3DN Interviews
Interviews from a Hopeful Region Part One
- Founder 1:
- It starts with the land. The company owns the land so that the company can give opportunity to the people. The land is the source.
- Farmer 1:
- I raise chickens. The land gives us seed to sprout to feed the chickens. The land gives us grass to feed the grasshoppers to feed the chickens. The chicken manure and grass feed the worms to feed the chickens. The chickens feed the people and the compost from the chickens feed the gardens that feed the people.
- Student 1:
- My father used to have to work in the mines. When there was no work we were hungry. Now there is always work. In season he gathers seeds to sell to the chicken farmers. In season he cuts the hay. In season he plants fruit and nut trees and lays water line. In season he plants the hedges that feed and protect the millet fields. We no longer go hungry. He tells me to get an education so I can do better work.
- Gardener 1:
- I take the compost from the chicken farmers to feed my vegetables. We grow tomatoes, peppers, onions, and dark green vegetables. The company drilled the well but they tell us to use only the water necessary. The water has to last a long time and do many things. We put the water on a little every day. Our vegetables keep the people healthy.
- Founder 2:
- I was there in the beginning. The people had no hope. There was no where to go, nothing to do. If you had anything someone else would take it but nobody had anything. We did not understand it at first. We built the first chicken house out of sticks, out of the way where no one can see it, strong enough to keep out the hyena. Chickens can eat many things that people can’t. We had nothing else to do so we tried it. It worked. We took our first batch of chickens to the city after only ten weeks. We have been doing it ever since.
- Chef 1:
- I used to cook out on the farms. I like it better in the city for my children. This part of the city used to be terrible. The company bought four blocks and enclosed them. No one gets in with a gun or a knife past the guards at the entrance. The city people like to come here to shop. They are safe here. My license is to make nutritious food and sell it inexpensive. The people need to eat good food to be healthy. I take the chicken, the tomatoes, the peppers and onion and make sauce. It makes the beans and flat bread taste good.
- Merchant 1:
- This is my shop at the mall. The company likes to make as many things by license as possible but we can’t make everything. I sell cook pots and such. The company can’t make them yet and it used to be expensive to import them. The company wants all its profits to buy land. The company helps me import the pots, the company makes its profit, I make my profit and the people can buy inexpensive pots.
- Old Guard 1:
- Twenty years ago the soldiers of the current government were the rebels. The old government controlled this city and the rebels controlled the countryside. The rebels would come through and abduct our young men to be soldiers and steal anything we couldn’t hide. Then the old government troops would come through and steal more. One night we went quietly into the rebel camp and killed them all. We took their weapons and when the government troops came we ambushed them when they crossed the river. We took their guns too. Some of the old government’s troops are still in the jungle and now they are the rebels. They don’t bother us much anymore and we have the truce with the new government. The company doesn’t bother anybody and doesn’t let anybody bother us. The company still makes sure all the members know how to shoot.
- Young Guard 1:
- When I was 14 I was abducted to be a soldier with the rebels. I escaped one night when the old government troops attached us in the bush. I was lucky to find a town run by the company. The company doesn’t pay much to guards. This old guy has his house and his pension and he doesn’t need much. I’m doing my service while I go to school. The members who have done their service get extra points when they apply for a license. I’m studying agriculture. I want to be a farmer like my father.
- Young Guard 2:
- My whole family was killed in the war. Neither the government nor the rebels took girls to fight so I came to the capital. I didn’t know what else to do. I lived on the streets. Sometimes I sold my body to get by. I knew I could get AIDS but it was worth it to survive another day. When the company started building this mall, they offered me a job sorting bricks. They gave me a tent to sleep in and regular food. I too am doing my service and going to school. I will do whatever the company asks.
- Architect 1:
- This mall is designed to be an oasis in the midst of chaos. The company bought four city blocks in the worst part of town. There was nothing here of use except the materials themselves. We didn’t have much in the way of equipment but we had lots of labor. These are poor people but they have strong hearts and strong backs. We tore everything down and saved as much brick and wood and steal as we could. Then we began building from the outside in. The entire perimeter is three stories of solid brick. The only way in is through the main entrance. All the other doors can only open from the inside and they are for emergency escape only.
