Open Source Ecology Forums

JackMcCornack

I filled in my Team Culture form last night, and did all right until I hit the last question:

Are you interested in being part of the world's first,
open source, resilient community? The GVCS is the preparatory step for the OSE
Village Experiment - a 2 year, immersion experiment (2013-2014) for testing
whether a real, thriving, modern-day prototype community of 200 people can be
built on 200 acres using local resources and open access to information? We are
looking for approximately 200 people to fill a diverse array of roles,
according to the Social Contract that is being developed. This may be the
boldest social experiment on earth - a pioneering community whose goal is to
extend the index of possibilities regarding harmonious existence of humans,
ecology, and technology - as a beacon of light to benefit of all people on
Earth

I thought I was interested, until I read the Social Contract wiki page, http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Factor_e_Farm_Social_Contract_v1.0  which left me violently disinterested, as a scientist and as a human being. I wrestled with my response from midnight to 3AM, and eventually hit 'send', despite my concern that my opinion might leave me out of the OSE parade altogether. Holy smoke, what hypothesis is this experiment designed to support?

My answer is below. If I'm off base here, if I've missed something obvious (and it wouldn't be the first time), I'd sure like to hear about it so I can correct my Team Culture page.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

I am, but there's another ethical conflict, plus I think it
is seriously flawed as an experiment "...for testing whether a real,
thriving, modern-day prototype community of 200 people can be built
<snip>"

I've read the social contract, and read what will be
considered for long-term tenure, such as "Ability to hold one’s own weight
intellectually...This level of ability is comparable to the level found at the
post-graduate level in academia...freedom from various psychological
ills...Good health and being fully able-bodied, since many tasks at FeF involve
physical work." If you're calling 200 smart, well educated, healthy, fully
able-bodied people a modern-day prototype community, your elitism is drifting
toward the creepy.

If this experiment is a success and becomes the norm of the
future, does Granny go out on the ice floe when she can't do calculus any more?
What if somebody gets depressed; is that one of the psychological ills that
gets them voted off the island?

It's still not the "boldest social experiment on
earth." That one was seventy years ago, and it involved loading the
gypsies and cripples onto boxcars--you're not going to do that, you're just not
going to let them in when the culture of scarcity collapses. Oh yeah, a beacon
of light to benefit of all people on Earth--all the smart young healthy able
bodied ones who are free of "idle chatter"; is this experiment going
to have a control group?

As far as my own ethical conflict goes, despite being
ambulatory and white, I wouldn't spend two years in a "gimps not
welcome" community any more than I'd spend it in a "coloreds not
welcome" community. I agree with Marcin and OSE in most things, but this
is contemptible. "Because FeF is a serious attempt at reengineering
civilization, only those who can rise to this challenge are invited to
participate," eh? Just what is the future you envision?

I'm hopeful you folks will snap out of this before 2013.
"The social goal within the community is to live and let live," and
it might be better demonstrated if you have a wheelchair user in the mix, or
someone who doesn't see well, or someone whose mental acuity is better suited
to gardening than "...ability to focus and to perform independent
research."

(Readers, I'm not making this up. The quotes are from the
Factor_e_Farm_Social_Contract_v1.0 page of the wiki)

DavidIAm

I know, right?

That is the social contract that fits Marcin, and that is okay for the place on which he holds title, where he says who lives there and when and how his buildings get built and all that fun stuff. It is what it is.

I agree with you personally, a successful community consists of dolts, idiots, drama queens, the laid back, doers, builders, planners, researchers, leaders and visionaries. Everybody has a role to play. Even in fulfilling the ideas that Marcin shares, even without his social contract.

Fortunately, the universe of people trying to make the world a better place is larger than his acreage. I have been hashing on a similar 'social contract' issues with some compatriots of mine - I want almost exactly what you're saying. We should talk. :)

Matt_Maier

I've never read that before.

"We are interested in eliminating these compromises by creating communities that can provide all their own needs resiliently, based primarily on local resources – without external interference. The above experiment cannot work in isolation. It can succeed only if a global network of similar autonomous communities is created."

Haha, that's silly. We want to build self-sufficient villages and we can't do that without building other villages for them to depend on. I think someone posted the first draft.

"FeF operation is not based on financial support from top-down sources, savings, endowments, or any other ‘trustafarian’ means of fiscal unaccountability. FeF is made by the present effort of participants."

That seems to totally contradict the current strategy of spamming every foundation that might possibly cough up money for OSE's work.

"...the community’s control by remote power centers – and tendencies such as war-faring are built right into the community fabric. Thus, as a general point of community design – communities can be most resilient and peaceful only if they can provide all of their needs."

Debateable. This is the tired old argument that wars are always about resources. I disagree. I think that's an oversimplified explanation.

I don't think you need to take that "document" seriously. It's obviously a stream-of-consciousness set of notes.

"I agree with Marcin and OSE in most things, but this
is contemptible. "Because FeF is a serious attempt at reengineering
civilization, only those who can rise to this challenge are invited to
participate," eh? Just what is the future you envision?"

