United Diversity

Together We Have Everything

Commons Creation Collective

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UPDATE: the first Commons Creation meeting was held at Limehouse Town Hall on Sunday 21st January, 2007. A copy of the presentation given can be downloaded here as a PDF (1.1Mb) file. Enjoy! 🙂

Introduction

The Commons Creation Collective is all about harnessing the wealth and power of our networks and working together to raising funds and awareness.

It will initially bring together conscious event organisers, radial media publishers, and their supporters, to collaborate on two complementary projects:

  1. The Commons Creation Fund
    Lots of people contributing a minimum of £5 a month into a common fund and deciding together how to best to invest it in shared infrastructure. Purpose: to create a commons; a pool of collectively owned/ shared resources (thereby building the foundations for a scaleable community banking and exchange system).
  2. The Commons Creation Flyer
    A regular A3 (folded to A6) flyer, distributed by members, that encourages people to become a member of the collective (i.e. contribute £5 a month, help distribute flyer, promote the collective), give details of all the events organised by members, and links to news and issues they deem important.Purpose: to ensure the success of the Commons Creation Fund, and to inform as many people as possible about all events organised by members, and all the news/issues they deem important.

So, what’s the deal?

INDIVIDUALS

To become a member of the Commons Creation Collective, individuals agree to:

  • Contribute a minimum of £5 per month to the Commons Creation Fund
  • Help distribute the Commons Creation Flyer/ promote the Commons Creation Collective (this can be as simple as inviting friends and forwarding e-mails, or getting involved with day to day admin jobs etc.)

In return, members:

  • Become shared owners of The Commons, our pool of collectively owned/shared resouces
  • Decide together (using Dotmocracy?) how best to spend the money contributed to the Commons Creation Fund
  • Are kept informed about all the latest news and events relevant to the collective
  • Can submit and rate news, events and short articles to be included on the flyer
  • Get FREE entrance to exclusive member gatherings and parties
  • Get discounts from other members of the collective (eg. concessionary ticket prices, cheap books, CDs etc)
  • Get fair access to use of the resources in The Commons (obviously, you own them)
  • Get connected to other people and groups who share similar values and/or are interested in the same things (all the other members and the wonderful people you’ll meet at member events)

GROUPS

If a conscious event/radical publisher/other group wants to get involved they agree:

  • To put a link to commonscreation.org on their website
  • To put a link to commonscreation.org on all their flyers/mailouts/publications
  • To offer discouts and/or special offers to members of the collective

In return, groups will get:

  • A profile on commonscreation.org highlighting all the good work the groups does, including details about how to get involved and links back to their own site etc.
  • Details of all events organised by the group included on the Commons Creation Flyer
  • A link to the group’s website on all copies of the Commons Creation Flyer
  • Additionally, and perhaps most significantly, groups will gain discounted access to and use of the resources held in The Commons (eg. web experts, CD burners, printers, vans, lighting rigs, staging, land, venues, etc.)

Who needs to be involved?

Event Organisers:

Radical Media Publishers and Bloggers

How will it be financed?

The aim is for the whole thing to be self-financed by member contributions (we encourage those who can afford to contribute more than £5 a month to do so). Some seed funding will also be sought, but there is nothing stopping a group of co-operatively minded people from pooling £5+ a month straight away.

Next Steps:

  • Gather some of the people who need to be involved and get agreement on the above (or at least something very similar to what is outlined above)
  • On the back of this initial agreement, get more of the people who need to be involved signed-up, whilst also working on the initial website and flyer

APPENDIX
Suggested Initial SMART Goals/Objectives (specific, measurable, acheivable, realistic, time-based)

  • Get first version of https://commonscreation.org up (a nicely designed site explaining the idea, who the existing members are, how and why to join, etc.) no later than one month after getting initial agreement from some of the people who need to be involved.
  • Design and produce the first version of the flyer no later than one month after getting initial agreement from some of the people who need to be involved. Start to distribute flyers.
  • Get 400 members to sign-up and start contributing £5 a month by December 31st, 2006.
  • Hold a monthly member’s gatherings (meal and jam session), starting no later than Januray, 2007.

Suggestions about where to put/invest money

  • La Base – “Some seek to destroy the pyramid by taking the power of the top. La Base creates by giving power to the base. When the base rises, a new structure rises with it.”

    What is La Base
    La Base is rooted in the idea that real democracy and human rights can only be meaningful when accompanied by economic rights and autonomy.

    La Base is not an organization, but a fund of productive capital owned in common. Access to this resource is universal but entails an obligation to ensure its sustainability for all, now and in the future. Those who use La Base are free to create their world as they will.

    La Base’s resources are currently used as fair loans to individuals to help them pursue their economic independence in democratic collectives. Loan repayments go back to the common fund to be used by others. To learn more about loans and other practical applications of La Base, please see the actions.

  • Rootstock – “supporting co-operatives working for social change”

    Rootstock is a social investment society set up as an initiative of the Radical Routes network of co-operatives. Radical Routes is a growing network of housing and workers’ co-operatives working for social change.

