The economics of neosubsistence vs. traditional subsistence

Traditional subsistence farming communities that are not connected to an industrial economy nearly always become poor and destitute, as a result of pressure on the land from a growing population. At its worst, this leads to starvation when once-adequate household farms are subdivided over and over again for generations of heirs until the acreage of individual farms becomes insufficient for subsistence. Long before the worst, the diminished farms fail to provide a significant disposable income, and people, though well-fed, are poor for lack of manufactured goods. Where there is an industrial town or city nearby, the excess population can migrate as industrial labor.

I tend to think that agricultural development policies often function to force people off land into towns as cheap labor for industry. On reflection, it is possible that in the absence of an industrial economy, rural standards of living would decrease indefinitely toward a state of degradation. If population remained static, this would not need to be the case, and before high mortality rates were arrested by modern medicine and sanitation, perhaps there was more stability in peasant farming communities, though De____'s accounts of starving masses of peasants in old Europe suggests otherwise.

The problem with industrializing an economy as a solution, of course, is that most industrial activity currently practiced is unsustainable, predicated on endless growth, and so if growth stalls, or turns negative, the urban population faces unemployment or depressed wages. As we are likely reaching unsurmountable supply constraints to industrialization (exhausted oil supplies, etc.), I believe there is a real risk of indefinitely-stalled growth. Where does the excess population go when the cities fail to absorb them? Even if population levels stabilize, exhausted supplies (and political instability) may make our current model of industrialization--specialized mass production coupled with lengthy supply lines--untenable.

In economic terms, industrialization creates externalities in the form of pollution and depleted common-pool resources (natural capital).

How does neosubsistence differ?

Marcin defines neosubsistence as such:

"Neosubsistence: The combination of advanced material and information technologies introduces a new economic option that we call neosubsistence. This is modern day means to livelihood where wise use of advanced technology and ready access to information allows one to spend a small amount of time in self-sufficiency production. This leads to a high quality of life where higher skill provides more resources in-house, reduces the need to 'work to make a living,' and opens up time for other pursuits. It is a route to promoting a bioregional economy, which relies more on its own resources rather than uncontrollable global market forces. This promotes accountability and reduces the necessity of war."

Thoughts:

Suburbia was perhaps the first attempt at neosubsistence. I have old pamphlets from the thirties and forties describing food production on quarter and half acre lots, directed toward the early car-owning ex-urbanite. But suburbia not only chose lawns over chickens and orchards, but turned out to have serious externalities: rapid exhaustion of oil supplies, congestion, community fragmentation, pollution. The infrastructure required to sustain the suburban project is a grossly inefficient use of capital which requires a constant inflow of new capital to operate.

In effect, the updated rendering of neosubsistence as offered by Marcin and currently bandied about the DIY community appears in the context of (a) the information age, and (b) the promise of flexible manufacturing at the household or village level. Is it possible that these innovations could re-empower independent, subsistence lifestyles? Birth a new movement of superempowered peasants? If industry can occur at a smaller, more local scale, minus the oil use, the congestion, the pollution, and with a renewed emphasis on community cohesion--could we have our proverbial cake and eat it, too? Can we accumulate the necessary capital to empower farming households, and could we absorb the excess labor on site as it's liberated by the increased productivity of agriculture brought by capitalizion? And, of course, can trade and cooperation be adequately facilitated over distance by the internet?

Some key terms here:

Flexible fabrication
Community capital
Networked communities

The place where Greg & Annie got married!

There's No Place Like Here: Communal Living with Nikki Silva

10 Principles for a Resilient Culture [WORKING DRAFT]

1. Secure Your Sustenance. Never give up your direct link to sustenance resources including land, raw materials, tools, and skills. This need not apply to every individual, but should apply to every household and at the very least to a village-scale unit of households for whom mutual loyalty and interdependence runs deep. Jeff Vail's minimal self-sufficiency. Emphasize livelihood over career.

2. Cultivate Interdependency and Relationship. Do favors for neighbors, develop reciprocal relationships and trade. Have fun together. Hold fairs and festivals. Develop a skill set that has value to your neighbors. Offer it. Jack of All Trades, Master of One.

