other means. Other cultures are nearly totally self-sufficient. The Sky Truckers a little less so, they are Marx's intersticial tribe. They are self-sufficient for energy and water, but only half so for food. Cloudmen depend on landlubbers for some food, heavy industry, and of course for their ships to be built. Yet they harvest the food of the sky as much as they can: it would be unthinkable to not feed yourself.

Some cultures live by a sacred river that gives them life. The cultures of the Sahara manage their qanat through the generations. Skymen have no rivers or wells: they live on clouds. Their ships can unfurl a mesh net like the wings of some immense mechanical bat, and fly through a cloud, filling its tanks with the purest of water. (These tanks are only big enough to hold a few days' water: lightness is always on their mind.)

Eat the sky. Ancient Greeks ate lots of species of birds, including mallards, pigeons, blackbirds, larks, sparrows, and cranes.

You idiots hunted the passenger pigeon to extinction but our world did not. They're a reliable food source when our wanderings take us to North America.

We go to Africa in June-August and participate in the quelea hunt with nets deployed from our ships. For small birds, the trick is to remove the head and feet and then cook 'em whole; you can eat the bones 'n' all: just crunch it down! The stewing softens those small bones anyway.

There's also edible pollens in the air, and technology in later eras allowed these to be sucked up efficiently. A high pollen count is 10g per m³ which is really quite a lot of food if you think about it. This PDF says they "found the most pollen at 600 meters" – up in the realm of the Cloud Nomads.

This culture is the least 'permanent' of all cultures in the solarpunk world. Typically, people follow this lifestyle for a few years in their 20s and then go home. It is an exciting life because we travel to festivals bringing equipment in and out, travel to disaster zones delivering emergency aid. We are young, able-bodied people, good with knots and rigging, good with our hands.

The gliders in the cargo deck become lifeboats in the worst-case scenario, but normally they're used on hunting trips. I love to take my glider out from the bottom deck and hunt big game high in the sky. The Southern screamer is an "excellent flier and soarer" and has as much meat as 1½ chickens. (It is eaten somewhat in your dumb universe too.) The most coveted game is the whooper swan, the Canada Goose. Mallards are also pretty good. Radar helps us find game. Eating swans and pigeons might seem weird to you, but it wasn't to the Ancient Greeks and Romans, for example.

The pattern of nested mutual aid groups is universal. Among Bedawin down below on the ground, several 'bayt' form a 'goum'; among the Yolŋu, several 'Ḻikan' confederate into a 'Bäpurru'. Here in the sky, you and your shipmates help each other with cooking and loading/unloading cargo, while your fleetmates support you in other ways. A typical fleet has 28 or 29 airships, each averaging 22 souls. You probably don't have a doctor on your airship with you, but your fleet has a doctor. One ship has the shared Fabrication Workshop (pictured above). One ship has the nightclub.

We can cover 2000km in a day when we need to, or more if the wind favours us. A fleet can haul 1000-1100 metric tonnes (28-29 ships with 30-40 tonnes of cargo). When we show up, we can set up a festival in 72 hours, evacuate 4000 people from a disaster area. That is our power, that is our contribution to the wider world. In return, they provide us the things we can't get in the skies. This agreement is formalised at the highest levels of the democratic federal assemblies.

Our storytelling nights are rich with wild stories of UFOs, as well as tales of the roc and Pouākai. One guy in my fleet claims he has seen the 'jellyfish UAP' you might have heard about.

I've posted about this world before here and here.

It's an alternate history. Colonialism never happened in the first place. The world remained tribal, and traditional cultures remain strong. But 21st century tech develops. There is a lack of capitalism and exploitation.

I downloaded these pics from the multiversal interwebs:

Traditionally nomadic cultures – such as this Australian bushman – remain nomadic in the 21st century. But their lives are made easier by technology. Under capitalism, developing technology keeps some people poor but increases the wealth of a few. In the solarpunk, non-colonial world, people use tools like this off-road tricycle to make their traditional lifestyles easier.

North American cultures follow the still-great buffalo herds. They use offroad vehicles that run on gasified biomass they harvest as they go. These vehicles are no faster than a horse. That guy on the right? I guess he's a tourist from a traditional European country; he's visiting his friends. They'll speak the Esperanto-type language to each other.

This picture was taken in a subway station in Cahokia.

This is a typical sight in the northeast megaregion. This is what the longhouses of the Haudenosaunee people look like in the 21st century.

The fishing cultures of North Europe live within the ecological limits. Some fish are still wild-caught, providing 5-10% of the diet. Others are farmed in open ocean farms. Members of a large (town-sized or city-sized) tribal confederacy have the customary right to harvest from these waters, and manage the wild stock and the farms as a commons.

My post linked above discusses guilds. One guild that exists, alongside doctors, tailors, and microchip-fabricators, is the Soapwitch guild. They have knowledge of local wildflowers, oils, and that sort of thing. Their job is to provide soap, perfume, toothpaste etc. for free to members of their tribe (instead of Unilever and Colgate doing it for profit). It's their tribe's reciprocal obligation to give them food, shelter, protection, etc.

The basic unit is the tribe or clan. This is three things: it's your family, it's your neighborhood (they live around you), and it's your economic unit. As an economic unit, each member has duties and gets (non-monetary) payment.