    Radical Routes co-operatives are active in many fields, including:

    Sustainable land use through permaculture, land restoration, woodland creation, and growing and distributing organic food.

    Communal housing – co-operatively owned housing is a resource for the whole community rather than a commodity for the profit of a few.

    Resource centres for communities

    Information through publications, radical bookshops and practical support for new co-ops.

    Campaigning on issues such as ecological preservation, animal rights and housing.

    International peace work

    Home education

    Electrical, plumbing and small scale building work

    Support services including Book keeping and accountancy, Computer services, Training and consultancy, Mediation and group working

  • Triodos – Europe’s leading ethical bank that only finances projects wtih affect positive social, environmental and cultural change.
  • Ecology Building Society – a mutual building society dedicated to improving the environment by promoting sustainable housing and sustainable communities.
  • London Rebuilding Society and other CDFI’s (Community Development Finance Institutions)

Comments

  1. Josef says

    Josef. I’m totally sold! This is exactly what we need. – Jamie Woon

    I’m very glad to report that Dannii and Jamie (One Taste), Al (City Hippy) and Sharon (Land Roots) have all confirmed their desire to join the Commons Creation Collective as soon as it goes live and I tell them how to pay. 🙂

    Peace Not War are pretty much confirmed too (Mudge and some others already are, but I’m just waiting to confirm with the whole collective that they are happy with signing up as a group).

    My mate Taylz from Cacophonic e-mailed me to offer his help too 🙂

    Told him that for now he can just work on signing up the rest of the Cacophonic collective…

    More soon.

    Reply

  2. City Hippy says

    Just to re-iterate my support for this project…I love what Josef is creating and will be delighted to be a part of it…the value of our network far outweighs the value of us as individuals 🙂

    Namaste

    Al

    Reply

  5. Eugenia says

    Hey Josef,

    This is beautiful!
    It’s really exciting,
    thanks for putting energy into this!
    I can’t wait to come back to london now and get involved.
    Ive looked at the ethical bank links and building society, thanks, something I’ve wnated to look into for so long.

    Collaboration, and collectives are the way we can create sustainable structures that are non hirarchical and lasting, and benefit all and the world.
    I believe in constructing change, making it happen, in beeing the change you want to see.

    bless and see you soon

    Eugenia

    Reply

  8. Josef says

    I got a positive response when I talked about Commons Creation at the last Synergy Project post-production meeting. Now just got to get them signed up in writing.

    As part of this process I sent this e-mail to Dom yesterday:

    Hi Dom,

    Thanks for the questions 🙂

    RE: “To offer discounts and/or special offers to members of the collective”

    The idea is for member groups/organisations to actively support the collective, and encourage people to join (thus raising more funds and gaining more exposure) by incentivising membership with special offers/discounts for members.

    For Synergy Project, offering Commons Creation members concessionary entrance rates would probably be the simplest thing to do. You could also offer discounts on other items in the online shop. You could do the same with IdSpiral shop too 🙂

    What exactly the discount or special offer is would be for Synergy Project to decide, but the Commons Creation deal is that member organisations offer at least something (in part to ensure all groups signing up make a minimum contribution).

    RE: “how many resources do you currently have that are there to share – I presume the answer is none”

    We haven’t even started yet, but I’m pleased to report we’ve got much more than none 🙂

    So far, of the few people I’ve actually explained the idea too, 5 have immediately forced £5 cash on me as an encouragement to make it happen. I’ve got £40 in a draw in my room, I’m owed a further £40, and have just begun instructing them how to set-up a standing orders to pay it directly into uniteddiversity’s savings account (a better temporary home for the money than my draw).

    As for actually goods already available to share, uniteddiversity has a 7 tier CD burner that has effectively been part of the commons since I left it with Indymedia at LARC years ago (its since been to ramparts, synergy centre, spike, and is currently looked after and maintained by Peace Not War who’ve used to burn all their latest DIY releases)

    uniteddiversity also has a good bike trailer. I occasionally need to use it for transporting books and other items, and I hire it out a couple of days a week to a friend who uses it for transports instruments and toys to the music lessons for small children he runs. Others at my housing co-op use it for free all the time (really my friend Paul who hires it is paying for my promise that it will be available for his usage at the specific times he needs it).

    uniteddiversity (well, my dad, to be specific) also has land in Spain that could become part of the commons and grow into a small creative ecovillage and centre for sustainable living. 🙂

    Of course, one of the most valuable resources are all the skills, resources, experience and contacts other members will bring to the collective.

    RE “do you have a business plan in place?”

    Not exactly a business plan, but I’ve got a plan of action in my head that I am in the process of carrying out:

    0. Carry out a decade of research into the functioning of existing systems and into the best practice systems-based solutions to the world’s predicaments, and then network and build relationships of trust with some of the key players in London and beyond. – DONE

    1. Get first few key conscious event/media organisations signed up in principle (with Synergy’s agreement this stage will be complete).

    Sign up so far are: uniteddiversity, Peace Not War, OneTaste, Movimientos, Sunday Sounds and City Hippy.

    2. Organise a gathering of early adopters (those signed up in stage 1) to consensually work out and formally agree on what exactly the Commons Creation deal is, and what the format and content of the flyer should be etc.

