Community

This is most definitely a "maybe someday, probably not" idea, yet one I am continually drawn to.

While the catalytic cost would be quite high, I believe it is possible to establish a community that exists for the well being of it's members.

Primary Mandates

Well Being of Members

All members are provided with healthy food, healthcare and housing. We also strive to provide facilities like exercise equipment, laundry as well as services like accounting. Ideally, a member should need spend very little money on outside expenses.

Culture

The culture will focus on social interaction, education and inclusion.

Repeated studies have shown both that social interaction has positive health and well-being impact on individuals yet social fabrics are slowly decaying. We will take an active role in combating this.

Education is to be valued. Ideally learning should be a primary leisure activity. While all education is valued, a certain focus should be placed on hard fields like math an science. All members should be encouraged to have a solid foundation in these subjects. Full membership may even be conditional upon it.

The culture will be focused on inclusion. In-group bias and deference to authority are to be treated as particular risks. Scope of authority should be clearly delimited and foundation of authority should be made clear to anyone expected to follow it.

Expansion

The goal of the community is not profit but expansion. We should try to grow as quickly as we can without risk to the first two mandates.

Economics

Until we are established, we will issue bonds to cover the costs of the initial setup. In reality, I expect that the members will be the ones purchasing the bonds, but that's not a requirement.

It should also be possible to produce profits. In order to feed members, food is grown. This can be produced in surplus to provide a buffer and the excess sold. Food is prepared in a meal hall, this can be open to visitors to eat. Classes are taught, enrollment can be opened up. All of these means of income should help the community become self-sufficient and eventually fully pay back the initial investors.

Once this stable state is reached, members will be required to provide a certain amount of labor.

Services

There are two services I think would be valuable to offer. Accounting and investment.

Accounting for the most part should just mean that all members have access to the services necessary to correctly file their taxes. This will be particularly valuable because membership may complicate that process.

The other is investment. The community should have investments that should cover expenses. This pool should be made available to members.

We may also be able to leverage bulk purchasing. This may be particularly useful for things like laptops and cell phones which could be purchased in bulk every few years. It will also be good for things like soap and toothpaste which we can purchase in large quantities and then make available at cost.

Labor

It will probably never be possible to make the systems fully autonomous, so some amount of labor is always required. Members provide labor and earn credit. Credit offsets how much they owe. So some members may choose to pay their dues purely through financial payment, others may pay only with labor. Excess labor has an upper limit, but it is allowed to extend beyond dues so that members can earn an income.

The ideal is that all tasks are open to all members. This will probably never be fully realized because roles like doctor and accountant require certification we cannot provide. Some forms of labor will require internal certification. For instance, anyone may be qualified to wash dishes, but food preparation may require training. However, this should cleanly dovetail with the community value of education.

Art

Well, actually it's broader than that. We will have manufacturing capacity. Anyone who has sufficient training to use them safely can use those facilities. They must cover the cost of their materials. But we can help sell their works. The community takes a cut, but this cut also goes against their dues.

Membership

Once a basic community is established, membership can be broken up into different levels. This should help provide some protection for the culture and provide economic stability. The balancing factor here is that those in the lower tiers should have increased access to some resources, particularly those aimed at full membership.

Duration

A simple limit upon full admission is to participate in the community for some length of time.

Education

I would like to leave partial membership fairly open, but full membership will require reaching certain educational goals. In particular, much like civics in high school classes, these should give members a framework for participation the governing of the community.

Health

Not sure how I feel about this, but a key goal is to provide for the health of members. The other side of this is that members will need to care for their own health. This clearly cannot be a fixed scale. The first step would be finding doctors to either work with the community or join us. At that point, the relationship between a potential member and the doctor is private, but the doctor will help set what they feel are reasonable health goals (stop smoking, exercise goals...) and when they feel the potential member is committed to those goals, they sign off. So the health information of the member remains private, but their joining does require a doctor to sign off.

Also, related to education, all members should have a solid foundation of health related knowledge. Understanding of diet and exercise as well as first aid.