- As you can see, the street down the middle is lined with shops backed by storage areas and living quarters for the shopkeepers. Delivery trucks are allowed in but no cars or private vehicles. Behind the shops, along the outside walls on both sides are the school, the library, the clinic, the government offices and the living quarters for those people. That leaves two courtyards. We selected plants that would produce food but also arranged the plants to make a pleasing and soothing place. People live closer together here in the city than in the farmlands. Living closer makes for more chances for strife. The Courtyards are a place to be calm and collect yourself. The mall council helps too. The members who live here elect the mall council and the mall council makes the rules and settles disputes. On the whole it works good.
- Hydrologist 1:
- The company bought this land about a year ago. It’s about five hundred acres and next to another parcel the company owns. They won’t license any part of it until we finish our work. We are near the desert here and water is critical. We are drilling to find a good aquifer to store the water we have. If we can find a shallow one without too much salt, we will design a system to trap the seasonal rain and allow it to run into the aquifer. Based on how much water is available, the company will license chicken farmers and gardeners to pump water from the aquifer for their purposes. Most of this land will not be farmed. The land is too dry and the water is too short. The company will license hunters to restore the range for the wild game animals. The Company will then license rich hunters, tourists with cameras and a limited harvesting for sale. The Company restores as much land to its natural state as it can and concentrates the people in a few areas where they can provide support and assistance efficiently.
- Administrator 1:
- The company is not a religious organization. Every member is free to believe as their conscience dictates. The company is not a racial or class conscious organization. All races and classes are invited to participate in the programs available. The company is not a charitable organization. The company never gives something for nothing. The company does not seek to make a profit to benefit its current members. The company’s only task is to provide economic opportunity.
- The company takes ten percent of every transaction in kind. It owns ten percent of the seeds gathered by those licensed to gather seed. The company owns ten percent of the hay cut to feed grasshoppers and ten percent of the grasshoppers raised. The company owns ten percent of the chickens raised on the seeds and the grasshoppers. The company takes its share of the chickens and sells them for cash and uses the money to buy more land, or loans it to new chicken farmers to produce more chickens.
- The members do not expect charity. The members ask only the opportunity to build a life from their own labor. Each license is a license to put the resources of the company to productive use. A member who uses the resources efficiently will do well. A member who merely works hard will get by. Any member who does not work hard or efficiently is squandering the opportunity and his license will be revoked.
- Auditor 1:
- Every licensee is equipped with a computer and software to account for every transaction. All of the computers are linked to the company’s main computer. The software tells the auditors when there is a significant change in the profitability of a licensee. If profits are dropping the company wants to know why and sends an auditor to investigate. Sometimes we can help solve a problem and bring profits back up. Sometimes there is a bigger problem like emotional problems or drug problems. Sometimes the licensee thinks they can steal the companies ten percent. The company wants to know.
- The members don’t mind the ten percent so long as they know that everyone is contributing equally.
- Biologist 1:
- The Company owns a longer stretch of this river. They do not allow fishing because the fish stocks are depleted. We are designing and building spawning grounds here. Some fish like mud flats, some reed swamps, others these gravel beds. The Company allows only fish ponds, hay fields and tree plantations in the flood plain.
- When the fish come to spawn, we will gather fertile eggs, hatch them and deliver the fry to the fish farmers. The fish in the river will come back because the Company is restoring the river. I am told that when the fish come back, the Company will market tours to sport fishermen. The people will eat the fish raised in the ponds.
- Biologist 2:
- This part of the jungle was mined for gold. The rain has turned it into this awful mess and killed most of the fish down stream. The good part is the Company bought the land cheap. We will build narrow ponds across the gullies and on contour. When the water collects we will plant water hyacinth and stock fish. When the hyacinth grows, we will pull it out and mulch the land between the ponds. As the hyacinth decays it provides nutrients for crops. The Maya developed this system in Central America.
- Banker 1:
- Between the members of the Company we use our own currency. We call it a Labor. Originally, it was the value of one day’s unskilled work. It was also originally equivalent to food and shelter for two people for a little over a day. Food and shelter was all the Company had to offer in the beginning. The value of the Labor floats like any other currency. As the productivity within the Company increases, the value of the labor goes up and it can buy more of what we produce internally and what we buy from outside. When everyone works hard, it is like a dividend to the members.
- Arbitrator 1:
- Whenever people try to work together, there will be disputes. The Company enforces a strict ethics code. They do not tolerate bribes, extortion, fraud or other cheating. The parties to a dispute are ethically bound to arbitrate in good faith and honesty. People can lose their licenses for ethical violations. Not many are willing to risk it.