Meh, reality always gets its way. The part of the plan where 200 people actually come together to build a civilization is, to understate somewhat, the most questionable part. I predict these machines will be far more useful by being integrated into the rest of the world than by recreating the world in parallel. For every autonomous village there will be a thousand normal villages that just need some tractors and solar power. The economic benefit will be realized as cheaper and more capable open source technology gradually (emphasis on the long timeline) replaces its old and busted counterparts.

DavidIAm

from
http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Factor_e_Farm_Social_Contract

General principle 12:
Governance and decision-making is based on creation. The creator controls their creation, ie., has authority.

it could work really well if they did it that way.

Danial

I didn't bother to read through the whole document. I stopped taking the whole thing seriously when I read "Respect for individual needs and rights is first, as long as the individual is making their contribution to the community." found here:
http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Factor_e_Farm_Social_Contract

I wonder who gets to decide who is not making their contribution. If the whole idea of community is to be run as a community, there needs to be more people in the administrative position than just Marcin.

Matt_Maier

I don't think that document was intended to be published. It smells raw.

I suspect he was mixing up thoughts on how he wants to run his farm, where certain work needs to be delivered on some sort of schedule, and thoughts on how a generic "village" might be organized. Obviously the organization of a research facility is going to be different when compared to a living space. FeF's goal is takig in money and spitting out open source machine designs (in my understanding). The goal of a "self-sustaining village" would be to fulfil Maslow's Hierarchy.

Also, I doubt the "self-sustaining vilage" part of the plan is ever going to happen. I'm sure it's entirely possible for plenty of pseudo-self-sustaining-villages to pop up, or break off, or merge or whatever. But I doubt that specific model will ever be influential.

dorkmo

i think he was sorta planning that once the gvcs was done he could show that a community based on them could work. based on that it seems he expanded on random thoughts that seemed to favor that goal.

im pretty sure 200 regular people interested in open source things could do it.

Jason

I think this is for Factor E Farm. It's a factory, a farm, and a research institution....so the idea is that when you show up it's more like boot camp than a cool place to hang out. (remember, they are taking people's money to produce results)

I don't see how this is related to how the GVCS tools are meant to be used out in the world. It's just a management style designed to drive a team towards an aggressive goal.

PaulP

My first post!

I just wanted to jump in here to try and counter the fear-mongering in the OP. First of all, is it really necessary to compare Marcin to Hitler? You are ridiculing the victims of the Holocaust and the rest of your arguments by doing so.

Second of all, the requirements for the first community are absolutely elitest. You don't build a model home with 40% rotten wood just because 40% of the houses out there have rotten wood. You don't have a random guy off the street test drive your new prototype car model. You make and do these things with the best material and best people available because this is what the public is going to see and try to emulate. Plus, it's more important for the project to succeed than it is for it to contain an accurate sampling of every gender, race, disability, etc. We're trying to build a community, not show the world how politically correct we are.

For this first community, you can't take a random sampling of people of the street because most wouldn't have the right disposition towards the work distribution, societal organization, and philosophical beliefs needed to make such a community work. The fact is that a large percentage of the population would need a re-education (or un-schooling if you will) before they could integrate well with the community. Of course, many people are not willing to change their beliefs in such a drastic fashion yet and as such are not suitable for the community at this time.

Danial

@PaulP - Whatever Marcins reasons for creating the "elitist" style social contract aside, it simply does not look good from a PR point of view. I would honestly recommend that the document be removed and sent out on an invitation only basis if that is what it is intended for. It is obviously not meant for the general public (as most people wouldn't qualify) and the people I have shown it to who know of OSE are actually quite taken aback by its wider social implications.

What Marcin is putting forward here seems to me to be similar to the Bio-dome projects where a group of specialists come together to see if a spacific thing can be done in an isolated environment. The only difference is that the FeF community comes across as being a social experiment. If it is indeed a social experiment then it is fundamentally flawed by the narrow scope from which it draws its participants, not reflecting any past or present social environment. Nothing is proved by assembling a group of highly educated, healthy, and stable people and seeing if they can provide for themselves. I would go so far as to say it is not even impressive under those circumstances. Now take an accurate sample of our society, "re-educate" them, and run the experiment. The implications of such an experiment should it succeed would be staggering.

Also, you cannot build a community without all aspects of the community being present. There is no community without grandparents, mothers and fathers, pregnant women, children, and infants, the ill, and disabled. That is the nature of community, that it includes all these things. When you begin to remove the elements of existing community that do not fit with your view of your ideal community you do in fact begin down the slippery slope that was mentioned in the OP.

All in all I would suggest that the documentaion around the experiment be rewritten to more clearly specify that this is a scientific experiment and not an attempt at social engineering. If the experiment is whether 200 acres can be managed through open source means to sustain 200 people under the best possible circumstances then let the documentation state as much, leaving no room for misunderstanding.

Matt_Maier

I suggest adding your feedback to the discussion section of the page. That way everyone can benefit from the constructive criticism.

Also, just to put things in context, most of what Marcin writes is too long and too obscure. He doesn't seem too concerned with writing to a particular audience. But, from a PR perspective, his TED fellowship makes up for a lot.

PaulP

@Danial - Don't stop there with the included people in the community, that's not a very accurate representation. We'll definitely need at least a few felons convicted of violent crimes (hopefully at least one with an underlying mental illness), people who are dying from cancer (we defintely need some of these to die on site to show the world what happens when people don't have access to cancer meds), a handful of fundamentalist Christians (obviously we need at least a couple of these to be blatant racists and bigots), and a large majority of the rest obviously need to be hardcore capitalists who can take ownership of everything and employ the rest of the people.

