4th, 5th, 6th Person Perspective

[Riggerjack]

If I understand you correctly, you're proposing a kind of camp site/RV park that functions as a test lab/school? (We talked about something very similar for the ERE RV Park back in 2012 or so, also the ERE Survival School or something to that effect)

I can see how they resemble each other, superficially. To differentiate them, I'm going in what may seem an unrelated direction. Please indulge me.

I have personally lost some interest in trying to define it intellectually (been there done that) and organize it socially (not for me). I've gone back (or forward) to throwing mud on the wall. I'm not sure "emergence" can be forced.

History is replete with examples of emergence being forced. Let's try an example you would understand better than I. Jet Propulsion Laboratories was such an example from before I was born (I have no opinion as to whether it still is). In the 50's and 60's radical change/advancement came out of JPL, I expect the discovery channel still shows documentaries about it.

There was a congregation of academics at JPL. As a former academic, yourself, I expect you have some insight into the reasons so many academics left other potentially prestigious positions for JPL. Maybe we could list them, together? I'll start (in no particular order):

1. JPL was new. This was a chance to start something, to get in on the ground floor.

2. JPL was doing something. There was a chance to see one's ideas translated into reality.

3. The combination of 1 and 2 attracted the fresh minds attracted to the relatively high IQ life that academia provides, but put off by the entrenched bureaucracy of academia. "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." JPL was a chance to play for real stakes.

4. JPL was doing culturally approved work. It was vaguely patriotic to work on secret projects for the government. In a modernist society, this plays more favorably outside of academia. Academics have social networks that extend outside of academia, and could find this useful at the time.

5. I assume it paid better than the wages available in academia, but this is speculation on my part.

Can you think of others I missed?

The problem (challenge?) with such a centralized approach is that it requires finding that one person who is willing to start and relentlessly drive the project until it has enough momentum to sustain itself. You're basically looking for a person who is an entrepreneur, promoter, community organizer, and host rolled into one. That someone also needs to be willing and capable of working for free and engage in an uphill battle for a long time to realize such a project. Are you that person?

No, I am not. And I wouldn't be bringing this up here, if I thought you were such a person. TBH if such a person were to show up, I would probably be the first to encourage him to hit the bricks. I don't want him, nor the niche he would be trying to create for himself. This is the leader/follower solution. It was appropriate technology for centuries, as was bureaucracy.

But it is 2024. That time ended decades ago.

Culture is inherently conservative. This makes it slow. Technology changed, culture will take time to catch up. This signals opportunity, to me.

Coordination is ultimately an information problem. Bureaucracy is an industrial age adaptation to scale up iron age coordination solutions (Leadership).

We haven't created many information age coordination solutions yet.

I contend that information problems in the early 21st century are software problems. This thread has examples already linked.




Jacob, we've been talking past each other for 18 months. This would be so much faster in a synchronous communications medium.

I think if you build something that is cool, it will attract people. The hardest part of shit like this is: 1) attracting the right people and 2) managing inevitable conflicts because you're shirking the rules of conventional society that "most people" "mostly" understand.

It's a problem as old as orgies. How do you get the right people, who will participate, who are not going to manipulate or sexually assault people?

I agree, this is the crux of the problem. Ultimately, I think it is beyond us to solve.

The key is to create environments that allow us to fail forward. This means creating environments that allow for safe failures, iterative improvements, communications of success and failures, and means of easily adopting different paths.

I would like my camping club to be one such environment.

Also, @AH is basically doing this in the desert in California.

I am watching. Here and his other sites. Though I spend far, far less time online in retirement, and have fallen behind. AH has strengths I lack, I'm fascinated.

I am interested in doing this in New Orleans.

At one point, I created a thread for reasons people should NOT move to Washington state.

viewtopic.php?t=4240

None of those reasons have gone away.

People should live wherever makes them happy, and most people will not be happy living in a land of rain, mists, fogs, and rot.

But if I solve for the "right people" problem here, would the means of solving that problem not also help you solve for the same problem in NO? Does that not give you (and others with similar ambitions) incentive to help me solve my "right people" problem?

what comes to mind is make something easily moveable or that floats

I don't know where you were for Katrina. The 2011 quake in Japan generated an huge Tsunami. Important because Japan has lots of cameras. One can find many, many videos of the experience, from many perspectives. Add in very high winds, and the objects flying in those winds, I don't think "floats" is nearly enough. Last I heard, the French Quarter is 11 feet lower than when it was built.

