Now this is a fun thread and an exercise in city planning for those who actually wish to achieve this.
For me I will answer your questions in bullet form with a thoughts and conclusion afterwards.

 - We would eat organic produce. Fruit, vegetables and fish via Aquaponics. Wheat, corn, fruit trees from plotted land.

 - I would live like I do now with only one change to my schedule, the maintenance of the land verses working for someone else.

 - The buildings that I would build would be those of CEB or Earth Bags with wood reinforcement and possibly some kind of hemp   insulation, Hempcrete may even be manufactured and used in the construction of buildings.

 - The amount of people is predetermined by those I consider Family and very close friends. Those others that would compliment this group would be of a specialty skill sets; IE Those in Medical backgrounds as well as Scientific.

 - We would live communally and we would have open trade with those of similar communities.

 - Farming is covered in question one, however an addition would be of Poultry for Eggs and Meat as well as Cows PRIMARILY for Dairy products such as cheese and milk. Maybe goats for Milk and Cheese as well.

 - Technology would be of what we have now as there would be abundant power for all houses. Each house will be setup with a solar array to manage its power requirements with a secondary wind turbine field powering a localized grid. A long with these I will create power harvesters to regain some power used from other electrical components. Additional; We would build Cold Fusion reactors along with many other ZPE devices once they become available or researched.

 - I would spend my days living a free life... A life free of bounds and limits, free to follow my own spiritual path. Apart from that, I would tend to what I need to for the day and look at improving the community where I could. Additional; In a community thriving for its own independence, there is never a shortage of work to be done. When there would be spare time, I would sit in a cool breeze and relax. Of a night I would gaze at the stars with my own personal observatory.

Not a bad way to live ones life.

With the technology that we have available to us now, there is no reason to have any limiting factors when going off the grid.
There are just smart ways of living your life off the grid and if there has been plenty of preparation done, then you should be able to achieve your goals with minimal set backs.
CNC machines, Solar Forges, Solar Thermal Heaters, Hydrogen generators for welding/cutting as well as heating and cooking...
We have the means, all we need now... Is the will.
As well as the funds ;)

hello everyone

i started to write a novel titled

ascende, maima, perma and mary the lifeship 

at

http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/4835

in where one of the basic ideas is that there will arrive several very sophisticated technologies what are given freely to every human being on the planet 

also a strong relaxation of copyright protections do i describe within my writing, 

the reason for this giveaway of sophisticated tech so to empower everyone to step into one's full potential and being able to produce contribute to one's own and eventually the society's needs

motivation for creation is in such a situation of abundace more joy and pleasure than necessety


more pillars of the story are:

•an android more advanced than an avarage human plus a research and development setup where children, youth and adults together invent the future tech on abundantly equipped playfield
grounds


•
trust into the will of the individual to positivly contribute to the wellbeing of the society in general ( this will can be executed and translated into creative actions best in an environment of abundance ... kind of lots of space and time and tools and everyone left free to do whatever with whomever however whenever)

•
this planet is not the property of the human race. therefore it could be best for humanity to retreat itself into some small area ( less than 10% of the global landscape ? ), stop mining the earth for minerals oil and so on...
but do this by going fastforward with highly fine tuned smooth technology.... like stop the logging of trees, give up the plowing of fields, release all the cows and instead build scyscrapers in the city where tomatoes get aeroponicly grown
and cultivate microalgae for use in 3D printers to construct bioplastic (wood replacing) chairs and tables.
if the forests would see no more tree felling and the former farmland could become again home to wild animals and plants, if the living organism earth could  keep her long built up reserves of minerals ... all this retreating of humanity could probably be rewarded by the repositioning of our souls within the great circle of all living, like all the harmony of the un- or only gently touched wildlife could bless us 
(we allow our emotional field to receive the vitality and creativity supporting vibrations of vast landscapes of wildlife )
while we are on the doorstep to create the molecular assembler and get the quantum energy thing into our batteries and engines ....
somehow like we would replace the (tree/troath)cutting, (animal)encaging, (earth)digging vibrations with more gentle form of actions towards our fellow animalplant and earth family members... and with this replacement also reposition ourselves within the cosmic family, what results in a healing transformation and might make us move in such a delightfull way so we by the way kind of without sweat are step dancing into exact this rythm and rhymes where magical applications in fantasy worlds  flow, wishing our constructive imaginations could get fleshed out by passing trough the higgs bosom

• if we can think of the best we want for ourselves, we might be able, as humanity, to build computer robot androids who will
not have inbuilt negative destructive intentions and they might help us to fine tune our psyche so we can also progress toward an all life affirming positive constructive basic human everyday life networking

Hi,

Thanks for posting this. It certainly stirs up the imagination!