3. Invest Much, Spend Little. Protect your endowments. Always have enough surplus of basic needs on hand to outlast a bad year, or three. Treat your non-renewable resources as capital and never deplete the principle. Always think in terms of long-term payoff.

4. Know No Waste. Socially: everyone is capable of doing something useful. Ensure everybody has a role that is meaningful, takes effort, and provides something of value. No tokenism. Materially: eliminate your waste stream. There is no waste in nature. The ideal is that everything either biodegrades or can be limitlessly recycled; energy must be renewable.

5. Replace Standard of Living with Quality of Life. Create meaningful rituals, hold recurring events, eat well, and have fun together.

6. Practice Democracy. Practice making decisions together to manage common resources. Honor everybody's voice and opinion. Avoid consistently alienating anyone. Feuds are real threats when families have ongoing multigenerational relationships with each other. Get comfortable with argument and hashing things out till you reach a decision.

7. Set Clear Boundaries. Have clear notions around ownership and legal entitlements. Make sure people know their individual and collective rights.

8. Embrace Complexity. Some things are not simple. Be attentive to externalized costs. Do not judge activities, tools, or investments by measures which reduce efficiency or productivity to simple axes.

9. Value Diversity. Not just in ecosystems but in economies and social environments. Monocultures and homogeneity in general generally yield gains for the few at the expense of the many, and short-term "efficiencies" at the expense of long-term systemic resilience. Respect your neighbor and the choices your neighbor makes, so long as they do not actively impede your own ability to take care of yourself or your family.

10. Self-sacrifice. The acceptance of the possibility of death releases unimaginable power. One need not be willing to kill to protect themselves, their family, their neighbors, the innocent, or the good, but one must be willing to die to do so.

Preparing our Communities for Uncertain Times. Updating "community development." The problem with the idea of development. Redefine or toss. In it's place: ? Proposition: this is where we should have been going all along and certainly where we should be heading now. Responding the Jeff Vail's "One institution that I do wish to explore here is the notion of anthropological self-awareness. It is important that the every participant node in rhizome has an understanding of the theoretical foundation of rhizome, and of the general workings of anthropological systems in general. Without this knowledge, it is very likely that participants will fail to realize the pitfalls of dependency, resulting in a quick slide back to hierarchy... Additionally, it is important to recognize the cultural programming that hierarchal systems provide, and to consciously reject and replace parts of this with a myth, taboo, and morality that supports rhizome and discourages hierarchy. Rules are inherently hierarchal—they must be enforced by a superior power, and are not appropriate for governing rhizome. However, normative standards—social norms, taboos, and values—are effective means of coordinating rhizome without resorting to hierarchy. For example, within the context of anthropological self-awareness, it would be considered “wrong” or “taboo” to have slaves, to be a lord of the manor, or to “own” more property than you can reasonably put to sustainable use. This wouldn’t be encoded in a set of laws and enforced by a ruling police power, but rather exist as the normative standard, compliance with which is the prerequisite for full participation in the network."

Vandana Shiva's Sydney Peace Prize speech

Vandana Shiva : Sydney Peace Prize Talk from WisdomKeepers Productions on Vimeo.

Ecovillages

Earthaven Ecovillage
Interview with Arjuna da Silva about the structure:

Listen to internet radio with Ecovillage Radio on Blog Talk Radio

Difficulties starting (3.30m); "get a commitment in writing that your founders will stay 10 years" (5.30m); main issues (a) the challenge of income & (b) giving up one's home & garden for a tent & hut (7.30m); ongoing issue of trying to appease, fly under the radar, of inspectors (10.30m); unexpected costs arising from good intentions (12.30m); haevn't found an architect or engineer willing to take on the liability of untested or unconventional construction by rubber stamping projects without lots of costs, and state-level lobbying for special permits (14.30m); current population 70-75 members on the land, mostly adults, exceptionally challenging for young families with children (17m); children not interested in living on the land (18.30m); interns< WWOOFers and seasonal help (20m); issues with being off the grid, hydro and solar infrastructure (22m); learning to communicate (25m); more on the issues of small families trying to make it (26.30m); Physical landscape of the property & design (30m); issues with codes - "spring water districts" (32.20m); tensions between community infrastructure and personal infrastructure (34.30m); acceptance of alternative culture in the area (36m); dealing with waste water (36.30m); meeting schedule and consensus decision-making process(38.40m); why a reed-bed lagoon system for waste water isn't the best option (41m); agriculture as a key focus of the community & description of systems/activities, "everybody is learning & making mistakes" (42.30); issues with cats and dogs (46.45m); how much food available from the land throughout the year, belief in healthy commerce and local markets (47m); obstacles to food self-sufficiency (50m); provisional contract for dogs, etc (53.30m); wildlife and predators (54m); how the communal work is encouraged, structured, planned - including 1500 hours community service in first 10 years, ~3 hours/week, ccash payment if they don't at $10/hr, etc, capital revenue fund, joining fee $4k per adult, siteholding lease fee, 99 year transferrable lease, $20k for the lease for full-size site holding, quarter acre, plus commons of hundreds of acres (56m); organization of community bureaucracy and labor, including paid positions (60m); more about how a person moves there, full-size, "compact" 60% full size, and cohousing sites, cheapest can come in is $10k, different ways to pay - (a) whole thing up front cash, (b) half down + payments @ 5% interest, (c) sweat equity option where someone trades skill, usually physical but not always (63.30m); CANNOT use bank loans (66.30m); issues utilizing grants (68.30m); cooperatively run businesses/nonprofits onsite including education center & ethanol production/aquaculture/mushrooms, privately-owned plant medicine business, small wood products business,CSA, forestry & construction business, Chuck Marsh's useful plants nursery (70.45m); working on developing earned income from hospitality "if economy will allow it," building a commercial kitchen (76.30m); how to visit and phone number (82.30m)

Directory for finding intentional communities (123 in WA state!).

The Beehive Collective.

Website for learning in Ecovillages abroad.

Building the Infrastructre Base for Holistic Education - GVCS vs. Ad Hoc

If the goal is infrastructure for a holistic "school" nested within a resilient community, and the GVCS is a means of providing that, how does the GVCS stack up to an ad-hoc, pieced-together version of the same elements?

How much more useful would it be?
Strengths & Disadvantages?
How much more or less would it cost?
How much easier would it be to integrate the various pieces?

"Needs" in the 21st century

Maslow's heirarchy of needs:

The physiological basics are more easily met now than ever. The "safety" needs, however, and perhaps the "love/belongoing" needs, are more complicated. What does it take to feel secure in one's livelihood? In one's relative sense of security in the world? Secure in one's health and resources?

Well, the resources "necessary" to be a participant in the modern world have expanded in some ways and contracted in others. Clearly most people do not need to have the land, tools, and knowledge to grow their own food, but they do need access to the internet, electricity, health insurance, a cell phone. Of course, relying on others to grow your food to the extent that you forfeit all ability to do so is predicated on a so far reliable but rather dangerous assumption.

My question is mostly to do with what resources we would need to equip the 21st century person with in order for them to feel fundamentally secure and connected.

- food
- water
- shelter
- fuel/energy
- sanitation (bathing, "waste")
- clothing
- transportation
- computer
- internet & wifi
- cell phone & cellular service
- health care
- disposable income for travel

Now, what would it take to be able to produce all this on a village scale? Add to the above: tools to make and repair everything needed. That's fundamentally the project of the Global Village Construction Set.

The GVCS doesn't tackle health needs. Would a community train its own doctors and nurses? What about specialized medical technology? These could be purchased by regional cooperatives, but these costs are, of course, some of the highest costs of modern life. Without a disposable income, how can an individual or family afford to utilize specialized medical technology even in a regional center?

Similarly, internet and cellular technology relies on networks, and someone has to lay the fiberoptic cable or put up the transponders. What sort of organizational form would arise to manage this? And what about roads, bridges, and other infrastructure? Local is good, but local to the extent that mobility is drastically reduced is a recipe for provincialism.