We all choose our risks. I wish you good luck with your choices.

[jacob]

Jacob, we've been talking past each other for 18 months. This would be so much faster in a synchronous communications medium.

I think it would be very helpful if you would summarize your idea in 200 words or less. One or two paragraphs and NO question marks.

[Slevin]

If I'm understanding you correctly, OAEC is already working on doing exercises like this, open to the public on many days, and has a lot of people already investing and stress testing a lot of these ideas. Probably technically considered an ecovillage these days, but started as a center for "appropriate technology" 50 years ago, and literally works with entire communities of people trying to implement changes like this.

[Jin+Guice]

jng I think you would dig Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) idea. t

You read it. Congratulations, I'm an anarchist now.

[Riggerjack]

I think it would be very helpful if you would summarize your idea in 200 words or less. One or two paragraphs and NO question marks.

Me too. If only I could, we wouldn't be 8 pages deep.

@Slevin, I'm not familiar with OAEC, but they seem very similar to the Whidbey Institute:
https://whidbeyinstitute.org/

Which is just up the road from me.

My impression is these are similar projects, spawned from similar rootstock. An educated, young, idealistic, boomer inherits a chunk of land, and uses it to try to embody their green ideals.

They are living their best lives, I guess, so I don't want to criticize.

But no, I don't go to the Whidbey Institute, even though they are within hiking distance of me. I don't have green values, do not speak their language, I wouldn't be able to contribute to their efforts. For all the reasons jacob gives for his frustrations with Deep Adaptation, plus some of my own quirks. (I seem to have something of an allergic reaction to SD green piety.)

What I want, is a mod of the game that makes creating new mods easier.

Let's consider the WI as a mod. The "staff" get to live in a world of their own choosing. That's good. However, starting with inherited land means anyone else looking to follow their example is limited to others who inherit. I find this unacceptably limiting.

The means of acquiring the land needs to be built into the mod. I used the example of timberland.

In a capitalist system, productive assets are priced in multiples of their expected outputs. Currently, this means that commercial timberland and farmland is priced in multiples of industrially produced, wholesale prices.

So, today, in 2024, some of the most productive land in the world, sells at prices that are among the lowest per acre in the nation. Covid did some odd things to real estate prices, but still this holds true.

"The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything he needs at retail, sells everything he sells at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways."

John F. Kennedy said this 64 years ago. It is still true today. This is the farmer's dilemma. (Homesteaders/hobby farmers reliably hit this wall with regular splattering sounds...)

If I were being strategic, then, I would look at buying land priced in multiples of it's net wholesale product, and change it to some form of retail production (including housing), with all the increased labor that goes along with that.

If I were successful in this, my project would then be generating an income that would fund growth. To expand the original project, or create new ones.

This is standard land development. It works at all scales. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... eclamation

This is "How the West was Built". This is how we got our hydro dams, and the rest of the past and future ecological disasters presided over by the Army Corps of Engineers.

But of course, there are problems with this model. The subject of "Land Speculation" in your local histories should give you a nice summary of those problems, with many specific examples.

My little camping club is just one way to move wholesale land to retail uses.

The trees are there, and most will need to be removed. The logs could be milled on site. Milling on site is a lot of work, but then we would have the lumber to build with. I already have the sawmill.

Once the trees are thinned or cleared, campsites can be "built", in whatever form is chosen. Maybe they are just small level areas with clearings sized for fire safety and a firepit. Maybe they are complete alternative "cabins" with all the comforts of home: with a heat pump, AC electricity, fiber optic internet, and wifi to extend signal throughout the property.

Either way, a wholesale asset is converted to retail use. Retail use, where the customer provides her own transportation. In other words, the opposite conditions of the farmer's dilemma.

All well and good. Standard capitalist practices. If my goal were financial capital concentration, this is good enough. Staff with cheap (or volunteer) labor, go repeat the pattern somewhere else.

But concentration of financial capital is NOT my goal, it's just a useful pattern. I've worked and accumulated, more money simply isn't much of a motivator, any more. If I were working with others who had also had gotten past their financial motivations...

(If this were a Ted Talk, I would pause and look significantly at my audience, here)

I could instead focus on the ways that other forms of capital could be generated on site.

