An (Urban) AS Community?

Post Reply New Topic

Would the proposed concept work if the (small) urban location was acquired first, assuming that the urban location pays for itself in co-located businesses and/or apartment rentals?

Economics works because there is demand. I shop where demand and purpose have been lost, and a building is a liability. For a new purpose, that useless general store that has been closed for years, can have a new life.

Demand is easier in a city, with a fast food and Starbucks on every corner, that stay open, it is not hard to sell hot water and animal feed and offer a better price, amount, and something that will not kill you.

Anything that builds foot traffic, is an ad for other services. A cheaper coffee service, "we use more grounds and less Bling" Only available in reheatable extra large, comes with a small cup.

Quick, cheap, and stop by after work and we will set you up with a food box, hot tonight, lunch tomorrow, and snacks.

It is fast, good, and cheaper than anything else. They save time and money, and there is a safe place to loiter, meet people, which would be the perfect front door for a used book store. My version would also be a quick print,

Up and coming book store, tens of thousands of titles are available on the web, Project Gutenberg and others, and I can print them out and bind them for my cost $3. Rare Books, $10, is a market.

Be it a web site or storefront, building traffic is the goal. No use wasting that on a single product. They are all consumers, they consume a range of goods and services. Food, information, a social connection, covers a lot.

Customer focus, why would they chose this place over other choices? I am going with cheap, quality, and intellectual.

As for Aspies, employment, with a walkin cooler in the back where they can be confined if they misbehave. Third offense, a day in the freezer.

Management is not for people with social skills Aspies lack, it is reserved for those who lack souls, and will manage customers and workers with an unforgiving view of making the numbers work.

Sales Tax will put me in jail, being late on any payment ruins my position, this is war till my death, and you are not helping, so no $0.25 raise, and get back to work, or go look for another job!

Management has to look to the long term survival of the business, and keeping the building comes before workers, customers, or the current business model.

As recent events show, there comes a time to lay off half, cut back to the core business, circle the wagons, and defend for five years, or die.

There are also times to push in all directions, as none know the future, see what sells, and what does not. I think one of those times is coming, and being first in new markets predicts winners.

Post Crash Long Recession Business Models will rise. I predict cheap, the Thrift Store of life. Overall, people have less, and even the educated that would have been hired to good jobs in the past, now get lower pay, and will get less for decades.

I am a long term Thrift Store and Ebay shopper. Prices have gone up, as more people seek buying used. Things that would have gone to Goodwill, are now being sold on ebay. Overall, things I used to buy for five cents on the dollar, now sell for as much as a quarter.

This bottom end demand is growing, and the most hopeful think we may reach pre crash employment numbers in two years, which is what they said two years ago. With a growing population, full employment is at least four years away, and then at low wages.

This shift to having to seek deals will continue,

Quick print is booming, as less people and business can afford to keep an expensive machine for occational use.

The coffee shop with WiFi has become the office of the unemployed. The rent is low and with a print shop, they can continue to function.

Any side business you want to startup, the coffee shop can be used for day labor.

Day labor has been drunks and druggies, temp agencies over charge, having a pool of known available workers is a business.

Adapt to the future, because it is not going to adapt to you.

I see three questions with such a model.

1. How would the proposed setup compete with an existing simular food business within the same block?
2. How much room would be needed? Sub-Question: would it be possible to split the non-retail parts of the business elsewhere?
3. How large of an urban area is needed to support the proposed set-up?

Inventor, are you proposing we combine a café with a print-on-demand bookstore for the business? Hmmm, it could probably work. Provide housing above the business floor?

Going for the low end of the food chain, grains, veggies, is selling calories that do not come from mostly oils, or are over priced as a dining experance, but are closer to Futurama's Bachelor Chow.

Other food business sell compact calories, burger, pizza, and the menu in coffee shops is pastry covered in refined sugar. Fats and sugars are not a good long term diet.

They are the Meth of food service. They are also selling service, and charging for it. A burger, fries and coke is not worth $8.

Some people have no other choice, but the results of that diet is our current one third obese, Some are aware, and those are the ones to target, Whole Grains, organic, without the Whole Foods markup.