    At this meeting I will outline my vision for the collective, including plans to purchase land and hold annual Building Man festivals as the collective’s annaul gathering.

    I will also seek agreement of my proposal that the first £1000 a month generated by membership funds be used to employ me to work full-time on developing the Commons Creation project.

    3. Incorporate the collective as Commons Creation LLP and register the Commons Creation educational charity.

    4. Develop and launch the first version of the https://commonscreation.org website, explaing the idea and inviting people to join.

    This will allow people to sign up online, and to contribute and rate news/events to be included on the site/flyer. It will also give details about existing members etc.

    5. Sign up a load of ethical publishers and media organisations (eg. Red Pepper, Undercurrents, Mute, Indymedia, Positive News, Permaculture Magazine etc.) by explaining the huge captive audience and market our conscious event organisations regularly connect and engage with, and how we can help to increase their circulation and reach.

    Basically this means negotiating on-going free/discounted flyer inserts and/or advertisements space in their publications and on their websites etc.

    6. On the basis of already having a small but powerful and purposeful collective of organisations working together to raise funds and awareness, systematically contact all the other social change organisations in the UK (and then Europe and the World) to join in and to encourage their members to do the same.

    7. Get 200,000 members signed up by the end of 2007, making 2008 the Year of Infinite Possibilities – we’ll have a million £ a month to fund world changing, commons creating, projects 🙂

    Basically we’ll be able to start buying up land and property all over the place, putting it into the commons, and then using it as the foundations for a whole new economic and political system for the world – mwhahaha 🙂

    (Our dire global predicament requires the urgent creation of new systems of ownership, economics and governance. Creating a scalable community banking and exchange system is a large part of this challenge, and that is only possible if we have land where we can grow food and house people, thereby making community currencies redeemable for food and housing, just like interest-bearing-debt-based-pump-real-wealth-from-the-poor-to-the-rich-rape-the-earth money is)

    All that will most likely take a lot longer than expected, but the need to start is increasingly urgent and apparent.

    In the short term the business plan is something like this:

    * apply for a small amount of seed funding from UnLtd Level 1
    * start collecting fivers (this has already begun on a small scale) to help cover on-going operational costs (i.e. cover my basic living expenses to enable me to dedicate my time to working on it, no more that £1000 a month and conceivably less)
    * once we have over 200 members and basic costs are covered, start building up a fund to purchase shared infrastructure (e.g. vans, PAs, lighting, server space etc.)
    * save money by owning and sharing this stuff rather than renting it, and make money by renting it out ourselves
    * re-invest monies generated back into the collective, repeat

    Something like that anyway. 🙂

    Well done, if you’ve got this far!

    Apologies for length of mail 🙂

    Josef

    Reply

  10. Josef says

    So, Synergy are now very nearly signed up 🙂

    Dom says:

    I am keen to hear other opinions but after reading your documents,
    your vision and your idea I am happy to start committing synergy to
    the idea of the commons creation

    Let’s hear it from the other members of the SC (Synergy Committee) and then we can take
    it to the next step

    Edwina (on the SC) says:

    Hi Josef

    sounds like a good idea, but I need u to clarify something for me…If the
    synergy project (t/as synergy communities) joins or supports the commons
    creation project, what does that mean in terms of financial reality and
    commitment.

    We have a great distribution network thanks to Giani, and I see no reason why
    this kind of thing shouldn’t be sent out along these same lines of
    communication. But, with the fiver a month thing, are u anticipating that we
    just encourage our network to join up individually, or does the group need to
    commit to donate some funds centrally?

    Also, I know you’re an expert at this kind of thing, but I would love to know
    how u anticipate facilitating the decision making process to decide how the
    money will be spent.

    Much respect for sorting something like this out.

    xEd

    I responed with:

    Hi Ed,

    Thanks for the questions.

    “what does that mean in terms of financial reality and commitment”

    Basically at least 1 person in the Synergy Committee will be expected
    to join as an individual member and contribute £5 a month. As
    directors, this should probably be either Dom or Giani. Of course, I’d
    fully encourage EVERYONE to sign up and add their £5 a month to the
    pot too 🙂

    The real value to the collective (as you’ve noted) is Synergy using
    its distribution network to encourage other people to become members
    themselves (and hence pay £5 a month into the pot and help promote the
    collective to their networks). In practice this means putting the link
    https://commonscreation.org on the website, and on all future flyers
    and mailouts, ideally with a line or two of text encouraging people to
    visit and join.

    The only other financial commitment would be to offer members of the
    collective some kind of discount/special offers (to create an
    additional incentive for people to join).

    As I’ve explained to Dom and in the comments on the
    https://commonscreation.org page, what exactly this offer is will be
    down to Synergy to decide (I would suggest discounted/concessionary
    entry to Synergy Project events)

    “how u anticipate facilitating the decision making process to decide
    how the money will be spent”

    This will need to be thrashed out and formally agreed at the first
    member gathering (that I’ll start arranging once Synergy is fully
    signed up).