The people who chose to transform this land have had a chance to work with each other. And conflict with each other. Some stay, some move on. That is, by itself, a few severely restricting filters.

If one is trying to solve the "right people" problem, I think many attractors, and many filters, is how one could achieve this goal.

Who am I trying to attract?

First, the people with the financial resources to fund the purchase and development of the land.

Second, the people with the interest and initiative to come out and do the transformation work. Some of this work is very physical, limited to the site. Some of this work is intellectual, and can be done virtually (Engineering/Legal/Software/etc). There is no reason this intellectual work needs to be repeated for each project...

Third, the people interested in buying the retail products that make the whole thing profitable. Campers, cabin renters/buyers, and an internet full of consumers.

In the end, we have a small community of "staff", living in a mod of their own creation. Everything in their environment (the rules they live by, the places they live, the prices they pay and receive, who they interact with, under which circumstances), is a product of their choices. If we have chosen wisely, we now have:

The building codes for creating other mods. With existing systems and associated studies to support those codes.

The alternative means to finance those mods. With a financial history to make these means less alternative

Experienced people with the skills to create and maintain those mods.*


In short, I'm trying to create an environment with as many attractors as I can. And I'm comfortable creating filters that help people who don't "fit" find other places to be.

My camping club is new, with an opportunity to "get in on the ground floor".

My camping club is doing something. There is an opportunity to see one's ideas translated into reality.

My camping club is a chance to play for real stakes.

My camping club is doing culturally approved work. (In SD terms, the work translates to "lower" levels; if I'm using SD correctly.)

I would be disappointed if my camping club regularly paid any form of wages, but we can't have all we want in one lifetime... People will move to places they believe will allow them to thrive (as they define thrive for themselves). I'm talking about this on a forum with alternative ideas of "thrive", for good reason.

But in the end, my little camping club is just one example of ways that existing patterns can be recombined to offset known disadvantages. Given my 'druthers, my little camping club would just be part of a larger effort. The kind of effort that new communications technologies make possible, now.




* Humans being humans, I expect many of these people to be dissatisfied with the compromises reached in the first mod. I want the first mod set up to empower these people to create mods of their own. This both relieves strain from the first mod, and forms a generative pattern for expansion of mods.

[daylen]

I wouldn't even know where to start. Perhaps making a deal with a staffing agency could get the ball rolling? The staffing industry has had a hard time matching supply to demand but software in this industry is maturing.

[Riggerjack]

Let's talk a bit about wood markets.

Before my camping club, the wood gets harvested commercially. Feller/bunchers (diesel), skylines (diesel), logging trucks (diesel), industrial studmill (steam), international logistics (diesel), local retailer (electricity), retail buyer. Every one of those steps has been optimized and refined. Go look at youtube, there are plenty of small logging/milling operations facing the farmer's dilemma.

One can easily go broke competing against such a supply chain at small scales.

As we begin the camping club, starting with preharvest timber, a lot of thinning needs to be done, just for the health of the existing treestand. It's actually more work to thin, than to clearcut, but the next thinning/harvest yields more, and more valuable lumber than does a reseeded clearcut.

So we start with disadvantages, more labor, and lesser immediate harvest. If we mill on site, we have all the lumber we can use, and all we can sell. Handy if we are building timberframed pavilions; a complete waste, if they rot unused. Well, I'm sure we have uses for compost.

Selling that wood as standard lumber is a recipe for going broke. But if we add a solar kiln, and dry storage, we could be creating retail products, suitable for shipping:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1593842430 ... 4039490728
https://www.etsy.com/listing/261005401/ ... ch_click=1
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1311312348 ... 3283966623
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1101616123 ... 2267941570
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1350903667 ... e_78&pro=1

To compare with mill prices*:
https://www.fritchmill.com/current-log-price-sheet.aspx

So the per unit price difference is not small (0.10/bdft, minus transportation, vs 2.99/bdft plus shipping being one example) but the hassle factor at retail isn't small, either.

Add some skilled labor, and there can be a sweet spot:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/353856450544?i ... R9CwkI3JYw
https://www.ebay.com/itm/164503917847?i ... R9CwkI3JYw
https://www.ebay.com/itm/164654586535?i ... SwfK5foC2S
Note that the skilled labor in the second and third examples is CNC.

Here in the Puget Sound area, there are CNC machine shops going out of business every few months. Yet another technology that is getting cheaper at a rate that undercuts the early adopter capital expenditures. Finding new uses for that discounted capital signals opportunity, to me.