But in seriousness, bringing a bunch of infirm, sick, and disabled people out to build a new community from scratch is not only stupid, but also morally wrong. These people often need things to survive that can not be provided by a newly formed, small community. And what is something goes wrong and we actually need 200 able-bodied people to contain the disaster? What if the new community fails - who's going to be responsible for helping these people re-integrate themselves into existing society? Your imaginary slippery slope is a product of the fear-mongering we're subjected to on a daily basis in our current society. Marcin is not writing the rules of the New World Order.

Also, my point about re-education is that most people would not take well to it and it would be useless, as society exists today. Hell, I doubt very much I'm going to change your mind about this relatively insignificant document, but you think we can change the basic beliefs of the average person?

I really couldn't care less about "proving" anything by establishing this community. Building the community with the 200 members as proposed would be easy? Fantastic! That will allow plenty of extra time to start replicating the machinery and helping others to build their communities. As an ideal to strive for - a community composed of 200 able-bodied people is not a bad thing. Maybe it will help people to strive to improve their skills and abilities. What it's not going to do is cause people to think genocide is a good idea. I think the wording, while not perfect (especially in the social contract), is not the harbinger of doom the OP makes it out to be. And I don't think your suggested changes are better from an accuracy standpoint or a PR standpoint.

Matt_Maier

Interpreting a single page of a modest wiki is of questionable value. Nothing on the wiki is binding except when something that was binding outside the wiki is posted to the wiki in the interests of transparency.

At any rate, I suppose it is flattering to the project that anyone would be worried about it being so successful it gets a chance to leave people out of the fun. I can think of worse accusations...

danielravennest

@JackMcCornack - I think the entire premise of that question (a 200 person village in 2013) is just silly. OSE will not be ready in 10 months to do that, nor have 200 people involved.

I would rather set a more modest target and then try to improve from there. For example:

"Develop a core set of about a dozen machines, which can be assembled by a small group of people, and which can meet 50% of the needs of the group. Have that core be able to gradually grow in complexity, number of people, and percentage of needs met, and able to copy a percentage of itself so as to create new starter kits."

I don't know what the right dozen machines would be, but it would be something like: Sawmill, milling machine/lathe, solar furnace, tractor, etc... Those would have to be supplemented with hand and power tools, buying parts and materials, and outside shop/hired work, because no starter kit will be able to do 100% of what you need. Even the GVCS set of 50 machines, I would be very happy if they could hit 80% sufficiency. Unless you want to jump back to the 19th century, there is just too much specialized knowledge and parts for a small group to do everything. Still, 50% or 80% would let a group be substantially more independent than they are now. The remainder would be filled in by working conventional jobs, or producing a surplus of something and selling it.

Matt_Maier

I think the idea is that the GVCS would allow people to produce so much economic surplus that they could bring in the money they needed to buy stuff that's not in the GVCS. A core part of the GVCS is a machine shop, so not only can people build and sell the GVCS machines, they can build damned near any other machine. Then, hopefully their farm can produce excess as well.

gonzo

I think the reaction in this thread is helpful but I hope Marcin will not see it as too confrontational.
We don't need conflicts, we just need to debate opposite ideas in order to get the best solution.
Indeed, that document might be only a raw draft.
To make a social experiment you need to keep in mind and to manage a lot of factors, that are far beyond Open Source and Resource Based Economy concepts.

I totally agree with Matt_Maier:
"I predict these machines will be far more useful by being integrated into the rest of the world than by recreating the world in parallel."

That's the whole point. The focus must be on creating those machines and then to make sure they will be available. It is not an easy task at all - to make machines and components available. It will take some serious effort to make the world understand that the machines are cheap, easy to repair, and they are always available to buy or to buy components. The world will adjust to that reality and will be changed forever.
It is indeed very useful to make a community like a village and to get the people to work together.
But the biggest danger is to try to separate it totally from the rest of the world from the very beginning.
I have seen communities destroying themselves or crippling themselves just because they wanted to function totally different than the rest of the world, from the first second. They wanted to prove it's possible to do it the other way, but they were not prepared to handle all the community issues. Instead of working to build steadily the transition to another way of life, they wanted to make the jump from the very beginning. And what they did was they just jumped into a nothingness.

We are living on a planet where almost nobody really knows how to manage resources in a community and to make it work. Worse than that, we don't even really know how to deal with community issues. We are not educated to involve into community issues and to solve them in the community. We live in a world where we are told that "democracy will fix our problems". We choose leaders who promise they will fix the system for us if we give them the power.

On this planet, we never had real leaders who build solutions BEFORE getting into power. Most of the "leaders" of this world are charlatans because they sell community solutions for power. None of them came to engage people to build solutions together before coming to power. Therefore, we don't understand that the most important thing in democracy is that we can associate and fix problems together. We are educated to think that the freedom to vote will fix everything for us.
We are educated so wrong that we don't really know how to manage things.
People come from different backgrounds, with opposite ideologies (all of them dysfunctional, not adapted to reality), and therefore there is a huge potential for and danger or conflicts.

