Evolve to freedom
The Search for Freedom
Are you tired of selling your time only to make money for somebody else, leaving only rare moments and weekends to do what you love (if you have any energy left at that point)? What if you could eliminate the bureaucracy in your life? What if you could end your personal financial contribution to war and keep your money out of the coffers of corporate leaders? Does a 2 hour work day sound good to you? We are developing the tools, the networks and community to make technologically modern self-sufficient living possible for everyone. Maybe it is time to begin producing only enough to provide yourself a quality life. Are you ready to divorce yourself from systems that require coercion, injustice, and ecological ruin, while fostering a connection to the land and developing your own true talents? This radical move is increasingly within your reach.
Self-sufficient Modern Living
How?
Gather a team of 10 or more skilled people who want to live differently, visionary mindset included. This is by far the most difficult aspect of making this dream a reality, but increasingly doable as more and more people become fully disenchanted with the things they do to make a living in this society.
Raise the funds to buy a 10 acre plot of land and install an open source personal Fabrication Laboratory (Fab Lab). Pick up some scrap metal from the nearest junkyard and cast it, providing the raw materials you will need to build a technology base for you new community. A personal Fab Lab plus a computer with access to open source software and blueprints gives you the power to build your own machines with the click of a mouse and some wrench turning. It brings the economic power of automation and design efficiency into the hands of smallholders.
Build a high production to create high quality, comfortable housing from on-site dirt. When issues of ecology are brought into consideration, it becomes clear that this is one of the most advanced building methods known to humankind. Provide for your food needs by planting an orchard, building a greenhouse, creating a garden, and raising a few lactating animals, a pond of fish, and a coop of chickens. The addition of a microcombine increases the ease of grain production. Fabricating your own LifeTrac tractor can greatly reduce the labor needed to build housing and get a successful system of food production up and running.
A feeds energy to your new stronghold of peace, with a few days storage in case the sun goes into hiding. The sun sends you no bills. A backup system may involve planting a fuel crop, or going to a local restaurant for waste oil to make biodiesel on extremely cold days as the crew at Factor e Farm did in earlier years. A variety of means of providing are being explored.
Don't have enough money for an advanced Fab Lab? A 3D printer (RepRap) can be made for under $400, and requires nothing more powerful than an [1] computer. A Multimachine open source drill-mill-lathe costs a few hundred in parts. The components of the Fab Lab are being designed to be constructed from openly available plans, and these two technologies give you the start you need to construct one for yourself, substituting sweat equity for cash.
Financing
A number of small enterprises can be used to support the construction and development of a community building towards self-sufficiency. A three acre orchard can give $5k per season through the operation of a passive U-pick business. People may be attracted to your showcase, and begin asking questions. That is valuable conversation, and at the end you return to your Fab Lab, as you got an order for an open source car – that's $1k dollar value earned for 20 hours of your time. Or, your tree propagation workshop brought in $1k for the day, as your plant stock is abundant. A few small organic farmers in your area are waiting for you to fill their microcombine order. Or, the training workshop for earth block building. You can roll in extra cash if you like, but your expenses are low, and you may have more important things to do. Perhaps providing clean water or gasifier stoves to the rest of the world, at a ridiculously affordable cost?
We like to help others. Low on money and high on vision? Come to our workshops, build yourself an infrastructure so you could live like this, if you have lifetime durable equipment. Start with basics: car at $2k; not bad for a high performance, low maintenance lifetime vehicle; tractor at $2k, brick machine at $1k, greenhouse another $1k; flex fab outfit, a large price item, $5k for all you need in machine work and cutting jobs. Orchard literally free, and all of our gene pool too, if you do the propagation work. And the glazing comes from bioplastics onsite, or extruded waste plastic. Then you may need some immediate cash after you start up, because you wanted to buy some more books or other exotic merchandise. Maybe marketing products of other farmer scientist friends of yours will do the job as you get on your feet.
Freedom
For the rest of your life, do what you really want. Perhaps pressing world issues are a concern of yours? Go ahead, work them. Or just a little more attention to your personal evolution, so that all of society can benefit? When you control your destiny, everyone benefits.
As your operations get off the ground, you cannot help but notice that everyone around you is going off-grid, starting to produce other open source items of Fab Lab industry, and those government workers are leaving town as they have no more problems left to solve or create.
(Has your junkyard closed out of metal because society eliminated all waste by lifetime design techniques? Then you need to extract aluminum from your onsite clays, in a furnace fueled by compressed gas produced from waste wood chips.)