I share a similar ideal community to what Lloydrminick describes

I personally identify with the Integrated Human philosophies
http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Integrated_Human

- We would eat a locally grown and cultivated organic, sustainably-raised foods.
- Meals could be prepared automatically in a community cafeteria via robotics or personally in the home
- The town would be designed to change and upgrade over time

- All of our basic needs for food, water, energy, and waste management would be met efficiently and sustainably within our neighborhood, and the work to maintain these life-support systems would be shared among the neighborhood members on a rotating basis.
- Basic survival needs will be met in such an efficient way, most of our time and energy will be liberated to pursue learning, personal growth, meditation, art, music, dance, sports, invention, entrepreneurship, and helping others.
- We would have the tools and resources available to facilitate a virtually unlimited number and variety of artistic, technological, and entrepreneurial endeavors.
- We would have the facilities, resources, and expertise among community members to support integral life-long learning for all community members.
- We would share a common vision and ideal to live fully, love fully, and from our position of great surplus and health to work for the sustainable prosperity and ultimate freedom of others around the world. More traditional family unity would be restored

In such a community I would spend my time eating and preparing healthy food, meditating, practicing yoga, playing sports, dancing, making music, creating art, studying (philosophy, economics, ecology, physics, history, music theory, and whatever else inspires me), teaching others what I know, and helping to create new sustainable businesses and communities elsewhere.

I also share this vision of helping cities though the transition into this culture

I would also like for this community to be situated in or near a major metropolitan area so that we could experience a balance of natural countryside and city, and over time I would like to help transform that major city into a sustainable, carbon-neutral metropolis in which sustainable prosperity is being realized for its citizens. If we can create our own sustainable community as a model for human and ecological thriving, and then from that community (with the help of others in the region) transform a major metropolitan area into a sustainable city with high quality of life for its citizens, then by doing so we could lay out a model by which the majority of the world's population could transition to modes of sustainable prosperity, health, and freedom.

My ideal community cannot just be an isolated utopia, but must be a stepping stone to the ultimate goal of sustainable health, happiness, and freedom for all.

May this vision, and all of our dreams be quickly realized!
- couldn't have said it better myself

I have thought about how I would set up an agriculture economy within a community. If I had unlimited funds, I would attempt to build a farming ecology based around the ideas of ease of growing, maintenance and resource allocation, including water and energy. I have done a little bit of research into vertical agriculture using hydroponics, and had a few ideas on how I would implement a building like that using some sort of low power method to power the massive water pump, as well as transportation of parts to be repaired/replaced. My trade is networking and computers, naturally I am drawn to using such methods as remote monitoring, configuring and administration, as well as using computers to try to mitigate some bad tendencies that humanity have.

I have lots of ideas, I don't think I can fix the world, I just want to help :)

@ARGhaynes - You forgot the naked dancing girls! You know, the ones with big.....er.....nevermind....:)

my thoughts on this are rooted in the works of Charles Fourier, William Morris, Peter Kropotkin, and most fully by Murray Bookchin.

Here's an article whose vision I support
Economics in a Social-Ecological Society

quote:
Social ecology’s vision of a moral economy centers on libertarian
communism, in which the fruits of common labor are freely available to
all. This principle of “from each according to ability and to each
according to need,” which distinguishes our perspective from many
other anti-capitalist programs, is fleshed out by a civic ethic in
which concern for the common welfare shapes individual choices. In
the absence of markets, private property, class divisions,
commodity production, exploitation of labor, and accumulation of
capital, libertarian communism can become the distributive mechanism
for social wealth and the economic counterpart to the transparent and
humanly scaled political structures that social ecology proposes.

It is communism, ARGHaynes, but it bears description because of the abuse of the term communism by authoritarian socialist states, typically causing people to think that its something else entirely.

