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Is OSE a capitalistic system?
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  • @Gonzo & Ackhuman: I think redundancy is a byproduct of the market economy, not of ownership. In order to meet future demand, more must be produced than are currently needed. When demand drops off unexpectedly producers are left with a surplus, sometimes a huge one. When I worked at LSI Logic manufacturing GPUs one of their clients broke contract and moved all their USA manufacturing overseas to cheaper manufacturers. As a result LSI Logic was left with millions of chips in warehouses that they could no longer sell because of intellectual property rights. Similarly companies produce extra to cover times when there will not be enough supply, or for many other contingencies or potential opportunities. Also as I'd mentioned earlier, banks own many more homes than they allow onto the real estate market, because keeping the supply of homes for sale artificially low keeps the price artificially high. Even though there are enough homes to house everyone in the USA the market makes it look as if there are not.  Remember, in a market economy the goal is profit, and so companies will do whatever is statistically most likely to give them that profit. Keeping production above demand is necessary for profiting in a market economy. The trick is to not produce so much that you're left with an unsalable surplus, which then becomes a liability. Yes, without ownership there would be no market economy, but I do not think ownership in and of itself necessitates a surplus.

    @Gonzo, re public limited companies: I addressed this in my last post, a 501c3 nonprofit corporation would meet all the needs of such a community including accepting donations and volunteers, tax exemption, etc. Because the goal of the organization is not to make a profit but to house its members, a nonprofit structure should be sufficient.

    @Rabert: I agree that 5 to 10 people will not be enough for autonomy. It is however enough to start laying the groundwork for a larger community or organization. If 5 to 10 people without land start working together on raising money, scouting out potential locations, studying laws, gathering donations, polling potential residents to find out what people would want in such a community, etc, it would make the project much more likely to come to fruition, and would increase the degree of its success. I think a city of 10,000 may be out of the reach of one person, but for a group of 10 people it might be possible. Another thing to think of is, people will be much more likely to flock to something they see as already successful, as with Danial's sitting by the water example. If they see one person with a lot of ideas but not much physically accomplished, they may be interested but will take no steps to bring it into reality and definitely won't move in. If they see ten people already passionate about the idea, with millions of dollars already saved up, a few potential building sites picked out, and a large, diverse, and active online community already in existence, they may be not only willing but excited to participate.

    Another thing that occurred to me is that it might be good to build an online community around the idea before trying to start building a physical one. Having hundreds or thousands of people actively following your project and possibly even donating to it would go a long way toward getting it off the ground.

    My girlfriend and I have been pondering what we can do right now before we have a village. One of the things we came up with last night is teaching classes in things like aquaponics, worm composting, and other sustainability practices. It would spread awareness and knowledge of the lifestyle we aspire to, costs very little and may actually make a little money, and has the potential to build a community by bringing together people who have similar ideals and goals.


     
  • In the USA there is a special type of corporation called a 501c3 corporation, more commonly referred to as a nonprofit.

    We have this in Europe as well. However, as soon as such an organization is intended to provide the means to its owners to pay for their life, what is the case with our project, you have no chance to be acknowledged as a non-profit corporation. Maybe there is some more leeway with this in US, but from all I learned to create such an organization as a non-profit in Europe is virtually impossible. If you could do that in the US, you should definitly try for it, though.

    Actually, I don't know if I would want that, since as a genuine corporation you won't stand out as something different and would fit better into the role of the wolf in sheepskin. Additionally, since this corporation won't earn much money, it won't be taxed either. The only advantage of a non-profit organization would be the possibility for tax-deducted donations, but we are not aiming for donations.
     
  • In the US it is allowed for a nonprofit to pay the wages of its employees, and for the corporation to make a small net profit (a thousand or so dollars a year I think? Not a lot, just enough to cover accidentally making a profit I think)

    Nonprofits are generally seen in a positive light here and not as greedy corporations, though some of course are in it to make their owners wealthy, I think most try to be for the greater good and not for themselves.
     
  • I think one of the most important questions that has to be addressed is what level of autonomy is required, acceptable, and ideal. There is a big difference between what you need, what you want, and what is perfect. Also the process of going from need to perfect tends to be linear. Beginning small with few people and little autonomy and working up to many people and fully autonomy. Starting with a full city's worth of people is logistically not practical. It is like if I want to become a master painter,but instead of practicing from the beginning on the small nuances of the brush/colour work, I learn everything there is to know about painting theory and then attempt to paint a masterpiece. There are growing pains that are required in order to create a strong foundation upon which to base a social group.

    In the beginning there will only be so much that can be done self sufficiently. This is simply because in this stage most of the resources are going to the building of the communities infrastructure. After some of this infrastructure is in place then a space opens up for engaging autonomy. The GVCS would accelerate the speed towards autonomy of a small community. It would be a gradual process however and would take years. As people come to the community greater levels of self sufficient living become possible. There is a pinnacle of autonomy that can realistically be achieved in one community however, unless we are expanding the community to millions of people. High technology, global telecommunications, and varied manufacturing requires a very large base of people to carry out. Although if you are not talking this kind of autonomy than just ignore the last statement.

    There are a number of co-ops, Eco-villages and planned communities around the world. Some have endured and some have not, but the one thing that may be seen as lacking from most of them is the ability to draw in new members. This may be for any number of reasons, but hope for any new planned community to prosper will have to have the drawing power that is not present in most others. It needs some hook or catch that makes people want to inquire on their own so that they do not need to be 'convinced'. The community needs to stand out among all the others, and be presented in such a way as to look both modern/technologically advanced and ecologically conscientious with a cherry on top.
     
  • In Canada nonprofit corporations are allowed to acquire money to pay for essential staff, under the stipulation that no member of the board of directors profits directly or indirectly from the operation of the corporation. Also, any profits that the corporation makes must be planned to be used for the betterment of the community less corporate expenses. It may be possible to have a nonprofit set up to provide housing/food for its members, but there would not be any exchange of moneys taking place

    I can see a community owned for profit corporation being as useful as well. Even if the company turns a reasonable profit and has to pay taxes on the money it would only do so until the community was set up and then could scale back its income to cover the land tax and other outside expenses.
     
  • I like the points you're brining up, Danial, very helpful to me I'm my thought process.

    I think degree of autonomy is important to consider. Different people will want different levels of separation from the mainstream society and its economy.

    I personally want to be free from the current economy except for what cannot be produced internally.

    Because my goal us to spread sustainable lifestyles to the general public, separation from mainstream society as a whole will be impossible. I do not want to hide on a commune, I want to bring alternatives to people who have none.

    Another thing I thought of in reading your post is that strangers when thrown together suddenly have a lot of friction until they find commonalities. For example I went to a general assembly meeting a week before occupy Portland started its occupation. There were several hundred people, maybe over a thousand, all gathered in a park for a common purpose, but it was chaos. No one knew what they were doing. Even the organizers only had a sketch of a plan. Eventually over the following months the group grew organically into a coherent entity, but they lost hundreds or thousands of people that would have stayed in the group had they had more of a plan and a unified core group from the start.

    An example of the friction is when the group decided to block the street between their two camps. When they started the occupation the route was fenced off for the upcoming Portland marathon. After the marathon was over the city wanted to reopen the street, which is the main exit for one of the bridges that comes into downtown. The general assembly put it up for consensus but a group of anarchists refused to give the road back to the city. This went on for days. The city and the general population were furious at the entire occupation. Internal rifts within the occupation also started growing over the issue. I stopped participating in the online side of things myself in protest. Eventually the police came and arrested the few people that wouldn't leave the street. The rest of the occupation just stood by and let them be taken away.

    What I'm trying to illustrate with this is that large groups that don't have a mutual bond to each other tend to experience friction and fall apart. To grow a city of 10,000 it may be wise to grow that number slowly. Set up an online community. Collectively choose a decisionmaking process. When new people join that aren't willing to follow that process or to follow the decisions of the group, don't let them move in in the first place when the city actually gets its land.

    Also, a test village with a smaller population, let's say 500, might be a good intermediate step to develop skills and a community charter that could be applied on a larger scale. Especially if there's eventually supposed to be more than one city in the organization anyway. The prototype village could become autonomous by interacting economically with the full sized city when it gets built.
     
  • Another thing that occurred to me is that
    it might be good to build an online community around the idea before
    trying to start building a physical one. Having hundreds or thousands of
    people actively following your project and possibly even donating to it
    would go a long way toward getting it off the ground.


    I do not only think that this would be a good idea, I'm convinced that it is absolutely essential. That's part of the reason, that something like that couldn't have been started 20 years ago, because there would have been no chance at all to find that many people for such a project. My website fugium.org, albeit at its very beginning only, is that attempt to build a community before really starting anything.