    Basically though, here is how I currently envisage it:

    1. Firstly, the money can only be spent on “shared infrastructure”. By
    this I mean income generating/saving capital goods, things like vans,
    PAs, projectors etc. Things we normally hire out, but if we owned
    ourselves we could hire out ourselvese and generate further funds.

    Once we’ve got loads of members and serious amounts of cash my own
    personal preference would be to invest in land and property (to start
    organic farms and housing co-ops), renewable energy production (wind
    farms, solar panels), communications infrastructre (servers, open
    source software, VoIP set-up etc), and eco-logistics (biodisel vans,
    bike trailers etc.). The things we are all going to need to build a
    collaborative sustainable economy.

    2. To begin with I propose that members gather every 6 months to
    discuss and vote on how the money accumalated should be spent (if at
    all). Assuming founding members agree to it at the first gathering, we
    will start by using a dotmocracy-like process. All members will be
    able to make and rate proposals on how to spend the money, and the
    proposals with the clearest support will be discussed in further
    detail before and final decision is made. More on the dotmocracy
    process can be seen here: https://dotmocracy.org/step-by-step

    3. The idea is to allow members to submit, discuss and rate proposals
    online as part of an on-going process. That way the 6 monthly face 2
    face gatherings can focus on further discussion of already submitted
    and popular proposals. Until we’ve got a website that can do this
    we’ll make do with using paper dotmocracy sheets at the gatherings
    (but I am going to apply for a bit of money to build the website and
    am fairly confident I’ll get it).

    4. For this project to really work I believe it will need someone
    working on it full-time: signing up new members, ensuring proposals
    get submitted and debated, organising the member gathering, etc, etc.
    Therefore I propose that the first 200 £5/month collected (i.e. the
    first £1000 a month) be spend on employing someone to do this. Ideally
    me because I’d love to do it 🙂 (but I’d happily job-share too since
    I’d prefer to work as a team)

    5. Beyond this, I don’t think we really should start thinking about
    how to spend the money until we’ve got a sizable pot of money to
    spend, say £10,000.

    6. I intend to register a Commons Creation charity and invite people
    experienced in “communty-based asset development” to become trustees.
    I know a lot of these people already, and am certain that their
    experience and support will help ensure we allocate our resources
    wisely (in fact, as trustee they will be obliged by law to ensure that
    it is).

    I’m thinking of people like Lorraine Hart from the Environment Trust
    who wrote the book “To have and to hold: the DTA guide to asset
    development for community and social enterprises”, Andrew Robinson
    (head of Community Development Banking at NatWest/RBS), Ben Hughes
    (Chief Exec of BASSAC), Steve Wyler (Chief Exec of DTA), Jamie
    Hartzell (Director, Ethical Property), John Jopling (Sustainable
    London Trust), etc.

    With their support and our networks, I am confindent that we really
    can be ambitious enough to think about starting a few housing co-ops,
    community centres and sustainable agriculture projects. Sure, just a
    new PA and a fleet of biodiesel vans would be nice, but lets think
    big! (the world needs us to)

    Hope that explains things sufficiently?

    To the Commons!

    Josef.

    🙂

    Reply

  11. Josef says

    Just to add that Rose, who is a member of the wider Synergy Project and founder of neo-dogma-non wants to get in on the Commons Creation action 🙂

    She says:

    Hi Josef

    neo-dogma-non wants to join too. What do I do?

    Love
    Rose

    🙂

    Reply

  13. Gareth Strangemore-Jones says

    Hey Josef and friends,

    This initiative is so timely.
    We are on the verge of real social change.

    I am currently involved in two new organisations that may be of interest:
    * http://www.omniworldview.com
    * http://www.ecoshelter.org

    Ecoshelter will be holding a multi media event programme in 2007-2008 and I’m sure there’s a possibility to collaborate once again.

    We’ve managed to straddle the gap between social and environmental wellbeing and commercial responsibility.

    Although plans are relatively advanced, they are as ever flexible. We’ll be looking for event programme content, production and promotion. Please get in touch.

    We will also offer discounts and benefits to Commons Creation members 🙂

    Peace And Power To You,

    G*

    Reply

  16. Josef says

    Hi Chris,

    For now people are setting up standing orders for £5/month into the following bank account:

    sort code: 09-06-66
    account: 40375992

    That is the united diversity saving account and isn’t used for anything else.

    The vast majority of people who attended the first Commons Creation meeting yesterday signed a form indicating their willingness to do this (and some have already done so!) 🙂

    Ideally the standing order should start on Feb 1st and continue of the 1st of each month thereafter.

    Thanks, and welcome! 🙂

    Josef.

    You should also join the mailing list: https://lists.open.coop/mailman/listinfo/commons

    And please let me know when you

    Reply

  20. olisb says

    so, since we’ve all been paying in fivers for ages now, should we have a review of things? Work out how much we’ve got? And how to use our collective wealth as a catalyst for real change? Spank the funds on marketing to get in some more members? Or just get together and have a nice chat?

    Reply

  22. Josef says

    Just pasting this in here so that this page is more comprehensive and up to date:

    United Diversity members _agree_ to pool at least 1% of their income into a _shared pot_ and spend 1% of their time working on commons _goals_.

