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LaurenMendoza

Having 50 different machines implies at least a certain number of people to operate these machines to collectively get enough work done to support the survival of said group. How many people minimum do you need to have to reach this point? Would 1 person with 50 machines be able to survive? What would be the hierarchy or other social structure in order to form a peaceful and productive town? What kind of social experiment/social structure does this project imply?

Am I understanding correctly that when fully functional, this village would be self-sufficient and self-contained? Do they make their own clothes?

Or is this plan based on the availability of scrap metal and other "trash" from the developed world?

I like the idea of the "Integrated Human", but wouldn't there have to be at least SOME specialization to have the village running efficiently? And don't the inhabitants of this village need to have a considerable amount of education in order to understand and actually use these plans?

I'm very excited about this project, and I want to apply the ideas to my real life. I live in the US and don't have a degree in engineering. I do know how to spin yarn from a sheep and knit a sweater, though.

Daniel

I don't see it as a necessary part of the idea that everyone has to live together and be there full time. For example, you can have a community of 50 people with 50 machines embedded in a larger town, each living on their own in a regular house, but trading with each other as needed. Or you can have a community owned farm and workshop which nobody or only a few people live at, and the rest come and work on things part time, and share the food and items produced.

One of the barriers to starting up a GVCS project would be if you needed to buy enough land to support a complete operation and population all at once. Land area is one of the needed "inputs" to grow food and trees, and extract dirt and other materials for building, and land is not free. It may be a lot more feasible for a group of people to buy a small plot of land, set up a workshop and garden, get enough food and other items from it to offset expenses at home and sell some things for profit, and then take the savings and profit to buy more/larger land, and so bootstrap up.

The way forward then is to find people close enough together that they can work together on projects. I'm in the USA southeast, so anyone around here that wants to work on a "village project", feel free to get in touch privately or by email at danielravennest (at) gmail (dot) com. I'm new to the Open Source Ecology site, but have been thinking along these lines for a long time.

LaurenMendoza

Thanks for your comment. I live in a city and I don't own any land. I think the hard part is getting a big enough and wealthy enough group together to buy enough land to make this worth doing. I'd love to do it but I'm not sure where to go or how to find co-buyers for the land.

The reason I ask about the social structure is because, to use this idea in an undeveloped country, for example, would be difficult. You could give a group of people the machines and all the know-how to do everything, and then someone would rip out the valuable parts, sell them, and you'd never know who did it. That's how things are in some places, and it's part of the culture. I wondered what kind of accountability could be used, and even how this could be worked into the design of these machines, to make this less of a problem.

Daniel

If your project assumes people will behave different than they actually do, it will fail. Some sharing is workable. For example, in medieval times, it took 8 oxen to pull a plow, but your average peasant didn't own 8 oxen, so several villagers contributed 1 or 2 each, and then they plowed their combined fields with it. In a modern poor country, you could, for example, have one person own the power cube, another the tractor chassis, and a third the attachments, then they all use the tractor in turn (one tractor can work a lot of land). Since they each own their parts, they have a self-interest to keep an eye on their own bits.

eBell

Good points. I think OSE and the GVCS can make a lot of change all across the spectrum of development and economic success. For example, if I raise enough amongst my family and friends to build just a small package of powercube, lifetrac, CEB and some tools for the quick-attach we now have a massive amount of productive capital. Anyone want a new addition, a new basement, a new retaining wall, a trench dug, a road graded? No one is saying each iteration of the GVCS would need ALL the 50 technologies. Look at the first purchasers of the CEB system; they are planning on starting an integrated construction company.

@Lauren, if you're in a city, perhaps the technologies that make the most sense are the more capital intensive manufacturing ones like the plasma CNC, circuit mill and such. Land is hard to come by in much of the US. I'm lucky, in Canada there's cheap land everywhere, just gotta go north :P.

LaurenMendoza

@eBell That's interesting. I'm most interested in growing my own food and that's pretty much impossible where I live here in the city. What state of Canada do you live in? What's the climate like? Do you grow things? Can't beat CA weather, but the land is expensive.

eBell

There are no states in Canada :P We are a federation, not a union, so they are called Provinces.

I'm in southwestern Ontario near Toronto. It's a medium-density urban city, so there's a fair number of community gardens and stuff around. Not sure if it's just the area or what :)
My family has always had veggie gardens and stuff for herbs and produce, just tradition I guess. Climate is sort of similar to Buffalo and NY I guess? Maybe slightly wetter. As a student I haven't been able to grow when living in residences but will be this summer now that I'm homefree from the shackles of education.

Hot dog, CA weather is great. Went to Coachella in the Indio valley a few years back, just gorgeous farms all over the place. A shame they ship all that food everywhere though.

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