    I would prefer not to accept donations because it would create two problems: People would start to think I'm after those donations and rip them off. If someone would donate, I would thankfully accept it, but I would not ask for it or make it part of the project's business model.
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    gonzo
     
    August 2012
    Danial, it's like you read my mind.
    I have seen communities that try to be independent and people could not trust them because they try to separate fanatically from the rest of the society.
    How can you trust a community that doesn't care about your future and doesn't pay your social contributions (unemployment insurance, health insurance, retirement fund)? That's almost impossible. The people must fell free to join but they also must feel free to leave the community permanently or for a while. Sometimes people have to leave to take care of their family, they get married and decide to move, etc.
    The supporters must feel that they can join the community for a while, making it better, without risking anything. It's the feeling of being free and the feeling of leaving something useful behind that can attract the people and make them join and to come back.
    This is not a religious sect like People's Temple where those who want to leave are "evil". The supporters should not feel like they will become slaves of the community once they join (If you join, you have to stay here forever, if you leave, you lost years of retirement contribution).
    Also, ideas like not paying taxes should not be encouraged. Not paying taxes can even lead to war. It should only be achieved if the community buys an island and creates it's own country. Conflicts are the last thing the community needs. When the community is big enough, a branch of it can buy such an island. But the community should never be at war or hostile with the rest world, in the name of hating capitalism.

    Yes the profits must be invested into creating infrastructure, and only after infrastructure is built the profits should be invested in building more autonomy.

    @kriswood
    I think that building an online community is vital for the success and for attracting more supporters. The supporters can check the community anytime, keeping their enthusiasm alive.

    @Rabert
    I think that donations can be vital especially at the beginning. There might be a lot of enthusiasts interested to make donations, from the curiosity of participating to such a social experiment. It can help a lot to build the infrastructure. OSE is also accepting donations and it relies on donation money. And some of the supporters can even be rich, making sudden big donations.
     
  • I agree that donations are vital, especially considering crowdsourcing options that are available today. Many people might be interested in participating in such a project but unable to move themselves. Donations are a way that people can be a part of and support something they care about. It would also lower the amount needed by residents to join the community.

    Many of the eco-villages I've looked at joining the last year are completely out of reach for me because they require getting a home loan and buying a condo or house at market prices. If a community was started that accepted donations, the costs of moving in would not be as prohibitive.
     
  • Another idea I just thought of would be to set up an alternate economy between existing intentional communities. Building an infrastructure so that these communities could begin meeting their own and each other's needs without relying on the mainstream economy could only help any eventual village or city to be more free from the existing system.
     
  • I think one of the most important questions that has to be addressed is
    what level of autonomy is required, acceptable, and ideal.


    Interesting question I think I would have never asked. To be able to, answer this, we would have to clarify an important prerequisite: Are we talking about autonomy for a person, for a group (family or clan), for a community (village, town, city) for a nation? Is it so, that a person in an autonomic state is necessarily autonom himself? No, I think not. That's the core reason I'm talking about autonomic communities, because I believe, that this is where autonomy counts.

    Beginning small with few people and little autonomy and working up to many people and fully autonomy.

    That simply does not work, as it has been proofed time and time again with hundreds and thousands groups trying to go this way. Beginning small will eat your resources, your strength and your willpower, and you will either live a life in poverty and self-exploitation, hoping that your national social system will take over when your small group cannot care for you anymore. Starting big has been tried only a few times, and worked most of the times. The Amish, the Hutterer, Vissarions people in Siberia, the Americans who went to Oregon 150 years ago, the jews in today's Israel, and so on.

    This is simply because in this stage most of the resources are going to
    the building of the communities infrastructure. After some of this
    infrastructure is in place then a space opens up for engaging autonomy.


    If you would do it that way, that would be inevitable. It will only work, when you not have all the means to procure all resources needed right from the beginning. If you don't have that, you will run yourself dead trying to cope with the lack of almost everything. Another reason for numbers. I would not start to actually build such a community before I have at least 5,000 committed people, who have contributed their deposit to become a member of that community.

    High technology, global telecommunications, and varied manufacturing
    requires a very large base of people to carry out. Although if you are
    not talking this kind of autonomy than just ignore the last statement.


    The community I'm thinking of will decide on what is needed to live a good life and what not. We will use much what you might regard as higher technology, and we won't have other things you might think of as indespensible. With initial deposit of 10,000 there will be enough funds to buy most of everything what is deemed essential to run a community based on need instead of want.

    This may be for any number of reasons, but hope for any new planned
    community to prosper will have to have the drawing power that is not
    present in most others.


    The small scale communities, when they begin, demonstrate hardship, abdication, and the pains of growth, especially when it is forced. No wonder, nobody will join.
     
  • To grow a city of 10,000 it may be wise to grow that number slowly. Set
    up an online community. Collectively choose a decisionmaking process.


    That's true. I'll try to do this in a kind of virtualization. I just provide the starting point. A detailed plan how such community could work. People can read it and can say yes, great! and join. Or no, nonsense! and stay away. With this we have the first conflicts avoided. Some people might say Sounds good, let's start from it and improve it! There will be a decision making process which refines the ruleset over time. We will not start to actually do something before we don't have an accepted and solid ruleset the majority will accept. I mentioned already the intrinsic problem with minorities, those who will find parts of the ruleset that unacceptable that they can't live with it, will leave, when it gets down to business and start building everything. Others will see the chance to modify things slowly, to influence the majority, to eventually become part of the majority. That's natural and intended.

    The most important part of this project is not the rough idea as I tried to roughly describe before, it is to develop a ruleset which will be accepted by a majority, will be committing to all subscribing to it, and will be legally enforcable to make subscriptions not arbitrary. People need to know what they decide for before they join in as much detail as possible. This does not mean micromanagement, but it does mean a consistence set of rules covering most principles of living together in such a community, the formal basis of creating a new future.

    We need that mutual bond before we start the real construction. To start bonding after facts are set in stone, literally, will seldom work.
     
  • I think that donations can be vital especially at the beginning.

    Donations are not needed. A webpage and some time is all that is needed.

    On the other hand, donations are not enough by far. Commitment is needed. People who will do what is needed, not just donate 10 dollars or 100. Action is needed, people who are willing to leave their old life for a new one. Partners in business are needed, who not only donate a little, but give all what they have for a new future for all. A person giving 10 hours of his time is much, much more important for the project than a person who donates a 1,000 Dollars.
     
  • Another idea I just thought of would be to set up an alternate economy between existing intentional communities

    I can only speak for Germany, where I know a bit about such attempts. It is not as if that never was tried. But all attempts during the past approx 40 years have failed. The reason is simple: Each community consists of few leaders and many followers, who have developed their own particular identity and ruleset over time. No attempt so far was succesful to generate solidarity among those leaders. What we have achieved in this country is peaceful coexistance, lots of communication, but no collaboration, and definitly no integration of concepts, believes and rulesets.
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    gonzo
     
    August 2012
    On the other hand, donations are not enough by far. Commitment is needed.
    Not all who wish can join the community when they want to, it might take years until they can join. But they might have some money to invest in the future of the community, therefore investing in their own future as members of the community. Not always you can convert people's time into goods, because you might be missing some tools impossible to make them on your own.
    It's very important to build the infrastructure as fast and efficient as possible. Extra money can help.

    People who will do what is needed, not just donate 10 dollars or 100.
    That's true, but the community simply can't create some things, it has to buy them. The community has to buy land, it can't create land, for example, no matter how many members it has. It won't have iron mines to extract metal and to create tools, so it will have to buy some tools and materials at least at the beginning.

    Action is needed, people who are willing to leave their old life for a new one.
    They must feel free to take a holiday, testing the new life for a while. They must feel free to get back to their old life anytime if that's what they want. Only when they will feel free they will be comfortable to join. Without such an essential policy, the community will only gather followers who will execute the commands of the leaders, and it will become more or less like a religious sect. There is no need to gather people who want to banish their old lifestyle forever and who want to cut all the links with the rest of the world. The community that creates the new life should build independence step by step and it should interact with and help the world instead of rejecting it.

    I can only speak for Germany, where I know a bit about such attempts. It is not as if that never was tried. But all attempts during the past approx 40 years have failed. The reason is simple: Each community consists of few leaders and many followers, who have developed their own particular identity and ruleset over time.
    And that's why they fail, because they have leaders and followers. We don't need leaders and followers, we need to engage the people into community decisions. I bet most of the communites you speak about don't have forums and not even have web sites, therefore there is no real communication even inside the community.
    Exactly like the OSE model, the RBE communities have to be capable to scale and to replicate. The sister and spin-off communities must be capable to communicate and to cooperate with each other perfectly. It must be easy for a member to leave a community and to settle into another remote sister RBE community. The purpose is to always look for increasing the freedom and autonomy for the community members.

     
  • @gonzo, I think that is my single favourite of your posts so far in this thread. :) The point of people being free to leave is an important one that I've never thought of in my past ponderings, and I think that is very true. If people must sacrifice everything to move in, and if they must sacrifice everything again to leave, it will be very difficult to convince people to give it a try. The idea of letting people visit the community once functional to see what it's like and to see if they'd like to join before committing to it is also a very good one. One community here in Oregon that has values similar to Rabert's does that also. People may stay for three days (I think it's five if they're from out of the area) to experience the community. If they want to move in they must sell all their belongings and donate the funds to the community. I've never visited though so I cannot say how successful they are. It seems like a 1960s style commune so I haven't been interested in checking it out personally. When I get closer to making more tangible steps forward I'll probably visit as many intentional communities of all kinds as I can to see first hand what works, what doesn't and what I do and don't like about them. For now though that's too far off for me to spend time and energy away from my day job traveling around like that.