    We _decide together_ how best to invest the _pooled money_ and individually _choose tasks_ to work on.

    Together We Have Everything.

    Do you agree? _Join now_.

    The Plan…

    Put time and money into a pot. Party.
    Buy land. Party.
    Tour. Party.
    Build eco homes. Party.
    Grow organic food. Party.
    Generate renewable energy. Party.
    Rent out affordable homes. Party.
    Sell sustainable food and energy. Party.
    Distribute 50% of surplus to members. Party.
    Put 50% of surplus back into the pot. Party.
    Repeat.

    Join now!
    Members simply agree to put at least £5 per month into the pot. And to party.

    Here is how to put your money into the pot:

    * By standing order or bank transfer into the following bank account (£5/month, £60/year, or more if you can afford it):

    name: uniteddiversity LLP
    sort code: 09-06-66
    account: 40375992
    reference: your email

    * Online if you live outside the UK (or just know you wont get round to setting up the standing order) its probably easiest if you subscribe online:

    £5 per month (about 7 eur or 10 usd)
    Make payments with PayPal – it’s fast, free and secure!

    £60 per year (about 85 eur or 120 usd)
    Make payments with PayPal – it’s fast, free and secure!

    * If you want to invest large sums of cash, have land to put in the pot, or simply can’t afford £5/month and/ or want more details about how to to invest your time, get in touch

    Our members know how to party.

    For more detail info about the Commons Creation project, read the We Have Land post, the original proposal and the presentation (.pdf 1.13Mb).

    You may also like to read the archives of the (now defunct) Commons mailing list and United Diversity’s internal mailing list. And for more context check out some of our other ideas

    As of Nov 13th 2007 there are 20 individual contributors to the Commons Creation Fund including representatives of The Synergy Project, Peace Not War, Sustainable Event and United Diversity.

    We’ve got about £300 in the bank and 5 acres of land in Spain worth roughly £30k. 🙂

    On 30/10/2007, osb AT defactodesign.com wrote:

    Thanks for pushing this forward Josef,

    Thanks Oli 🙂

    Perhaps you could just outline briefly for me, and all the other
    super-forward-thinking people on this list, exactly what this means?

    I’ll do my best…

    How will you formalise ‘ownership’ of the land in ‘the commons’

    With my Dad transferring the land into my name (what is happening now) I am essentially becoming the trustee owner.

    The plan is to transfer the ownership of the land from me to some collectively owned and controlled legal entity.

    Once we’ve sorted a member agreement this could just be United Diversity LLP. Alternatively it could be an Industrial and Provident Society for Community Benefit, or a CIC.

    As I’ve mentioned previously, I planning on meeting some people next month about LLP aggrement. IPS law is currently under review so it seems prudent to wait until that is over before trying to set up a IPS or CIC (because everything may change, notably how much it costs to register and limits on investment size etc.)

    what sort of ‘shares’ will we have in this land and any revenues
    generated from it

    The amount of ‘shares’ each member has, and the proportion they receive of any revenue generated by it, is proportionate to how much “monies worth” they have invested in the “commons” relative to everyone else.

    Members can invest cash (like we’re all doing), or other resources (e.g. land, like my Dad has done), or their labour (if we identify a need for particular skills we will advertise a “job” to which people will be able to apply and for which they will be at least part paid in “shares”).

    Before and redistribution of revenues, 50% of any surplus revenue will simply be re-invested in the commons creation fund. The remaining 50% will be redistributed back to members proportionate to their investment relative to others, e.g. if you’ve invested £10k out of a total £100k invested, 10% of the revenue redistributed to members would go to you (because £10k is 10% of £100k).

    I really need to create and maintain a nice table with who has but how much in and when so I can illustrate this more clearly. I shall endeavour to do so this week.

    and any decisions that affect its use/future etc?

    The idea is that we agree on and formalise (in our member agreement and/or our IPS/CIC rules) some basic principles about how our collective land is used. These are pretty much already implied – the land is to be used to provide sustainable and affordable food, shelter and energy. Will we seek people who are willing to rent out/lease the land at affordable rates in return for sustainably working the land.

    Within the agreed co-operative and ecological land use framework, leaseholders should probably have as much autonomy as possible to get on with what they have agreed to do (so long as they keep paying their rent and can demonstrate that we are acting in line with our shared principles).

    Like most co-ops, it will probably be necessary at some point to start electing a “board” or coordinating group how take care of day to day decisions, but part of their role will always be to encourage active member participation in all decision making.

    Like you say, it seems like a no-brainer, but it seems important to
    get this clear now since this is the first ‘proposal’ ever made to
    invest from our common savings.

    Does what I’ve written above make it clear enough for now?

    I hope so 🙂

    Thanks,

    Josef.

    Reply

  23. Josef says

    Just to add to the comment posted above. We’ve not actually got about £800 in the bank and I’m pretty convinced that setting up and an Industrial Provident Society for the Benefit for the Community (IPS BenCom for short) is the best way for us to proceed with regard to legal structure in the UK.

