It's hard to say. For most people it would not work out well, unless you're in an occupation where it's easy to find work. As far as unions go, the broader question is whether or not unions are needed these days for the working class to demand change, or whether relying on them is the best strategy. Union leaders undermined the general strike in England in 1926. But unions would be the way to go for non specialized labor. Union membership is low, but that could change the more democracy is undermined, although not enough for the general strike in question.
Excellent article and entirely relevant. "One interpretation of this holds that it was not an observation about what a regular guy Adolf Eichmann seemed to be, but rather a statement about what happens when people play their “proper” roles within a system, following prescribed conduct with respect to that system, while remaining blind to the moral consequences of what the system was doing — or at least compartmentalizing and ignoring those consequences."
I agree that the world needs to be less focused on software, and a simpler life would be nice. I also agree that people should not try to change others and focus on themselves, but the issue is not about changing others. It's about changing the system.
Software can achieve many positive things, including the organization of communities and their management, automation and efficiency gains, and the benefits of automation and efficiency gains should be shared by all.
A simple life without a cell phone might make for more personal happiness, but it's not going to save me from environmental destabilization, and it's not going to change any of the underlying factors of the system that affect which type of life I can have, no matter how simple I try to make it.
The issues we face are best solved by community action and not individualism.
Something for nothing is exactly what we are guilty of. It happens when we get a product cheaper because companies generally don't have to pay to rebuild damaged ecosystems. It happens when we get clothes made by sweatshop labor, and don't have to consider the effect of throwing those clothes away when we take them to Goodwill. Take a hard look at exactly who is getting something for nothing. People wealthier than what is reasonable compensation for their effort are the ones getting something for nothing.
Another CouchDB fan here. CouchDb's mango queries are implemented as Erlang map functions under the hood. Users now can get the speed of Erlang and the usability of Mongo-like query syntax.
I was looking into Solid for a bit, but stopped as my concerns grew, must of which are expressed in other comments.
Recently I've been enamored with the Dat Protocol and the Beaker Browser. I like that it's a peer to peer protocol that uses local data storage. In addition, it makes it almost effortless to publish and scale a web application or site. It doesn't have Solid's strength in access control, but that's not to say that Dat's access control won't evolve. At this time, Dat's access control is very simple, basically share by link.
In addition, I would like to Linux handsets like Pinephone become better and more widely used.
IMO, this type of communal living strategy is the best remedy to a lot of the problems faced in America and in western cultural in general. Many of the problems were already stated in the article, so I'll just add suburban sprawl, the high cost of individual ownership of everything, including the house, and the increased workload that results from not sharing the labor of common tasks like cooking, cleaning, and caring for children. BF Skinner's Walden Two is a good read that goes more into detail on the advantages of communal living. As a non religious person weary of politics, neither the state nor church are good options.
The only developer living on a boat that I know of is Dominic Tarr, creator of secure scuttlebutt. I think one of the other main contributers lives off the grid somewhere. Seems like a cool group. They could probably tell you what it's like.
I lived on someone else's boat in the marina for 2 months about 10 years ago. It gets pretty damp in the cabin, so electronics might have a short life. I would love the opportunity to sail and code at some point. I haven't looked into weather proof gear, but a raspberry pi in a plastic shell case might work well. At least the pi is easily replaced.
Scuttlebutt is a peer to peer protocol with peer discovery on the same LAN, which seems like it would be good for making friends while docked.
The biggest win when using functional css, or css utility classes, is that it is extracted out into a library already, in which case there is nothing to create or maintain (just the downside of messy classnames).
+1 for solid. Solid has these concerns baked into the design. It's the best solution I've seen for user-owned data and interoperability, not to mention the wealth of possibilities enabled by linked data. To try to legislate those concerns into the current centralized web is going to cause a lot of grief.
The personal responsibility argument is always equally true and futile. Systems need to account for irresponsibility, especially those like the transportation system. The thought process of the distracted driver is not that the penalty can be disregarded. People develop a false sense of confidence in that an accident hasn't happened to them, so they can drive faster or look at their phone.
The logistics of the penalty need to be considered too. Are are the people at fault in fatal collisions to be put into the already crowded prison system indefinitely? It's cheaper in the long run to evolve the system to restrict the potential harm that can be inflicted by irresponsible people.