    The point of leaders and followers is I think exactly the crux of the issue. In order for any of these community ideas to work, whether RBE, capitalist, etc, they must involve all members equitably (notice I didn't say equally, as long as everyone's getting a fair share, not all successful systems give an equal voice, for example representative democracies vs direct democracies vs consensus). Our current society is at least in name a representative democracy but due to corruption it no longer functions as one entirely (if it ever truly did, who knows). I think the Occupy movement attempted to implement something like this but there are too many people for it to work effectively. They got bogged down in consensus and could not come to agreements on many issues. Often vocal minorities could hold up the entire process by refusing to consent on any given issue. I think this was partially due to not enough people having any formal training in consensus, so people didn't understand the rules and just did whatever they wanted.

    One system I'd like to try is sociocracy.


    It works similar to consensus except that it's also partially representational. People are divided into groups. Within each small group people come to consensus. Each small group chooses a representative who goes and speaks for them at the next level up. That person now speaks for the whole small group and joins a group of others who represent other smaller groups. This group can make decisions that effect all the small groups, and can elect a person who represents them at the next level up, and so on and so forth to as many levels of division as are needed. If at any point a group is dissatisfied with their representative, they choose a new one. All people in all the groups have equal value, and there is a chain of accountability all the way up to the top. Within each level organization is still horizontal as in consensus, but unlike consensus when a person or group has been selected for a task they can just do it without having to check back with the group for further consensus. This gives a level of executive power that consensus lacks while still retaining the ability for everyone to have a say (if indirectly) and for everyone's needs to count.

     The one thing I don't like about Sociocracy is that it also has a top-down representation. A board of directors (which in some organizations I understand is not elected) chooses management personnel to represent them at each level down to the bottom. I'd prefer to keep everything bottom up so that the people have all the power except for what they voluntarily give to their representatives.

    I think I'd also let the system be arranged organically. For example if you are unhappy with your group you can always look for a new group to join or form one of your own, choose your own representatives in the new group, etc. Likewise for division of labor people would be free to create separate hierarchies for specific jobs.

    I've tried to get a consensus based group going in the past but the problem was that no one was interested without a hook. What good is such a group if it cannot meet any of your needs? Still trying to find the bootstraps to pull myself up by on that one. Perhaps I need to find other people like me who want to work on this problem together hmmm... 
     
  • On a complete unrelated note, a friend linked me this e-book and I read the first chapter on the way home from work today. It looks interesting.

     
  • @ gonzo

    It's very important to build the infrastructure as fast and efficient as possible. Extra money can help.


    I favour thorough and good planning over quick realization, especially, we are not under any time pressure in the meaning of normal business timelines. I mentioned it before, I plan for 10 years of community creation and fund raising (fund raising is not donations, but commitments t purchase partnership shares by people who like to join!) before land will be bought. That should be enough time for most people make up their mind and possibly prepare to join.

    Sure, if someone would force money upon me without any obligation or favourism demand, I would not say no. But I don't want to create a business model which relies on donations or is dependent on this, so I simply choose not to spent work and time in order to generate donations. If, at some point, someone will join the project and is very interested in expanding the focus to donations, I would not object. I'm German, and in Germany donations are by far not that big a part of culture and society than in the US, for instance, so maybe I'm just not sensitized enough in this regard to develop the stance that it will be needed or even indispensible.

    The community has to buy land, it can't create land, for example, no matter how many members it has.

    You may have overread my posting where I explained my basic idea. I propose to create a corporation with 10,000 partners. All partners will buy an equal share of this corporation. With this funds, we can buy we can't make.

    They must feel free to take a holiday, testing the new life for a while.
    They must feel free to get back to their old life anytime if that's
    what they want. Only when they will feel free they will be comfortable
    to join. Without such an essential policy, the community will only
    gather followers who will execute the commands of the leaders, and it
    will become more or less like a religious sect.


    Well, that's a tough one. When you have a great idea and start a business and invest everything in it you have, you may succeed or you may fail. You don't just take a holiday to try it out, and you definitly don't create a business with the mindset on the backdoor to opt out. That's what we are doing, we create a business, even legally so. The only diffference is, that the goal is not profit but freedom. Partners of this business cannot, due to the nature of this business, have obligation which are required to be answered in payments, since they will earn no or only very little money. But nobody stops them from having a stash of cash somewhere on a bank account as a fallback solution, if they don't like in this corporation. What I don't think would be a good idea, that those people buy things and stuff and bring it into this community bolstering what they now have and others not.

    The people who left Europe for America in the 18th and 19th century, the Americans who left the east for the west, did not do that with a backdoor. This mindset is needed. This project is no holiday, It is nothing you do for fun, because you can afford it. It is an attempt to save our civilization under the impression of growing resource scarcity, failing growth paradigm of capitalism and steadily growing world population. You should probably read a bit of Richard Heinberg, who is much more blunt in describing what will come to us than I am, when do not change things radically. Either you want to change and rescue some of the future for your grandchildren, or not. I personally see it as black or white, no grey in between.

    What we are planning here is not community with leaders. It is lead by itself by continous votings. That's even required by law, since it is a partnership with equal rights for all partners. The only leader to follow is the majority, not one single person or a small group of persons. There will be some who will be empowered to officially execute the decisions of the majority, but they will have no right to ignore decision, modify them or invent some of their own. Luckily, incorporation allows for such regulations with legal support and enforcement.

    We don't need leaders and followers, we need to engage the people into community decisions.

    That's exactly what we are trying to do.
     
  • @kriswood

    If people
    must sacrifice everything to move in, and if they must sacrifice
    everything again to leave, it will be very difficult to convince people
    to give it a try.


    I mentioned that above already when commenting to gonzo. This request is nothing unusual, it happens daily when people create a business and when they need to leave it again, when it fails. It happens daily, when people marry and get divorced again. For this project, we need decisive commitment, no half-baked sympathy.

    I do not propose a new home. I propose a new life. Those who are simply looking for new home with free health care, organic food or security for old-age, are wrong at this place. They belong to the 99,999% of people, who want to be washed but not to get wet.

    And just to get this clear: I don't want commitment towards me. I'm not a leader and I don't want followers. I am a partner and I want partners. Equal rights for everyone, no privileges. I want commitment towards the project. And I only provide the basic idea and the starting ruleset, what will come out of it is the decision of the majority.

    The idea of
    letting people visit the community once functional to see what it's
    like and to see if they'd like to join before committing to it is also a
    very good one.


    Of course. But before someone will be able to visit such a community, it must exist. I would like very much to be copied lots and lots of times, because just one such community on our planet won't safe anything. Therefore I envision a visitor center and a visitors program, to spread the message, to show what can be done.

    One system I'd like to try is sociacracy.


    I something like this one mind when we have many of this communities, to coordinate work and resource sharing between those communities. If a single community's decision would affect a neighbour community, this decision would be escalated to a body where all communities of a region decide on such things. If a decision of such a region would affect neighbour reason, it would escalate again to the next "higher" body, and so on, up to a body which decides on issues affecting the whole planet.

    This would be strictly bottom up, those bodies would only decide with majority on issues presented to them because they affect a bigger body than that who wants to have it decided. They would have no power whatsoever to decide on subjects they invented themselves.

    I think I'd
    also let the system be arranged organically. For example if you are
    unhappy with your group you can always look for a new group to join or
    form one of your own, choose your own representatives in the new group,
    etc. Likewise for division of labor people would be free to create
    separate hierarchies for specific jobs.


    This comes automatically when there is no leader and all decisions are necessarily based on common agreement. This includes the nomination of leaders - and the possibility, that each leader can be deselected anytime, when this is felt necessary or benefitial by the majority of those who selected them into this position earlier.




     
  • Thank you for the extended info Rabert, I think I'm starting to see what you are saying more clearly. Here are some observations and ideas.

    The ten year time span over which a 10k city would be planned is reasonable, as it would likely take as long to design a fully functioning and properly integrated city. My concern is how such a long time span would effect the people who join at various stages over the course of the planning. Those who join early on in the project will have much more time to decide they do not want to do it, for whatever reason, and are more likely to leave it behind. Those who join later will be more likely to stick around. Ten years is a long time. It is the difference between and entire generation graduating school and having children of their own in school. It does not mean that it is impossible by any means, only that planning on attracting people to the project will have to be enticing enough to keep them attracted over a long period of time. This can be very tricky and logistically very challenging. There would have to be an entire PR and advertising group just to keep putting out new material about how the project is coming alone. One of the ways this could be lessened is by taking the first five years to plan with a core group of 20-25 people. The people would have to have knowledge of engineering and city planning, but at least after the five years was passed the world could be presented with at least a partial model of the city. It would then be much easier to hold onto peoples attention over a shorter time span.