We are not prepared psychologically, emotionally, and ideologically to make a community function on totally different principles than the rest of the world.

We can change the world but we must do it gradually. Our communities can ultimately function on a totally different mechanics and principles than the rest of the world, but we have to get there gradually.

The most important thing for such a social experiment a smooth transition and an infinite caution.

gonzo

Even the term "boldest" doesn't sound right to me. Makes me think about the "Order of the Solar Temple" who wanted to live different and to boldly prove it to the world.

The secret of success is in making a perfect balance between "changing the world" and "creating our community".
The more we make GVCS machines and components available to the world and we find more people to keep availability in shape, the easier for us will be to create our own community based on the new principles.
These two things go hand in hand, it's impossible to separate them.

My message for Marcin is:
"Please do not be upset for the reactions in this thread, and please do not feel embarrassed for a small error you made.
We all get too enthusiastic at times and we make errors because of that. That happens to everyone."

JackMcCornack

OSE may well be a powerful influence on humanity. I support OSE because I think OSE matters. I don't think the current economy (based on scarcity) can continue upward, and a major social revision is in order. I think Marcin is brilliant, that his ideas can change the world, and that with great power comes great responsibility.

This is hardly a “modest
wiki." This is a guideline for a new civilization. “Governments as we know them
become obsolete with the advent of open source ecology”; well, I think the guy
who wrote that, means it. I don't think the Social Contract v1.0 document is stream of consciousness, or a rough draft, or wasn't meant to be published; it has been the operative document for selecting FeF participants since August of
2009, when it was posted as a major revision of Factor_e_Farm_Social_Contract,
which went live in October 2008. If Marcin wants to staff the OSE Village like it's a mission to Mars, I've no problem with that. I object to its presentation as an experiment in community building.

I'm not comparing Marcin with Hiter, nor to the proponents of a dozen other bold social experiments, I am comparing policies. Historically, when resources run short, societies determine who is deserving of the resources. The OSE philosophy, which will be demonstrated by the OSE Village, appears positive for all; it isn't until we get into the Social Contract that "all" gets winnowed down to the 4% (my calculation) who are the Best and Brightest and Fittest.

If it is a success, this "social experiment" will prove that OSE can produce thriving communities, providing they are not saddled with undesirables...the elderly and other
less-than-fully-ablebodied, the mentally inadequate who are operating at less than postgraduate
level, the idlers, and the immoral. If this experiment is performed as described, when Marcin presents the results to the public, few people will say, "Wait a minute, where's the control group? How well does a two year experiment translate into lifetime community? Would it still have succeeded if the participants had included a broader slice of humanity?" Most people will take it at face value, and there may be unfavorable consequences.

A hundred years ago, "experiments" of this nature fueled the American Eugenics Movement, which didn't have much impact on society until times got hard--the 1929 Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression--and that's when things got jumping. By 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, 33 of the United States had passed (and were using) forced sterilization laws to improve America, and the Nazis declared America's eugenics policies (if I may paraphrase) a beacon of light to benefit of all people on Earth. The rest is history; history that ended in Germany long before it did in the US; I can't speak for anyone else's state history but my own, but the Oregon
compulsory sterilization law was repealed and its Board of Social Protection
(does that name sound strangely familiar?) was disbanded in 1983, and the book wasn't fully closed until 2002, when our governor apologized for our state's participation in these activities. So the slippery slope is not without its precedents, and I hope Social_Contract_v2.0 has some room for the bottom 96%. If this is a small error, then it can be easily remedied.

Matt_Maier

I always assume incompetence before malice. It makes more sense to conclude that a person didn't explain a complicated idea properly then that they want to forcibly "improve" the human race.

JackMcCornack

I sure don't think Marcin wants to forcibly "improve" the human race--nor did the majority of the late 1800s and early 1900s social experimenters. But because the experiments were not well designed, other people were able to use the data to support their own prejudices, and yes, those people did want to forcibly improve the human race and it went on in our country well into the '70s. Oregon's particular shame was the compulsory castration of homosexuals in the '50s, under broad interpretations of sterilization and morality. Some state laws allowed forced sterilization of any resident of the state found unfit, some determined that poverty was hereditary and sterilized girls (minors) as a preemptive strike on further Aid to Dependent Children expenses, some let the courts decide and some let social workers decide who was a good candidate and lots of states didn't necessarily tell the woman (or girl) on the operating table that she was being sterilized.

Missouri can be proud of escaping the madness; although compulsory sterilization laws came before the Missouri House five times, the all failed (by 9 votes in one case), perhaps because they were overreaching. For example, the 1929 Measure (House Bill 290) called for sterilization of chicken stealers and car thieves.

But most states had laws for improving the breed by sterilizing the undesirables, or people who might carry undesirable traits, and badly designed experiments were quoted to select the victims. By discarding environmental factors, it's not hard to prove that illiteracy is hereditary. Or that child molesters can be bred out of society by sterilizing their victims.

A lot of people don't believe this ever happened--this is America, it can't happen here!--but I've met Germans who don't believe in the Holocaust and Russians who don't believe in Gulags. And I've met plenty of Americans who believe paraplegia makes you stupid and a missing arm means you can't work, and from there it's an easy slide to "These people often need things to survive that can not be provided by a newly formed, small community," and from there to (cutting and pasting from Social
Contract v1.0), “The absence of the welfare state in this scenario means that everybodu must take accountability for their survival, or perish," and from there to the boxcars.

