6 ms·
Squad Wealth
- PaulHoule 6y agoI am careful with that word. I start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squad and would expect it to mean "8-14 members" -- if at all possible I would call a 20 person organization a Platoon comprised of 2 squads.
- steveklabnik 6y agoThe article seems to agree with you: > the ideal squad count is no more than 12.
- analognoise 6y agoThis sounds like the kind of thing a couch surfer with no family or job would be really amped by.
- groby_b 6y agoIt appeals way beyond that. Marginalized groups have known that concept since... well, forever. It's "chosen family" or "framily" (friend family) in the circles I'm familiar with. The more technical term is "intentional communities". If you search for it, you'll find an extremely wide range of them. This particular "squad" thing has more of a tech bent, but it still falls within that concept. The page also highlights one of the problems that squads face - it's a highly cohesive group with very closely aligned interests. That often makes their communication less interesting/understandable/relatable to outsiders. (Which poses an interesting problem - the more uniform the group becomes, the more efficient in-group communication is. To the point where you cannot attract new members to the group, and it slowly withers away)
- analognoise 6y agoThose concepts don't give me the couch surfer "all you have to do is bottom-up the economy" but "you'll mostly be paid in memes" vibe.
- BTinfinity 6y agoWith the amount of memes used throughout and constant informal langauge i'm not sure if this is a serious post or if i'm missing out on a joke. Not really sure if it was trying to put specific point across either
- jborichevskiy 6y agoIt's serious, though I agree it's a bit muddled in all the memes and references. The core point as I understood it: the internet is quickly blurring the line between a company and a group of friends working together. Two of the limiting factors are our communication tools and financial/corporate structures. My take: as this model become more prevalent, more alternatives to traditional employment and education routes open up allowing creators, researchers, and engineers to work on interesting problems without having to find one another through educational institutions and corporations.
- luckylion 6y agoIs there even a legal distinction in the US? Germany has a somewhat complicated and sometimes surprising law around all of that, but essentially you can form a "company" without any official acts. It's not necessarily a company to earn money, it's mostly about liability, e.g. who pays when it falls apart. I couldn't quite make it through all the memes, because I found them too annoying, but I believe that, at least over here, the Squad would likely form a GbR ("Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts"), which includes individual liability for everything done within that company. It's somewhat fuzzy what's part of the Squad's work, but essentially you could be on the hook for something your buddy does with your personal savings, without limit. It's probably better to formalize it and choose a limited liability company.
- rswail 6y agoSounds like a "partnership" where the liability for debts are shared between partners (as is income and equity). Australia has 3 "corporate" trading structures and trusts for holding assets: * Sole Trader * Company * Partnership https://www.business.gov.au/planning/business-structures-and-types/business-structures https://www.business.gov.au/planning/business-structures-and...
- eximius 6y agoThere's a 600 acre plot of relatively cheap land near me that I 2/3rds joking suggest me and friends should go in on together and start a hi tech commune. So far plenty of interest but no commitments. :(
- xur17 6y agoWhat does something like that go for?
- neckardt 6y agoLooks like in the right location you could get it for around $1M: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/Mile-156-State-Hwy-77-Winkelman-AZ-85192/2084923968_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/Mile-156-State-Hwy-77-Win...
- ybot 6y agoIt can vary a lot depending on location, but here's a search on zillow to give you a sense of the market in California: https://bit.ly/3gEqOkw https://bit.ly/3gEqOkw (bitly link, because the URL specifying the search filters is unreasonably long)
- eximius 6y agoThe one Im looking at is $2.25M. A bargain for the property, still a bit much for little old me by myself.
- modriano 6y agoDoes it have 1+ gigabit service? Plumbing? Roads? How far is it to the nearest major airport?
- eximius 6y agoThe property is adjacent to a residential area, so sort of to all of them, but not plug and go. Even if it was on the property, 600 acres is big enough that it might not be in the right place. I think it's just shy of 1.5hrs from a major airport.