    The second concern, and an idea to follow, is about the "buy in" price of 10oz of gold. Given today's price of gold that buy in would be 16,620USD, giving a total of 166,200,000USD total for all of the members. If we look at the price of gold ten years ago of 309.73USD we see that the buy in for one member would have been 3,097.3USD, with a total of 30,973,000USD. Looking to the future the projected price of gold in ten years is 5.000USD, or 50,000USD per member yielding 500,000,000USD for the membership whole.

    This means that the unstable nature of the gold market, while being a great investment, is a very poor measure by which to measure a buy in option to the project. The reason for this being that the price of gold climbs much faster than the average wage in any country, meaning that the longer someone waits to buy gold for the city the more costly it will be relative to their income. Using myself as an example, with the price of gold ten years ago it would be very easy for me to buy ten oz. of gold, current prices would be doable but not easy, and the projected prices ten years from now would be nearly impossible. The advantage here is always on the side of those who commit earlier on in the ten year span. They have longer to save and may spend less to get it, where as anyone how comes in late will have less time to save and have to spend more.

    My idea to this would be to make the cost to join in a common currency, preferably the most stable, and allow a pay over time option. Lets say that each person has to pay today's value of 10oz of gold. If someone was to join from the outset that would have ten years to pay the 16,620USD, breaking down to 1662/year, 138.5/month. Someone who came in halfway through would have to pay the same amount in total only the yearly and monthly totals would be doubled, 3224/year, 277/month. Going this route would be easier than scrambling to buy gold at the price possible and would be more fair than basing it on a fixed weight of an economically volatile metal.
     
  • @Danial

    Ten years is a long time.

    Depends on where you look at or where you are coming from. For a business, 10 years is in fact a long time. I personally don't know of any business which has a ten year plan. For a career, 10 years is a time frame you very well might plan for. For a lumberjack, ten years is only a fraction for his planning to grow and cut wood.

    I set 10 years, because I think that is the timeframe needed to find around 10,000 people, not because I believe that time is needed to plan and build the city. And this time is not the paramount, the number of people is. When we can find 10,000 people in 5 years, we will start in 5 years. If we would be exceedingly lucky and find 5,000 people after 3 years, and those 5,000 think they are enough to start buying the land and begin with constructions, we will do that in 3 years.

    Personally, but I'm no architect, I do think that the actual planning for the layout of the city and the project to build it is not very demanding. Basically, we will build lots of houses and seed lots acreage of farmland in the first year. We will have the workforce, motivation and knowledge of thousands of people to help with that. In the years leading to that we need to design a basic layout and some common ground rules. Everything else will be done when we are there.

    Refugees, and we are refugees in a sense, don't plan for their cities. They build them, and improve them over time.

    It is true, that people who signed on early are subjected to attempts to get them away from this crazy idea by the establishment, and we will loose some. On the other hand, those are the people who are mostly inclined to subscribe to the project's ideas, what they demonstrated by joining early. The early ones are no bandwaggon jumpers. What we will do is to try to get them involved. There will be planning, there will be discussions, there will be decisions to be made, and all are not only asked to participate, as partners in business it is their job to participate. Secondly, they will sign a legally binding contract. They will join a company with all the paperwork. They will be co-owners of its assets, material and immaterial. This will create some kind of psychological barriers to leave. However, those who want to leave, shall leave. It is not helpful at all to have unhappy, disappointed and miserable people around when you need to create something.

    This means that the unstable nature of the gold market, while being a
    great investment, is a very poor measure by which to measure a buy in
    option to the project.


    It's just the other way around. It is not the gold which is unstable, it is the currencies. I have two reasons for gold: First its stability in worth in an unstable time. Did you know that you have to pay today for a good suit the same amount of gold you had to pay for a 100 years ago? That a middle-class carriage in 1800 did cost roughly the same in gold what a middle class car cost today? 10oz of gold in 1600, in 1900 or today buys you roughly the same amount of things. The second reason is its stability in worth in an unstable time. From my point of view its a fact, that today's fiat money system will collapse sometime this decade. Funds in fiat will loose all or most of its worth. Gold will remain. When someone would deposit 15,000 USD for a project which will make use of this money in let's say 8 years, we do not know at all what we can buy for this money at this in 8 years, if at all anything. With gold, you have much less risk in this regard. This is very important, because the realization of this project is completely dependend on the availability of sufficient funds. There is no room for risk.

    Last but not least, it is easy to manage. 10oz of gold. Today, next year, in 5 years. No need for adjustments because of inflation, no need to hazzle with different currencies and exchange rates, and - most important - no need for bank accounts. Everybody keeps his 10oz and gives only that portion to the project, what is needed at a given time. So no need to worry you will be ripped off by a cunning schemer. Literally, with 10oz of gold, you can carry your option of a better future in your pocket, not in the pocket of a bank.


     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    gonzo
     
    August 2012
    Well, that's a tough one. When you have a great idea and start a business and invest everything in it you have, you may succeed or you may fail. You don't just take a holiday to try it out, and you definitly don't create a business with the mindset on the backdoor to opt out.
    ..
    But nobody stops them from having a stash of cash somewhere on a bank account as a fallback solution, if they don't like in this corporation.
    In this case, you don't have to invest everything. And that's a main factor for success. Once you know you are connected to enough safety nets, you can work with pleasure, investing all your energy and enthusiasm in the project. You don't have to live with the fear that you will fail.
    The point is that such a community is not about one great idea. It's success will depend on literally thousands of ideas and decisions of other people. Risking everything you have in such an experiment is crazy.

    One community here in Oregon that has values similar to Rabert's does that also. People may stay for three days (I think it's five if they're from out of the area) to experience the community. If they want to move in they must sell all their belongings and donate the funds to the community.
    That is a very bad idea, to ask them to sell all their belongings and to donate the money to the community.
    It is a good idea to request the members to come with a minimum initial contribution. But it's a disaster to ask them to sell them everything, making it very hard for them to leave the community if they will have to do it or if they will be excluded.

    USA is very attractive to immigrants because of the abundance (lots of resources) and freedom it delivers to it's citizens, comparing to the rest of the countries in the world.
    The community must be even much better than USA. It must provide resources in abundance, it must create as much profit as possible (without hurting anyone) and it must guarantee best freedom to it's members.
    For example the children of the members should not be indoctrinated at all. They must not be educated that "the rest of the world is bad". They should just know exactly what are the benefits and dangers of being outside. But they should be encouraged to leave the community for at least a few years when they become adults, so they can test on their own skin the both worlds. Only then, when they are outside, they should be encouraged to join the community, just like anyone else will be encouraged to do it. It's a very bad idea to indoctrinate children, like religious sects do. They should not be treated like slaves for a second. This approach can ensure there will be no negative press about the community (press that can make it look like a strange cult). It's not their fault if their parents joined the community before or after they were born, so they will have no obligation to stay in.

    I think it's not a good idea to implement just visitor centers. By the contrary, the people who volunteer should be able to do some voluntary work for the community in the most flexible way possible.
    Some people might live close to the community and have 2 hours / day. Others might have 1 day / week. Others might have a few weeks / year. All of them should get something to do. It's too artificial to impose a limit of maximum 5 days of visit.
    Once the people have the freedom to join when they want and when they can, that will create a much better publicity than a visitor center. It's like the difference between visiting a shop or the factory that produces the goods which are sold in the shop.
    The people should have the opportunity to do voluntary work for the community and even work for products/money as long as their participation is producing more for the community than the community has to spend on them. The same with visitors - they should stay as much as they want, provided they produce more than they consume.
    Providing jobs to unemployed, without obligations, is the best publicity the community can ever make, especially in these times.

    I suspect that with the technology the world has today, a decent life can be ensured even with 2-3 hours of work per day. Eliminate corruption and theft and you will see that it's already possible. I disagree with the idea that the community has to produce only what is necessary and make almost no profit. 3 hours of work / day can provide the goods needed to survive, and 4-5 more hours more can provide abundance. Once the community is rich, it can pay to have it's own specialists and researchers: historians, geologists, astronomers, anthropologists, it can build telescopes, and, why not - even satellites and spacecrafts. The purpose of the community must not be to get back to a primitive life. By the contrary, it has to open the way to going forward, to make more scientific discoveries, to colonize the space, and so on.

    Extra profits can be used to pay insurances for the members in both worlds: inside and outside the community, increasing the freedom and safety the members and future members will enjoy. The community must provide more safety nets to it's members than the rest of the world, not less.
    Extra profits can be used to allow joining to those who can't come with the minimum participation needed.
    The members must afford to make vacations and travel around the world, if they enjoy doing that. There should be a special fund prepared to compensate those who want to leave the community (or those who will be excluded from the community). Those people should get a fair compensation for their contribution of building the community. If someone has to leave, he/she might not be very happy to have to starve and keep their children outside in the rain and snow, just because the experiment didn't work for them. In the same time, the community should be free to exclude those who are lazy or misbehave, without having to settle in court and pay expensive compensations as punishments for hurting those who are excluded.
    It's a social experiment after all. It might be very successful but it must focus on increasing freedom and safety of both the members and community.