War criminals quoted American sterilization laws at the Nuremberg Trials, American legislators quoted their favorite social experiments when passing those laws, and those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Matt_Maier

On the other hand, would it be fair to a bunch of kids to have their parents drag them into an experiment like this just to create a diverse village? If we start setting diversity as a goal, we'll end up with quotas. We've only got 200 slots, so, does that mean 2 people have to be handicapped? How much handicap is good enough to qualify? If a phd engineer wants to participate, should we tell him, "No, sorry, we need a 12-16 year old hispanic girl."

Danial

I don't think it needs to be as broken down as much as having certain percentages of each race, illness, etc...

Being a particular race or combination of races is not a prerequisite of a community, and neither is illness or crime. Illness is not a prereq, but in one way or another it naturally happens within any community of living organisms. Crime on the other hand is not a prerequisite of a community, it is born out of an unhealthy community environment. There are places where crime does not exist, and so we can not assume that it must be built into an experiment such as this.

What if the experiment looked something like this:
A random group of 200 people come together to create an open source resource based community. There is no screening of the applicants save that they are not in any immediate danger of dieing from an illness and that they want to take part in the project. The experiment starts and people begin to sort out there new lives, what they do every day, work, food etc. Along the way someone has an accident and breaks a leg or arm requiring them to go to the local hospital. The community adapts to the temporary labor shortage and increased resource strain by having someone who is not working. Of the two hundred people there are five children with an infant expected in the second year of the project. There are also a few elderly individuals who help out where they can. At one point there is a flu or cold going through the community, requiring one or two people to leave the experiment for more intensive medical treatment than is available in the community. The vacuum created by the people leaving prompts the experiment to look for a few more individuals to come into the community, perhaps from a waiting or emergency list. The community then has to train the new members on how things work. And the experiment comes to a close after two years either successful or not.

Inclusivity does not denote have static percentages of the whole planet and trying to mimic them in a 200 person group. It is about not excluding those who wish to participate based on age, gender, race, sexuality, disability etc.

Honestly I think an experiment like this would be amazing to take part in, and I hope it does happen at some point. I just hope it is not based on exclusivity.

Matt_Maier

"
It is about not excluding those who wish to participate based on age, gender, race, sexuality, disability etc."

>>I think this is the core of the idea.

JackMcCornack

> If we start setting diversity as a goal, we'll end up with quotas.

Removing exclusivity as a goal is not the same thing as setting diversity as a goal. In my experience, diversity happens by itself unless barriers to diversity are established. The prerequisite of "...being fully able-bodied, since many tasks at FeF involve physical work..." is an exclusion based on prejudice, and justified by an unsupported assumption. "Physical work" covers a pretty broad range of activities, and if a well qualified paraplegic offered to be a part of the world's first, open source, resilient community, surely there will be enough physical work that can be done while seated. Not all physical work requires the worker to stand, and with 200 people on board, I am confident the community can find somebody to put the groceries on the top shelf. even if a few members of the community cannot.

The other exclusions seem similarly unjustified, and basing this community on the assumption that it won't work unless the undesirables are kept out, it's not a social experiment on community building, it's a self fulfilling prophesy.

Matt_Maier

I don't think FeF is ever going to be part of the experiment. That place is supposed to be a campus. It doesn't have to turn a profit because it will be the focal point of donations. Experiments will happen there, and those experiments need to be done by qualified experimenters. Eventually, someone will try to establish a GVCS-based village from scratch, and there's no telling what their agenda will be. Most likely they'll be some kind of radical, since that will be a sure way to get the money and manpower necessary.

However, it's all irrelevant. The work FeF is doing is non-profit and open source. Anyone can use it for anything.

How Marcin wants to run his backyard has nothing to do with how anyone else is going to run their backyard. That's part of the point of the project. Open source is specifically designed to prevent the possibility of being held accountable to anyone. Marcin doesn't get to dictate how replications happen. Sure, he can support things he agrees with, but that's nothing new.

Don't go into this project blind. People ARE going to use the technology we produce to do things we disagree with. You should come to terms with that right now.

ederieux

This discussion highlights an issue that OSE needs to address: how is OSE governed and what is the deliniation between OSE and OSE's individual leaders. Folks ought not have to guess what OSE's mission and rules are. Matt says FeF is "non-profit," is not "part of the experiment," and is Marcin's "backyard." It is hard to tell from the various statements that OSE has published, but it appears that neither OSE nor FeF are currently non-profit and nothing precludes them from making and pocketing profits. It also appears that a significant percentage of the income from OSE true fans has been used for buildings and improvements at FeF. If FeF is Marcin's backyard - meaning his private property to do with as he wishes with no obligation to OSE - that is something that doners and volunteers should know. Nothing wrong with private property or for-profit organizations. But participants should have easy access to this information as they choose whether to donate thier time and money.

Matt_Maier

That's a fair statement. I can't think of one document I could point to that would explain the situation.

