RBE10K/Settlement

The RBE10K Project focuses on sustainability, as understood from an RBEM point of view, i.e. living in accordance to the carrying capacity of the Earth, and in developing structures conducive to a peaceful, egalitarian, voluntarist, and evidence-based decision-making community. The settlement is expected to consist of 10,000 people to ensure sufficient variety of skills to be fully self-sustainable, and to ensure the social experiment is relevant. The location for the settlement is not yet defined, however it will have to be a place where there is permissiveness by the local governments to perform as intended. The project intends to be not-for-profit and fully self-funded, however the viability of the project may require extra funding, or even the implementation of the project under a company structure. The experiment will go for two years, and it is expected it will renew for subsequent two meanwhile volunteers are still interested in its continuity. The experiment will also attempt at producing a sister experiment at the end of each term, meanwhile there is sustained interest.

Strategies for implementation of the first settlement

Alternative strategy

(This article is originally written in Spanish and is translated with Google Translate and may contain errors. See original:Media:plan.pdf)

Overview

This strategy aims to maximize the potential of RBE10K project, with a more progressive and consistent funding to these goals. It is designed for specific purposes defined stages (instead of a timeline as the original plan), with a more progressive habitability to ensure sustainability and welfare of the 10,000 participants in the project.

Stages

Stage I - Finance and planning. (Estimated time: 2 years)

Goal: Get 10,000 participants willing to commit to the project and can afford the funding requirements. It is the stage in which it seeks to promote the project and plan its direction. Also seeks confirmation and commitment of the people involved and needed to finance it.

• Finance: Three ways to participate:
  • 1 - Paying a minimum of u$s 10,000.- Being necessary to achieve that is at least 1.5% of all the people involved in the project.
  • 2 - Paying minimum of u$s 100.- Monthly (inflation adjusted) for the duration of Phase II of the project, with the remaining to be involved to reach 10,000 people, who will pay u$s 6,000.- once Stage III start.
  • 3 - Making donations. One who feels that the project has a value to humanity and who wants to help in its realization.

Planning: Defining strategies and project management. Collection of information relevant to the study of the various options and technologies available and affordable. Update and complete the project Wiki. Sketching strategies in each of the relevant areas of the project (Energy, Agriculture, Manufacturing, Architecture, Health, etc.).

Stage II - Development. (Estimated time: 3-4 years)

Goal: To lay the foundation for safe habitability of 10,000 people. Because the use of technologies and strategies sketched in Stage I can not be independent of the characteristics of the land where the project will be established in this stage, will develop and experiment with changes and technological developments necessary for the sustainability of the population.

• Stage II-A
  • Goal: Construction of laboratory and research workshop. Installation of the production of energy necessary for this stage.
• Stage II-B
  • Goal: Ensure habitability of 10,000 people. Experimentation in situ of the changes and technological developments required for the project in the areas of Energy, Agriculture, Manufacturing, Health, Health, Environment, Architecture, Leisure and Recreation, etc.. with constant feedback and collaboration from all members involved and the wider community to ensure transparency and constant updating of information in order to achieve autonomy of the monetary system. Construction of the foundations necessary to sustain the total population of 10,000 people.

Gradually and to the extent that the warrant requirements of the project and the conditions are present, can begin to gradually establish more involved residents of the 10000.

Stage III - Population and Experimentation. (Estimated time: forever)

To demonstrate empirically the feasibility of an EBR. Encourage and promote development in the world.

Why minimalist/eco-comunalist?

There are multiple reasons for choosing a minimalist/eco-comunalist approach. Some of them are listed below:

• Participants consider a priority implementing this experiment as early as practicable
• Participants consider that volunteers must self-fund this experiment to prevent RBE-incompatible agendas
• Sustainability, understood as the carrying capacity of the Earth, is essential for RBE and hence for this project, therefore the project seeks to minimise, as much as practicable, dependencies on resources or processes for which the degree of sustainability cannot be determined
• The project seeks to rethink needs according to RBE characteristics and objectives, and to build an RBE culture from the ground up, incorporating the least practicable number of inherited cultural traits
• The participants will be engaged on novel forms of behaviour and interrelationship, and this will require the least practicable number of foreign distractions

Systems Theory based social organisation

An RBEM is all about social engineering, i.e. planning a society and its culture, as opposed to letting pre-existing culture developing a society.

Things to do in daily life

Daily life in the settlement will be all but boring. There will be a significative focus in the development of health, fitness, knowledge and skills of each volunteer. The community will aim at producing rich, diverse and high-quality artistic works to be contributed free of charge through online services, including music, films, literature, visual arts. etc. The community will also aim at furthering science, and producing technology such as software, open-source hardware, and educational materials. Other activities will include refining notions of RBEM, developing this wiki for the benefit of subsequent settlements, online media for communicating developments in the community, and daily tasks for the sustenance of the community such as producing food, equipment, doing general maintenance of public spaces, and providing public services such as training, coordination, cleaning, cooking, etc.

Features

Features of a RBE10K settlement:

• Housing: privacy, protection, comfort
• Food and Water
• Clothing
• Energy
• Information Technology and Communication: hardware, software, Internet, phones
• Tools and Machines
• Transportation: people, goods
• Health: precautions, treatments, surgeries
• Recreation: arts, sports, games
• Education
• Research and Development: automation, happiness, methods of collaboration
• Management: resources, conflicts, information