- When there is a dispute I go and listen to both sides. I tell them what I think is fair and many times we resolve the dispute that way. If the parties cannot agree I file a report with the magistrate. The magistrate will decide the matter based on his best judgment. If the magistrate finds ethical violations he will refer the matter to the judges that determine such things.
- Legislator 1:
- The Company has its own internal representative democracy. Representation is by occupation. The farmers have the biggest vote. Licensees can organize however they choose and send as few or as many delegates as they like to the annual council. Each representative has one vote for every member they represent. One representative might a few or hundreds of votes.
- At the annual council, the representatives select a Board of Directors and a slate of officers. They also select judges who resolve disputes. The Judges appoint magistrates and arbitrators. Everybody is bound by the Articles of Agreement. The Articles of Agreement require the Board of Directors to use its best efforts to acquire resources, develop those resources and license them to members. The Company cannot compete with members.
- Representatives are paid by the licensees they represent. The representatives set the salary for the Board and the Officers. The representatives negotiate an incentive plan that rewards the Board for productivity and Board negotiates with the Officers to reward their productivity.
- The President:
- My job is to take the profits of the Company and acquire more resources. That means land yes, but land is only the beginning. It can be land that people can use to produce food or it can to be land where we can grow wild animals and attract tourists. Both require careful planning for the use of water. Both usually require restoring health to devastated ecosystems. You see we buy the depleted land cheap.
- Once we have the land my job is to get the best people possible to design the use of that land. We design for sustainable use. We design in cycles of use that result in increasing fertility and increasing diversity of species. These are complicated relationships and require the input of many skilled disciplines.
- We are a spherically integrated company. The more we produce internally, the more resources we retain and the more resources we can acquire. It is theoretically possible that one day the Company could own the entire world. That is not our goal and I don’t think it likely. But, we will continue to grow because the business plan works for the members.
- Banker 2:
- Most licensees are able to earn more than they need to live and play. All of that money is loaned to the Company. We pay interest in Labors. The company hires skilled people to make new land ready for new licensees and pays them with the borrowed Labors. The people paid in Labors can buy anything the Company has for sale. What the people produce in excess of what we can consume internally, the Company sells on the world market for foreign currency. All the foreign currency goes to buy more land. When the new land is licensed the Company makes its ten percent and pays the interest on the Labors it borrowed.
- Applicant 1:
- The Company sent me to engineering school. I’m a mechanical engineer. I had job offers in the United States but I want to work with the company. Fuel is one of the biggest costs for the Company and the Licensees. I designed a methanol generator and I am applying for a license to use it. You see, the Company has been planting trees in the flood plains since the beginning. They are currently licensed to be cut for firewood and building materials. The licensees are required to plant one and one half times the number of trees that they cut.
- Instead of firewood, I can cook the methanol out of the trees. The methanol will run trucks and tractors and what is left over is charcoal. The price I get for the methanol will make the charcoal cheaper than the firewood was before. I need the Company to loan me the money to build my first generator. If it is as profitable as my figures suggest, I will be making methanol generators to sell to other people who want to license the Company’s trees for methanol and charcoal. In the meantime, I do not mind cutting and planting trees.
Interviews from a hopeful Region Part 2
- Think of a society as an organism. Within the organism are organs. Organs are sets of relationships that contribute to the success of the organism. Most societies are based on the set of relationships between the people and the land that the people occupy. A hunter gatherer people succeed to the extent they do not deplete the natural environment. An agrarian people must protect the quality of their soil and the crops that they produce in order to succeed. Mercantile people add another layer of relationships over agrarian relationships. Industrial people add another set and so on.
- Sets of relationships can be designed to offer the opportunity for success to disadvantaged groups of humans. The concept is not unlike the plan our forefathers developed for the United States of America and not unlike developing a business plan for a family business. The set of relationships that affect the lives of any given group of people can be adjusted.
- The two dominate social organisms that exist today are the nation state and the multinational corporation. Neither provides an adequate model for the current proposal. Most nation states include a set of relationships whereby a privileged class depends on the labor of a class with less privilege and less opportunity. Multinational corporations buy resources with the accumulated capital of the privileged classes to produce products. The owners of these corporations have no input in the decisions of the corporation. Those decisions are purely profit driven based on a narrow set of relationships. The decisions are made by hired managers who are measured by the size of the dividend paid regardless of the costs that may be imposed on other sets of relationships.