"This includes partnering with a fiscal sponsor-The Terra Foundation- to obtain 501c3 tax exemption,"
http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Resource_Development_Strategy

"This page documents all charitable contributions received through the nonprofit side of Open Source Ecology, as well as any donations where the donor has explicitly requested that allocation should be reported.

Terra Foundation, a 501(c)(3) corporation organized in San Luis Obispo, California, USA, is acting as the fiscal sponsor for Open Source Ecology (OSE). OSE is thus able to process tax-deductible contributions from USA donors." http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSE_Financial_Transparency

"Create a fundraising team to find Funding Sources appropriate to the OSE Work. Distribute the tasks to the people in the team and start working on them.

Funds from European Foundations will be received by the OSE Europe Foundation, see the blog post by Robert Anteau).
Funds from USA Foundations will be received by the Terra Foundation - OSE is currently under the its fiscal sponsorship, see OSE Financial Transparency." http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Fundraising_Strategy

My impression is that OSE a non-profit administered by Marcin. I could be wrong about the details, tho. I haven't heard any rumors of anyone overriding Marcin's decisions.

PaulP

What if the experiment looked something like this:

200 able-bodied, highly intelligent, socially and ecologically mindful people come together to create an open source resource based community. The experiment exceeds all expectations with the community producing a large excess of goods and machinery that is then used to seed the next community.

> and from there to the boxcars.

There is a huge gap between excluding people from this experiment and genocide. That gap has a lot of components but the main one to look at is from non-aggression to aggression. There are a lot of problems with the usual libertarian ideology but that's one I can get on board with. There's a whole world of difference between holding a gun in your hand and shooting someone in the head. Or to use your hyperbole, there's a small step between forcing communities to take on sub-optimal people (pardon the inhumane-sounding wording) and a bureaucratic totalitarian government mandating your every move.

Should we educate people on diversity and try to accommodate disabled people as much as possible? Absolutely. Should a community be forced to do so? Assuming they're not using an unfair share of land or other resources, absolutely not.

Are there plenty of self-reliant disabled people in the world? I'm sure there are. Then again, a lot of the time this is with the help of wheelchair ramps and elevators, handicapped-accessible bathrooms, doors, computers, etc. - none of which will exist at FeF due to limited resources. However, if you can find a paraplegic master craftsman who can run a lathe in his sleep, I'm sure FeF would be glad to have him.

danielravennest

@PaulP - When I see a number like 200 people in a village as a design point, I assume that means about 100 people working, because that is the proportion of people in the USA in the labor force vs total population (~50%). You cannot assume 100% are in the workforce, because that does not scale in reality. Perhaps when you are seeding a new project and have just a handful of people you can assume they are all working full time, but whenever you get past that handful, it's not going to happen, and any design that assumes it will, will fail.

That 100 people working an average of 1920 hours each gives you 192,000 hours a year to get everything done. If you add up all the work that needs doing, and it comes to more than that, you don't have a feasible design. Further, if you have a partial system, and any part of the system requires more than 1% of people's time to meet 1% of their needs, that part of their needs is better met by just working regular jobs. OSE type projects have to be more efficient than conventional alternatives, or there isn't any point to doing it.

JackMcCornack

Matt, I think Marcin has such a brilliant intellect and powerful personality that Marcin Jakubowski may be a household name in his lifetime. OSE could be as important and well known as the telephone, and if so, Marcin will be OSE's Alexander Graham Bell. Surely OSE will be as important as corn flakes, and even with that seemingly trivial example, patented in the 1890s, most Americans today know Kellogg was the inventor and vaguely recall he was a scientist.

> How Marcin wants to run his backyard has nothing to do with how anyone else is going to run their backyard.

I think he'll be the guiding light of OSE, and that other people will run their own OSE communities will be strongly influenced by how Marcin runs his, and before anyone else starts an OSE Global Village they will study the results of Marcin's social experiments, and be guided accordingly.

> Don't go into this project blind.

:-) Nobody will go into this project blind. Only "fully able-bodied" candidates need apply. :-)

> People ARE going to use the technology we produce to do things we disagree with. You should come to terms with that right now.

I'm fine with the technology. I'm having trouble coming to terms with the experiment. If this technology is used to prove that only the brightest and fittest have a place in OSE community, there could be problems.

PaulP, I appreciate your efforts to keep me on track; I do drift off into hyperbole if I'm not thwacked now and then.

> There
is a huge gap between excluding people from this experiment and
genocide.

Indeed there is. Re this particular experiment, I'm more concerned about it exacerbating people's existing prejudices of who are contributors and who are burdons, but I have offered a legitimate example of how similar experiments once led to genocide, one baby step at a time. This is the best known example, but there are others.

> That gap has a lot of components but the main one to look at
is from non-aggression to aggression.

Right you are, and in the example I chose, it took about half a century to bridge that gap, starting with Dr. Kellogg's hiring restrictions at Battle Creek Sanitarium and ending with the Holocaust. Dr. Kellogg was non-aggressive, personally (though he did have some quirks of sufficient scale to give the word "flake" a new meaning), and he personally cared for people he felt shouldn't breed. His success at managing his sanitarium and his considerable influence as a scientist were the foundation of the Race Betterment Foundation, which begat the slightly aggressive American Eugenics Society, which brought America the first compulsory sterilization laws (I'd call them aggressive) followed by the (IMO) highly aggressive sterilization laws of the late 20s and early 30s, which were used to justify Nazi euthanasia policies. Hey, Alexander Graham Bell wrote that deaf people shouldn't marry, he didn't say they should be killed, but people died anyway.

