Anarchist federalism, an experiment in code

One of my passions is coding. For many years I worked in a workers collective doing hosting and web development, but after the big companies moved in with the $5 a year hosting solutions, and the contract work lifestyle got to me, I left to focus on community development.

I have had an idea for quite a while now on building a code base that allowed people to make decisions, there are plenty out there (Loomio being probably the stand-out, then there is DemocracyOS, Liquidfeedback, Adhocracy etc), but none of them approach decision making via anarchist federalism.

The idea is that a groups decisions, where most of these platforms stop, could then be passed on to decisions between groups, passing both ways from local, to regional, to federation, to confederation, and back. A two way flow of information and decision making. This would also require things like a system at each 'level' to bring for example, a regionals decisions to the federation congress. This is the format that the International Workers Association makes decisions.

There are a number of options out there that I thought it was about time I explored. To that end I've started up anok.io as a place to base the development. Whether that be forking Loomio to build such a model on top of its mature base, or from scratch is yet to be seen. I will be testing out some options over the coming weeks, including what options for languages for the platform.

If you are interested in helping out, drop a line to info at anok.io or nogods at nomasters.org.

I like the idea. I was thinking to make some application for voting as there is nothing interesting that would fit the anarchist structure. Iā€™m impressed that you are already working on something similar.

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I have been but things have been on the backburner for a while now with other pressures. I am hoping to pick the project back up again soon.

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