Outstanding In His Field

Idle thoughts on creating wealth

Dec 11, 2024

UPDATE 11DEC24: This is NOT a commune. It is a capitalist enterprise under a corporate entity with shareholders looking to generate multi-generational wealth and security by pooling resources. OK proceed.

UDATE 15DEC24: Thanks to Markets and Trends in our Telegram group for sharing a link to Helios Farms, with their own MOOLA currency.

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to think of ways to extract my clan from the Matrix. It is amazingly unsimple to decouple from the current social framework and get some peace and quiet — by design, no doubt.

However, as new technoliges emerge and infrastructure improves, the sphere to which I am limited continues to expand. Since I make my living with a computer, I require some advanced hardware, a steady broadband connection, and a stable supply of electricity. This has only become feasible outside of Jakarta in the last 5 years or so.

When I first moved to Indonesia in 2008, I essentially stepped back in time about 10 years. At that time, the city of Balikpapan, where I lived, was little more than a stop light in the jungle.

I was using a barely functional PC, with a dial-up modem that charged by the minute for internet access, and the town routinely blacked out around 3pm, when the four Manitowoc diesel gensets gave up the ghost, rather than try to keep up with demand. That doesn’t include the frequent night-time outages, when the graveyard shift fell asleep and forgot to fill the tanks.

Up at the mountain retreat, I spent years tethering my laptop to my phone’s network, and the phone had to be in the exact right spot to get a signal, not to mention black-outs every other day. Nowadays, the wi-fi is faster than in the city, and the black-outs occur only every two weeks or so. Thanks to battery banks, even that is not as annoying as it used to be.

In any case, there are lots of folks who can’t, or don’t want to leave the city — though I can’t imagine why. At the same time, things like food supply, quality and prices have gone haywire. Many of the world’s cities are experiencing routine disruptions, and the “authorities” are only too happy to whip out the clubs and gas canisters when folks get testy about it.

Today’s thought experiment is, how does a modern urban family ensure quality, low cost food supplies, while having some remote location to get away from the human ant piles? Here’s what I’ve come up with, and readers’ thoughts will be valuable in the comment section.

Suppose four to eight common-sense families formed a contractual corporation (S-type in the US), and bought say, 200 acres of nice farmland out in the boonies. You’ll want live water, of course, and good soil.

That’s more than enough space to have multi-generational compounds for each family, plus ample space for gardens and livestock. Projects, such as power, that affect quality of life for everyone can be undertaken by a council and cost-sharing. Shared costs might also include tractors and implements, veteranary services, and so forth.

Each family would commit to some amount of time per day/week/month/year for road and fence maintenance, overall land improvements, livestock management, and other communal projects, like central water and power supply, or server farm.

This kind of arrangement could also lead to a miniature economy. Each family might specialize in some skill or product — canning, leather work, weaving, plumbing, wiring, etc. Maybe one family specializes in hothouse berries, while another cultivates a citrus or nut grove. The group could barter or buy from each other, and surplus would be sold in local markets or online. And let’s not forget share-cropping with neighboring farms.

One advantage to this arrangement is that many US states, and many countries too, offer grants, tax incentives and other benefits to farming and ranching operations. By incorporating, the group could enjoy fiscal and financial protections and savings, while apportioning many shared expenses that benefit everyone.

This is not some utopian fluff proposal. It is a strictly capitalistic endeavor using commonly owned resources to benefit and enrich the owners. It takes advantage of the diverse skills and talents of the owners to enable profitable enterprise of each member. It also applies current and future techologies to improving the health and well-beling of the members.

Along the lines of new techologies, the group might employ a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), with its own trustless contracts and internal digital token currency. If the group is careful in the buying process, they might end up with a gas well and/or sufficient live water for onsite power generation. Perhaps one family wants to live permanently onsite, and will trade off doing another’s maintenance chores for consideration.

There are lots of benefits to this kind of arrangement, and a few drawbacks, too.

How do you penalize a family that doesn’t put in it contractual time in the operation? Does everyone pay in the same amount, and thus get equal shares, or is there a percentage-based apportionment? Suppose some of the families are opposed to a group project (say power generation), can they still benefit through the corporation from income/grants/tax breaks that the participating members get? How do you control and monitor that?

Plenty of details to work out in this model.

There’s also the steep learning curve for farming and ranching operations. Gardens and livestock require constant attention, and crises will always arise. And that’s on top of building consensus among the owners for community responsibilities.

Still, the prospect of having a clean, high-quality food supply, a place in the country to get away from the madding crowds, and ample opportunities to generate wealth beat most other proposals I can think of. It has the additional benefit of being a multi-generational solution for the families involved.

As Vince Lombardi famously said, "The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary."

I figure eight families is just about right. Two hundred acres provides plenty of space for small-scale farming and ranching — enought to supply plenty of quality food for the owners — as well as ample room for eight family compounds of 3-4 houses each. It also ensures enough skills and talents to cover most needs for the operation.

Just some musings on this monsoon morning on the equator.

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I don’t know why, but as I ponder these ideas, the film that keeps coming to mind is The African Queen (1951). Maybe it’s the epic story, maybe it’s John Huston’s solid directing, maybe it’s two of Hollywood’s most iconic actors (Bogie and Hepburn) turing in great performances at the peaks of their careers, or maybe it’s the metaphor of attempting something against all odds and winning in the end.

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