Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Strike the earth!

Good idea, don't count me in, though.

Meh, I just like to vote. Don't care.

You'll probably have a lot of "Fun*", that's for sure.

GET A JOB, YOU HIPPIES.

[Kadzar]

Well, I can live without cats.

Anyways, I've been thinking about roofs and suchlike. It'll depend on the biome what sort of roof and drainage system we use, but it would be nice to have roof access on hot nights, and at my parents' house we have no gutters and instead have a grapevine on one side and some sort of berry bushes on the other, both of which my dad uses to make wine. I don't know what the specifics of this particular drainage system are, but if it's possible to integrate it, we can avoid having gutters to clean and have a source of boozable plants. So there's that.

[PTTG??]

Looking at various construction materials, I'm thinking semi-prefab steel buildings. With two dorm wings and a central "public" area, we can have a very efficient structure. Since it's effectively three two-story cubes, construction costs will be basically as low as possible. That said, there's no reason to discount renovating an existing structure.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Good point on the zoning Aqizzar. But it is possible to get the zoning of a piece of land changed. It depends on your city council. A smaller town is better (not small like tiny tiny, but not big like Atlanta or Seattle where they're all self-important).

Anyway, a small apartment building in a cheap neighborhood would probably be a better choice. Knocking out walls to create some larger spaces for a rec room or LAN room may be feasible. And you've got roof access well above street level. The plumbing and electrical for individual living units is already done. Just put people in the studio / efficiency apartments and use anything larger for common rooms, workshops, storage, laundry room, workout space, etc.

You know, the whole gang could do a craft booth at farmer's markets. Soap is an easy one. Get your pottery on and grow plants on the roof, and you've got bonsai to sell. Knit Cthulhus and beholders. If someone is into sewing, beading, etc you can make little things people would want to buy. Hand bookbinding. And throughout the year you sell stuff on Etsy.

But how would you handle these sales? Say the breakdown for crafts looks like this:

A: Coding
B: Sewing
C: Making chainmail
D: Bookbinding
E: Knitting
F: Bonsai
G: Pottery

Clearly F and G need to make a deal between them. B and E may have some synergy. But A doesn't really interact with the other crafts. Let's say A creates a website where people can tell everyone their problems and gets a ton of revenue from Google ads. While C doesn't have a machine to knit chainmail so he has to do it by hand, which is slow, so he doesn't make much money.

Does everyone just pool their money? Does everyone put 30% of their income into a personal bank account and 70% into the group fund? Who controls the group fund (as in, sure we vote on things, but whose name is on the bank account? Who is physically able to walk into the bank and empty the account and walk away? Who do you trust?).

How is this taxed? You may need to create a not-for-profit or non-profit business. Say B sells $1000 worth of sewing stuff in a year, and gives $700 to the org. I think since that's a charitable donation he's not taxed on it, and his taxable income is $300. But maybe the government looks at that as a no-no because he's also a member of the org. In any case, the individual incomes would probably remain below the minimum taxable income, so nobody would be paying taxes anyway. They do stuff for each other rather than pay money outside the commune.

For that concern, I'd suggest the following skill sets:

Computer Hardware
Computer Software
--Networks and security
--Databases, web coding
Electrician
Carpentry (Framing, floors, windows and doors, roofing, furniture)
Mechanic (The commune would need cars that he knows how to fix, and can fix in the basement or whatever. Ideally all the same model)
Plumbing
Drywall / Painting
Cooking
Small business administration

Desirable but secondary:
Welding
Sewing (Most clothes would come from thrift stores anyway, making your own daily clothes isn't worth it)

EDIT: Creating the business would help prevent someone from just cleaning out the till and walking away, if you kept the communal money in a bank account. The person would basically be a wanted criminal at that point, because he doesn't own that money, the commune does, and they would immediately report it to the police.

The board of directors could be the commune members. Usually there's a worry that a power struggle could happen with the BOD but in this case, we must assume that we start with people who are all in this together and don't want to screw each other over. If you don't have that, there is absolutely zero chance of this working.

Having a non-profit business license also lets you accept charitable donations. The business can own the property, too, so there's no worry about one person selling the joint or something.

[PTTG??]

All good thoughts, Leo. Any idea how outside jobs would interact with that? I do like the idea of an NPO.

[ein]

Soap is an easy one.

I could do this.
We may need to raid liposuction clinics every now and then though.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Soap is an easy one.

I could do this.
We may need to raid liposuction clinics every now and then though.

*Waves a replica Portal Gun around* Hurry up, Gladys. Load up that fat.

I saw soaps in polyhedral dice shapes (the sacred solids plus the d10). Those would sell well.

[Vector]

Eh, I can do cooking okay--but I'm not sure I'd be willing to sign on as a chef.  First off, I'm a vegetarian, and second off, that shit takes a lot of time for one person to do.  A thirty-person dinner is a ridiculous time investment.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Eh, I can do cooking okay--but I'm not sure I'd be willing to sign on as a chef.  First off, I'm a vegetarian, and second off, that shit takes a lot of time for one person to do.  A thirty-person dinner is a ridiculous time investment.