    The point of leaders and followers is I think exactly the crux of the issue. In order for any of these community ideas to work, whether RBE, capitalist, etc, they must involve all members equitably (notice I didn't say equally, as long as everyone's getting a fair share, not all successful systems give an equal voice, for example representative democracies vs direct democracies vs consensus).
    That's a very important and vital issue. Yes, it's a mess to involve everyone into every single decision, that's not even possible. So they have to trust the leaders (call them decision makers if you want) to a certain extent. The question is how to make them trust the decision makers.
    - I think the people must have a minimum participation into taking decision, in a minimum spectrum below and above them.
    - A key feature is the transparency. A wiki with all the relevant statistics: production of every sector of activity, expenses, etc. So the people can check easily the decision makers.
    - Also the people can become part of the decision makers group by rotation. Sure, if they don't want to bother, they should not be forced to.
    - But the members must have an obligation to participate to a minimum of decision making. For example if they live in an apartment building, they must participate at least once per month to meetings where they decide what that small community needs.
    - Everyone must have the obligation to check some aspects of the community. Check if the pipes are broken, check if the wikis are updated, check if the managers are doing their job, etc.
    At the bottom line: checking is the thing that can make it work. Managers must check the people they manage, and the people must check their managers - it must be both ways. It must be clarified everything that has to be checked, how often, by whom, and how to rotate the checking duties. We must make sure we can see quickly if someone did his/her checking job or not, no matter how high or low they are in the checking chain of command.

    When the people do not check and they don't have a minimum participation into decision making, they will leave space for abuses. Then the community will only work as long as the leaders are doing their job honestly. But once the leaders will stop doing it, the whole community will fail. Therefore everyone will have to do their part of the job of keeping the community democratic. If they refuse to do that, maybe they will have to be excluded.
     
  • That is a very bad idea, to ask them to sell all their belongings and to donate the money to the community.

    I think so, too. I would only ask to people to not bring their Cadillacs and Gucci shoes and wallet full of 100 dollar bills with them. Either they will leave the community for that earlier or later again, because luxury is more important to them then freedom and a future for their grandchildren, or they will sell everything later and donate it to the community because is makes sense. Or they just donate it to their church or a charity or whatever ...

    It's a very bad idea to indoctrinate children, like religious sects do. They should not be treated like slaves for a second.
    ... It's not their fault if their parents joined the community before or
    after they were born, so they will have no obligation to stay in.


    Where did that come from? :O Did anybody write or talk about child indoctrination or child slavery here? Did anyone write about walls and fences and prison-like lock in? If someone prefers a 40 hours week, bills for rent and utilities and no social security over free food, free housing, free social security and 10 hours work a week, nobody will force him or her to come or to stay.

    I think it's not a good idea to implement just visitor centers. By the
    contrary, the people who volunteer should be able to do some voluntary
    work for the community in the most flexible way possible.


    There is no insurance. When you have people working for you, you need to be insured. Especially in the US you just could just wait until someone would sue you senseless. What I propose is a company, not some kind of exclave where you visit some monks for recreation and enlightment or something like that. People will enough opportunity to see what we do and to decide if they want something like that themselves. We will even send out taskforces to help with creating companies like ours, if we are asked. But we will not be a center for some time off and doing useful public work.

    ... and 4-5 hours more can provide abundance. Once the community is rich, ... Extra profits can be used to pay ...

    This is not about getting rich, or creating abundance. It is about preserving what we have for future generations, what is exactly the contrary of getting rich or creating abundance. There is no room for profit in that concept, especially no "extra profits". Read this:

    There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small village.

    As he sat, he saw a fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite some big fish.

    The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”

    The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”

    “Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.

    “This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said.

    The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”

    The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go
    out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In
    the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my
    buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance
    throughout the night.”


    The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman.

    “I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more
    successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and
    try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money,
    you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be
    able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own
    production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you
    will have moved out of this village and to the big city, where you can set
    up HQ to manage your other branches.”


    The fisherman continues, “And after that?”

    The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king
    in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and
    float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.”

    The fisherman asks, “And after that?”

    The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move
    to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a
    few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap
    with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a
    drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”

    The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    gonzo
     
    August 2012
    It's just the other way around. It is not the gold which is unstable, it is the currencies. I have two reasons for gold: First its stability in worth in an unstable time.
    Why not simply to pay the amount of money needed to buy 2 hectares of land at the moment they join? Sounds more practical to me.

    And anyways, the more the community will be successful, the less money and resources it will need in order to allow others to join. One day it will even be able to provide regular jobs to those who don't want to join the community, and to make profit from it. So the newcomers won't have to donate anything, since the community makes enough constant profit, and it will make profit from any newcomer's work since the first month, while supplying their necessities of life.

     
  • Why not simply to pay the amount of money needed to buy 2 hectares of land at the moment they join? Sounds more practical to me.

    Can you guarantee, that the other 9,999 partners will get their 2 hectars right beside of what was already bought? If so, this would be good idea!
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    gonzo
     
    August 2012
    .. The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”
    This joke I heard it last year, from a German, in a shorter version:
    A German goes into a vacation in Greece. There he meets a Greek fisherman who was working just a few hours per day and spent the rest of the time on the beach. The German said: you can work more, you make more money and then you can have a bigger car, bigger house, and everything you need! And the Greek replied: "But I already have everything that I need!"
    I hope I don't hurt anyone's feeling, it's not a racist joke - at least I'm not putting it like that. Just to show differences between North and South of Europe.
    Anyways,

    This is not about getting rich, or creating abundance. It is about preserving what we have for future generations, what is exactly the contrary of getting rich or creating abundance. There is no room for profit in that concept, especially no "extra profits".
    It should be about getting rich. The community must be rich. USA could sent people on the moon because it was rich at that moment so it had enough food/resources to feed those people working to make spacecrafts. Only a rich community can be resourceful enough to invest in research, to discover and to send explorers out there.
    World's Untold Stories uncovers the regenerative medical breakthroughs allowing doctors to regrow body parts. - http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2010/02/24/wus.body.from.scratch.cnn
    Those discoveries that allow today to grow some body parts from scratch were made in rich countries (most of them in USA). You can't believe that subsistence self-sufficient rural communities in Albania can do that.

    A community of fishermen like in the joke who are happy to just play guitar, sit with their family, play with the kids, enjoy a good meal etc, that kind of community can't colonize another planet or send spacecrafts to the nearest stars.
    Some people simply can't feel happy to just play with kids and friends. They need to discover, to create, to understand, to explore, etc. And, in my view, that's the very purpose of the human life - to expand horizons. Sure, not at the expense of forgetting about family.

    So it's all about extra profits (community profits first of all). Extra profits means extra resources, and then a part of community can spend their time researching and exploring, instead of creating food or buildings.

    But anyways, abundance can be provided in a smart way, making sure goods can be recycled efficiently, consuming very little energy, making sure the future generations will have even more, not less.

    Can you guarantee, that the other 9,999 partners will get their 2 hectares right beside of what was already bought? If so, this would be good idea!
    It's not their land. They have to come with money. The community gets the money and it will buy land, rights besides the already acquired land. Of course, 2 hectares South of the community land might cost a bit more than 2 hectares positioned at the North so it has to be an average.
     
  • This story is not a joke, its an allegory, which is around for many years already. It is meant to make people think.
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    gonzo
     
    August 2012
    I would only ask to people to not bring their Cadillacs and Gucci shoes and wallet full of 100 dollar bills with them.
    I totally agree with that. It's not the individuals who should get richer. But it's the whole community who has to get richer, all members in the same time.
    I am for encouraging inventive and revolutionary new business models, to encourage the people to create a lot of profit for coming with a new business idea, but probably the taxes should be very high for those who make very high profits. Maybe someone creates a very successful website, for example. But the whole community should benefit from it.
    However, I'm not sure what's the best way to make sure people don't display their extra wealth. But once everyone has a very good life and everything they need, then probably nobody will be hurt by occasional display of wealth. I noticed that the people in Scandinavian countries are quite indifferent to such shows.
     
  • The community gets the money and it will buy land, rights besides the already acquired land.

    Can you guarantee, that the community can buy the other 2 hectar parcels right besides the already bought land next year, in three years, in seven years? If yes, good idea!
     
  • Sorry but I think you are wrong in that example.
    Trains are also a property of someone (you claimed that any kind of
    property is bad). Governments own those rail companies. But some of the
    rails are even owned by private companies, or by companies owned by it's
    very customers (public limited company). So it has nothing to do with
    being a private or public property.


    Don't bother responding to a mathematical argument in natural language.  I really don't care if you think that I'm wrong, because frankly, you have demonstrated quite the deficiency in reading comprehension.
     