Tenure

Not really, but a good analogy. This lies beyond "full" membership. It may be required for certain roles (see governance below). But it also comes with additional responsibilities. Reaching this level will require membership of a minimum duration (probably something like 10 years). It will require minimum baseline education (so a balanced education at a high level) as well as some specialization. It will also require significant involvement in some project that expands and improves the community.

For example, a fictional member. After reaching full membership, they continue their education to the equivalent of a bit beyond a liberal arts degree (above college level knowledge of history, science [philosophy of science, chemistry, physics, biology], math, computer science and art [literature, film, music]). They go on to specialize in biology, specifically in food production showing the greatest knowledge of a few plants. They then spend a few years improving the yield of a specific plant, helping redesign some of the automation.

Once this level is reached, there is an obligation to record and keep updated the area of specialization and provide aid to anyone studying in that area. There is also an obligation to aid in the education of any partial members studying to reach full membership. This is specifically important. It would be possible for everyone to teach people one tier down, but that can result in slow propagation of knowledge and correction. It is important to have those with the highest degree of knowledge working with those at the lower levels.

At this level we also credit members a significant portion of their dues to free up their time. The intention is that rather than participating in tracked labor, their contributions are harder to quantify.

Candidates

If we reach a state where there are more people that want to join than we have the capacity for, we need to find a fair way to choose who joins. Preference should be given to people that are engaged in the academic environment. Preference should also be given to outside labor - when there are not enough internal volunteers for a job that needs to be completed, we can hire people as traditional employees.

Legal

I don't know how this fits into a broader legal framework. It overlaps in complex ways with so many areas of the law.

Finances

How to issue bonds

Housing

Providing dorm like housing that does not include a kitchen

Requiring residence for continued membership

Labor

How to pay people on a progressive scale

Members have first claim to labor, only then is it outsourced.

Health

How to setup internal doctors, can we setup our own facilities

How to provide health insurance

Governance

This is of course a very difficult subject. It should be democratic, but that has issues of preferring a small benefit for the majority over a large benefit for the minority. I like the Merkle's DAO, but they are unproven and would be tricky to bootstrap.

I am confident that rules should be written almost programmatically (possibly literally programmatically) and should be available to everyone.

Insulated Mixed Economy

The community should internally behave as a very progressive mixed economy. So every member should earn credit or income on their marginal labor, but that should decrease logarithmically. So given two members where one is returning 10x as much value, they will earn something far less than 10x the credit.

Expansion

It is necessary to start with a single community. But the goal is expansion. Membership within one community should be capped around 150. When approaching that limit, plans should be made to split into two communities. Over time, this should develop into a network of these communities. This should follow something of a "federal" model where over time a very limited set of rules is established that all communities adhere to. Smaller groups of communities will share rules guided by a collective council and individuate communities will handle their day-to-day matters.

For example, there may be top level rules regarding the rights of all members and regulating trade between all communities. A sub-group of communities may choose to be family oriented and form a council to govern things like running a shared school. But the individual communities will oversee things like how their facilities are managed.

It is important that membership is to the organization as a whole. A member of one community should be able to easily relocate to another so long as there is room. They should be able to enroll in a class taught at another community at the same rate (which should just cover cost of materials where necessary), again presuming there is room.

Education

Addressed many times here is that education is a primary value. Foremost is that members have access to education. But it is also important that educational materials are compiled and made generally available.

Testing

There should be separation of teaching and testing. In the places where we want to provide certification, the testing process should be formalized and (where possible) not administered by the teacher. I would love for this to expand to providing testing and certification.

Initialization

1) I need to establish myself. Once I have some sort of credential to base this upon, write a detailed proposal.

2) Develop a core group of members. This initial group is responsible for the research and design to get everything on it's feet.

3) Figure out the legal framework to be able to issue bonds. The initial costs will be covered by these bonds. I think we can offer a 6% yield. If possible, we don't set a date, but keep the option for us to buy back the bonds at any point on first issued, first paid.

4) From here the goal is to get the residence operational and the kitchen. The kitchen is required for residence, but it is also a first means of income.

Outreach

Once the community is stable enough (a few members, a few structures) start inviting people to come stay temporarily. This can give potential members a chance to experience the community. Inviting journalists could also lay the foundation to get some attention.