A Collaborative Aspie Project?

Post Reply New Topic

Step by step, which I think slow, but constant progress.

I have the live in portable publishing company, 10,000 public domain titles I can download and print, so a large book store,

Production can be scaled up. 240 a day with ease. My costs are very low.

I have not offered my services to others, for I am using them to finish my book.

I live a few miles from the Mississippi River, and behind levees that are 17" and failed at 10' in Katrina. The New Madrid Quake is due, the big one, every 200 years, and that will center on Saint Louis, a 9.0 from Little Rock to Chicago, that will last for years. Last time the river ran backward with waterfalls, church bells rang in Boston and Washington, and that was before levees, the TVA dams, and a Cat 3 hurricane coming up the mouth of the river will push a 25' storm surge.

I want to move.

Land and buildings are getting cheaper, I have been watching and found some potential sites. I like farm land because I like to eat.

All of those jobs lost have left buildings, large, with no economic use. The taxes pile up. A lot is selling on the Court House steps.

I bought my binding machines as the stock market tanked, people had to sell. No one else was bidding. Now it is a platted subdivision, surveyed, selling for the old price of farm and timber land. No one thinks the rural housing market will recover. Vacation sites, Florida, the Smokies, have no tourists. Florida does have global warming, and after Katrina, I have fear.

The mountains seem better. It has been real hot in the south for the last five years. Texas burned, the drought spreads. The mointains have water, decent soil, and are cooler. I have been looking through the west side of Virginia, North Carolina. Farm land is $2,000 an acre and up. No one is buying for there are no jobs, textiles left, other industry, and it is no longer seen as an investment in a future winery.

I have spotted several 40 acres and a barn, with well, $80,000, that when it is a bit warmer I will go look at.

Writers are known for living in a chicken coop. A failed motel would work. Traditional someone sold a book and bought a place, and raised writers in the out buildings. Cheap rent, good food, and wine. If writers are not aspies, they may as well be, they are not normal.

Before Mega Consolidated Publishing Empires, press runs were 700, writers went on speaking tours, and still survived. Mega Publishing has to sell 100,000 to make a profit. Lulu Press prints anything, and unpromoted, still sells 200. For my book they wanted $9.25, so the printer makes $1500.

The market is changing to web direct, writers connecting to their readers, and with better promotion, it could be better than being unemployed. A writer, or painter, making minium wage from their art is happy, particulary if they have a chicken coop to live in, a garden, and wine.

Concepts of life have to do with concepts of wealth. Happiness to me is having what you need to do what you want. I need a power pole, a post office, and a few book customers. I thought of printing for others, and have them come and print to pay for it. The book market is huge, and new writers the main product. Publishing has slid into default, but readers are the same as ever. I want to connect readers and writers, through lower cost publishing.

This human thing, some write, some read, was exploited. Books were over priced, writers got pennies. Only big sellers were published, we had more presses, writers, readers, and titles a hundred years ago. Serving the main knowledge market got gutted by publishing, Books that sold a thousand to five thousand used to be the main market.

Such is the Literate Liberation Front Manefesto.

It is an economic base, it can support more than me and horse, dog, a few rural high schoolers, and a garden.

Land is the base of all wealth, but human labor is more productive. I am creating the jobs of the future, for the Chinese will not be writing our books. Catch a key skill, the supply chain becomes captive. Production, Marketing, contolled by the creative end.

There are millions of people with no future, who will work for some life not under a bridge.

So, let me get this straight, Inventor - your idea is to use writing and publishing as the nucleus, if you will, for a new village, with businesses to support them? Or is it something else?

You might want to look at the Open Source Ecology project:
Website
Wikipedia article

If the village can produce all it needs for buildings in situ, that will change the nature of the game, I think.

Yep. Marcin's tractors and compressed earth blocks.

We Children of the Toys demand Erector Sets and Lego!

For one, it is fairly expensive, and a lot of work. It is cheaper to buy, hire.

Such has been the failure of Homesteading, it took a lifetime to get it working, more input than return.

Marcin also came to the village of 200 as being a human scale, and sited on 200 acres, long term self supporting. Not just us, but social scientists, an economic unit, a customer base for most things, books, clothes, leather goods, wood work, food production and service, a bakery.