Think more like seven ;P
If you had 30 people, more than one would be cooking, right? Just having someone to assist, doing all the chopping and dishwashing, would make that a whole lot more feasible.

You see economies of scale especially with food. But beyond a core devoted group you start to see free riders. I have no idea how many is an ideal number. Seven seems very manageable and likely. Thirty seems high to me.

All good thoughts, Leo. Any idea how outside jobs would interact with that? I do like the idea of an NPO.

Let's take the database / web design guy. He takes care of maintaining the website that holds everyone's webcomics and stuff, he helps people work with their online retail stuff, that sort of thing. Maybe he drives when the commune does their accounting and taxes.

But in those things he doesn't actually generate any income himself. He facilitates. One could argue that the ad revenue from the front page is from him, and he might have a section of the site himself. But he probably looks around on the Internet and finds jobs locally or where he can telecommute.

Let's say he finds a job where he builds a commerce site for some small business, and he gets paid $1000 for the job. 70% goes into the commune, 30% into his personal bank account.

The thing is, his rent is paid. His food is paid. His clothes are taken care of. If he's a true geek, he needs what - some tech here and there? And some tech he doesn't need to buy because it's already in the commune. Say, someone wants Photoshop. Well, I don't know how many installs you get, say three. But I wonder if you could install it on three local servers and up to three people could be running it at once. You just grab one that nobody else is using at the moment. People need to shut down their programs when not in use to free them up.

What I'm getting at is that 30% going into his bank account is more like savings. He probably buys treats or little gadgets or whatever but he's actually putting money away. More than likely, people wouldn't be putting money into savings living alone.

Heck, at that point you could probably get a group rate on medical insurance.

Again, say the mechanic has a buddy who needs his brakes, pads, hubs, rotors, bearings, etc. replaced. It's a decent-sized job. Mechanic orders the parts using the commune fund (commune votes on this, but it should pass if there's money there) and does the work. Mechanic gets paid, puts the 70% in commune and 30% in his own account. The 70% completely covers the parts cost and then some. Basically, everyone draws money-making resources from the commune. The 30% personal money is untouchable, it's just not part of the equation.

I'd like to think people would be willing to do 100% into the commune. I think that's what the original communist idea was. But people in America are going to have trouble with the idea that they will walk away from this in a decade with nothing in their pockets. Of course, they don't realize that they'll have nothing in a decade of capitalism either.

Maybe 70% isn't enough to cover the costs of running the commune. Maybe it's too much, and the extra funds can be spent on stuff for everyone (like hardware upgrades, speakers, parties, etc).

The simple system I showed for the mechanic and the web designer does have one problem: people whose crafts involve their own skills but little materials, such as a lawyer or a web designer, draw $0 from the commune and then give back 70%. The people who use materials, such as a soaper or mechanic or jeweler, draw $50 from the commune and then give back 70%. (For example).

This means the people who don't need materials actually contribute more in net than people who do use materials. In general, however, jobs that use materials should probably have higher profits than those without materials, so it evens out.

The commune also needs to make sure they know what the books look like, so they can vote no on materials expenditures that are known to end up losing the commune money. These are cases where the materials cost more than 70% of the retail price.

[PTTG??]

On the other hand, you only need to cook once a month.
 
Ok, maybe a bit more than that. We'd need to have the ability to vote people out of some chores in case someone's idea of cooking for 32 is a LOT of raman.
 
I did some math, though, and we can get eggs for ten cents less a piece in bulk (that is, in pallets of 1800 eggs). That works out to nearly 200 dollars a month for breakfasts alone ($.1 * 2 eggs * 32 breakfasts * 30 days). The question isn't if you can find the money to join- it's how you can afford not to!
 
'Course, supplement that pallet of eggs with a couple dozen hens eating scraps, and you could double those savings. (Hens generally lay 1 egg every 25 hours, but some breeds lay 363-364 or so eggs a year.)
 
Chickens are also rather efficient spacewise, though if too crowded, they can go caniballistic, much like people.

[sonerohi]

Eggs, black beans, rice, and broccoli are some of (in current market) the best foods for cost vs nutrients. Especially in bulk.

[Vector]

I personally think that some options for personal spending would be a good idea--not due to "walking away with no money," but because there's some esoteric personal items that will cost a reasonable amount of funds, and which no one else is likely to use.  People like to own their own stuff, in short.  I'm a girl.  I'm also a martial artist.  That means I want my own damn practice weapons (and real weapons), and yes--it also means that I'm occasionally going to go buy clothing or a big honking stack of math textbooks.  And no, other people will not be able to wear that clothing, and no, I do not feel like going without it or needing to report such expenditure to the commune.  People need some sort of privacy.

Eggs, black beans, rice, and broccoli are some of (in current market) the best foods for cost vs nutrients. Especially in bulk.

