Let’s Fork Society

I’ve noticed a strong undercurrent of exclusionary practices by society which marginalizes and demoralizes otherwise exceptional individuals.

To help this situation, I want to someday help create a compelling and sustainable community that envisions a different society. One that values life, and people, and the environment we all live in. I think it’s possible if we can decentralize the means of manufacturing. The communists had something when they thought of reclaiming the factories, but now, I think it might be possible to make our own. To become self-sustaining, without economies of scale. To build industry upon boutique practices, just by automating repetitive tasks. If we just considered automated labor as belonging to nobody but the community, thus begins the demonetization of goods. I can imagine machines that could build houses, farms, energy collection, vehicles, and cities, all ownerless and demonetized. Thus, the forces towards centralization in the economy as it stands today are rendered ineffective. The society then becomes independent.

Another idea is that not every needs to work in order to maintain the standard of living even an intentional community would require. There’d still be plenty of work to do, just a need for fewer people to do it. This would allow for people to pursue their own goals and passions, or to focus on themselves.

I think it’d be prudent to be governed by a sort of social anarchy. There should be protections in the society to not try to gain power over others, and if they try to, society will not physically reject them, but instead, would reject them in principle. Consider people simply disconnecting from them using a social network.

As for the social part of social anarchy, the idea should be that those who can work to help society in some way, they should, but it’s not a necessity. There should also be a very broad definition of what someone might be doing to help society, in order to include people doing things purely for artistic and cultural benefit, or blue sky research that might not yield results for many lifetimes. Consider what we could do if we thought not by the next fiscal quarter, or the next election cycle, but generations ahead.

It’s not an idea that should languish or fail to spread if put into practice just once, and if all practices are open source, transparent, and communicated well, an ownerless city should be replicable anywhere. So, as with any good open community, as they say in open source (software) parlance, let’s “fork” society.