  • I think redundancy is a byproduct of the market economy, not of
    ownership. In order to meet future demand, more must be produced than
    are currently needed.
    That's part of the problem, but it is definitely not the whole problem.  It is indeed primarily caused by private ownership.  When you have private ownership, there are lots of products that could easily be shared that are not, because by default, only the owner is allowed to use or control that product.  We have lots of empty homes, more than the number of homeless people, yet we continue building more homes because those empty homes are owned by someone else.

    Remember, in a market economy the goal is
    profit, and so companies will do whatever is statistically most likely
    to give them that profit. Keeping production above demand is necessary
    for profiting in a market economy. The trick is to not produce so much
    that you're left with an unsalable surplus, which then becomes a
    liability. Yes, without ownership there would be no market economy, but I
    do not think ownership in and of itself necessitates a surplus.

    It can result in either a deficiency or a surplus, but if there's not a deficiency, then the surplus is far more than is necessary.  That is the key to what makes it inefficient.  There is no accurate picture of supply/demand, and when supply is "sufficient" to meet demand, it is far in excess of what would actually be needed to fulfill that demand, because of the assumption that multiple persons' demands must be fulfilled by multiple, distinct products.  Do we all really need a personal kitchen, a personal laundry room, a personal vehicle, a personal wardrobe, a personal set of products, when we could really do just as well, if not better, with commons?  I'd rather have a really nice kitchen that I can walk to and share with other people than whatever shitty, personal kitchen I can privately afford.  I'd rather walk to a train station and be able to read the news while I go somewhere than have to get in my car and pay close attention to everything around me the whole time I'm using it.  I'd rather be able to go to a room and play an instrument than save up money and buy one, without a guarantee that I'll even be interested in playing it for long.
     
  • I think you may be underestimating the amount of work required to create a planned city. We can think of it like a highly advanced version of the Sim City game franchise. Finding a suitable and large enough piece of land, surveying and zoning, takes a long time with the area involved here. After that is done we have to consider basic infrastructure like roads, water and power distribution, power generation, and waste treatment. Laying this crucial foundation first eliminates redundancy in construction later on, creates an efficient overall system, and allows each building to have the same utilities from the start. We also have to consider the architecture of the buildings themselves. Building design and solar orientation can have a massive impact on the overall efficiency of the city's systems. More areas of subtle planning is the impact of the building plan on the people who are going to be living there. It is well known that residential areas that are separated from industry by commercial zones tend towards creating happier and healthier communities. Integrating parks, ponds, rivers and other recreational centers has to be planned as well.

    One of the amazing benefits of planning a city is that it can be made incredibly efficient because you have blank canvas with which to work. It is also the keystone that makes the entire structure of the city stand, and as such, its importance cannot be understated.

    It is of course possible to have a community develop organically. This is how almost all settlements started here in Ontario, Canada. There are some planned cities that were created once the surrounding communities were in place, but all of the small communities developed in an organic way. The small town I grew up in has 1500 people and was founded a couple hundred years ago. It started as a small cluster of buildings on the banks of the local river (main form of transportation at that time) and as more people came to the area the settlement grew outwards in a way not dissimilar to an infection or bacteria. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach to community building, but there are several inefficiencies built into it. Building use as an example will have to be re-purposed later on as the community grows, wells initially dug before utilities were available have to be closed or filled as city water becomes available, and so on.

    One great example of city planning, even though it is not popular on these forums, is TVP. Setting aside the social aspects and mandates of the project itself we can take a look at the city model that has been created. It is an example of the level of planning that should be achieved before the construction of a project as large as the one we are talking about.
     
  • ackhuman, I agree with you, that property in the meaning of exclusive right to access and use something is generally contraproductive. There are excemptions from that rule, though, which I would fix at immediate personal use. If you have the right and the need to use something, it cannot be objected by someone other who wants to use it as well. I think it is important, that both of these prerequisites are met: right and need. If you have the need but not the right, you can't use it or have it. If you have the right but not the need, you can't deny its use or access by someone other.

    On a blog of mine I had a reader, who has done some work on the quality of property and identified eight qualities to decide if something can be property or not:

    1. Quality of rightful origin

    Something can only become property, when it is the result of human labour.

    2. Quality of countability

    Something can only become property, if it is something concrete, what you can count. ("Countability" probably needs a more detailed definition itself.)

    3. Quality of identifiability

    Something can only become property, if it is positively circumscribable from other homogenous things and can be individually identified.

    4. Quality of moral neutrality

    Something can only become property, when it was not produced on the expense of someone or to harm someone.

    5. Quality of intention

    Something can only become property, when it was produced to become property. 

    6. Quality of non-personality

    Something can only become property, when it is non-personal, otherwise slavery would be acceptable.

    7. Quality of monopolizability (is that a word?)

    Something can only become property, if its nature allows for an exclusive right of its use.

    8. Quality of common advantageness

    Something can only become property, when being property is of advantage for all.
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    gonzo
     
    August 2012
    Can you guarantee, that the community can buy the other 2 hectares parcels right besides the already bought land next year, in three years, in seven years? If yes, good idea!
    No but the community can own different 5-7 patches of land. In the case that it can't buy land near the places where it already has, then the gold won't help also. If the community needs certain materials (for example construction materials needed to build one house), then the newcomers can bring those specific materials or the money that can buy those materials.
     
  • The project won't work with seperated patches of land, because of logistics, transportation requirements and all the legalities with driving on public streets. Ever thought about using the GVCS tractor on a public street?
     
  • I think you may be underestimating the amount of work required to create a planned city.

    Probably. I am thinking about building houses using GVCS tools and machines, something standardized and easily to be build with bricks. Actually I'm thinking about a giant infinity sign, aprox 2 km in lenght and 1 km in width, which consists of one large chain of two story row houses. Where the line is crossing in the center, there I envision the community center and the university, schooling an and other central public facilities. The rest of the construction would be homes, offices, workshops, storage rooms and barns. Along this line would run the utility installation, piping for water and waste water, cable for electricity. Telecommunication would be wireless. That's it. Everything else is farming and landscaping.

    I do not say that this is easy, but it is not very complicated to what I know. The only remarkable thing is the scale.

    However, I'm no architect. Probably I simply don't see the problems and catches. But right now, I think that with utilizing the GVCS several thousand people could build all that within a year.
     
  • "Ever thought about using the GVCS tractor on a public street?"

    Hehe, gave me a good chuckle picturing the lifetrack cruising through the streets. One large parcel of land is definitely required. There are regularly 300-500 acre parcels of land for sale around where I live so that is not as much of a concern as getting ideal terrain is. Where I live the land is very hilly, lots of lakes and generally about 8-12" of topsoil covering the bedrock. So finding a suitable fairly level area of a decent size can be challenging, though by no means impossible.

    Very interesting list there Rabert. Will give me lots to think about.
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    gonzo
     
    August 2012
    The project won't work with separated patches of land, because of logistics, transportation requirements and all the legalities with driving on public streets.
    The project must be capable to replicate itself everywhere. Every community should be like a cell in a bigger organism. If you can't buy more land to expand the community, you won't be able to buy it either with money nor gold, Then you simply have to find a solution: replicating smaller remote communities or sell the land and buy a bigger area of land somewhere else.

    Ever thought about using the GVCS tractor on a public street?
    Why not? Is the GVCS tractor in it's final design? I suspect it can be modified/redesigned/improved. And is there any requirement to use the GVCS tractor? Until it can be used on a public street, the community can use another kind of tractor.
     
  • @Gonzo, I think he will be able to get 10 square miles just about anywhere he wants it, if he can get as much money as he's expecting.

    On a side note, I wonder what 10,000 people buying collectively nearly 3 metric tons of gold would do to the price of gold on the open market... 
     
  • On a side note, I wonder what 10,000 people buying collectively nearly 3
    metric tons of gold would do to the price of gold on the open market...


    Virtually nothing, since it is only a tiny fraction of what is traded globally on a daily basis (approx 600 tons), and not all of them would buy all the gold on the same day, not even in the same year. When all this would become a huge success, and suddenly millions of people would try to copy that, they might probably need to find a different way to collect the needed funds, though.
     
  • And is there any requirement to use the GVCS tractor?

    Of course not. But we can build it ourselves for much, much less than buying a new tractor (you know what these things cost?). We want to spent money only on things we cannot make ourselves, because we won't get much more after our initial startup funds.

    There's a reason why I'm following OSE for some years already ...
     
  • This is ridiculous! If you consider the full cost of the tractor, any modern tractor will far outperform the contraptions I have seen posted here. Just because your scratching in the dirt is not economically sensible with a modern tractor does not make it the fault of the modern tractor but rather what you are doing with it.

    It should be fairly obvious that it takes everything we have to currently produce everything we have. There is some temporary slack as resources transition from one type of production to another. There are also some apparently idle resources, like young people, old people and people who didn't work out. Current group of baby boomers retiring with lots of promised wealth seemed to have pulled a fast one on us but that will work itself out soon enough.

