The RBE10K Project
Contents |
In short...
We want a RBE, and we want it now. And you know what they say: if you want something done, do it yourself!
About the project
Pronounced Arby-e-ten-thousand, the RBE10K is yet another transition project to a worldwide-scale Resource-Based Economy. It operates side by side in a colaborative way with other transition sister projects like The Venus Project, and collaborate and support awaeness-raising movements like The Zeitgeist Movement and The Free World Charter.
RBE10K project is a transition model to a RBE with a hands-on bottom-up philosophy, getting it done by the people committed to moving towards it without the help or assistance of external factors such as investment or sponsorship by wealthy people or corporations.
How is this project different from others?
Differences with The Venus Project
Unlike The Venus Project, RBE10K does not:
- seek to collude or influence governments and corporations to give up their monetary ways
- intend to change anyones' lifestyle, unless they willingly move to a RBE10K city voluntarily and agreeing to its terms and conditions
- require expensive hi-tech machinery to get it going
- expect or envisage round cities, whilst it does envisage that some cities may prefer to remain low-tech
- promulgate a grand-unified global system, but a voluntary collaboration of all cities instead
- promote a homogeneous culture, but a rich variety of idiosyncrasies and governing rules (i.e. terms and conditions)
- expect techicians as a class to dominate all decision-making
- focus on technology, but instead focuses on open systems, personal responsibility and humility
Differences with The Zeitgeist Movement
Unlike The Zeitgeist Movement, RBE10K does not:
- choose to wait until the conditions are ripe
- have an interest in discussing about technologies of the future or problems in the current society
Differences with Transition towns and other sustainable approaches
Unlike sustainable projects like Transition towns, RBE10K is not:
- a more sustainable, or less wasteful community
- a community intending on isolating from the rest of the world
Inspiration
Inspired by the effectiveness of DNA and bacteria for their capability to grow very rapidly from a minuscule unit to colonising the world. Using the DNA and the bacterium of metaphors, a centralised knowledge-base system (currently this wiki) would be the DNA, and a community of 10,000 people would be a bacterium.
Objectives
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|, and [[{{{10}}}|{{{10}}}]]}}{{#if: | (too many parameters in {{main}})}}Primary objectives: short term, one off RBE experiment
The objective of the project is to test the predictions by the theories behind the Resource-Based Economy from a social standpoint, i.e. the ability of a community to live and thrive without trade, property or authority, and the capability of its citizens to self-govern and contribute to the community goals, supported by a systems infrastructure based mainy on open computer software. There are s few main goals in this respect:
- the ability to raise interest of enough people to make the project viable
- the ability to define within the 2-year timeframe all the information necessary for the success of the settlement stage
- the ability to obtain the resources necessary for a successful settlement
- accomplishing the settlement in a safe location and with all the people and resources required
- maintaining a functional and productive society for the 2-year long duration of the experiment
- learning from any conflicts or problems and update the knowledge-base with relevant information to reduce impact in further occurrences
- maintain the health, safety anf personal growth of all its inhabitants
- at the conclusion of the 2-year long experiment, achieve a willingness of the majority of the inhabitants to sign-up for another 2 years in the experiment
Secondary objectives: long term, expansion of the RBE10K settlements
Each RBE10K city would have three secondary objectives, in the following order of priorities:
- provide for the basic needs (as per the knowledge-base) of all its members using exclusively its own resources, sustainably, and privileging those resources that are available for it in great abundance
- constantly improve its own knowledge-base, relying for it as much as practicable on the methods of science
- founding a new RBE10K city every two years (inviting 10,000 people living outside RBE10K cities to populate roughhly half of the old and half of the new cities)
- automate anything that can be automatable, and contribute to the development of science and technology
Participation in the project
Participation of the experiment as a knowledge-base contributor
Participation of the experiment as settler
RBE10K cities would require each newcomer to bring some of the necessary materials and resources to help build the community, for a value of roughly 10,000 units of their currency (€, £, US/NZ/CA $, or roughly equivalent), non-refundable, and as per the requirements specified in the knowledgebase, using a system to establish allotments and administer priorities. Every newcomer would also be required to agree to a simple list of terms and conditions for life in a RBE, including giving up rights to property, trade, blame, personal opinion outside matters of personal preference, etc (such terms and conditions would be an essential building block of the knowledgebase). Newcomers would also be encouraged to commit to a minimum of two years participation in the community, while engaged primarily in assist with one or more of the three main objectives of the city.
Long term view and potential of the project if wildly successful
In terms of maths, starting with one city in 2015 and keeping to plan, the whole humankind would migrate to a RBE10K city by 2055 (ie a 40-year long project), which would reach around one million and be the home of the 10 billion people that would be on Earth by then. Because of the primary concern with sustainability, it is not expected that population or number of cities would increase ever again from this number.
Drawbacks and considerations
One can expect life to be harsh in RBE10K cities during the first 16 years of the project, while growing towards the first million RBE inhabitants and dealing with all the strange new world issues of a community with severely limited resources, educated and raised in our uncivilised/miscivilised culture, having to adapt to much simplified and possibly inconvenient lifestyle characteristics, without law and order, institutions, leaders or authorities. However conditions would rapidly catch-up and also surpass those of the current non-RBE culture, as a result of automated systems and processes, lack of waste of time and resources, increased psychological and emotional health, and having people contribute exclusively in areas of their most strongest interest and passion.
Project schedule and timeframe
The project will launch formally in 1st January 2013, aiming at the first colony somewhere safe and isolated in the world two years later, and in those two years will engage primarily at recruiting the interest of a first community of 10,000 RBE enthusiasts and activists, creating the first draft of a knowledgebase in this wiki, initially in English but ideally finishrd and used in Esperanto (encouraging everybody to learn and contribute in Esperanto as an equaliser and normaliser universal language for RBE10K cities), and building and gathering all the resources that would be necessary for the settlement, ensure full self-sufficiency for two years, and enabling a capacity for remaining full self-sufficient thereafter. The total budget per RBE10K city would be us$100 million. Each settlement would also require a wide enough variety of skills to cater for self-sufficiency.
Criticism
Concerns
Advocates and activists of The Venus Project generally emphasise the need for having a concerted, global effort, instead of a multitude of transition styles (one of which would be RBE10K) occurring at various spots in the world.
Advocates and activists with The Zeitgeist Movement generally emphasise the importance of not progressing into transitions just yet, that the best strategy at this time is help raise awareness within our communities in an effort to reach critical mass and act when the time is ripe.
Some of the criticism received includes the following notions:
- An RBE settlement must not be experiment
- We need to transition globally to RBE much quicker than 40 years
- The inclusion of money pollutes the concept of an RBE
- RBE must be a global initiative, and not a mix of various styles of transition (TVP view)
- RBE cannot be implemented low-tech
- If the project doesn't succeed it may cause a negative perception of RBE in the general population
- It is essential that an RBE city has all the basic comforts people is accustomed to
Addressing concerns
The RBE10K Project intends on address all concerns raised, dealing with conflicts by documenting reasons for each claim and dispute, researching and quantifying the validity for each reason, and arriving at the best possible outcome to maximise the degree of consensus.
References
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