The mechanic here, rich fuels are compact, so enough is not filling. People over eat to fill their stomachs. Grains and veggies, filling, long term energy, and improved digestion, which is why Asians do not have a lot of health problems we do.

The product is visual, the servings are large, it is priced below other choices, and increasing portion size at point of sale, is cheap, Dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow, futher reduces the customers cost of living, and I did not expect them back for lunch.

I am also selling service, but in your need to eat well for a reasonable price, saving time and money compared to any other method.

While I would pass on lunch, I would be there for breakfast, for the get out of the house, stop for coffee, is part of America, and mostly selling hot water. Again, the others sell sugar, oil, and refined grains, even the Bran Muffins are loaded, but some rolls with dried fruit, like the Prune Bread, to go with your coffee or tea, will assure that what we sold you yesterday will be departing your system soon.

As food flows through you it provides what you need to live, have endurance, and in the lower reaches of your bowles, it absorbs things your body wishes to dispose of. The high energy American diet lacks this basic need, it lacks the volume to take out the garbage every day, which leads to rotting garbage, Colon cancer, and farting flies.

It is a hard concept to market, but Kellog and McFadden made millions selling it a hundred years ago. Breakfast cereal was sold as a laxative.

Mineral Waters were popular, mostly because they contained Epsom Salts. It holds more water in the lower intestines, which leads to voiding the entire large intestine often.

When it comes to health, feeling good, you must have an exit plan.

2. As for size, the one I mentioned out west was a very early drive in, like an early Frost Top, which had three serving pots, rice, beef, chicken, and three cooking pots. Three people could run it, and lots of short term parking was needed. A guess, sales ran over a thousand dollars per worker, on a slow day.

The early model of the drive in where everyone ate in their car. One of my favored obsolete building, along with old gas stations, which have been converted to many other uses, produce market being one.

Now that Walmart has gone upscale, their new stores encase the entire town, their old locations, and 2000 Malls, sit unused, with Thrift Stores and Discount Religions being the only people who would rent.

They were built cheap, but do have parking.

Modern times, we service the cars that bring the shoppers, making life comfortable for them. Parking defines retail.

I like space, the department store concept, where fast food to go can live with fast coffee to go, and Prune Bread! Also room for the unemployed to loiter, drink coffee, get out of the house, and try to do something about finding a life. Quick print, used books, print on demand books, bring in more foot traffic, and they can be cross sold.

Where some locations can be leased by the square foot, other locations have unusable footage, The building is out of scale for the market, several stories above the store front ground level shops, large interior space, like old department stores, several floors open within.

Building size has something to do with use, local demographic, parking, number of local gun fights per month.

What I see is book stores bring in people who read, organic food drives away some people I would not want to deal with, and the mix that settles in to loiter, is a potential labor pool.

Based off of that, other locations come into play, as I would have no problem telling a customer that seems to be at liberty, the dishwasher did not show up, would you take a shift for cash today?

Another building starts with, it needs cleaning, paint, yard work, which can fund a casual labor pool. It may have nothing to do with the project, but knowing you can raise a dependable crew to transform it to useful, makes other thinking possible.

I think it would scale to most cities, as the basic coffee shop, quick print, used book store, print on demand. Food service takes a larger demographic, but still small.

An area demographic of 50,000 is the least Office Max, Office Depot, Kinko's will locate in, and they dominate quick print. Under that number, you are the only quick print around.

My own work is back office, anywhere, that I can fine Pre Press skills. I would fit in down the block, across the street, or upstairs.

The point is, diverse small business cannot support the overhead, alone. as a related enterprise, where its taxes, accounting, payroll, and location can be combined, building the next leanto business is simple.

For example, if I pull together Pre Press, organize it, put it in an office, I can measure and contain the cost, Manage it, set it on a firm economic footing, then step back and say, I Quit! I am no longer your employer, I am your leading customer, so if you want a raise, find some more work.

If they also have access to the quick print, perhaps work a shift there, the means of production are in their hands.

They still have the security of their business paying the rent, their pay check coming from the same place, and the food service, but they have the potential to grow, where efforts increase their pay check.

Pre Press covers art work, Editing, Copywriting, Web Sites and Promotion, Social Networking. It is to produce a product used in books, my goal, but also Advertising, Business Reports, and combined with printing, makes a range of services available. These services are needed by most businesses, so it is a part of the startup machine.