    Also, there is now a new European Cooperative Society legal structure that may useful since the land we’ve already got is in Spain. Need to investigate further though, and to find out A LOT more about Spanish legal structures.

    Josef.

    Reply

  24. Josef says

    Also, for those wondering where the land is:

    Thought you all might to know that you can check out exactly where the land is using this website:
    https://sigpac.mapa.es/fega/visor/

    Once its loaded up, hit the little binoculars button at the top to open the search dialog box. Choose “Coordenadas” and enter these details in the appropriate fields:

    X 584051
    Y 4441660
    Huso 30

    That puts the map squarely on the 9m x 9m foundations we’ve already got 🙂

    You can use the bar on the right to zoom in. Once you’re really close (i.e. the scale bar at the top is 200m) some check boxes appear under “Capas” on the left. Check the “Parcelas” box and you can see the boundaries of all the different parcels of land.

    Our land is actually 3 plots. The one you’re centred one, plus the L-shaped one just above and the small one immediately below.

    Enjoy!

    Josef.

    PS you can see some photo in the image galleries on the wiki:
    https://wiki.uniteddiversity.com/tiki-galleries.php

    (got a load more photo’s too – will upload them somewhere sensible eventually…)

    Reply

  25. Josef says

    I have recently become a real face to face friend of Vinay Gupta of Hexayurt fame (twitter synchronicity brought us together, see his write up here: https://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/personal/yesterday-was-an-amazing-day-1142 ) whose talk Ending Poverty with Open Hardware talk I posted a while back

    Vinay and I are very much on the same page when it comes to infrastructure stuff and, it seems, also how how to fund it and spread the word.

    I strongly recommend you listen to the talk he gave at the Temporary School of Thought:

    * Vinay Gupta on Infrastructure for Anarchists – audio / lecture notes.

    Also, he recently penned this, which very much ties in with our plans:

    The Global Village Development Bank
    financing infrastructure at the individual, household and village level worldwide

    If the World Bank was being created at the dawn of the 21st century, how would its basic model and operations differ from the mid-20th century model which currently supports projects worldwide?

    There are two significant developments which affect infrastructure financing since the foundation of the World Bank. The first is the development of distributed infrastructure (DI) – a library of technologies and techniques which provide the same class of services that are provided by systems like the water and power grids, but without the massive one-off investments in physical plant. Dry toilets and solar panels can provide high quality services household by household without a grid. The second development is information and communications technology (ICT) which enables organizations to span continents with ease, and makes the details of project progress accessible from the other side of the world, given a satphone and a camera.

    There is a natural synergy between distributed infrastructure and ICT. Keeping track of hundreds of thousands or tens of millions of small infrastructure projects would be impossible with conventional paper record keeping. The analysis of which systems can be used in which climates is difficult for systems like solar and wind, but is easily automated. Digital mapping technologies enable overviews of structural and society-wide progress in service provision. The other side of this synergy relates to pace: in a digital society, and in the digital world, progress and change come faster than ever. The stability required to finance an infrastructure project with a 30 year payback period exists almost nowhere in the world today, as the political situation, energy policy and technology, global governance and other factors move the landscape.

    Small scale, low cost infrastructure projects have often been seen as less “efficient” than large scale megaprojects. However, as Small is Profitable (https://smallisprofitable.org) conclusively demonstrates, this is largely because different accounting practices must be used to fully reveal the value of small scale projects. Large scale project accounting practices work for comparing one large project with another, but the economies of agility which go with small projects, plus the better fit between local need and local provision of services, plus less complex resource financing and distribution administrations, plus many other factors combine to make it much harder to compare large scale and small scale projects accurately. Suffice it to say that in chaotic areas and areas of low population density, large scale infrastructure projects are simply not an option, and few (if any) experts in the field campaign for megaprojects in rural areas or (post-) war zones. But microprojects can efficiently reach into these areas, providing services one village or one hut at a time without the unbounded risks required by projects which must be large, or not exist at all. Everybody on earth needs infrastructure to attain a high quality of life, and nations require generally available infrastructure to support public health and economic objectives, but total industrialization, population concentration and massive resource and capital footprints are not available to most nations on earth.

    Constructing a financial institution – a Global Village Development Bank – which understands DI and ICT at a profound and instinctive level is not a simple undertaking. There are three profound shifts from conventional practices which must all be implemented simultaneously to even dream of creating an effective institution.

    The first change is in the nature and scale of the projects to be financed, and how they are understood. Triple bottom line accounting practices must be applied at every level of this venture. A water project in Africa generates not only financial returns on investment, it saves lives, and both of these truths must show on the balance sheet. A million small stoves in Bangladesh impacts household economies, but also global climate. Triple bottom line (planet, people, profit) reveals these aspects of projects. The projects themselves are likely to be surprisingly simple in most cases: dig a well, train villages in integrated solar cooking, set up local manufacturing of efficient stoves. To account such small projects as infrastructure financing is the key to actually raising funds to pay for them.

