Organizational Strategy

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Context and What is Right Livelihood?

The focus of our Global Village Construction program is to deploy small intentional communities that live according to principles of fright livelihood. We are considering the ab inition creation of nominally 12 person communities, by networking and marketing this Buy Out at the Bottom (BOAB) package, at a fee of approximately $5k to participants. With 12 people, that is $60k seed infrastructure capital. With integrated skill of the community integrator, plus individual skills, there is a chance of success, in terms of creating a community with unprecedented quality of life. This quality of life is based on efficient operation, plus 100% voluntary lifestyle, based on transcendence of material constraints. When resource constraints become a non-issue through wise choice of technology, skill, and open source knowledge-enabled flexible production systems for self-sufficiency - then freedom and human creativity are unleashed. As such, the community begins to function as a place of freedom - promoting pursuits of a research and development lifestyle dedicated to the benefit of all humanity. The main working assumption - one already expounded by historical leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, E. F. Schumacher, Buckminster Fuller, and many others - is that economic self-sufficiency is the only true route to control of one's, and hence society's, destiny. Be in charge of producing your needs, and the world will be a better place.

The concept of right lIvelihood used here is used in its most radical form. Superficially, right livelihood is described as making a living without hurting others. However, this statement has the general characteristic of holy scripture - all the 'right principles' are described, but very few follow them due to human frailty. But we must challenge this human weakness, and attempt to create an environment where good life is to be had for all. People may have tried such improvement throughout all times in history. At the least, this proposal is but another attempt. At the very best, it's an explicit program, which, because of its integrated nature and an attempt to link ancient wisdom with modern technology - has a chance of carrying small, dedicated groups to lives of uncompromising, good work.

What is right livelihood as the term is used here? It is a basic definition as in the last paragraph - plus the explicit situational details of how that applies to our lives - according to generally accepted priciples of how the world works. The details are many, and would take many pages to describe, so we can detail only the general principles that apply to today's society. Right livelihood is about creating life, not death, and truth, not fiction. Thus, we say no to the military industrial complex - which is about war = commerce. If we understand this, then we start to ask how communities can meet their needs without having to take from others. Then, we start to work on replacing global supply chains with increasingly localized ones. In practice, this could be flexible and digital fabrication fueled by open source design. The future is here, we have all the technology to survive and thrive, by educating with truth and bravery, so that many more people become skilled rather than dependent. With independence comes less reliance on 'Big Brother' or bureaucracy. Such bureaucracy should be questioned.

Introduction - Creation of Right Livelihood Enterprise Communities

Deployment of on-demand replicable right livelihood communities happens in 3 Phases:

  1. Pioneering life with deep exploration of useful technologies, to distill the essential from chaff. Status - in progress
  2. Replication as a 12 person, Buy Out At the Bottom (BOAB) Right Livelihood enterprise community (RLEC), where our notion of right livelihood includes priciples of open source economic development. This is an extension of the Hexayurt concept from the scale of emergency self-sustaining shelter to the scale of a landed, autonomous, small community with a sound economic base as part of the package. See details of the BOAB RLEC below.
  3. Internships at tha RLEC designed for immersion study to train others to replicate RLECs as a novel form of social organization.

Technology Base

Prerequisite technology for Phase 2 involves

  1. Necessary hardware for living - energy, food, housing, mobility, internet, workshop, orchard, etc.
  2. Social technology of gathering 12 people
  3. Land acquisition strategy built into the social technology.

Hardware for Living

The hardware for living includes:

OSE RLC.jpg

The hardware involves:

  • Electricity production - mainstay is solar concentrator power, with solar turbine electric power, Babington burner flash steam boiler backup, and heat storage via hot oil for cloudy periods up to 1 week. Inverters and battery storage is utilized. The hybrid car is also a high power mobile electric power plant also, and the electric tractor has batteries that may be tapped as well in emergencies.
  • Food production - orchard, attached greenhouses, large-scale greenhouses, animal husbandry, aquaculture, and raised bed organoponics guarantee fresh foodstuffs. Solar dehydrators and canned food supplement the diet. Value added kitchen makes interesting food products.
  • Housing - CEB, sawmill, and glazing extruder provide a solid basis for building homes, cisterns, silos, walls, paths, and other needs.
  • Mobility - flex fab lab produces cars and tractors
  • Wireless internet - hookup via existing service or wireless range extension.

Social Technology

The social technology involves collecting a group of 12 skilled individuals. These individuals agree to buy into creating the community under the guidance of the core organizer, at a cost of approximately $5k.