But the real change requires a wood shop. The means to turn wood into finished products. The variety of retail products from a wood shop approaches the infinite.

But it is really hard to make a living as a craftsman. As a general rule, I would advise people to not compete against hobbyists and retirees when choosing a profession. If one is going to, anyway, differentiating yourself from retiree/hobbyists gets to be important. One way to do this, is to document the virtue of your supply chain.

The camping club's wood supply chain includes logging practices designed around ecological practices, rather than the other way around. Performed by a community more interested in the eco, than the logs. I expect a far greater interest in ecology among a camping/alt building club membership, than the general public (filter).

That membership has a far smaller (more visible) system to keep track of. Secondary/tertiary effects are far easier to see, up close. Making corrections is easier where interests aren't sold off/entrenched.

This smaller, closed system makes:

The problem is that our actions connect in ways that we don't understand.

This issue of multiple different perspectives existing at the same time also means it's important to be aware of WHOSE environment you're changing. Because the environment you're building to attract some solution (people) might incidentally kill off another environment. Even more complex is the problem that humans tend to live in more than one environment at the same time.

more tractable.

A small community that has some residents, and a larger, physically transient population, has different levels of observation of the changes happening to the site. Many perspectives, all with some skin in the game. Any changes need to meet the needs of fewer people who have a large overlap of interests.

...

I'm not talking about professions in this thread; I'm talking about lifestyle design.

ERE shows that the lower one's expenses are, the easier one can meet those expenses. What do you think it costs, to live in a camping/alt building club? How would you like to cover those costs?

If one is early in one's accumulation phase, or haven't begun it yet, do you want to design your own means of accumulation as an entrepreneur? Do you want variety in your day/year/activities? Do you want to learn to close loops? Do you want to work with your hands and your mind? Do you just want to have a few hours a day as a shipping clerk (semiERE)?

If, like me, you have completed your accumulation, do you want to live in a place where everyone is engaged in lives they are designing for themselves? Do you want to live in a small footprint, and live amongst others who are trying for small footprints, too? Do you want to live in a place designed to exclude cars? Do you want craft shops that are available to members?

Do you want to live where a complex/systemic approach to lifestyle/community design is the default?

As the ERE city thread shows, this place doesn't exist. It will need to be created. I'm trying to describe how these kinds of places could be created, in ways that are both economically viable, and make further creations easier.

All I talked about in this post was the existing markets for wood.

I didn't talk about how new markets could be created. I didn't talk about the opportunities provided by a transient population that is likely to have a large overlap with shopping at farmer's markets, when they are at home. I didn't talk about housing markets, or gathering wildflower seeds, or podcasting, or any of the nearly infinite ways creative people with agency could find to support themselves with freedom in a resource rich environment.







* mill prices are in mbf (1000 board feet) using the Scribner log scale. 10 logs, 12 inch diameter at the small end, 20 feet long is 1 mbf. So $100/mbf works out to $0.10/board foot, minus transportation costs. Here on the island, logging labor and transportation to the mill pretty much eats all of the timber value from clearing a homesite. So far, I have composted all of my logs.

[Riggerjack]

I wouldn't even know where to start.

Start here, on this forum.

Perhaps making a deal with a staffing agency could get the ball rolling? The staffing industry has had a hard time matching supply to demand but software in this industry is maturing.

Have you noticed that in every example I bring up is small in scale? That the largest scale I referenced to any action is individual or small, selected community scale? That every industrial example is linked to the inefficiencies/externalities they create?

Thank you for the suggestion. But I don't want to create an ecological paradise built on sweat shop software.

[Riggerjack]

Since I have referenced both the Whidbey Institute and Holocracy in this thread, I would be remiss to not include this link:

https://whidbeyinstitute.org/deepening- ... more-36187

It seems they were incompatible.

[daylen]

Sorry for the misunderstanding. Just curious about your thoughts and attempting to help.

There seems to be a tension between big ambitions for mods of mods, etc. and staying small. I just presumed that a steady flow of willing workers that are perhaps already living semi-ERE like could help build out the early tree of mods you have in mind. Perhaps these people are already working just 3-4 hours a week and find the lifestyle rewarding so they start their own branch of the mod tree.

[Riggerjack]

Thank you, I didn't mean to seem critical of your contributions.