    It would seem this OSE effort is motivated by people who feel the current economy for them does not provide sufficient rewards to motivate them to be productive within the current economic framework. I can understand that. If I am going to be poor working at McDonalds or GM for that matter, I may as well be poor growing my own food. The incidental benefits of growing my own food might be greater then working at GM but the level of poverty is crushing even compared to minimum wage (incl medical benefits)

    No matter how cheap your tractor is, it takes a lot of people to have anything beyond hunter gatherer existence - even this level of livelihood from the historical record required many persons trading over distances spanning continents. (As well as sophisticated rules of society and social behavior)

    This is not even getting into the need to satisfy the very basic need of social interaction with others outside your immediate group.

    The only real problem that needs to be solved is how do people get along and collaborate on a large scale as society goes global and businesses go global in scale.

    We have a decision to face as a species over the next 20 to 50 years, we allow people a minimum level of wealth (well being) and as a trade off we accept a certain level of global governance or we continue to have wars and social unrest as people become desperate.

    The strong will always exploit the weak, but that doesn't mean we can't agree on a framework that is designed to prevent discontinuities on an individual, on a local and on a global scale.



     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    RabertRabert
     
    January 2013
    It should be fairly obvious that it takes everything we have to currently produce everything we have.

    I think that is the major misunderstanding or difference between us and the others. It is not about "have", it is about "need". We are indoctrinated and trained to want to have everything, as quickly and thoroughly as possible. This mindset is - not slowly, but very fast - destroying our planet and our civilization. We need to learn, that it is not about to do things the most efficient way on the biggest scale possible. We need to learn that technology has a supportive role, not a demanding role as in "see what can be done and consequently exploit those possibilities to the utmost extend!".

    We don't need everything we have, we don't need to be able to produce everything we have, and it doesn't need to take everything we have. We need to step back. We need to ask ourselves, what we really need, and not what is possible, what is still open for the grabs, just because we can do it. We need to take into account future generations, which want to live on and from our planet just like we do. As long as there is no second planet in reach, or a technology with free energy in abundance available, we must not just act like such will available within the next few years or decades. This is nothing but a bet with the life of our children and grandchildren as the wager.

    We are not talking about a lifestyle of stoneage hunters and gatherers. We are domestic people, we will have homes, and food, an clothing, and healthcare, and security, and education, and technology, and research. But with a conscience and a mindset, that we need to preserve what we have for future generations. When we need to feed 10,000 people, we don't need today's agro high-tec. A simple tractor or three, just supporting basic manual labor, is completely sufficient.

    That is the basic ruleset of a subsistence economy:

    1. Leisure preference: The intensity of work is not to be extended to its utmost capabilities, but only to the point of sufficient coverage of need.
    2. Minimizing risk: Risks are only to be taken, when necessary for survival. Never to just open an opportunity for profit.
    3. Underproductivity: Available ressources are not to be exploited as quickly and thoroughly as possible, but only to the point of sufficient coverage of need.

    You see the difference to what we have now? You understand, what living to this economic principles would do to our planet, and would do to future generations, in contrast to what we are doing now?
     
  • Do you believe humanity as it is today is an emergent phenomena or that it is bounded and controlled by some outside force?

    What I understand from what you wrote is that - current human organization is not emergent but is being determined by outside forces and that those outside forces should be changed to result is some different organization of human activity?

    A variation of this - which I like better (but still think wrong) is that humanity has somehow broken out of the "natural" limits we should be "respecting" and this will be our undoing.

    Even human activities and organizations that seem to be controlling like government or law or religion are completely emergent phenomena.

    I will address each of your basic ruleset of subsistence economy

    1. Leisure Preference - Work is the greatest leisure. Yes we need to rest but once rested what we need is work. Individual work and group work. Meaningful goal oriented work.
    2. Minimizing Risk - Impossible and very boring and makes life worthless. The only sure thing is death but I am sure you are not suggesting suicide as a guiding principle.
    3. Underproductivity - well that was the main point of my previous post - while there are some difficult to explain examples - Ferrari's and Mars Rovers and Large Hadron Colliders it is all related and connected - one less Lamborgini and that means one less MRI scan that changes someones life immeasurably, or one more step towards curing cancer, understanding the human genome. The hardest thing to understand is war and armed conflict. Should we have a world where we don't need Ferrari's to cure cancer or war to move forward, of course but I don't see how growing your own food with sub optimal machinery is part of that solution.
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    RabertRabert
     
    January 2013
    Human organization is our doing, without exception. There is no outside force or god or whatever who tells us or makes us organize ourselves in a certain way. The concept of property, nation states, religion, languages, money - all is our invention and doing. The problem with this is of course, that we have no excuse. What we are doing to our planet, to our health, to our children and grandchildren is all our sole responsibility.

    I would not go so far to call that emergence, though. Because emergence has the flavour of unavoidability, of necessitiy. It is not so much emergence but choice, decision making of typically very few people who are in power at the right time and the right place to get those decision laid into their hands. The question is, what propels this choice, what social and psychological means influence that choice, and who sits at the levers and buttons to operate those means.

    A subsistence economy does not go without work. Work is just not done to the point of exhaustion and burn-out. and work is not done to solely produce for profit instead of need. And when you regard painting, learning, sports, discussing, theater, creative writing, raising children, etc as work, than you have as much work in a subsistence economy as you want. By the way, I don't know one person, who would not want to trade in his 40 to 50 hours week for a 10 to 20 hours week for the same pay.

    Why is minimizing risk impossible and makes things boring? There is a whole profession dedicated to that, called risk management. Minimizing risks means not to endanger your or others security and safety because of un-needed tasks and exposures, not to endanger the availability and usability of ressources by unnecessary exploitation. Minimizing risks is nothing but common sense.

    Please read again what I wrote about underproductivity. It is not about stopping research or science, it is about intelligent use of ressources under the premise of need instead of want or can. This includes human ressources, taking up your example of war.

    Those who do not want or cannot accept the axiom of need instead of want of course don't like this concept. Because with a subsistence economy growth and profit is neither intended nor possible. But it is the only known and tested solution to keep our planet available and usable for the next few hundred generations of man.
     
  • It is impossible to make the distinction between need and want. The human only has his/her wants based on limited perception, limited decision making, and lots of fears (mostly justified but some irrational ones too). To add to this complexity what the human wants at 5 is different from that at 15 or 20 or 50.

    A lot of what I understand you are suggesting involves/requires central control from some central wisdom that can see into the future. (I can't even do that with my 4 teenagers.) We know this is not possible and attempts to do this always results in disaster - we keep trying but at least under democracy and capitalism we can undo these mistakes without too much cost and time as soon as they are recognized as mistakes.

    I do agree with your idea of reducing the hours of formal, organized, specialized work for some or all and for periods of time in a persons life As well as allowing more people to participate in the economy at all levels. As the stuff get easier and easier to make we need to spend more time healing people and more careful not to make so many broken people.

    I think a recognition of societies self interest to provide for the basics of a happy and productive life need to be recognized as well as the responsibility of each person to do there best for society will result in the stability and more careful growth we all would like to see.

    I think it becomes much easier for a person to make the right choices in life when it is clear and obvious they have real choices and those choices are not artificially limited by a social order designed to limit them.

    I just can't see how baking your own bread with a wood fire (as much fun as that can be) leads to the greater resources per person required to achieve anything better.

    Would you give me a concrete example of intentional under-productivity to help me understand how this helps make things better?





     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    RabertRabert
     
    January 2013
    It is impossible to make the distinction between need and want.

    Just the contrary, this is quite easy. You may want three differently coloured Ferraris, but you need only a compact car or even just a bicycle. You may want 25 shirts in different styles and fabrics, but you need only three. You may want this new fragrance for your wife, but she needs just soap. You may want this big TV-set, but you don't need TV at all. You may want salmon and oyster for lunch, but you need only food.

    Starting at kindergarten, we are indoctrinated to want stuff. The global plutocracy spends around 130 USD per year and person on this planet, from the starving infant in Somalia to the dement pensionist in Florida, to train them to want stuff and to keep them wanting stuff. Why are they doing this? Because it allows them to suck all of the energy, productivity and wealth from the people and transfer it into their own coffers. When you want stuff, you need to be able to get stuff, what means you need to earn money, what means you need to work for money. You want stuff, you must work. You just want to satisfy your needs, you work less. The profits for the plutocracy are produced by work, so they want the people to work as much as possible, for as less money as possible.

    But that is only one half of the story. The other half ist the depletion of our planets ressources. Every single item which is produced but not really needed is a waste of ressources. Ressources your grandchildren or their grandchildren might direly need in future, but have been spent on a Ferrari today.

    A lot of what I understand you are suggesting involves/requires central control
    from some central wisdom that can see into the future
    .

    How that? What has baking your own bread out of your own wheat and weaving your own fabric out of your own wool to do with central control? There is no central authority which decides what is needed or not, the community who has to use up ressources and invest work to produce those things decide. The only question to be answered is: Do I need it, or do I just want it? If someone needs it, it will be provided. Just be prepared to demonstrate why you need it. Imagine a world without advertising, and what would happen to the "wants" of people. We are all made to want, this is not natural. Our needs are natural, they come without coercion.