One is expensive, the shared cost of a water system, sewer, off grid power, an acre or two of copse, woodland grown to be cut for firewood, where the roots regrow many tops on a short cycle. dense planted, rapid growth, fed by the sewer system, a few cords of hardwood per person, might take an acre or two.

While the getting is good, people raising horses will pay to have the bedding and manure hauled, there are wastes from grape production, cardboard, that can be sheet composted over the fields, and make them long term productive. Grow clover, chick peas, plow them in, poor pasture land can become rich row crop land.

This land was ruined by tobacco, run down to barely supporting grass. It can not only be restored, it can be supercharged.

Farming for a living is all work, and low profit, farming to feed several hundred is very profitable in cost avoided, and having food of the highest quality.

When place, shelter, food, fuel, employment, all come within walking distance, are all owned free and clear, except taxes, the cost of being a human is very low, mostly paid in labor, and the potential for income is the highest. Local supports all costs, can supply seasonal workloads, and the export market brings in more than imports cost.

I am an Earth Firster. We are a small part of a thin film of life, my loyality is with soil bacteria, worms, and The Great Mother. We do have a place, where our services are greater than our needs.

I find some design just plain ugly, like most of America. A village should have one design, something that improves with age, and stays the same size. It is to serve humans, a chained beast, not allowed to sprall and cover farmland. It is not allowed to be ruled by money, real estate speculation, the value that counts is the people.

It is like an apartment, a deposit is needed, funds, labor, then there is ongoing rent, labor to maintain the village, and when people leave, they get their deposit back. The village stays the same.

It is a Corporation, and shareholder rights can only be sold back to the corporation, and new shareholders can only be voted in by existing shareholders.

The deposit will become small as the village matures, and produces shelter, food, fuel, and a private economy. The benefits will be much greater than the cost, and new shareholders must bring value to the community to the table.

To me that would be writers, who could add to the economy. But for 200, a Nurse, School Teacher, might be first choice. Besides residents, a guest house is needed, for twenty visitors. Some will come to learn, some to teach, and some to become known and perhaps future members.

It is not an end, it is an experiment. I want it to stay the same for study, and with the skills and machines, a new and improved village can be built on the next 200 acres. Each will develop a culture that reflects the people it serves. I put up with writers and painters, but musicians should live at least a mile away.

I want to build an economy around publishing, but doing it, produces a construction company, who can build other villages.

I was thinking smaller, 40 acres, housing for my machines and writers. On a per person basis it is much more expensive, and would not have the labor to do things other than write, print, bind, ship. I would be importing food, labor.

Scaling it up, the cost per person is lower, the labor pool grows, and my opperating expense goes into the domestic economy.

Marcin has done more on some of it, none of us do it all. I have publishing, lean more towards art, have a strong base in economics, and am a better farmer. I have met people who are better at everything I do.

We need a new world, some assembly required.

Inventor, have you checked elance.com? They would be your competition, you should know what you're up against. I've seen native English speaking fiction writers work for as little as $3 an hour who have a moderate amount of experience. How would you see your ideas working in light of this?

Copywriter is not author. Huffpost will not win any awards. The future is Content, and that cannot be faked.

Me and My Bees, written by a bee keeper, could not be written by an unemployed freelance. The readers may be few, but they have bees, or would, and want a first hand account. Books are the way that knowledge is passed from generation to generation, and like bee keepers, from a few, to a few, but content rich.

Juan and Pedro can paint your house, but if you want a mural, a mosaic floor, that takes knowledge and talent, not often found in house painters.

I read a book by the Keeper of Kew Gardens, he had a vision of what trees planted would look like in a hundred years, base on his lifetime work, and what he learned from the older keepers. the vision of generations of dedicated keepers, is not what you find at Lowe's Garden Center. elance could write the Lowe's ads, for their spring mass mailings.

One can say, plant in full sun, another how to plant an orchard, another on preparing the soil, drainage, for years before planting, and yet another on reviving a sixty year old orchard. For others, espalier, growing a tree against a south facing wall, fed, pruned, shaped, as a flat design, pleasing to the eye and producing the finest fruit, and for that much work and long term, the tree will not be found at Lowe's. Apples that produce the most weight per tree, store well, are not the fruit sought for the apples from my garden, that will produce for a hundred years.