Example of cooperative farm enterprise

From Rodale Institute Classifieds:

Organic Farm in Oregon
Submitted by Robert Styler (not verified) on Wed, 10/26/2011 - 17:03.
Not sure if this would interest you:

23 acre organic farm just north of Medford, Oregon (also close to Ashland, Or). Three wells (one pumps 100 gallons/min). Two streams that run 8 months out of the year. Mostly flat – irrigation throughout. 20,000 SF of greenhouses. 7,000 SF stone ranch house. The house can easily be divided into three separate living areas, each with their own kitchen and bathroom. There is also a HUGE commercial kitchen to process food in another building. There is also 40,000 SF below roof for shipping, offices, etc. We have a climate similar to Napa, CA…not much rain…we get about two or three snows a year that stick around for a few days.

I am looking for 3 couples or families who each want to pay $2,500/mo to earn equity in the farm. I have a deal where we can pay off the whole mortgage in about 10 years (even faster with the farm producing income…or the income can offset the monthly payments). The families would own the majority of the farm once the loan is paid off. The investor I would own the rest. The farm is worth much more than the mortgage and with a small, committed group working together, we can create a great deal for everyone. It is just too much for me and I want to find the right people who would cherish this opportunity to build equity, live on an organic farm, and create something special together. I am open to other arrangements than the one explained above, as long as it is fair to everyone involved.

[I am looking for 3 couples or families who each want to pay $2,500/mo to earn equity in the farm. I have a deal where we can pay off the whole mortgage of $670K in about 10 years. The families would own about 60% of the farm once the loan is paid off. The investor would own about 25%, and I would be left with 15%. The farm is worth much more than the mortgage and with a small, committed group working together, we can create a great deal for everyone. It is just too much for me and I want to find the right people who would cherish this opportunity to build equity, live on an organic farm, and create something special together.]

If you have farming, construction, or general handy skills...all the better. This farm is magical...and an amazing opportunity for the right people. Each family will need to buy in with a minimum of $30,000 each, which will go into a farm account to make sure we have plenty of reserves.

Please only reply if you are solid, responsible, and have the financial resources to be a partner.

My focus right now is CREWfund.org, a nonprofit that I launched to fund the green economy…and I would enjoy living with and working with positive people who have an inspired vision for a future were we all can thrive. 541 232 1020

Robert

Open Source Ecology / Factor E Farm / GVCS

A collection of the best links to render the program:

Marcin's Personal Intro to True Fans

GVCS - Detailed Overview

Skill to learn: Blender 3D

ps, also this is cool: Tiny Tech India

Susan Witt on Winona LaDuke's land trust model for the White Earth reservation

"The White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, in the turn of the century a group of well-meaning quakers said to the Ojibwe...you poor dears, you don't understand about private ownership. Let us help you survey this land and divide it into individual lots and give private ownership so you can have the experience of it. But the Ojibwe culture is to use multiple parts of the land -- so there're the lakes where the rice is harvested, there's the brush with the best raspberries, there's the timberland for the hunt -- so the community as a whole, as an integral community, moved through the whole of the land.

"Suddenly it was divided up into little lots, and with the consequential mortgaging of the land and losing the land to outsiders, their once intact reservation got divided up with holes in it, so people couldn't travel across it. LaDuke has used the community land trust model... the goal is to recreate the land intact, and then give long-term lease rights, so that people actually can own their buildings, own their homes."

~ 1h14m here.

"Sustainable Community Development"

Is this my field?

Heard it described as Gwendolyn Hallsmith's shtick here.

Wiki has entries for community development and for sustainable development.

Where can liberals and conservatives agree? Local currencies, organic ag, sustainable (resilient) communities, etc. AND, how to make sure the "poor and disenfranchised" don't become serf communities adjacent to or within better-off communities?

And more on local currencies, since that's what the podcast's about:

"The things that complementary currencies do best is connecting underutilized resources with unmnet needs [e.g. people who want to work but don't have work, theatres that have seats to offer but aren't selling all their tickets, etc.]"

Open Source Warfare & Resilience

"Produce everything you can locally. Virtualize everything else. The value of your home will be based on the ability of your community to offer energy independence, food security, economic vitality, and protection. Survivalist stockpiles and zero footprint frugality are pathways to failure. Think in terms of vibrant local economic ecosystems that are exceedingly efficient, productive, and bountiful."

