Admissions Committee
I'd like to give you the first honor of serving on our admissions committee to Factor e Farm. We are looking for dedicated developers, or Lifetime Developers or Investors at a humble fee of $10k - plus a heavy grind-down to see if the person fits. Given that I trust most of your judgment on proper stewardship of land, I would like to extend the offer to rack potential candidates with me. I will publish further details on the Lifetime Developers.
Selection criteria include topics we've touched on before:
- Maturity
- Service-to-other
- Stewardship skill, technical and ecological
- Judiciousness and wisdom
- Spiritual dimension
- Reason
- Clarity of intention
Please comment on these, expand them.
Your duties on the Admisssions Committee and principles would include:
1. Reviewing potential candidates as they arise. We're looking for a population cap of about 30 people at the end of the game, 1 person per acre for full autonomy and resilience.
2. Discussing the suitability of the potential candidates with other members of the Admissions Committee. So far we have no other members.
3. Evaluate suitability of others joining the Admissions Committee.
4. All is negotiable, all contracts and rules can change at any time, towards success of the endeavor
5. Accepting the underlying goal of unabashed development of post-scarcity, resilient communities, toward transforming outdated modes of governance and land tenure.
6. Defending the integrity and continuity of land stewardship of Factor e Farm by whatever means necessary.
Would you like to accept this invitation? Questions and suggestions?
Scenarios to Resolve
I have a couple of first thought questions.
The first is about family structures relative to buy-in price. Here are a couple of scenarios. How would you handle them (in theory, realizing that every situation in unique and the times will be very different by then).
1) Mom and Pop buy in, build house, move in. Son or daughter shows up, lives with them for 3 months then wants to build house. Allowed?
My opinion is, either pass on your own merits (if you want a separate plot of land) and pay for it or build on a bedroom on your parents house.
2) Continuation of above. Subject survivorship/inheritance. Dad dies, mom follows shortly after Can semi-butthead Bubba inherit or does board (following rules) really kick him out? Or does matter get deferred to democratic vote of entire >16 population of Factor E Farm Community? If he really does not fit in community, can he sell his buy-in right to someone unrelated if that party meet accempance criteria?
3) Young to mid-aged couple qualifies, buys in, builds house, moves in. Functional, well-liked people. Wife moves in with neighbor who is in estranged marriage. Neighbor's estranged marriage partner returns and wants to reclaim right to live in community. Now what?
4 )Is it possible to meet buy-in price through service to the Factor E community? Especially in complicated cases as above in which some one has "lost their place" do to complicated relationship displacements?
5) Many/most such communities have a chow hall and several cooks. I think this is a key social binding factor. It also gives productive work to women who might not be very useful in fields/shop and it makes it the community much nicer for single men because they don't have to cook or go without good food. The dining room is also used for meetings and school for kids, etc. Is this in long-range plans? Your thoughts?
People need to know some of these things before they invest time and money in Factor E Farm Community. Ultimately, the management will be handled by people on site. Having recently gone through a break up yourself, Marcin, you know that these things just happen because people change. Basically, you're not the same person, you were 5, 10 years ago. So a balance must be struck that allows the community to survive and thrive. Rules must be followed, but flexability must be built in.
Answers
Forthcoming. It boils down to 'what service is each individual providing towards post-scarcity existence of the community'?
The dilemma arises when filial/friendship connection brings in additional people. The typical scenario may be that the new person is not interested in any of the larger picture, but is there only because of filial/friendship relationships.
1. The only foolproof solution for maintaining community integrity is assuring that everyone contributes to the community. This can be addressed by making each new person absolutely useful to the rest of the community. The only way to address this is by teaching the new person the requirements of the community. At that point, the new person has a choice of complying or finding another place to live.
2. Another difficulty would be a person who visits. A clear visitor policy must exist - namely, that the visitors are also not a drain on the community.
The bottom line to the answers here is that there are no easy answers until all members assume the full responsibility for what it means to live in a post-scarcity community. This is where proper entry policy can assure the right initial intent within candidates, and ongoing review by the Board of Directors assures continued integrity of participation. It should always be kept in mind that we are talking about the FeF experiment, not any average community. As such, only exceptional people are invited into the experiment. This must be one of the considerations that potential candidates must weigh upon applying for membership. It may turn out that this experimental design is impossible to fulfill in practice. That's why this is an experiment. What has history shown us about the likely outcome of an experiment like this?
The bottom line is still the creation of a post-scarcity community that contributes zero to global problems. As founder of the experiment, I believe that we can evaluate each and every action and intent of community members to assure that the long-term vision is being pursued. We may indeed find out that the experiment fails, and other, less stringent design needs to be implemented. Whatever design is chosen, I don't think one can argue about the fact that the physical meeting of essential needs is a foundation, and that this foundation should allow for full pursuit of freedom and happiness, while being responsible to the world.