I have a tweed jacket. the label shows a man weaving before his cottage. He raised the sheep, sheared them, washed and carded the fleece, spun the thread, wove the herringbone, and made the coat. It was how it was always done. Spinning and weaving are regaining their place, as knitting did. Making something useful through many steps, something that cannot be mass produced.

Passing knowledge from generation to generation, where the holder of the knowledge lived in Scotland, and you, two generations later, in Virginia.

There is Bunny Bread, and a thousand other forms that are worth eating.

I was a talented mechanic, a lifetime reader, I have special interests, and will read everything published in a hundred years to learn. Still, I struggle to make Jam. I have made beer, wine, Scotch, learned the magic of apple pies, but Jam is a mystery that is different every year. I have heard seven years to begin to understand the natural cycle, the year to year changes, to make consistantly good Jam.

Some arts can only be kept. I buy socks from an english company, that keeps 150 women knitting at home in rural Scotland. Cheap at $35, when machine made is $25, and I have been disappointed with quality. A more mechanical group in Australia makes Angora blankets. You can order by size and weight. $300 is a small price to pay for a perfect for you lifetime blanket.

Quality of life is not found at Walmart.

I doubt elance can turn out a finished book. If they could write one that would sell, they would. Lulu Press is my publishing competition, They print what they are sent, over priced, and with no Edit, Promotion, any work can become a cheap paperback. Overall sales are 200 per title.

John Elder Robison hit the New York Times Best Seller List, sales of 50,000 a week. There is a lot of range in publishing.

Lulu is a Vanity Press. Publishers are Mass Market. I am looking at smaller market segments. Works with lifetime sales of 1,000 + are worth some effort. It may be break even, but that still supports my supply chain. People get paid, my suppliers larger orders.

It has outgrown my efforts, and I have other interests. Writers would be my first choice for filling the jobs of printing, binding, mailing, marketing, because it is something they should learn. Including food, shelter, wine, other writers, makes it a good job.

There are a lot of failed motels that would meet my needs. I do think Marcin is on the right track of building the eastern European villages of his youth. Several hundred people on several hundred acres does survive. Highest quality of life at the lowest cost. What it lacked is the technology he is building. My addition is digital publishing, marketing, and fiber optic.

My knowledge base supports his mechanical base, and the land supports all. We left the land because it was back breaking work, a life in isolation, and a factory job in the city was a better deal. That has changed, we can return to the land, and bring the technology with us.

We need food, shelter, fuel, clothes, education, a healthy life, and the machines, which we can now own. The cost/Benefit of city living is opressive, Debt Servitude.

The basis of all wealth is yesterdays sweat. When that is sold, taxed, and a life is rented at interest, someone else gets the benefits. When your labor is applied to your garden, it will feed you for life.

We will get the future we make.

One could target a specific area and aspificate it just like some villages get gentrificated and would similar to creating a gay village but with the difference that it would be based on neuro orientation.

The advantage is that it doesn't require mega schemes. Just "move as near as you can", public transport or cars does the rest.

It means one can exploit existing economic infrastructure and society organization, but break the structures that doesn't fit aspie needs.

Where do you see electricity coming from? Will you buy land with running water and build a hydro electric plant? It only takes a trickle and some good engineering to get a great deal of electric. Or tap into existing systems? AFAIK, solar and wind are still too expensive.

What do you think about underground dwellings? The way I see it, the most efficient way to do things would be to build our city underground and still have land on top on which to grow things. Building materials would be somewhat more complex, but it would make much better use of the land we have and with a hydro electric generator, living underground would make a great sense. We'd need alot of cement or stone slabs though. A deeper city could lead to mechanical mining operations and more living space.

Underground living can lead to depressions, rickets, fungi and all kinds of problems. And at least I want a window view of the surface, not TV. Besides heavy materials like rock emits radioactivity and in some cases release radioactive/poisonous gases too.

Ground living please..

I use electric, for some things, the power pole is a must, but where the loss can be afforded, the big 2 Volt batteries are cheap. Wind, sun, are part time, and even the creeks freeze. The load of a wood shop is not easy to do off grid. Providing the power to run a laptop is easy.

I vote above ground. But as Marcin points out, the best place to get the soil is dig a celler.