- Neither are formerly dominate sets of relationships adequate. Tribal societies may be egalitarian but that form of organization is incapable of the complexity needed to succeed in the modern world. Monarchy, feudalism and communism have all proven to be prone to problems resulting from the inadequacies of those who make decisions in those types of organisms. (China may be an exception for communism) If the goal of society is to provide the opportunity for every individual to reach their individual potential, the society must necessarily adopt a policy of equal opportunity and some form of decision making that is responsive to the needs of the most vulnerable members. Since the existence of an opportunity does not mean that an individual will take advantage of it, the society also needs a mechanism within our organism that rewards participation in proportion to the contribution of the individual members.
- The first step in defining a social organism is defining membership. We are looking for a set of relationships that can be manipulated to the benefit of the human members. We can look at all human beings in the world as members of one organism or we can look at each family as an organism. The organism containing all humans is extremely complex. That organism is malfunctioning to the extent that it is unable to provide adequate food, shelter and opportunity for its members. Each family succeeds depending on the skill with which the family members take advantage of available opportunities. The opportunities available necessarily result from a larger set of relationships in which the family finds itself. A family in the United States or Europe has different opportunities than a family in Sudan, for example. We search for a model set of relationships that provides opportunities to the human members of the organism even in the most impoverished of circumstances. Taking any existing nation state group would include the existing relationships that detract from the success of the organism, we envision a new, voluntary membership criteria that limits membership to those who can contribute to the success of the organism. Theoretically, we could design many organisms with varying relationships designed into them and see which ones are successful.
- As mentioned earlier, the base set of relationships is the set of relationships between the people and the land that they occupy. The productivity of land is related to the amount of water and sun available. People can interact with land to either increase or decrease its productivity. We have seen overpopulated areas entirely depleted of the lands productive capacity. Therefore, the first principle we derive is that our organism must control access to and use of the land the people occupy. The organism needs the authority for watershed management, wildlife management, and management of where human activities will take place to facilitate an on going increase in the productivity of the land.
- After the relationships with the land are established and productive, our organism has a nearly infinite number of potential relationships that it can establish, both internally, and through interaction with other organisms. (One could also view each subgrouping within the planetary community as an organ. However, we prefer to visualize the process as smaller organisms competing and cooperating for success.) We can experiment with relationships between members, between what is produced and consumed, what is produced for external sale and what is produced for internal consumption, what is purchased from outside and how the “profits” are utilized.
- Given the importance of the relationship between people and land, the first priority of our organism is acquisition of control of land. The goal of the control of land is to provide reliable sources of food and shelter. After food and shelter, the people need health care and education. Once the members have health and education, additional potential relationships can be developed.
- The Company described in Part 1 is one possible organism of which we speak. The Company began by utilizing formerly unused resources to produce reliable food sources for the members. We refer to this as expanding biological potential. In a sense, all agriculture relies on biological potential. Traditional agriculture, however, relies on simplifying the set of biological relationships. We believe that higher productivity can be achieved through increasing the complexity of biological relationships. In the example, the members raise hay to feed grasshoppers to feed chickens. They also collect seeds from native plants, sprout the seeds to increase the seeds nutrient value, and feed the sprouted seeds to the chickens. The hay and chicken manure is composted in the presence of worms and the worms are feed to the chickens. The compost is used to raise vegetables. When chickens are cleaned, the awful is exposed to flies. When the maggots are grown, the combined waste is dried to be fish food.
- We do not have scientific evidence of the productivity of these systems. They are probably not cost effective in our industrialized society because of the cost of labor. However, in the situation we find in underdeveloped countries around the world, labor is plentiful and food is expensive. The missing ingredient in such places is the control of land and the information to establish the necessary relationships. There has been work done in restoring depleted lands by eliminating the free grazing of animals. Where animals are raised in confinement, the humans can better control the plant cover on the land and the manure from the animals is easily collected for use as fertilizer. We anticipate that, when biologists begin thinking in terms of these relationships, there are many more potential increases in the productive capacity of land through the increase in the complexity of biological relationships.
- In the example, the Company defines membership based on the contribution of labor to the company enterprises. The Company owns the land and licenses the land’s productive capacity to individuals that have skills necessary to operate that portion of the Companies enterprises. The licensee is entitled to keep all revenue over expenses less a share due the Company. The Company’s share varies depending on the investment by the Company. The Company’s share could be likened to an income tax. It is however, closer to an investors share of profits. The Company takes its share of profits in kind and has the option of spending its share on labor to develop new resources, or selling its share externally to acquire capital assets that cannot be produced internally.
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