In times of serious shortage, groups of humans have gone from "those people aren't as good as us" to "those people aren't good enough" to "those people don't deserve to procreate" to "those people don't deserve to live" in less than a generation. Of course Marcin has the right to choose his own companions, but because of my great respect for Marcin, for his authority and his influence, I am strongly opposed to him describing his choices as a bold social experiment.

> Or
to use your hyperbole, there's a small step between forcing communities
to take on sub-optimal people (pardon the inhumane-sounding wording)
and a bureaucratic totalitarian government mandating your every move.

That's not my hyperbole, but I get your drift, and there are many people who want the Americans with Disabilities Act repealed for that very reason. And I'll pardon the inhumane-sounding wording; there's usually an emotional side to every debate, word have emotional impact, and I figure you chose "sub-optimal people" for the same reason I chose "boxcars."

aaronmakaruk

Hello Everyone,

Here's some information to add to the conversation:

Factor e Farm is held in a community trust - it's not private property.
Open Source Ecology is filing for tax-exempt/non-profit status and will be governed by a board of directors.
Marcin is hiring an Executive Director - this will free him to focus on GVCS development and this person will work on getting our policies up to standard - there isn't enough time to do it yet.

Aaron

ederieux

Thanks, Aaron. That is very helpful. What is the name of the FeF trust and who owns it? Are the trust documents available on OSE's website?

When will the tax exempt/ non-profit status documents be filed? Who will serve on the Board of Directors?

I saw plans for this change that were posted several months ago - maybe last May. But I understand your post to say that OSE has not yet filed for tax exempt/non-profit status and continues to operate, at least for now, as a for-profit organization and all OSE funds and assets other than the real estate at FeF are owned by Marcin. There is no Board of Directors at this time. Correct? The information I have found that is available to potential contributors has not been clear on these points.

Don't mean to divert this discussion from Jack's original post about disability and diversity issues. But I think that understanding how OSE/FeF are owned and governed is the first step in addressing the legal, moral and even practical concerns raised here.

aaronmakaruk

Let me try to get some answers to your questions - this weekend is the TED conference, so there will be a delay in my response, but I've got this on my list.

Matt_Maier

Lets see if I understand...your fear/worry/question is that if Marcin carefully selects only highly capable and productive members of FeF, then anyone who starts a GVCS-based village will be so impressed with his intellect they will assume ONLY geniuses can make the GVCS work, and will likewise exclude the stupid and handicapped?

I dunno. Excluding obvious things like violating the law I have a philosophical problem with telling people how to organize their village. I got into this to give people more/better options, not to restrict their options to only the activities I approve of. I think Makerbot's hermit crab shell project is retarded and the resources could be applied to a more pressing problem, but they're not hurting anyone. Sure, they might not be HELPING as much as they COULD, but that's not a legitimate reason to have a problem with their activities. In the same way, if Marcin doesn't use the first GVCS-based village as an opportunity to advance the cause of feminism, or gay rights, or recognition for handi-capable-ness, it's not going to bother me.

I'll save my worrying for the first psycho, child-abusing cult leader who uses the GVCS to build an impenetrable, self-supporting compound. Or the first warlord who rolls troops into GVCS-equipped villages and forces them to start building tanks. Or the first terrorist who "starts a village" but uses the tools and fertilizer to make a dozen open source car bombs.

JackMcCornack

Thanks for the info, Aaron,

I think many of the problems (and/or perceived problems) stem from Marcin being overloaded with responsibilities--there aren't enough hours in the day for Marcin, or any other individual, to do everything that OSE needs done.

As far as the discrimination issues in the Social Contract, they'll disappear along with other barriers to non-profit status. When OSE gets (or even applies for) its non-profit status, the "how Marcin wants to run his backyard" exclusion to civil rights law (no, you don't need wheelchair access to your back yard, any more than you have to provide access to your backyard to people of all races or religions) becomes moot.

There are attorneys who specialize in avoiding compliance with Federal civil rights law (including the Americans with Disabilities Act) and if OSE has such an attorney working on its non-profit status application, it could end up with the Department of Justice deciding what is what, but the easiest, quickest, and cheapest way to comply is just to comply.

However, if the Board of Directors really want to keep (for example) the "fully able-bodied" requirement in the Social Contract, here's how the usual arguments go and how they usually fail.

The easiest example is wheelchair access. There's no question that paraplegica does not meet the OSE's Fully Able-Bodied standard, and does merit the protections of the ADA, which will require a non-profit version of OSE to reasonably accommodate an applicant. OSE could argue that wheelchair access to FeF is unreasonable, a la...

> handicapped-accessible bathrooms, doors, computers, etc. - none of which will exist at FeF due to limited resources

The ADA was in effect before construction started on FeF, and the DoJ is unlikely (IMO) to conclude that "limited resources" compelled OSE to stack compressed earth brick doorways too tight for wheelchairs. Computer access for paras means a computer desk has to be high enough to get a wheelchair under, and remember, the ADA doesn't require every bathroom and every desk be wheelchair accessible, just enough of them to "reasonably accommodate."