I have looked into abandoned mines, most have been bought up as bat habitat. The same for natural caves, there are a lot of them, but most are closed, full of bats, and wet.

Drainage, sewer, water, power, could run in tunnels.

In general I think of cottages around a village square. The water, sewer, gas, electric, storm drainage, is cheaper when compact. Shops and services, living quarters above, some village living for those who seek a room, with bath, and everything a close walk.

I started with the idea of a motel with a restaurant. Office space, food, living quarters. There are a lot, but usually on a highway.

The best deals I saw were forty acres, barn, well, power, some with a septic tank and something to start with. I think an acre per person is living space, and survivable.

There are several reasons to not depend on the electric grid. When the lights go out, so does the water. There had better be backups.

Ten years ago there was a lawyer on the web saying we needed new Hovervilles. He say that many of the war babies would retire on nothing, before the crash and Great Recession. His view, we needed places people could afford, that produced food, or they would become homeless and starve. Poverty is booming. WWII retired to Nevada, Arizona, Florida, they are the worst now. 45 million war babies need something, and most cannot afford it.

Ten years ago oil was $13 a barrel. We had full employment.

Aspies are not on anyones list of seats in the lifeboat.

I came to the same solution as Marcin, years before, and tractors, loaders, brick compactor, was about ten times as much. It was still the cheapest. I am a supporter of Marcin, he has it right. One truck load of his designs, some land with water, and people in tents could build over a summer.

Marcin had twenty-five come for a weekend, and build his 5,000 square foot shop. In winter.

His village design is great, but where do you find 200 with a purpose of forming a new community? Building the first of something is always a problem. Once it is built, crops planted in developed fields, many people would want to live there. It would be affordable living for the retired.

I am, but do not want to be, and think that an economic reason is the goal. Low overhead, using your labor, producing more than you consume, wealth.

I am looking for more business. Publishing is not going to employ hundreds. elance shows what happens if everyone trys to sell services on the web.

200 retired people would have an income of $2 Million. To make that as a payroll, takes $10 million in sales. At that they make $10,000. I think well of publishing, but not that well.

200 acres is $400,000, Marcin's Machines, $100,000, laying water and sewer, $100,000, then the rest is labor, a lot of labor. It becomes a trailer court without trailers, with pasture turned into fields.

$2 Million, three years, housing for 200, fields producing, firewood producing. $10,000 per person. About $2,000 for land, another $2,000 for machines, pipe, water, sewer treatment, fence, barns, feeding the fields.

The rest goes for buildings, which while mud is cheap, the roof, floors, windows, doors, fixtures, cost.

$10 to $15,000 per person is cheap for a lifetime home, with fields that can feed you, a wood lot that will keep you in fuel, and a private economy.

Proper ventilation and the use of cement can overcome these challenges. If we keep these things in mind and build in awareness of these problems, they can be overcome. Having outdoor recreation houses is one solution, choice of lighting, good ventilation, and equipment to detect radiation and radioactive particles another. If we are building in rock we can use sealants where construction/digging is completed. Using more electric on lighting is actually a good thing considering how much energy will be saved due to constant underground temperatures. We could also use sun pipes to bring light from the surface to our place underground.

The underground system also produces more building resources as populations expand and will allow for community exports. We could essentially live underground in a desert and have water efficient green houses to grow food. Though there is no water in a desert so hydro electric is probably out of the question...

Creeks would be expanded into large lakes where only the top would freeze, the flow and pressure would remain the same, generation would be constant and determined by the reservoir.

My only other issue is that using mud for brick depletes the top layer of soil, so you are going to have to dig for your mud blocks. Digging will also yield clays that make good fertilizer for the top layer. But extracting stone from ground quarries is still the best way of building. The Egyptians had some great drilling and cutting tech that was sand based. we could electrify their process and use the same methods to make materials. Though some heavy duty power tools and perhaps explosives will be required.

Stone age stone mining tech and power tools are a very efficient way to move forward on a budget.

As far as building your town on retirees though... You will have to be located near a well equipped hospital. The baby boomers won't want to go without their medical attention. You will also find that there will be more who are unable to work among them. Though for the younger BBs it might make sense to live on your land for a while to save up for later expenses and move off when they need more medical care.