Being scientific is one thing, and eating what we want to eat is another.  We can be as cost-effective as we like, but I don't know anyone who would want to eat dishes based largely on eggs, black beans, rice, and broccoli for years.

I'll come clean: I'm addicted to curry.  There will be problems if I don't have the money to make my own damned dinner once in a while.

[Jreengus]

You should be able to make enough savings from buying in bulk to avoid having to buy the cheapest food available.

[DJ]

Chickens are another major reason to go rural. And if you're going to raise animals for meat, nothing beats pigs. You can buy 3-4 weaned piglets in the spring, and fatten them up to 100-150kg each by November. You can feed them nothing but leftovers, pumpkins and grass, all of which cost practically nothing. You'd need a smoke house to preserve the meat, though, but just imagine the taste of that delicious home-made prosciutto. You can either have a butcher come and slaughter them, or slaughter them yourself, depending on how pansy you are.

My family used to keep 2 pigs every year (we stopped because we don't have time for it any more), and it's not that much work nor does it smell as bad as you think (if you clean the sty daily, you can't smell it at all beyond 4-5 metres).

Crops also aren't all that time-consuming, if you get a small tractor. A professional farmer working full-time can produce enough food for hundreds of people, so 3-4 people working a couple of hours a day should be able to provide for a small commune.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Let's look at some hard numbers.

Assume we have 7 people willing to strike the earth. They each come into this with the same money they would need to spend to secure a studio apartment: first months' rent and a security deposit.


Studio apartment
1 month of rent     $600
Deposit             $250
Total               $850

Seven of those would have a total of $5950 to spend on the first month of housing.

Here is a Craigslist link for an 8-bedroom 3 bathroom house in Tacoma. I don't know how long that link will be good for. Suffice to say, $2000 deposit and $2800 per month rent and the house looks decent, older, and sturdy.

You can assume $40 per person per month in utilities. Each of these people would need to be able to pay $540 per month minimum to support themselves in rent.

If they all got into the house, they would save a tiny bit of money on the initial and only $200 each per month. Probably not worth it.

A better example would be this. Puyallup. 7 bedrooms, 3 baths, not a great looking house but maybe okay. $290k. That means seven people would split it and in the end it would cost each of them $41k. You might think that's a great price for a house, but you need to look for a 1 br 0.5 bath house and see how much that costs.

Perhaps a cheaper option would be to buy a piece of land and build on it, but I don't know what the costs of construction are these days. Based on one website, we could expect with a very simple design to pay $80 per square foot. So let's look at that:

Each person's living space will be about 20x20. Big bedroom. 400 sqft x 7 people. 2800.
We need a kitchen space. 20x20 is acceptable. Dining room, double that. So 400 sqft x 3. 1200.
Need a communal lounge. Probably 30x30. 900.
Three bathrooms seems normal. Each is 10x10. 100 x 3. 300.
Need some storage space. Say 10x10 per person. 100 x 7. 700.
Workshop / garage. Three vehicles (or two cars and two motorcycles for example). Each space is about 5x15, double that for space around the cars. 100 x 3. 300.

Add it up and you're at 6200 sqft. Almost $500k.

But those are fairly large living spaces. I think we can't cut down the kitchen much, or the garage, or the bathrooms. So let's go with this:

Bedrooms 10x10
Kitchen 20x20
No dining room, we use the lounge which is 30x30
Bathrooms 10x10
Storage 5x5
Garage 10x30

That's down to about 2800 sqft, about $225k

Now let's get a little crazy. This guy says a  20,000 sqft warehouse costs $35 per sq ft. Assuming it scales down to our desired 3000-6000 sq ft, you'd pay

3000 sq ft: 105k
6000 sq ft: 210k

This place claims a prefab steel building would cost $20 to $30 per sqft, with modular traditional buildings (desirable for insulation purposes) would cost $50 per sqft. You could use steel for the garage / workshop and for the storage spaces.

3000 sq ft steel only: 75k
6000 sq ft steel only: 150k

Of course when building your own structures you still have the extra cost of the land. And the fees and permits and such for the building project.

This page suggests that half of that $80 per sqft is labor and half is materials. You'll spend another $40 per sqft on land, and $40 per sqft on builder profit margin and waste. Which suggests that if you do all your own labor ...

But nah, that would be pretty difficult. You'd need at least a couple trained carpenters. But if you did,

3,000 sqft (materials only): 120k
6,000 sqft (materials only): 240k

[sonerohi]

Eggs, black beans, rice, and broccoli are some of (in current market) the best foods for cost vs nutrients. Especially in bulk.

Being scientific is one thing, and eating what we want to eat is another.  We can be as cost-effective as we like, but I don't know anyone who would want to eat dishes based largely on eggs, black beans, rice, and broccoli for years.

I'll come clean: I'm addicted to curry.  There will be problems if I don't have the money to make my own damned dinner once in a while.

Never said we did, eh?