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Consider an undergraduate program where ~150 people each contributed say $50,000 each to collectively buy a large parcel of land and create their own eco-regene

by ada1981 9y ago

Consider an undergraduate program where ~150 people each contributed say $50,000 each to collectively buy a large parcel of land and create their own eco-regenerative village. That would be $7.5 MM dollars. Over the course of a few years they would build micro-homes, permaculture farms, invent, build, hack, create art, take free online courses, host traveling scholars, incubate start-up ideas, etc. They'd be a self-sustaining techno-tribal commune. After 4 years, they'd have the skills to live sustainably, work together, and would have basic food, shelter and community needs taken care of for the rest of their lives, and they would be free to invent, create art, do activist work, help other students boot up similar learning communities, travel among other similar villages the world over, etc.

umeshunni 9y ago
So, how do these people learn the skills to build houses, physics and math skills that are required to 'invent', basic electrical and computer science skills to know how to program and so on?
- ada1981 9y ago
  We have a group of mentors that will work with the initial group and then the graduates will help the others. Self-directed learning is nothing new, sudsval.org has been doing it for decades with k-12 students and many people are self-taught to expert level at any number of things. The community will determine what they need to learn and will be empowered with support in those efforts. There will also be a collective wiki knowledge base that students can add too, including their own courses and projects so others can benefit from them. Everything is open source and available to anyone who'd like to contribute or learn.
AstralStorm 9y ago
The problem is that the solution is extremely fragile at the beginning. See, nobody is a specialist since birth and learning even mildly basic repair is getting harder each year, while the hardware gets more complex. So such a society becomes fragile when important members who mentor a trade fall out (age, obligations etc.). You can buffer those problems sometimes via shared funds, sometimes not.

umeshunni 9y ago

So, how do these people learn the skills to build houses, physics and math skills that are required to 'invent', basic electrical and computer science skills to know how to program and so on?

ada1981 9y ago
We have a group of mentors that will work with the initial group and then the graduates will help the others. Self-directed learning is nothing new, sudsval.org has been doing it for decades with k-12 students and many people are self-taught to expert level at any number of things. The community will determine what they need to learn and will be empowered with support in those efforts. There will also be a collective wiki knowledge base that students can add too, including their own courses and projects so others can benefit from them. Everything is open source and available to anyone who'd like to contribute or learn.

AstralStorm 9y ago

The problem is that the solution is extremely fragile at the beginning. See, nobody is a specialist since birth and learning even mildly basic repair is getting harder each year, while the hardware gets more complex. So such a society becomes fragile when important members who mentor a trade fall out (age, obligations etc.). You can buffer those problems sometimes via shared funds, sometimes not.