Aspies, I do not know if I support, there are some strange ones, A Differance of Thought and Perception as applied to Business and Economics, I do support.

Economic stagnation seens to be the new deal, group survival the old problem, and at my age, my goals are not long term. For others, being under employed is the norm, both by income and by access to the tools that lead to more income.

The best us old folks can do is create a stable platform, something I can depend on in old age, but the next business models that work ten years from now will be all the kiddies coming up.

I am waiting for Neural Induction Programable Dream Enhancements, and Flying Motorcycles.

I can predict the future, people will eat, and need economic support systems.

I will continue my plan of World Conquest.

Back in history they actually had farms in which the mentally ill lived in the rural country. They grew their own crops and were self sufficient this really helped their conditions, it's a shame they stopped doing these types of things.
My former psychologist told me about it. The patients would live and worked there.
There's also something about the peacefulness of the country that is soothing...

Aspies arn't mentally ill, so I'm not sure if that psychologist's statement is entirely on point. Also, some of those "farms" were horrific places. I personally would'nt want to draw a connection between those "farms" and an aspie community.

The Poor Farm, Pest House, Debtors Prison, and Orphanage, were always needed functions.

Conditions were horrible everywhere up until 1957, then only half as bad.

There was Bedlam, the non functioning mentally ill, a refuge from the prior method of burning them at the stake.

The Pest House came before Hospitals. Both have a high death rate.

The Poor Farm and Debtors Prison were set up as work houses, where people were expected to pay their debts, and restart their lives. People go broke, you cannot just hang them. The system was to turn a profit through labor, and was not for life. Training, keeping them from drink, gambling, labor in the fresh air, fresh food, was to give them another chance.

Orphanages did protect children from the worst abuses. Problems like being left as a baby in the woods. Orphans were the illegal aliens of the time, and any Master chimney sweep was empowered to grab them off the street and enslave them. They were small, thin, and fit in chimneys. They worked for food, and were starved so they fit in small places.

Children who had parents were sent to the spinning mills, or coal mines at six. They fit in the small places under the spinning machines, to gather lint, so it did not get picked up again by the machines, which often scalped the children, which caused them to be fired. In the mines men could not work a coal seam under three foot, but children could work in eighteen inches.

There was employment for all, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," because even with everyone working from age six, in horrible conditions, half of all children did not live to six, and most died by mid thirties.

What little we know of older times, children of six were sold into slavery, Greeks, Romans, who could write, mention the children of the poor, and those on their borders, all sold their excess children like goats.

Goats sold for more, and someone might ask where you got it. No one asked where children came from, for 10% the auction put them on the block, and the high bidder owned them. They were sold because their family could not feed them, so it was death or slavery.

The past is not just some grim tale, the past is recent. Child Labor was restricted in 1913, they had to be twelve to be sent to work. That only applied to mines and mills, farms were exempt.

We have homeless, shelters and missions, tent towns under a bridge in many places, just like the hobo camps of the depression. We have families living in a car. We have three generations living at grandmas house.

It was not that long ago that was the norm. The rise of the industrial era, two world wars, population reduction, lead to an unreal post WWII boom, where a single family could own a house, car, and send their children to school, and eat.

We take this bubble as some standard, but since then we have been living on growing debt.

My first jobs paid about $40 a week. That was in silver, 40 ounces, that is now $1500, which is not starting pay for an eighteen year old.

About the only debt we had was a mortgage, cars were bought for cash.

We are now reverting to the long term curve, the norm. We cannot put everyone to work, there are more and more who have no place in the world.

We have cheap consumer goods, but the price of food and energy is spikeing. Number of people working, wages, have been declining for forty years.

Our version of Poor Farms is jails, but we cannot support a doubling that is coming. 5% of the population broke and homeless is overwhelming.

I do not know how to deal with it, but for a limited group, mine, War Babies, retiring to the country can work, and it better, for 40,000,000.

As one person with a spade can keep a one acre garden that will feed ten, that is why we need farms. Ten people, three generations, lived in a one room cabin. We need micro houses.

If one quarter of the people have to double up on living, about a quarter of the living units are excess. A few can live the old way, but the taxes, utilities, Insurance, are more than a lot of people could pay.