@ARGHaynes - no, not in the since I expect you're using it. It is about directly democratic villages, towns, & (small) cities that are confederated at the regional level through recallable, mandated delegates (not representatives).

The term 'communism' has a rich history that pre-dates the Bolshevik revolution & has been widely used by anti-authoritarians in a manner that has no relation to Marx or Lenin.

Also, the term 'libertarian' does not originate with the right, but was appropriated by them - they would be more accurately referred to as 'proprietarians'. Libertarian comes from the French anarchist-communist Elisee Reclus, who coined the term to refer to anarchists in the wake of the repression following the Paris Commune of 1871.

Libertarian communism was a widely supported tenant during the Spanish Revolution, and was instituted by many peasant communities during the time.

Also, Murray Bookchin was writing about how modern technology enabled an ecological, post-scarcity society way back in the 1960s.

In college we created a community house where everyone shared community pantry, closet, workspace and bedroom.  The reasoning was that the average college student spends the majority of their time in class, out drinking, playing games or chatting on facebook (I realize that is a generalization).  That to say, good point DavidIAm.

@DavidIAm

I understand your point on the failures of "modern urban life"...I too believe there are failures all throughout the inner city, however I believe the reasons for failure are probably different from yours...and we could go on an on in great details about the social welfare system...the motivation of education in inner city schools, funding for inner city schools, drugs, crime and all sorts of things that plague the inner cities. We may even agree on many of these topics. But like all things, there is a good and a bad in everything.

There is plenty of land for people to spread out to...but will they ?....and what about the large cities ?...where will they go...?, are you going to convince half the population to leave NY and move to Texas or Ohio, because there is more land out there. These buildings are proposals for solving the living space of the cramped cities. I don't see them building one of these in Cody Wyoming (Population 8,835).

Here are some good candidates :

NY - 8.1 Million
Bejing - 20 Million
Bogata - 33 Million
Buenos Aires - 17 Million
Istanbul - 22 Million
Lima - 30 Million
London - 23 Million
Paris - 26 Million

In The 8 Cities I list there are about 180 Million people, while I agree there is plenty of land for them to spread out into smaller communities...is that the best course of action ?....can anyone convince these people to spread out ?...I think in some ways you and I are Idealist ...I love the outdoors, I go camping and hiking,...I like my space, and all my neighbors in my little corner of Staten Island are nice, and friendly, but Staten Island has about 500,000 people living in it...I can tell you...there are probably just a handful of lots left to build communities on. This island will be at it's capacity in the next 10 years.

Traffic is already bad it takes an easier hour to get off the Island in the morning, just because of volume. Most of the construction going on, are taller buildings to house more people vertically. Where I use to live in Queens, old houses are being bought and the 1-2 acre plot of land they use to sit on are being now used for 3-4 house's very close together.

The fencing industry is booming, people are building tall fences all over these new construction sites, because of the proximity of the next door neighbor. I don't know where you live...but if you have lots of free space, then I envy you sir.

I can tell you from the people I speak to, people who have considered leaving NY to move west, most turn the idea down, because of the job market, they have low confidence in a successful career change by moving west.

One last thing to keep in mind is...while many US inner cities have social disorders, other large cities around the world do not...I do believe that the US has lost a lot of it's morality. Look at the chaos that ensued after the Katrina incident here in the states, with robberies and looting's... I have not heard one story of looting from Japan, not 1. I don't think the blame for our social issues should be associated to our living standards.. You are not more moral then me because you live in a small community, and I am not smarter then you because I live in the big city.

To a better future for us all. Eddie.

I think it would be worthwhile to convince people to move back to the cities as much as possible.

Unfortunate that the rules of nature are indifferent to human wants and limitations. We have the choice of recognizing the supremacy of physics and making the best we can within those limits or running the world however we want even if it is irresponsible. Any military vets can attest to the fact that everything is weird until its normal, but we can adapt to virtually any living condition.

@Jason, I will agree with you that abstract conversations, by their non-concrete nature are removed from the task, and therefore have much more potential to be non-fruitful.  However, each individual has a predisposition to a certain type of conversation, every school of personality study has a mechanism to recognize that some individuals are concrete thinkers and others are abstract thinkers.  There are two dangers inherent in these discussions.  The first is that someone has an emotional response to an issue and refuses to discuss the topic in a clearheaded fashion.  The second danger is that someone that does not care about the idea decides to come in and change it.

