Many of my earlier thoughts about what a "lifetoward community" meant were principles that could be developed in the world one step at a time.
- Economic systems that maximized trust through personal knowledge of partners.
- More shared resources, including services and products (a corollary of A).
- Land and homesteads including roads, perimeters, and other facilities
- Sparsely-used infrastructural equipment like lawnmowers, trucks, trailers, manufacturing space and tools, and even cars
- Sparsely-used recreational and social resources like common gathering spaces, barbecues, grounds, sports courts
- Data or connectivity services, like shared information technology infrastructure be it broadband net access, servers, applications, etc.
- Medical assistance (Kaiser is an example)
- Legal representation
- Accounting
- Greater personal control of information by clearer, simplified, audited paths of information sharing. (Corollary of B3 and A.)
- Corporate engagement with the outside world (bargaining as a corporation instead of as separate individuals)
- Political clout (ability to discuss and develop stances and lobbying power on political issues)
- Education (private schooling which has a set of values associated with it)
- Economic efficiency and sustainability - bulk food buying, waste management, power-generation
- Explicit debate of policy whereby members understand the foundations of their own lives; the ability to enforce group policy through economic leverage
- Social network
Perhaps the business to be in is being the administrator of corporations, a corporation providing incorporation services to facilitate people building their own functional groups. Here are some specific ideas:
- Carpenters' workshop - the non-profit corporation buys a workshop and equips and maintains it with the tools necessary to provide members with state of the art and top notch carpentry opportunities. They have bulk lumber buying power and marketing channels for carpenters to sell their work. Members can get together to collaborate or just
- Ferrari lovers' group - the trust buys and maintains Ferarris which are shared among the members - works just like a Flying club
- Housing project - the trust buys land and master-plans it with the participation of shareholders and develops the community including a company store, maybe a school, etc. These of course would be effectively "towns" but the goal is to keep the size of the membership limited to a "tribal" size, and that they can be chartered with different rules than would otherwise be handed down. Entry and exit is not "free" in that you can simply decide to move to the town. Instead you have to sign in to what effectively is a super-HOA. The town has a sustainable waste management system, its own electricity generating capabilities, a shared information downlink, etc.
- Medical group - limited liability company is a diverse set of doctors who provide their services on retainer rather than on per-visit or per-condition terms. This really starts at the patient level. A group of people gets together to hire these doctors on retainer for their exclusive access. The doctors are charged with education, and the decision making around a common healthcare facility. (Kaiser is effectively this.)
- People's bank - A non-profit bank (like a credit union) with active engagement of shareholders to maximize shareholder finances.
- Craigslist is a classic example of a functional networking/IT application. They are a profit corporation which acts in nonprofit ways.
The thing that always occurs to me when I get thinking this way is, how is this any different from the institutions that make up our lives in our various levels of community today? Here are the answers that support the idea anyway:
- Groups are kept smaller with the advantage of being able to actually know your fellow members and service providers personally. This increases trust and accountability and may make for more satisfying transactions. Business is carried out by policy-based choice rather than under threat of litigation for breach of contract.
- Policies are explicitly signed on and under the control of shareholders rather than accepted extrinsically. Transparency to members is the rule, not the exception.
- Profits are always automatically returned to the "consumers" of the services or products. That is, for any given group, the paid administrators of that group have compensation amounts published to the group and open books such that all consumers are also the owners. It's like a Co-op.
- Information technology allows for the simplification of the administration of such groups. Facebook and meetup can do it, but they're just selling networking. The same technology combined with the legal entities like corporations and trusts can be powerful because real goods and services can be legally held in addition to the connections.
- Simply by observing that too many people own too many swimming pools, lawnmowers, cars, trailers, etc. it seems that there must be economic advantage to "sharing".
- A truly democratic (by/for the people) economic system would be a myriad of economic groups like those described here which members sign on to based on the rules of competition of such groups, and each sign-on would be by choice, and the groups themselves would all be non-profit. A person's personality and lifestyle could then be characterized by the aggregate of all functional groups to which he is subscribed.
- These would effectively be known as "consumer groups", non-profit collective-consumption or service entities which leverage combined buying-power to create lower cost customized ways to procure and administer resources for final use.
But then there are arguments that go against that idea:
- Many people don't want to do business with personal acquaintances. We prefer to do business anonymously for cultural reasons.
- People who aren't sharing now will consistently choose not to share. No group they would join would raise their trust level enough to not require their own special tools, cars, lawnmower, etc.
- The "family" is the currently existing equivalent of such a non-profit group. That families in today's world tend to separate rather than consolidate indicates that people in this culture do not need the services suggested here. Of course the problem with families is that members are required to sign on to more than they would choose....
- People are not aware of the negative sides or full profit view of the existing institutions. They vaguely know that they are big and making lots of money off them, but it's not alarming enough to take the extra effort to learn and engage the more complex topics which underpin their own existence. They are buying a right to ignorance (not meant to be a bad thing) and this is a fair trade in many cases.
- It could be argued that all these things are already in place to the extent that the culture would support it. For example, flying clubs and food co-ops exist. Stadiums provide venues for shows at costs which are appropriate to the costs of operation of the venue and the rarity of attendance. In other words, the market is enforcing all these rules already.
Looking at the arguments for and against, one could simply observe this:
Wherever one sees that such a consumer group is needed, that is the place to go into business. Simply provide the service and you're in business. And that's the American way. In other words, to assume a different paradigm will be more successful is probably naive at least until the existing paradigm is mastered. So what are the barriers that keep more people from going into business? Unwillingness to compete? Administrative overhead? Inability to organize (employees, skills)? Lack of access to suppliers and customers? What kinds of people do go into business and which don't or shouldn't?
So, some current challenges for consumers right now include:
- Health care
- Control of information
- Practical education (where public schools are missing the mark)
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