One technique for avoiding the "provide qualified individuals with disabilities" access-and-opportunity thing is to say "Everybody here has to be able to do everything," which the Act says is an acceptable argument for 15 or fewer employees. If you're hiring someone to hang sheet rock then paraplegia makes a person unqualified, but if there are 200 people involved and sheet rock installation is not the purpose of one's tax-exempt non-profit corporation, disqualifying paraplegic applicants in general for their inability to hang sheet rock in specific is unlikely to fly.

>Excluding obvious things like violating the law I have a philosophical
problem with telling people how to organize their village.

Ditto that, Matt. If it's Marcin's village, he can run it how he likes and I'll merely exercise my option not to participate. I've objected to calling it a bold social experiment because of how outsiders might interpret the results--when a scientist says "experiment", many laymen take the declared results as proof of the scientist's hypothesis--but I haven't denied his right to pick and choose his own companions by his own criteria for hs own village. But now the OSE is seeking non-taxable corporate status, so it won't be Marcin's village, and the taxpayers picking up the tab get a voice in this, via civil rights law.

Or Marcin could declare OSE a private club, and if the courts agree, OSE could have tax-exempt status and its own private membership rules (private clubs are exempt from the ADA etc) but the courts refuse the exemption to private clubs formed specifically to avoid compliance with Federal civil rights laws, so it would be an uphill battle with minimal reward.

I'm confident the Social Contract will be rewritten (a "fully able-bodied" requirement in the Social Contract is as strong a disqualifier to tax-exempt non-profit status as a "fully Caucasian" requirement would be); confident enough to rewrite my tirade on my Team Culture page, and I probably won't mention it again unless folks start looking for loopholes.

Matt_Maier

Would you have the same objection to a "fully able-minded" requirement? What about "fully emotionally-stable?" How many sub-optimal people does a leader have to include before you don't question their motives anymore?

JackMcCornack

C'mon Matt, I'm not questioning Marcin's motives, I'm observing that regardless of the motives of the experimenter, people after the fact sometimes use the experimental results for their own ends--thus a scientist of Marcin's stature has to use care before declaring a bold social experiment. I don't doubt he believes his entry standards are essential to the success of an OSE Village--but success won't prove (or even indicate) the need for top-tier brain and body because there's no control group in this "social experiment", so there will be no evidence one way or the other. 200 people of random intellect and fitness might do as well.

And yes, I would --and do-- have the same objection to the "fully able-minded" requirement. 6 or 7% of Americans can meet the "Ability to hold one’s own weight intellectually" standard, defined in the OSE Social Contract as post-graduate level (Masters or Doctorate). If there were a control group, the experiment might show that a journeyman welder of average intelligence has the "Ability to hold [his] own weight intellectually" in the OSE environment, where a trade school graduate may have more practical knowledge than an astronomer with a PhD. I chose the wheelchair example because it's clear (needs wheelchair = not fully able-bodied) whereas an intellectual example would be fuzzy.

Matt_Maier

"...I'm not questioning Marcin's motives, I'm observing that regardless of the motives of the experimenter, people after the fact sometimes use the experimental results for their own ends--thus a scientist of Marcin's stature has to use care before declaring a bold social experiment..."

>>>Oh, okay, I get you now :) just one more clarification. Do you think the risk of Marcin's first village being twisted to support an evil agenda in the future is great enough to dictate recruiting now? Like, if he put you in charge of recruiting, how would you do it? Do you think it's more important to show the first village succeeding, even if it increases the risk of inspiring weirdos, or do you think it's better to minimize the chances of inspiring weirdos, even if it increases the risk of the first village failing?

"...the experiment might show that a journeyman welder of average intelligence..."

>>>That question was a diplomatic way of asking if you'd let a mentally retarded person participate in the first village. If it was up to me, I wouldn't. At least, I can't think of an argument that would convince me to count them against the 200 person cap. However, one of the great things about the GVCS is that it's so damned simple. I'm really looking forward to seeing how much intelligence is actually required to understand it. I suspect it's not much. My guess is that a person would have to be at a place where they couldn't tie their own shoes before they wouldn't be able to do something useful in a GVCS-based village. I just wouldn't let that person into the first trial. Or the second. I don't see any reason to risk the success of the new project. When the first one works, there will be plenty of time to see how far the risks of failure can be pushed. But if the first one fails, we might not get a second chance.

"I chose the wheelchair example because it's clear...whereas an intellectual example would be fuzzy"

>>>Well, yeah, that's why I asked the question. Also why I added the emotional stability question to it. If I understand you correctly, you are worried that a GVCS village filled with the best-and-brightest could be used in the future to justify leaving anyone who is not the best-and-brightest out of the future good times. Obviously, optimizing the people recruited is easy. People who perform at the highest levels will always tend to get things done better...that's why they're called geniuses. But their ability to do more/better stuff doesn't invalidate the humanity of people who can't perform at the same level. However, there are several major categories of "performance" that were left out of the original discussion. A person's ability to get along with other people, and keep their emotions in check, is important to the overall functioning of a small group. So, if we're going to include people of average or below-average intellect, or similarly sub-optimal physical ability, should we also include a few people who like being assholes or like to get drunk and rage out every Friday?

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