Tribal duties include –

• Hunt, gather, farm, or fish the food in the traditional way
• Help build houses in the traditional way
• Help build community halls and other spaces
• Maintain and clean those community halls and public spaces
• Childcare
• Maintain roads, fix potholes

The tribe has some skilled specialists, like tailors. Maybe 1 person in 100 is a tailor; it's that person's duty to make sure her 100 kinsfolk have clothes. One specialist is the perfumier/soapmaker who provides everyone with homemade soap, moisturizer, toothpaste, perfume, and that sort of thing. This is another opportunity to add local flavor: African black soap, Palestinian Nabulsi soap, Inuit soap made from seal blubber, etc. and each perfumed with local flowers.

Tribal perks/entitlements/wages include –

• Food (traditional, local)
• A house (vernacular architecture)
• Clothes (traditional)
• Childcare when you need it
• You can hang out in the community hall This isn't luxurious, but you feel taken care of, safe. Just by being born into a family and discharging your duties you thereby earn material security. Lovely. You are home.

Tribe’s don’t do very specialized or technical work. Everyone has to pitch in. The division of labor varies from place to place, often based on sex and age. At 0-12 you have no duties, from 12-15 you start being given light duties. Many cultures have traditionally divided men's work and women's work.

Some people get the perks without the duties. These include the young, the old, the sick, injured or disabled. (In some cases, and I'm saying this to be non-Utopian, this is nasty, people who are a burden like the elderly are killed. Traditional cultures often had senicide.) Other people exempted from duties include guild-masters (discussed below) and champions in art and sport: imagine your cousin is a world-class violinist who performs on the world stage – you want her practicing, not sweeping the streets. So the tribe exempts her.

There is a second economic unit: the guild. No tribe could perform robotic surgery, manufacture 7nm microchips, or build a train. So the medical guild, the microchip guild, the train guild do that. Guilds are not geographically bound, unlike tribes. Guilds conduct their business in the Esperanto-type language. (Anti-anarchists always say, “How could mutual aid groups do very technical work?” Answer: by organizing very technical mutual aid groups.)

Everyone is a member of a tribe (you're born into it, how could you not be?). But only some qualify and become guild members: first an apprentice, then a journeyman, then a master.

What do tribes do for guilds? They provide food, clothing, shelter, and some perks like luxury goods (silk, honey, pearls). And they provide new members, young blood. Also materials: the microchip guild must work out a special contract with the tribe whose ancestral lands are on a cobalt mine. What do guilds do for tribes? They are obliged to fix your laptop when it's broken, they maintain the trains, they provide healthcare. Become a guild apprentice and the tribe halves your burden of tribe-work. Become a master and you are totally exempt from tribe-work (it's stupid to expect a busy doctor to also sweep the streets), plus you get a bigger house, a finer grade of food, finer clothes, etc. This is a non-monetary exchange. It's a win-win contract.

I'm indigenous, and my culture is a shadow of its former self. This got me thinking: what sort of a world would it be where indigenous cultures are all thriving everywhere? Then I followed that thought for way too long and built an alternate history world.

It would be a world of strong local flavor: everywhere you go, there's vernacular architecture, traditional clothing, local food. Inuit cultures rule the Arctic. Aztecs rule Mesoamerica.

I've written an alternate history that I won't bore you with. Imagine there was never a 'Great Divergence' (where the West pulled ahead) but instead various cultures developed at roughly equal speeds, and maybe shared technology more rather than use technology to exploit/oppress.

Technical services are on a guild-system. The guilds recruit young people, train them up, and each local community (tribe, if you like) has a deal with the important guilds: you give us your services and we give your members food, board, other privileges. This explains why technology (like the steam engine) spread around the world without being used by one culture to oppress another. A person would have tribe-membership, with its duties and perks, and maybe guild-membership too, with its duties and perks.

The Americas and Australia are totally different in this alternate history, because they never got Europeanised. Imagine a developed (21st century) Aztec culture, Cree, Inca etc. with the internet and electricity and so forth. Every culture is in its bloom of glory – it's a world of strong culture. I understand this opens me to charges of exoticism, but counterpoint: my own culture (not gonna doxx myself) is among them. Some worldbuilding is all about physics, some is all about military theory; this is all about anthropology, all the strange and fabulous variety of human religions, fashions, food.

There are international elements to counter the extreme localism. In the alternate history, in the age of the steamship and telegram, international culture emerged. (This 'internationalist' phase actually happened in the mundane world as well: the first modern Olympics was in 1896; Esperanto appeared in 1887. It just wasn’t very successful.) Speak your local languages at home: the internet, academia etc. are in the global language. There’s art in local languages (storytelling, etc.) and there's international culture in the international language – the equivalent of The Simpsons or Star Wars that you can joke about when speaking with someone from the other side of the world.

Another internationalist element would be cultural exchanges. Imagine you’re a Rus in Russia, and a Himba troupe come to stay in your community for three nights, do dance and storytelling, share your food, flirt. This is a form of diplomacy.

Thriving indigenous cultures implies thriving ecosystems, as the two are inseparable. So it’s kind of a solarpunk/environmentalist world. Which fits with the idea of local economies/local cultures.