Housing and construction is never going to recover, consumers consume goods from China, wages decline, and debt goes up. This is not the basis for a recovery.

Half this country should go live on a poor farm, They would eat and have a place to live. Having a job, an apartment or house, and a car, lots of clothes, is just not possible for all.

Job prospects are not good for recent grads, and dismal for future grads.

The 30% who get Degrees are not finding work, The fit construction force is not finding work, Trucking is down, Manufacturing wants automation Engineers, not line workers.

We are going to become something else, we could chose what.

The present is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. In many countries, parents still do sell their children into slavery.

Anyway, re. an Urban Community, what is being suggested? A ground floor business level, with a bookshop, print-on-demand services, and café, possibly branching out to provide some food later, and having the accommodation for the workers above? Then, later, including a farm which will provide resources to the urban community, which will serve as an outlet for the food that is produced? So sort of like a market on the bottom level...?

They would probably be fitter, brighter, healthier, have a sexy body, have better sex.... and it would finally get them off the damn internet

How would the hunting/fishing be?

That tends to dictate where I live.

After generations of domestication, an urban location got the most votes.

There does still seem to be some primitive urge to live beyond the cities, and that is something that would produce stronger stock.

Over millions of years and more so during the last 125,000 the hairless ground ape carried everything they owned, and covered twenty to thirty miles a day seeking food. Just 150 years ago the river boats came down to New Orleans with a load of produce, or whiskey, sold it and the boat, and walked back to the Ohio Valley.

The physical range of humans has declined with city living, where no amount of income and ease can make up for never developing as an animal.

Puppies raised in a cage never become well rounded dogs.

I like the rural life, and as farm land is rare in most places, like urban buildings that have unusable space, farm land comes with forests, that might have been logged, but that is not an often crop.

What is useless to humans, is well populated by deer, turkey, and provides a buffer from neighbors.

It is our nature to be hunters, and to develop the body that goes alone into the forest, kills something, and packs it out.

Farm was the urban life, when villages were a few building at a crossroads.

Farmers were hunters, they planted bait, also went in to the forest, trapped in the winter, and made trade trips in the fall.

The range of rural life has been lost to the city culture, but it exists, with life beyond sidewalks.

This cannot be sold to the urbanized, so let them think we are picking cotton on their plantation, and they can be managed.

Rural is harder to staff than urban, it takes someone who is not involved in the company of others for their identity.

To me the interaction of urban living is scary, but most in the poll chose it. Spending the night on a mountainside with bare supplies, a blanket and fire, is when I feel safest.

One of the great things about farming, is a lot of work in a short time, planting, harvest, and spending the rest of the time watching it grow. Since the invention of the tractor, most of the labor has been replaced.

The problem with rural living is having a market. Having a farmers market to supply in a city would solve that, and the range of crops can produce all year.

The problem with living in the country has been making a living. Getting somewhat closer to retail city prices for produce, farming works.

It would also give an exclusive to the city place, and employment, turning fresh produce to money.

Lots of things are going to change, and when they are no longer economic, they end. Food as raw material, or prepared, will last.

The city can also supply the harvest labor.

AspieBURG and "Aspie Acres" are not exclusive, they can work with each other.

I believe AspieBURG would be easier to set up first.

I'm for AspieBURG because I think it would be the easiest to set up first, and would assist the Aspie Acres to get started, providing an urban outlet for the produce of the latter as well as a source of funding.

I'm for «AspieKibbutz» because it will be possible to be depend less on outside. A rural location allow you access to resorces given by nature for free (wood, firewood, etc.) you need less money if you are ready to work. You can produce a good part of your food,and mny other things.

AspianCitizen, good to see you again!

I have no objections to a rural Aspie community, but I believe that it would be cheaper, easier, and faster to locate at least the first Aspie community in an existing urban area "AspieBURG". Purchasing land is not cheap, and getting financing for an urban area with appraised property is easier. With a rural location, you will have to build everything from scratch. Some people on this board would be strong supporters of such a thing, and I have nothing against it.

I just see AspieBURG as an easier route to an Aspie community. It would also serve as an excellent distribution point for exports from "Aspie Acres", through farmers markets and internet sales. Much like Cosanti does for Arcosanti's exports.