- legerdemain 6y agoWith the exception of streamers with a substantial regular audience, people taking active part in social justice events, and devs lucky enough to work on lively community projects, average people in my peer group have not started organically bonding into bands of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers of the information superhighway. For example, I've watched a lot of roommate groups in shared houses fall apart as housemates pack up and go home to live with their parents. This essay honestly feels like the author has transferred the style and cliches of mid-90s techno-utopianism into an essay promoting the benefits of neoprimitivist permaculture, buzzwords and all.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cinquemb 6y agoI'm starting to see something like this happen with devs that pursue many contract work (non community projects) and pool effort/work and split the spoils (its a group of two, one usually does db stufff, one usually does application stuff, but both can write/ship code. I might work with them in the future, working with one them now). But overall, I'd agree, something like this is a non starter if each individual in a "squad" cant some how contribute meaningfully in part to its wealth. Analogy might be to a specops squad to killing: might have a sniper, a couple of riflemen, a grenadier/demo, someone who can handle heavy weapons, and maybe a tactical communications/CAS person; all them can kill you in their own way and in a variety of environments, missing one reduces their ability in said environments.
- twic 6y ago> mid-90s techno-utopianism Reading the article, i could almost believe i was reading an interview with someone from the Media Lab in an issue of Wired back in the day.
- rdiddly 6y agoI have to hold myself back from "Oh brother"ing and scoffing myself to death with this, because I respect the fact that they're paying attention and their ideas aren't so mired in the past the way mine, basically, are.
- megameter 6y agoI get the vibe. Squad, maybe not. But collective? Gang? Tribe? Yeah, that's been a thing for a while, but it really accelerated lately. It's easy to stumble upon the "permeable boundaries" Heather Marsh writes of online and create an organism that isn't a legal entity and isn't for life. And there's more of them all the time.
- goodmattg 6y agoThis essay is both extremely poignant and nearly unintelligible, which is a vibe.
- chrisjarvis 6y agoI thought I was gonna hate this but I ended up enjoying it a lot haha, thanks for sharing!
- lifeisstillgood 6y agoI heard Michael Munfer on a podcast recently taking about higher education - that it is being dis-intermediated or broken down (cannot remember the right term) And he suggested a new university that is likely to arise - where there is no campus but you are housed with (your squad) you get weekly tickets to the Proms or a new theatre etc etc. A whole rounded but decentralised education I think not that squads are our future but the active conscious creation of them are
- Smaug123 6y agoA word I've often heard for the "dis-intermediated or broken down" sentiment is "unbundled", by the way.
- lifeisstillgood 6y agoThanks !!! That's what i meant :-) PS Michael Munger not Munfer
- VectorLock 6y agoSmall cliques of ~12 users is pretty much the long tail of Discord servers.
- igor47 6y agoMakes me think of the bash' from Too Like the Lightning
- darawk 6y agoI related pretty strongly to this. If you didn't, I highly recommend trying to form a tight-knit little group or two like this. It's really great.
- venantius 6y agoSeconded. I notice a lot of comments scoffing at this and talking about group disintegration - have now been part of the same “group chat” / squad for 6-7 years and it was inchoate but there even before then. We do everything described in the essay. Reading it was eerie.
- darawk 6y agoYa, I felt the same way. Like they had been reading our channel or something. Good to know other people are doing the same thing.
- rboyd 6y agoAnecdotal observation but from living in a kind of squad in my early 20s, two main problems ripped ours apart: 1) wealth distribution among unequal contribution and 2) romantic relationships and the changing dynamic they introduce. When I think about groups that survive they seem to either have strong top-down power hierarchies (as in the cult or the corporation), or otherwise de-emphasize money and sex (as in the monastery).
- _delirium 6y ago> When I think about groups that survive they seem to either have strong top-down power hierarchies (as in the cult or the corporation), or otherwise de-emphasize money and sex (as in the monastery). There's also the 'clan', essentially an extended family with strong financial and social ties, often treating wealth quasi-collectively. Varies by culture and era, but my clan (in the Mediterranean region) has been around in current form for about 100 years and is fairly resilient. Varying incomes and romantic relationships (among other things) cause problems here too, but the social structure has developed ways to manage them. There's a fairly elaborate culturally rooted system of gifts, obligations, unofficial hierarchies, etc. that keeps some of it working.
- sersi 6y agoThat's super interesting, can you expand? How is wealth treated quasi-collectively despite varying incomes? Is it shared between members? Or do members help with certain expenses like education, health, housing? I'm rather curious about this
- waihtis 6y agoInteresting. Is the clan by itself the bonding force or are there other aspects (religion or something else) which define the clan boundaries?
- dash2 6y agoTwenty-somethings often think that friends are more important than family, and friendship groups will last forever. They’re not.