    The second change is in risk management. Nobody can afford to hire expensive technical consultants to oversee each one of these hundreds of thousands of tiny projects. Rather, a combination of technical expertise and local knowledge about those undertaking the project must be combined to assess the technical risk and implementation risk of entire classes of projects at once. Each of a class of Namibian well projects is similar in some ways. The implementation team is known. Combined, these factors give rise to a degree of confidence in the project outcomes. Many small projects allow for statistical analysis of project performance, and for systematic investigation into factors which affect project success. Because each project is small, and they occur in generations, project methodologies or funding decisions can be adjusted depending on performance data from the field: in short, what does not work can be defunded before more money is wasted, and what works can be allocated those funds. This is a decision that can be made day-by-day. Another factor to consider is who makes the decision: pooling funds into a single bucket which is managed by experts is efficient on paper, but in practice this approach has not proven able to meet the challenges of funding DI. Processes like Kiva (https://kiva.org) allow each investor to manage their own portfolio of humanitarian investments and, with expert advise and good tools for visualization of project outcomes, this approach is likely a much better fit for massive funding of distributed infrastructure projects. Precisely how to facilitate expert input into these processes without overwhelming investors is an open question, and a critical one as we attempt to pair investor empowerment with systematic performance analysis.

    The third change relates to ICT. Ronald Coase and Yochai Benkler have examined, from slightly different angles, how increased access to information changes the relative efficiency of different kinds of enterprises. The general trend is that in information-cheap environments, networks of small enterprises form efficient markets and provide services in aggregate. In information-expensive environments, larger organizations form to amortize the cost of understanding the environment and making decisions. The modern world is an almost quintessentially information-cheap environment, and service provision networks are ubiquitous in many areas, from franchising through to software ecologies like Linux. Enterprises like the Grameen Bank, Kiva and Akvo (https://akvo.org) all examine, from different perspectives, how financial architectures which make full use of ICT and provide services in the developing world at a scale and cost which makes sense. The conclusion is that the eventual form of a Global Village Development Bank might be a series of legal agreements and software protocols which create a similar business process to the World Bank, but as an interaction between tens of millions of people, providing capital, maintaining software systems, implementing infrastructure and development projects, objectively reporting on performance, monitoring risk and ensuring efficient allocation of capital in triple bottom line terms.

    Such a global financial architecture might not be immediately recognizable as a development bank. However, the essential function of capital management clearly does not require a single monolithic command-and-control structure in a networked world. A networked approach to capital management – a distributed bank which understands and financed distributed infrastructure – is a plausible equilibrium state for financial affairs in an information-cheap environment.

    Akvo is a charitable foundation which produces software to help small-scale water and sanitation infrastructure projects find funding. They epitomize several aspects of decentralization in their business process, including allowing investors to manage their own portfolio of projects to suit their risk and other preferences. They collaborate closely with a variety of partners to raise awareness, funds, to implement projects on the ground, and to report on the fundamental success or failure of individual projects within their whole portfolio of projects. The network-centric approach to infrastructure financing allows for buildups of local knowledge and expertise in financing specific technologies. However, Akvo only coordinates grant funding, not loans, and is focussed heavily on water and sanitation technology rather than operating as a more generalized capital market.

    However, Akvo’s success is strong support for the notion that a decentralized infrastructure can be funded by decentralized finance. The network-centric nature of day-to-day operations (the team operates in four countries, and has partners in dozens more) is a further testament to the effects information-cheap environment on financial institution design.

    Streamlining transaction costs has three parts: reducing the cost of making an offer, reducing the cost of making a decision, and reducing the cost of acting on an offer. All of these costs are amenable to reduction by ICT, and the perspective of Coase (for which he won a Nobel) was that changing the transaction cost landscape inevitably reshapes the enterprises which work most successfully in that environment.

    Current approaches to infrastructure financing are failing the villages globally.

    Financing distributed infrastructure using information and communications technologies to reduce transaction costs and manage risks has the potential to roll out infrastructure in critical areas – water, sanitation, energy, education, information – where conventional capital management approaches have failed. The distributed infrastructure market is several billion people. There is room at the bottom.

    I’m spending the day with Vinay on March 31st to do a “Global Swadeshi Dialog interview with me and write up our plans. 🙂

    Reply

  26. Josef says

    Also, a friend recently asked:

    Josef if I don’t have any income can I just give you 1% of the bread that I bake and weasel my way onto your land?

    To which I responded:

    Well, 1% of 0 is zero!

    But, also, you are lying! Job seekers or working tax credit is still some income! Expected contribution is 1% of income and time, with minimums being £5/ month and 10mins a day.

    Actually, my plan is for the agreement to be that everyone contribute at least one “unit” each, with 1% of income and time both representing 0.5 units. i.e. you could choose to contribute 2% or time and no income, or 2% of income and no time. Do you follow?

    Either way, YES you can weasel your way onto our land 🙂

    Reply

  27. Josef says

    I didn’t end up doing the video with Vinay on March 31st (I was too tired and not feeling inspired – its still going to happen though…).

    This summary of the plan I recently wrote in an e-mail to a list of lovely people is probably the best on paper outline at present:

    In short, here are my thoughts and the idea:

    Purpose:
    to create a Happy Planet. To improve quality of life on Earth whilst simultaneously reducing ecological footprint. To create a world where everyone one is able to live long happy lives without wrecking the planet.