    Choices and achieving anything better

    I would rather talk about responsibility and contentment. If you have a satisfying and filling meal, you do not necessarily need to invest time and effort into a better meal. If your coat keeps you sufficiently warm and dry, you do not necessarily need one which is even warmer, but you probably want to invest in making it sturdier, that it lasts longer, or to redesign is production process, that you can make it faster or with less ressources.

    We all have choices. We decide today if the grandchildren of our grandchildren will have pottable water to drink and mineral oil for medicinal use. It's our choice. Well, not really - do you decide if there will be mineral oil left in 200 years? No, those who own this oil decide. If they decide that they want the profits today, to hell with the future generations, they make you want to use products and services being dependent on oil. Your choice is the choice of the addicted alcoholic to drink or not to drink this whisky.

    Would you give me a concrete example of intentional under-productivity to help me understand how this helps make things better?

    Sure. If your community owns a forest which could sustainebly produce double the amount of wood your community needs on an annual basis, you can decide to take all that and sell it for profit, or just don't do it and take only what you need. Results in half the workload. If your land could feed 10,000 sheep, but you need only 5,000 to produce wool and food for your community, you would just have 5,000. If on your land would be a copper mine which could produce 1,000 tons of copper per year, but your community needs only 10 tons a year for own use and another 100 tons to trade for things needed but not being able to be produced out of own ressources, then you would take only 110 tons a year.
     
  • Rabert - please understand I am very sympathetic to your vision - it is just I can't see how it will happen the way you say it could happen. I wish we could continue to progress without all the struggles and conflicts of competition and excess but I can't figure it out.

    I agree with what you say about people being indoctrinated - most people would not even have the imagination to think of a car if they did not see one never mind a ferrari. However, who will decide to protect all those people from the idea of a car, Even worse what will you do with those people who come up with the idea of a car on there own. Of course it would not occur to most people to brush there teeth either (all on there own)

    The reason why cars are popular, is that they solve a real problem and greatly increase a persons possibilities. Once you have cars the best solution is to let everyone have one who wants one more than any other thing they could buy with the same money.

    Yes we are using up the planets resources but we are no where near the limits of what is possible. Also, the current economic framework is not sustainable but it does not have to be. be. It's purpose is to bring forth a level of level of technology that will permit a level of understanding and social order that will make conflict obsolete and that will stabilize population. What happens after that is hard to predict from where we are now but we either have it within in us to move beyond that or we don't. This future time may start as early as 20 years from now but most likely 50 to 100 - there is nothing to suggest we don't have the resources to make it another 100 years.

    We can't predict the future but we can learn from the past - let us say you were at the event where man first learned to make fire - would you have suppressed that knowledge. How does that help. Would you have tried to control the use of fire for only cooking and not metal work - how would you have done that without completely corrupting the thing you were trying to protect.

    Excess permits experimentation which results in new knowledge. During the start of the industrial age, somehow humanity achieved an excess - mostly through in retrospect terrible practices of slavery, war and plundering, etc. This excess allowed some really weird people, sometimes within the protection of special societies, to do some really weird stuff we now call science and medicine.

    So let us talk about the forest. First thing I have difficulty with is the community owning the forest. Community property always means a few people with an agenda who have convinced or otherwise forced others to pay for something they want (for good or bad). 

    Let's say the wood is used for heating and this is essential for survival (no other sources of heat) and the wood is collected manually by each person in the community. You would never be able to sell the wood (trade it) for anything except something that would replace the function of heating. If you can trade an amount of wood that is less than that used for heating for an equivalent source of heat why would you not do that.

    Somehow some way one or more persons within the group will convince others to sell the wood - they will use some advantage to collect more wood (develop/buy a saw, etc, etc) and they will want to take advantage of this. The best solution is you allow them to buy the wood from everyone else at the price they are willing to sell it at. (Maybe they buy a ferrari with that money and then drive it to a warmer place!) So now the forest is gone but everyone has gas heat. All the time collecting firewood can now be used to do other things (like cure cancer and maybe go for a walk in the woods, it does grow back) So what if the gas runs out - well hopefully something else comes along - super insulated solar heated homes, etc, etc.

    What is a little sad is that if you are the one guy who wants to keep collecting wood to heat his house, you use 5 hours every day to collect wood while everyone else works for 5 minutes and for what - so that in 300 years when the gas runs out you can say "You see it was not sustainable!" In 300 years a lot will happen and every indication is that a lot of technological progress will happen.

    In fact the only reason there still are any trees is because we don't use them for heating not the opposite!

    If as a personal lifestyle choice you want to live materially less rich for other trade offs and you can pull it off - great - but it is not a solution to how humanity can live. The only way to live is to be free and progress. What you are suggesting is kind of like indefinite camping.

    If in 50 or 100 or 300 years somehow we don't make it we can go back to collecting wood and living in huts but there is not advantage in not seeing how this current technological push will play out.

    The other thought is you make some really strong assumptions that mother nature will always continue to provide - their are many many examples of people/communities being wiped out by bugs, land slides, fires, floods, earthquakes, land slides, disease, etc, etc.

     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    RabertRabert
     
    January 2013
    The reason why cars are popular, is that they solve a real problem and greatly increase a persons possibilities.

    True. The question however is, what price is to pay for this? Not everything we can do should be done, and some of thing we can do, must not be done. Do we need cars to be able to feed and cloth the people, to keep them healthy and safe? Or are they instrumental for just the opposite?

    there is nothing to suggest we don't have the resources to make it
    another 100 years.


    I'm not talking about the coming 100 years, but about the future in principle. That can be 1,000 years or a million years. Our system is not able to keep our civilization running for that long, unless we invent things which will safe our lives and make the western lifestyle sustainable. But relying on the emergence of these inventions just in time would be very, very stupid. This is the bet, where the life and welfare of our grandchildren is the wager. We can't live now as it would be sure thing that our children will invent everything necessary to safe the future. We can start living like there is no tomorrow, when we have this inventions. But till then, we need to preserve what we have for the generations to come. Just think about this: There has no more then 400 to 500 generations passed, since man left the caves. Start thinking in numbers of generations instead of years, and you will get a better feel of the immediate thread we are heading to.

    let us say you were at the event where man first learned to make fire - would you have suppressed that knowledge?

    Probably not, because I didn't know about the danger, if there is one. But to use for instance atomic energy despite our knowledge of the dangers to all life on our planet, despite the unsolved issue of the deposition of atomic waste, is not only dumb, it is a crime against the species we share this planet with and the future generations. To make failures out of ignorance is unavoidable and acceptable, to make a failure despite you know better, despite you know the risk, is wrong and punishable. The justice calls that gross negligent or a deliberate act.

    That is one of the big difference between today and ancient times and even the beginning of industrialization: Today, we know much, much more. We only choose to ignore that.

    This excess
    allowed some really weird people, sometimes within the protection of
    special societies, to do some really weird stuff we now call science and
    medicine.

    What does not mean, that without slavery, wars or environmental destruction those inventions and discoveries wouldn't have been made. Have you ever heard of Gossen's law of diminishing results? That applies to science as well. It was a great achievement of medicine to extend the average lifespan of man in Europe from say 40 years to now 75 years over the last 200 years. What would be the price to be paid by whom to extend the average lifetime another 10 years? I'm just thinking about the people in India selling their kidneys ...

    Community
    property always means a few people with an agenda who have convinced or
    otherwise forced others to pay for something they want (for good or
    bad).


    The community I'm talking about is a mutually owned corporation, where all members of the community own the same share of the corporation, and consequently an equal part of all property of the corportation also called community.

    If you can
    trade an amount of wood that is less than that used for heating for
    an equivalent source of heat why would you not do that.


    Of course I would do that, under two premises: The cost (measured in time and work/energy invested in it) and risks of the trade would not exceed the advantage, and the other party equally has a better use for our wood than for their heating material.

    Just to take wood from the community forest and sell or trade it for your own profit or advantage would be explicitly forbidden in the community. It would be community theft. If someone does it anyways, this someone would be treated the same way any corporation employee would be treated who has stolen from the corporation.

    A preregorative for the location of the community would be the availability of a forest which can sustainably serve the community with enough wood to heat (if heating is necessary, or no other heating agents are available), to construct, or whatever other things wood is needed for. One cannot take more from the forest than it can regrow. If it is not enough, we will not have the heating, the construction or the other things. We will not use up the forest in a couple hundred years hoping that someone will have invented something till then to keep us warm or construct without wood.

    The other
    thought is you make some really strong assumptions that mother nature
    will always continue to provide - their are many many examples
    of people/communities being wiped out by bugs, land slides, fires,
    floods, earthquakes, land slides, disease, etc, etc.


    I do not advocate to go back to a gatherer and hunter society and to abjuct from all technology. We want to keep our communities healthy and safe, and one of the primary goals of the effort and work invested by the community is to make this happen.
     
  • I really want to understand this community Rabert.

    If you were living in your community in the forest and your neighbor decided to cut down your favorite tree to heat his house how would you stop him/her from doing that? And please don't alter the premise of the hypothetical question by saying no person would do that, etc, etc.





     

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