Before you can convince 10,000 people to start a city, you will likely need to show that it is possible with 10.

"Before you can convince 10,000 people to start a city, you will likely need to show that it is possible with 10."

Unfortunately, that is not possible. You can't live an autonomic live with 10 people. In the US, you actually have something close to what I'm aiming for with the communities of the Amish and Hutterer. However, they do not try to live truly autonomic and they have this religion baggage to carry around. Here in Germany there are a few hundred communities with 10 to over 100 people trying to live a life outside of the consumism mainstream. They all live a frugal, poor life with lots of work and self-exploitation, and need public help when they are getting sick or old. That is not what I'm aiming for.

With 10 people I can try to start a business. I can start to produce GVCS components and to sell them. But I cannot escape the system, at best bend it a little bit to my favours. And just being another alternative production site and sales shop would not convince anybody that with this "Evolving to Freedom" will be possible. Trying this path is more like accepting assimilation by the system.

The numbers I mentioned are not arbitrary or wild guesses. There is some thought behind that. A community of 10,000 people is large enough that you can have virtually all professions needed in a society living on terms of subsistence, even redundantly. 10,000 people again is large enough to be a force a group of marauders would most likely stay away from and look for easier targets. 10,000 people accumulating their possessions can raise enough money to build a city with their own hands, including all infrastructure needed to live without being dependent on public service. Last but not least, 10,000 people allow for enough social diversity, that you don't see the same faces every day, and that one has some selection when it comes to finding a partner for life or for some obscure hobby.

On the other hand, 10,000 people is not too large that one can hide behind anonymity. A producer has to take into account, that he earlier or later he will meet the people using the things he made. The thief needs to take into account, that at one time someone will ask where he got all this stuff from. The cadger cannot count on slipping through without being recognized as such.

The same is with 10 squaremiles. Given it is at least moderatly fertile land, on 10 sqm you can have the space to house 10,000 plus their workshops and offices, the schools, storage rooms and barns. You can have the wood needed to contribute to the houses and furniture, and to heat every winter. You have enough land to erect windenergy mills, while the roofs of the houses will be used for solar energy. There is enough land to grow the crops and produce to feed the people, plus the hemp and flax needed to make all the clothing and linen 10,000 people will need. There is enough space for sheep, chicken or cattle which will provide wool, eggs or milk, and at the end of their life their feathers, hides, and meat. There will even be enough space for parks and lakes, the latter contributing fish to the diet.

So, 10,000 people and 10 sqm of fertile land, that is all what is needed to live a life free from comsumism and capitalism. The tools needed to make all that happen will hopefully be provided by the GVCS. Right now, it seems to fill only a fraction of the needs when you are actually trying to build a village. Sheet glass for windows and green houses comes to my mind, for instance.

Thank you very much, wideawake! I'll take a look.

As long as the capitlistic system does exist, and it will exist for the decades to come till it breaks down catastrophically, we cannot be free of this system, because it has the rights and the means to force its will upon everybody. In Germany for instance, you will have two bits of costs which cannot be avoided at all: Land tax and, believe it or not, a fee (what actually is a tax) for public TV and radio services (and sums up to around 250 USD per year and household and up to several thousand dollars a year for companies). A disputed case is the fee for waste disposal, which you have in some cases to pay for even when you don't create any waste at all or dispose of it yourself on your own cost. If you want to use internet and telecommunication (what I would want too) you would have to pay bills for that as well. Energy, fresh-water, waste-water and most other utilities will not be billed, when you are not connected to the public services.

What little money is needed for what you are unavoidably forced to pay for, can be earned by producing things which can be sold outside of that community. Honey, linen, training, whatever you can think of and is produced for the community anyways, just a little more than you need yourself. I believe, that a turnover of around a thousand dollars per year and person will be more than enough to pay for the anavoidable fees and taxes, and still be far under any taxable income. What,on the other hand, makes it essential, that your community is strong enough in headcount, that you have all the trained and experienced people that you can produce all things and services needed in enough redundancy and security to really never have to rely on deliveries from outside of your community.

But that's it basically, and if you work on the basis of subsistence without money, no income or turnover can be taxed at all, and no obligation to pay into social security will be created.

Of course, debt will end this all, because when you are indebted, you have to pay back the principal plus interests, what will chain you to the capitalistic system and force you to work more for others then for yourself. Did you know, that in every price you pay, from the rent for your flat to the price tag on your beer, an average of about 40% of that price is interest being factored in? The system works based on debt, and everybody pays the creditors, not just the immediate debtor.

It is a wicked system, we are subjected to: First make children addicted to consumism starting at kindergarten the latest, preferably via their parents already from the craddle, keep them addicted when they are adults, and keep them short of the means to feed the addiction, money, all the time, so they will borrow money, and become indebted. Indebted consumism addicts without money are helpless, rightless and hopeless. They will never have a chance to escape the system, unless they win a lottery big time (you know the odds) or somehow gather the strength to abdicate from their addiction, make a clean slate and leave the system totally, what is a very hard thing to do for most people, especially when they have to care for a family.

Yes, total independence is in fact impossible today, but it can be reduced to be a mere marginal annoyance, which will not affect your life much more than a mosquito bite. When we want to evolve to freedom, we need to evolve free from the system which enslaves us all first. The problem is, that most people don't have the will and/or the strength anymore to cut their chains, the intended result of more then six decades of brainwashing society.

Define "independent of the system."

I Appreciate with OSE is doing.  Just read something interesting, to develop the 4-Mix engine, it was $10 million dollar venture between Tanaka and CARB.   I appreciate the undertaking, time and energy that is going into these 50 machines.    A lot of the parts that are going into these machines though are coming from factories.  Hydraulic hoses, cylinders, manifolds, tires.     In a grid down situation, none of that will be available.  What then?  I liked their CEB machine, but maybe the Cineva RAM would be a much better choice to build in a Grid Down Situation.  Something hand/mechanically powered?    I think in India they have a nice block press machine Auroville Earth Institute, it's manual powered, vertical press so it can make all kinds of interlocking blocks.