Rather, I am critical of corporate/industrial/scale in general. This ground is thoroughly worked by my culture. I have no reason to think I could compete on these terms.

I have more experience with the corporate software environments than I would like. Rare among people with nearly no software skills.

The opportunity in software space I see is that:
1. The skilled workforce is getting greatly expanded around the world. The skillsets rapidly devalue. Rapid devaluation creates opportunities for repurposing, as with CNC above.
2. The professionals are both highly compensated in the corporate environment, and often highly dissatisfied with their work conditions.
3. The work is easily replicated. Once a system is successfully built to market widget A, it can then be adapted to widgets B-ZZZZ, with minimal effort.
4. The work can be distantly coordinated.

What I am interested in, is the software that can be created by enthusiasts working out how/what to create, among themselves. And the markets they would choose to compensate each other.

This requires a pool of skilled people of goodwill, agency, and enthusiasm. Kind of the exact opposite qualities of the population of a corporate office tower.

[daylen]

I was coming at it more from the perspective of a deal with an agency to find the skilled people you are talking about. The agencies I am thinking of link up skilled people that do not work in the traditional corporate environment with companies that require skilled labor on a project-by-project basis. I didn't mean you should use their software for your project, just make use of their software and research to search the market of skilled people.

[Riggerjack]

@ daylen,

Thanks for the suggestion.

There seems to be a tension between big ambitions for mods of mods, etc. and staying small.

Did you read Ostrom? Did you follow the link to Holocracy? Sociocracy? Prosocial?*

There is no tension between small scale and big ambitions. There is nothing but small scale, and better communications. Rather than my culture's default solution of a "hierarchy of efforts", think "ecology of efforts".

A forest doesn't report to anyone. Cougars don't rule anything. Cedars don't coordinate with squirrels. Each species and individual is serving their own interests, to the best of their ability.

But we can cooperate/coordinate/compete on our own terms. If we create an ecology of efforts, how do you think that compares to a hierarchy of efforts? Comparing the results of capitalist economies to command economies might be a helpful metaphor. Then think about the command economies within a capitalist economy. How will they compete with an ecology of efforts?

Small is beautiful.

As an example, let's call this guy Chet:

that one person who is willing to start and relentlessly drive the project until it has enough momentum to sustain itself. You're basically looking for a person who is an entrepreneur, promoter, community organizer, and host rolled into one. That someone also needs to be willing and capable of working for free and engage in an uphill battle for a long time to realize such a project.

As I said, if Chet shows up on my project, well, I am skilled in helping him find somewhere else he would prefer to be**.

My preference would be for Chet to leave, empowered to go create a project of his own, one I could help with from a distance. After all, Chet is a very talented guy.

Failing that, I expect Chet would be a valuable team member on other parallel projects, maybe QH, or maybe something in NO, Detroit, etc.

When the teams working on those other projects are evaluating Chet, I want them to know not just that Chet didn't fit into my project, but what the cause of the poor fit was (I think most would agree, the problem was me). My thoughts. Chet's thoughts. Other team members' thoughts. I want them to know Chet's contributions and weaknesses. I want Chet to know these things about the team/team members he wants to join/form.

Because I want Chet in a place/project that maximally allows him to contribute his strengths, while minimizing his weaknesses.*** We are all better off for Chet finding this place. The network is stronger. More value is created.

Compare this with the way hierarchies handle personnel. Legal and HR both completely lost their sh!t at "When the teams working on those other projects are evaluating Chet, I want them to know not just that Chet didn't fit into my project, but what the cause of the poor fit was." Efficient communications and coordination are complete nonstarters in hierarchies.

The difference is in the motivations of decision makers, and the information they use to make those decisions.

But if my goal were solving the local "right people" problem in an information age, everyone working with more information (in the medium of their choice) seems like the obvious place to start.

I looked at pictures of the Drake Landing Solar Community and it looks exactly the same as the cookie cutter suburbs that many people like living in (cul-de-sac gives it a look of dreaded car exurbs, but the density looks closer to "hip" streetcar suburbs).

I brought up Drake's landing because it's a project that gives relatable numbers to solar collection, in an environment not known as a solar powerhouse. Nobody cares that someone survived a winter in SoCal on solar heat. Doing it in Calgary, with only the sunlight that hits the Southern roof of the garage, is both impressive and relatable.