From this interview with John Robb on BoingBoing.net.

Villages from the air

(photos courtesy of chg7.wordpress.com, skyscrapercity.com, and nytimes.com)

Dunbar's Number - 148

"a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships."


"Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group."

"a direct function of relative neocortex size."

"Dunbar's surveys of village and tribe sizes also appeared to approximate this predicted value, including 150 as the estimated size of a neolithic farming village; 150 as the splitting point of Hutterite settlements; 200 as the upper bound on the number of academics in a discipline's sub-specialization; 150 as the basic unit size of professional armies in Roman antiquity and in modern times since the sixteenth century; and notions of appropriate company size."


(photos courtesy of chg7.wordpress.com)

Wiki here.

Wendell Berry - notes

"There's a difference between thinking about problems and having problems. Where experts are thinking about problems, the people who have the problems are usually absent, are not even well represented. The only way out of this is for the teacher, the person of learning, the researcher, the intellectual, the artist, the scientist, to make common cause with a community. They must commit themselves to a community in such a way that they share the fate of that community--participate in its losses and trials and griefs and hardships and pleasures and joys and satisfactions, so that they don't have this ridiculous immunity that they now have in their specializations and careers. Then they'd begin to learn something."

"Luddism has been far too simply defined. It doesn't mean just the hatred of machinery. Luddism has to do with a choice between the human community and technological innovation, and a Luddite is somebody who would not permit his or her community to be damaged or destroyed by the use of new machinery. The Amish, for instance, have succeeded simply by asking one question of any proposed innovation, namely: "What will this do to our community?"

"However, a community has to understand that if it refuses the public proposal, then it has to come up with something better. And if the government or a corporation comes in and says, "We want you to have this obnoxious installation because it will employ your people; it will bring jobs," then the community has to have an answer to the question: "Where are we going to find jobs?" Sometimes it won't be an easy question. Sometimes it will be a devastating question, but the community nevertheless has to begin to look to itself. It has to look to itself for the answers, not to the government--and not to these corporations that come in posing as saviors of the local community, because they don't come in to save the local community. So the communities have to begin to ask what they need that can be produced locally, by local people and from the local landscape, and how it can be produced in a way that doesn't damage the local landscape or the local community. And by local community, obviously, you can't mean just the people. You mean the people and the natural communities that are supposed to exist there--the trees, the grasses, the animals, the birds, and so on. Everything has to be included and considered."

"I guess we should leave open the possibility that we'll be too stupid to change. Other civilizations have been. But at least it's more obvious now that this superstition is a superstition, because now there's no place else to go. The "other places" are gone. If we use up the possibility of life here, there's no other place to go, and so the old notion is bankrupt, though it still underlies most destructive practice."

"There is no time in history, since white occupation began in America, that any sane and thoughtful person would want to go back to, because that history so far has been unsatisfactory. It has been unsatisfactory for the simple reason that we haven't produced stable communities well adapted to their places."

"The first characteristic of a plan is that it won't work. The bigger the plan and the more far-reaching and "futuristic" it is, the less likely it is to work. There isn't a person who is alive and who has any appetite for living, who doesn't make plans. I make a plan for every day I live. I've got certain things I want to do that day, and if I didn't, I suppose I wouldn't do anything. But I can't help but notice, and I've been noticing for a good many years now, that my plans almost never work out. The day almost never exactly fits the plan. Some days depart wildly from the plan. So I conclude that even though you're going to make plans, if you're a live human being, one of the things you must learn to do is to take them lightly. A plan really is useful for signifying to yourself and other people that you like living, that you're looking forward to living some more, that you have a certain appetite to continue the enterprise. But one's real duty to the future is to do as you should do now. Make the best choices, do the best work, fulfill your obligations in the best way you can, and work on a scale that's appropriately small. Make plans that are appropriately small. If you do those things, then the future will take care of itself. But if you don't do those things, then you build up a debt against the future, which is what we're doing now."

From this interview by Jordan Fisher-Smith.