  • Agricultural Producer - orchard, greenhouse, nursery, forestry, animal husbandry, vermiculture, fertilizer production - to feed the community and provide products for market
  • Land Steward - responsible for maintainaining health of the land and sound developmenet practices for the facility
  • Master Builder - an individual to lead construction efforts; also has architecture abilities
  • Energy Provider - expert in renewable energy for autonomous energy, sales to the grid, excess fuel sales
  • Healer - farmiliar with food as medicine, mind-body practice, massage, neutraceuticals, herbs, and basic first aid, and is on call to the rest of the community
  • IT Provider - manages the computer and connectivity infrastructure
  • Electronics Person - familiarity with computer control, automation, sensing, device controls, electronic devices, etc.
  • Inventors - interesting products that contribute to a better world, not making a living; products include vehicles, energy systems, machines, and other devices; large market opportunities via open source flexible production, starting with power, habitat, mobility, and food needs of local communities

The group works together to make habitat, power, mobility, and right livelihood infrastructure for itself. This is immersion experience in self-sufficient living.

The work load should be approximately 2 hours per person per day to meet economic self-sufficiency and provide basic needs. On top of the 2 hours, it is total self-motivated productivity for individual needs and service to local communities. This is our idea of highest quality of life, where survival is a nominal endeavor, and the focus of one's life shifts to good work. A good level of flexible specialization makes the living situation comfortable to all, as the workload of surviving is not onerous to any one person.

Land Acquisition

Land is the largest expenditure for a community. As such, the number one approach to this issue is to seek someone who is already a landowner, and invite them into the program with their financial contribution replaced by the in-kind contribution of approximately $100k in land value. This value corresponds to the actual worth that each person is contributing: $5k in captital and $95k in skill offered to the community in the coming few years. Right livelihood opportunity cannot be matched to a price, but here we select $100k as a reasonable figure. This should procure from 5-50 acres of land. This land becomes part of the permanent stewartship holdings of the group, bound as a reserve to all future pursuers of right livelihood. Such land is not to enter the speculative market under any circumstances. In future years, additional members may enter the community, up to the number self-supported by the land base. This applies a natural bound for population control, where the limit is determined by optimal quality of life of existing members.

Right Livelihood Infrastructure

The key to participant alignment along a common purpose lies in explicit design choices for the physical infrastructure. The physical infrastructure determines the right livelihood activities, and, indeed, focuses participants' energy to particular choices of endeavors:

  • technology integration work
  • high level grassroots organizational work
  • regional infrastructure and economic development

Essential facilities related to these right livelihood activities include:

  • computing and communication infrastructure
  • flexible and digital fabrication capacity
  • greenhouses and permaculture facilities
  • food processing, materials, electronics, and other labs
  • small industry of all sorts

All work is placed in the public domain for maximum benefit to all of humanity. Enterprise developed in-house is to serve as right livelihood opportunities to participants, where the developers have primacy in the endeavor, naturally, by being the developers of constantly evolving products. To address business incubation issues, our infrastructure is a dedicated deployment environment for open source enterprise - thereby providing an incentive for product development other than patent protection. The personal requirement from participants is evolved awareness that open economic development, or sharing, is a viable route to livelihood.

Right Livelihood Options

Examples of technology integration work involve documenting and demonstrating working examples of integrated, ecological technologies. One example is a solar turbine CHP systems with solar collector, heat exchanger, turbine, generator, energy storage, and backup power. See details below.

Examples of high level grassroots organizational work involves developing educational programs, forming new organizations, setting up foundations, leading research efforts, managing resource development for funding innovation, leading particular development efforts, and many other endeavors. The main direction is system change, to bring about new infrastructures, institutions, and options for living.

Regional infrastructure and economic development examples include physical production for local markets. The focus is on productive infrastructures - such as production of greenhouse growing systems rather than selling produce, or producing power generation equipment instead of selling fuel or electricity, and so forth. Straightforward products, such as hybrid cars or greenhouse glazing, should be produced as well, though we favor providing 'the fishing rod' instead of 'fish.' This is a general direction, and options will be evaluated on an ongoing basis.

Accountability

Accountability to the missiion of good work lies in a quadruple path:

  • In house-validation of product services by using developed products for meeting on-site needs
  • Viability of above products for market
  • Demonstrated adoption of developed technologies within the local region, either with or without the assistaince of the RLEC
  • Replication of RLECs by in-house immersion training of leaders who start new communities for a global network


Priorities:

Outcomes:

  • commercial product via open source, distributed, flexible fabrication, at absolute lowest cost, $1/W

Means:

  • fabrication optimization, and product in kit for user assembly

Other priorities:

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