The numbers for gathered energy show that an extreme low energy lifestyle isn't a necessary goal. Learning to effectively gather/use/store solar energy is a necessary goal.

I wouldn't build a system like that, unless my goal was terraforming. A far, far more more efficient energy storage system is necessary. Fortunately, we already know how to do this.

I am working on other shit and I can't devote 100% of my time to this, which it sort of feels like it needs.

I do have time and money to devote to these things, just not enough of either to pull it off with what I know how to do. If someone helped me solve these problems, I would be willing to start asap.

We are all working on other sh!t. Or, at least I hope so. We all have some time and money we could contribute and/or invest toward these things (we are a resourceful lot, after all.), just not enough of either to pull it off with what we, (individually), know how to do. If someone helped me solve these problems, I also would be willing to start asap.

But together, we can be more than any of us is, alone.

In this thread I'm trying to move this from the "impossible task that needs a Chet to do it for us" to smaller "tasks that we can coordinate among ourselves, with the resources we have", coupled to good incentives to make that investment of effort worthwhile, at all levels of participation. It's going to take a different approach from the typical Leader/Follower model.



* I have included many links in this thread. Trying to follow what I'm saying without following those links must be similar to reading a novel by going to a book club, and talking about the reading one did not do. In this book club, the ratio of readers to non-readers is unknown. Confusion abounds. If one is confused, are you confused because I am unclear, or because you haven't built the assumed knowledge base to follow along?

** This may be a skill I have over-developed.

*** A system that does this for both me, and Chet, is going to work for nearly everyone.

[daylen]

I have read everything as you have written but now it is all hazy and jumbled. It seems like you are limiting your world to ERE people.

[jacob]

Me too. If only I could, we wouldn't be 8 pages deep.

Convincing anyone to change requires a vision of where to go, a plan for getting there, and dissatisfaction with their current situation. If we take the last one for granted, I suggest focusing either on refining the vision of what could eventually be ... or talking more about the first steps to go in the right direction. The 8 page stream of consciousness we have so far would really benefit from being anchored somewhere whether it's at the end-point or the starting-point. Having neither a target nor a direction makes it very hard to guess at where you're going/want to go...

[Riggerjack]

It seems like you are limiting your world to ERE people.

I'm limiting my own efforts to ERE people. I wouldn't know how to limit my world (or project) to ERE people, if I wanted to. But I don't.

Every ERE member has a network of friends and family. Few of us would make changes in our lives that would alienate that network.

That means any environment we create, needs to appeal to both an ERE mindset, and those one node away from an ERE mindset.

But communication is already clearly a limiting factor, so limiting my own efforts to here, (where there is an existing network of people with an unusual collection of skills and values) seems wise.

I expect some of the people on each starting team to be from here. I expect that to change as progress is made. There just aren't enough of us.

Convincing anyone to change requires a vision of where to go, a plan for getting there, and dissatisfaction with their current situation.

Yeah, I agree with that, completely.

PHUCK THAT NOISE, ALL OF IT.

I don't want to convince anyone to change their minds. You have been at that for decades, with talents I completely lack. It is too slow. Way slower if I have to do it.

As JnG pointed out, ambitions like mine are not uncommon.

If you don't find my little camping club appealing enough to step up, why would I want you there?

Maybe the alt building is appealing, but the geography is not. Then helping me from a distance, also helps you when you want to try a local variation of your own.

Maybe you don't like camping, or Washington, or alt building, but you have a unique vision all your own. Then helping me at a distance helps you when you want to use the tools we develop to create a music venue/studio complex, or Solarpunk Eden, or art colony, or a 55+ retirement community, etc.

None of these people required any convincing to change. They needed to find a project that was appealing enough to want to step up, and the means to contribute.

Maybe my camping club is that appealing project, maybe not. Maybe helping with the legal/engineering/design/software aspects of my camping club is that appealing project.

We live in an Information Age, supposedly. When we work out the means of coordinating legal/design/engineering/software efforts for my camping club, those same means are then already available for those with similar ambitions, with a history of successes and failures.

The next generation of projects is a chance to iteratively improve our means.

[Riggerjack]

Well, I see I have created confusion, again. So here is the super simplified chronological perspective. It feels merely repetitive, but maybe it will help:

Work out legal/financial coordination for creating mods.

Create the 1st mod: an alt building club as a means of testing those legal/financial coordination systems.

Convert a stand of timber into an Alt building community.