I am in for shelter, deep shelter, filtered air. As suggested, tunnels for piping, food storage, where I would not want to live as the mole man, unless I needed to, and had the Mole Cave.

Earth brick, adobe, first remove the top soil till below the roots, there is 20-30% clay, makes a good brick. Compost the top soil with manure, straw, and spread it on the fields.

You still produce a borrow pit, useless unless planned in, like a pipeing tunnel and cellers. Each site is different, sub soil can contain rocks, hard to work. Drainage is another problem, you can only dig as deep as you can drain. Where bed rock is four foot, foundations sink. Build on bed rock, that is going to get wet.

Each site is different, has local materials, and also has regulations, Building Codes, Zoning, It is not easy to dam a stream when it is a trout stream. Towns downstream that use the water are picky about how you dispose of your waste.

As far as Aspies go, the lack of an established culture, building one village, is the only common skill. Building another the best income, as developed skills, the tools, will be available. War Babies near the hospital, airport, Wounded Warriors near the VA, there are other groups that could not build, but could use the finished product. Both mentioned have an income.

Public Service, banding together to do something for the common good.

Marcin used both Crowd Funding and Crowd Labor to start his project. It is being built stepwise. Raising large labor crews for short term project steps, can drive this. I was looking for a motel because ten living units are needed, food service, to be able to work on something else. Labor takes people, they need water, food, sewer, showers, even if they sleep in tents.

It is fast and cheap for construction, but not instant. It burns money long before it provides something.

While I can think of some current economic uses, War Babies, Aspie City, longer term Marcin is pointing out this is what the future could afford, in a post peak oil world. Providing your own food and fuel, being a large enough group to have diverse trades, serving 200+ customers. A proven Micro-Economy.

A lack of any of these things, food, shelter, fuel, clothes, blankets, shoes, and you would not survive. It is worth the expense and labor to have a fallback place. It takes years to develop fields, build, grow firewood.

We know aspies have a differance of thought and perception, the Psych Majors said so. Different from them, and something they are blind to. The only way to discover Aspie Culture, is build one.

We are not defective, we hit some high points, but are considered just weird. Out there we are, on WP we are not. A village could bring out our strengths.

We have been less employed, paid less than our IQ and Education would suggest, and future employment prospects look grim. Retiring out of the world, seems a wise choice.

You bring up some good points, my only question is on bedrock... I thought it was rock and would stay put, is it actually porous? How would you describe it?

Better take into consideration that looters may show up in such scenario.

Looters will show up, after Katrina drinkable water was life, the vast majority of the 1600 that died did so from a week of no water. One big reason for being rural. Cities without power, water, food, turn strange quickly.

Mountains are solid rock, soils are thin, and plants like a well drained four foot. Water ponds on top of rock, drains slowly, and some soils only support grass, because two foot down is water. Dig out a celler, it becomes a swimming pool.

Soil maps show what drains, what can be farmed, and even then calls for work, drainage, soil improvment. A lot of the better soils were ruined with tabacco and cotton. Clear the forests, plow everything, the topsoil washes away. East coast was tobacco, the south cotton, the west open range and herds of 100,000. Now the east is grass, the south pines, and the west brush. Short term gain, long term destruction.

There are still pockets of good soils. For the same effort, they will produce three times as much. Super Soils can be built that produce ten times as much. A culture from long ago, upper Amazon, made rock walls, filled within with everything they cut down, the ashes from their fires, their garbage, and their wastes, and produced rich food crops for generations.

Where farming started, irrigation, the fields salted up and would not produce anything. Dryland farming released moisture, exposed fine dust, and it blew away and formed the deserts of the middle east.

Homesteading and sod busting caused the Dust Bowl. Now a long term drought is spreading. Land that grew grain no longer will, and cattle land turns to desert. Now the south is in drought, Texas burns, and it is getting hot.

Finding a pocket of good soil with water, in the mountains, which still get rainfall, then taking care of it for long term. We are one step from eating dirt.
Weak soil produces weak plants, the bugs and molds take over, weeds thrive. Pesticides and Fertilizers only cover up the problem for short term.

Looters cannot steal dirt, crops in the field, or deal with a group of 200.

edited

Last edited by emtyeye on 24 Feb 2012, 6:18 am, edited 1 time in total.