    Starting points:
    * Timebanks (I worked for TimeBanks UK), LETS (my Mum ran London’s biggest for 5 years), Bartercard, etc. etc are really great community building and exchange tools, BUT
    * Until there is a community currency in which I can pay my rent and by food and energy, I/ we will be forever a slave to the capitalist banking system that creates money as debt (and requires constant economic growth, i.e. social and ecological destruction)
    * Therefore, if I/ we want to launch/ create a scalable values-drive community currency and create a Happy Planet, we need to acquire land and invest in food, shelter and energy infrastructure.
    * Together We Have Everything. All the money, skills, contacts etc. we need to make this happen. United Diversity was set-up in recognition of this.

    The plan:
    * The deal is that all members of United Diversity agree to invest at least 1% of their income into a shared pot and decide together how best to invest it in eco land and infrastructure projects, and to spend at least 1% of their time working on common goals.
    * Actually, the idea is that everyone agree to contribute at least one “contributary unit” each, with 1% of income and time both representing 0.5 of a unit (e.g. one could contribute 2% of income and no time, or vice versa, but all are encouraged/ incentivised to invest as much as they can.)
    * Members will be allowed to decide where their money goes both geographically, and what proportions goes into the land fund (for buying land) and infrastructure fund (for lending to eco land projects so they can get more infrastructure), e.g. one. might decide that I want 25% of my contributions to only be spend in my London postcode, another 25% to be spent anywhere in Europe and the remaining 50% to only be spend in Sub Saharan Africa, with 75% going into the land purchase funds in those areas and the rest available to loan to existing community/ eco land projects for infrastructure investments.
    * How will we make decision about what to spend the money on? Well, everyone should be able to have a say in anything that effects them. And since everything and everyone is connected that means everyone should be able to have their say on everything. However, the amount of say that one has on a particular issue should be proportionate to how much that issue affect you, i.e. people who live and work in Smallville should have more say about what happens in Smallville than people who don’t. Ideally, therefore, ratings and votes in the decision making process (see below) will be weighted according to one’s degree of seperation from the matter at hand.
    * So what is the decision making process?
    1. Brainstrom ideas, rate them on one or more criteria on a scale of -2 to +2. Ideas that, say, get and overall average of +1 got through to the next stage…
    2. Top ideas are debated. Members make for/ against arguments for each idea outline how they will increase quality of life whilst reducing ecological footprint, or not. Again, these arguments are rated. Each idea is clear presented with the the strongest for/ against argument clearly visible.
    3. A vote is taken, in which all members can participate but where votes are weighted as outlined above. Additionally, members can choose to accept “vote recommendations” from other people they trust on the issue, thereby effectively delegating their vote to whomever they beleive is most informed on the topic. This allows people who have neither the time nor inclination, or simply don’t trust themselves, to still have their say.
    * So, we’ve brought a load of land and lent money to lots of nice eco/ community land projects to invest in new infrastructure. What now? We rent the land out and/ or sell leaseholds to people who agree to work according to ecological prinicples (in a similar way to how https://ecologicalland.coop/ plan to operate, see https://ecologicallandcoop.wordpress.com/example-elc-hamlets/ecological-land-management-criteria/ ) and we collect infrastructure loan repayments.
    * Any surplus money coming in from land rentals and loan repayments is split 50/50. 50% is re-invested into yet more land/ infrastructure projects and 50% is redistributed to members as dividends.
    * The amount of dividend income a members recieves us proportionate to how much they’ve contributed in “contributory units” (i.e. money and/ or “sweat equity”, as outlined above).
    * But is not just how much members put it that effects the amount of dividents they receive. It how much they take out too, i.e. what share of the world’s resources do they use? i.e. how big is their ecological footprint?
    * What do you mean? Well, the amount of dividend a particular member receives will be based on an equation a bit like this:
    Number of contributory units multipled by reputation (based on peer rating or any work done) divided by ecological footprint.
    * This incentivises member both to contribute a lots (and care about the quality of their work) and to reduce their ecological footprint, great! 🙂
    * But there is more! The dividends are not paid out in pounds, dollars, euros etc. but in a new United Diversity currency backed by the real wealth and use value of our shared land and infrastructure assets. We might call the currency “ecos” or “freedom tickets”.
    * Also, eco land projects who fully buy into the whole mission will be invited to issue this currency themselves, and to repay their infrastructure loans in it, backed by an agreement to accept the currency themselves in exchange food/ shetler/ energy.
    * And people who have no money but lots of time and williingness to work the land will be able to pay their rent on our land in this currency too.
    * And each year will hold “Building Man” festivals (because its a play on the amazing Burning Man festivals) where instead of creating a temporary city in the desert and then destroying it, we’ll harness all that amazing creativity and self-organising power to build ecovillages in sensible places (i.e. on community owned land) and leave them there! (a great opportunity for people put int their 1%+)
    * And we’ll celebrate that we’ve finally freed ourselves from the money as debt bank slavery system and created a saner economic model!
    * Yay!

    Is that clear? Thoughts, comments, suggestions?!?

    Reply

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