The alt building community then creates a camping club to host/support on their land.

Begin selling memberships to cover initial investments. Camping memberships and cabin memberships.

Develop the full infrastructure to support campers and cabins. Gardens and greenhouses, solar heat storage and distribution, integrated septic systems, etc.

Once the camping club is started, the legal/financial coordination is already worked out to support other mods, Permaculture club in the Midwest, or a Music club outside New Orleans, or a Solarpunk club in SoCal desert, etc.

The Alt buildings/integrated infrastructure being created in the camping club gives each of these other mods a chance to iteratively improve the designs of the physical infrastructure. Each new mod is a chance to iteratively improve the coordination systems.

When the camping club is complete, we can expand into a neighboring property, or some members may want to create spinoffs in other locations. Again, more mods, more iterative improvement.

The key is to make each mod attractive enough to bring in the people with the financial, labor, social, and intellectual resources to make the project a success. Nobody has an equal amount of each resource, so we need coordination systems to match the resource need, to the people who have an excess of that resource.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" works out badly in in Socialist and militaristic societies. Top down, low information, bureaucracies deciding needs and abilities is disastrously wasteful. The same goal in market capitalism works better, as pricing reflects the needs/ability information, and each decision is made with more local information. Yet, externalities are information excluded from markets by design.

But we supposedly live in an information age. We have better coordination systems, in theory. The camping club is just a project. A place to practice these coordination systems in a small, contained lab, populated with volunteers.

But the whole point was to change the world. So let's count the ways the world has changed by the completion of the camping club:

1. A few hundred acres slated for clearcutting, is now a more functional forest, and getting healthier.

2. The people who own and harvest this forest have economic/social/personal incentives to maintain that forest health.

3. The people living here live by rules of our own making and enforcement. The secondary/tertiary effects of those rules are all the more apparent, because the systems are very small and isolated. If we are wise, the community will not sell off the means of systems correction.

4. The transient population (campers and renters) get to experience this environment, part time, and then compare/contrast this with their default environment. This makes a future transition to another mod easier to envision. It allows them the bright spot in their lives where a tiny part of the world is aligning with their values, and they get the satisfaction of participating in that change.

5. The people living in a small alt building community get a constant influx of new and familiar people to interact with, at a level of our own choosing. People who share similar values, but live different lives.

6. The people who live here, have the means to thrive here. We are experimenting in creating an environment that will allow the residents to still be thriving in Adam's time.

7. The people who live here have both a forest, and the workshops to turn forest products into finished, retail products. So we have the mill, and the equipment storage/maintenance facilities, and the wood shops, and any other craft spaces we wish to build for ourselves. And the systems to coordinate the use of those spaces/tools.

8. We have virtually unlimited heat and hot water available from stored solar thermal. This means we can experiment with ways to turn this to economic advantage. Greenhouses that replicate other climates, and other seasonal cycles. Solar heated hot springs. Heated warehousing, etc.

9. But most importantly, they have blazed a trail for others who have similar interests. The legal/financial/engineering/software/coordination work is mostly done for anyone looking to create a mod using the tools we developed. The changed environment we created is easier to replicate, and continues to get easier.

10. The property conversion from industrial resource production to residential property/retail/ecologically balanced forest creation, is nearly permanent. The ecological/economic harm of clear cutting will never again make sense in the environment we have created. This is a change that can last through Adam's time.

These are all small changes, but this is just the first project. It's small, too.

[7Wannabe5]

Gotcha (now.) Sounds good. However, I would suggest that this should actually be first in your chronological order:

The key is to make each mod (including the first mode) attractive enough to bring in the people with the financial, labor, social, and intellectual resources to make the project a success.

and since this would be second,

Work out legal/financial coordination for creating mods.

the first people you will need will have to be largely in possession of legal intellectual resources and/or financial resources and/or have access to them through their social circles. I would also suggest that this is not necessarily an easy task even if you have other humans with theses resources on board. For example, my 3 sisters and I have been considering chipping in together on some real estate/family compound for quite a few years, and even though two of them are lawyers, one of whom also has a good deal of experience with co-ops, still not a done deal. In fact, last year we decided that maybe it would be best if we just all came up with independent plans towards establishing varying forms of "footprints" in the northern woods/lake realm in which we wish to establish family compound.