In "Call me boring but..." I pointed out a concrete fact concerning the disparity between the amount of land available and the amount of land the OSE style solution will demand, as well as a the concrete problem of commodity distribution that has been a driving force in human history for generations.

But if checking the feasibility of your goals prior to investing effort and energy is too abstract, I apologize. Still, that won't ensure your effort bear the fruit you wish them to. Being too slap-dash in your efforts to correct a thousand year trend without bothering to think too much about it (Is this because you think Marcin has the answers already?) is likely to simply aggravate the problem for everyone. Its like scratching at poison ivy, its proactive and obvious... and its also the opposite of what you should do.

Don't get me wrong guys, I will continue to read everything here and absorb it like a sponge, and I think it's got a lot of value. I just won't be so concerned as "who's right" at this moment - just continually build out different possibilities and fit it together with what I already know. If that makes any sense. I'll also pose questions and engage in debate if I think it will help me arrive at a new understanding.

Its also interesting to note - my post was was the most abstract post here, a meta post on thinking. And so far it appears to have been the most useless :)

I did some math, and perhaps it is wrong, but it seems that if we were to divide the world population into small communities of 200, and we gave them each their own bit of space, there would be an average of 27 acres to a community (here assuming we used only arable land).  So there is already a bit of a flaw in assuming that rural communities are ideal.

@DavidIAm, your points are good ones, there are areas I agree and disagree, but you have clearly thought out your ideas and I recognize that.  Looking at it again, 27 acres would be more than enough for the first generation of a community, and probably even the next several, though eventually it seems a point would be reached where either population control or population density would have to be addressed.  

I am not sure I buy into the whole "wage slavery" thing, getting paid to work seems pretty good to me, and having a fluid resource that can obtain goods seem alright too.  Plus the emotional appeal of the word 'slavery' just gives it a political feel.

Here's another thing I'll throw out there. I see a number of people talking about communist or socialist societies. I see much discussion about capitalism, both for and against. These discussions are in this thread as well as many forums all across the internet, and I'm sure there are dozens of debates going on at this very moment.

What I never see however, in fact I've never seen it once - in any discussion, or even mentioned at all - is Georgism. I can't help but wonder why Georgism is virtually unknown. In his time, Henry George was a respected intellectual. Many people had read his works. Then virtually all knowlege of him disappears off the radar screen in any way that the public would be exposed to. I also find it quite interesting that communism and capitalism have been tried in a number of countries....but no one has ever tried Georgism. Maybe it would fix too many problems simultaneously, so society resists it....both consciously and unconsciously.

So, I think a Georgist society with control of its own money (and having a fair monetary system), would be a great shot at improving things.

@Jason, could you go into more detail about Georgie?

lovely idea for a thread. :)

everyone has, or has access to, a manufacturing device, like a 3d printer, which can reproduve itself on command (like the reprap, or a star-trek replicator).
all energy is got from non-poluting sources, like wind, solar, geothermal, wave, tidal, standing waves, electro-mag, zero-point, etc.
everyone has a tricorder (or some means of testing things, and determining their safety (so no more chemical lobotomisation from excitatory neuro-toxins like aspartame and glutamates), among other uses).
everyone has a spaceship (yes, i'm serious, yes this is achievable).
everyone can grow their own food, both indoor and out, and freely share produce with others.
edible-landscaping projects have transformed everywhere to be capable of sustaining anyone, wherever they go.
people are not economically coerced into wage-slavery, and are free to do as they wish, and contribute the fruits of their passions to the benefit of everyone.
everyone would be free to have their own habitat, uninhibited by economic limitations, and equally so, everyone would be free to come and go, live in and leave, more comunal arangements.
manufactured scarcity is treated as a crime as great as high treason.  (and so a great many technologies that had been long witheld, are released for the benefit of all.  technologies such as bio-tech denstistry, advanced cultivation/growing technologys, free energy, and more)
highest speed internet connectivity is a human right, and like water, air, shelter, and other essential services, is entirely free.
there's radical transparency, and open-source direct e-democracy.

i'm sure i can add more, refine and clarify that further, alas, seasonal social obligations beckon.