The co-op model with which I am familiar is that there is a buy-in financial share purchase for each member, a monthly maintenance fee for each member, and a required weekly/monthly/annual work contribution from each member. In some co-op situations, monthly maintenance fee and required work contribution are flexible in relationship to each other. For example, $300/month and 20 hours work/month standard, but could be $600/month and 0 hours work or $0/month and 40 hours work. Since money is fungible, the obvious problem that will typically develop is that the quality of the work hours contributed will vary a good deal. The best solution to this that I have encountered is to make the work assignments piece-work with hourly values. For example, cooking dinner twice/week for all of the approximately 30 members of a co-op to which I belonged fulfilled my total work requirement for the week, but I could have also chosen cleaning bathrooms once/week and cooking once/week, or nominated myself for the rather thankless (good cooks were much more appreciated), relatively powerless, rotating position of co-op co-president, etc. etc. But, entirely possible I am way off base that this is anything remotely resembling what you are envisioning.

[Riggerjack]

the first people you will need will have to be largely in possession of legal intellectual resources and/or financial resources and/or have access to them through their social circles. I would also suggest that this is not necessarily an easy task even if you have other humans with theses resources on board.

I agree. More than resources is needed, but it's a good start.

For example, my 3 sisters and I have been considering chipping in together on some real estate/family compound for quite a few years, and even though two of them are lawyers, one of whom also has a good deal of experience with co-ops, still not a done deal. In fact, last year we decided that maybe it would be best if we just all came up with independent plans towards establishing varying forms of "footprints" in the northern woods/lake realm in which we wish to establish family compound.

Starting with people with different priorities/visions, and trying to Goldilocks some compromise is certainly a strategy. My own strategy is to create the project, and allow those excited by the project to step in. There are a few points I'm not flexible on, so remaining flexible about the rest, seems prudent.

The co-op model with which I am familiar is that there is a buy-in financial share purchase for each member, a monthly maintenance fee for each member, and a required weekly/monthly/annual work contribution from each member.

This system is nearly information free. Everyone is equal to a single significant digit.

In some co-op situations, monthly maintenance fee and required work contribution are flexible in relationship to each other. For example, $300/month and 20 hours work/month standard, but could be $600/month and 0 hours work or $0/month and 40 hours work.

And now there is a little more information. An exchange rate between labor and $.

Since money is fungible, the obvious problem that will typically develop is that the quality of the work hours contributed will vary a good deal. The best solution to this that I have encountered is to make the work assignments piece-work with hourly values. For example, cooking dinner twice/week for all of the approximately 30 members of a co-op to which I belonged fulfilled my total work requirement for the week, but I could have also chosen cleaning bathrooms once/week and cooking once/week, or nominated myself for the rather thankless (good cooks were much more appreciated), relatively powerless, rotating position of co-op co-president, etc. etc.

And this squeezes a little more information in. Now there's some preference in tasks and time.

At a bare minimum, I would suggest that a pricing/bidding mechanism, task quality feedback, backup, and some means of handling specialized tasks is needed.

Can you imagine how much that would complicate administration of the chores? Me too. So replace admin of chores with software. Enforcement is covered by Ostrom, but I'm open to other possibilities.

[7Wannabe5]

At a bare minimum, I would suggest that a pricing/bidding mechanism, task quality feedback, backup, and some means of handling specialized tasks is needed.

Also a way to address the possibility that somebody might suggest that their contribution to the project/community would be puppet theater every Friday night or Pipe-bomb building 202 the first Tuesday of every other month. IOW, just constructing the list/boundary of what the needful "chores" might be is towards Top-Down.

If you are drawing membership from this group or similar, one of the first issues to resolve would be whether the meal and food production plans/design would be towards vegetarian or meat-eater. The co-op I lived in was semi-vegetarian, so I had to provide vegetarian alternative any time I cooked for the group, but the meat-eaters would often grouse if the meals were strictly vegetarian, so I had to come up with a lot of recipes that were vegetarian, but tasted like meat. For instance, my mushroom/nut turnovers were quite universally popular.

Also, it's likely to be the case that in an isolated rural setting, sex will end up being an issue. Although, quickly getting the flow of campers coming in might go a long way towards ameliorating that problem. When I lived in the co-op I didn't have sex with any of the men who lived there while they were still living there, but I did have sex with a few of their friends who visited or attended parties. Some people are good about not pissing where they drink and/or creating unnecessary drama. Others not so much.