I want thoughts from the integral community on a political economic idea

I’m not sure if the ‘uncategorized’ category is the best place for this. I’d like to discuss an idea with integrally informed people for making land common property. I expressed this idea in an article on Substack here. Please let me know your thoughts on this. Thanks

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Hi Thomas, welcome to the community! :pray: interesting ideas and certainly a good proposal. It could leverage the spread of integral consciousness adoption on an increasingly wide level. I had somewhat similar ideas pop up and leave in a sense of having Living Off Grid Beige-Magenta territories for people close to stage clear who want to live as simply as possible.

Yes, at some point community and land go together. Well the problem is we have lost the commons. It’s all been commodified. And the coming together is more than just peaceful coming together closely. So right idea. More to it:

It is an interesting idea, and one in an area I have also been spending a lot of time considering.

I am struggling to see the benefit of using crypto though. What is the rationale for not using a normal business structure and allowing people to have common ownership through equity?

I’m not sure what is meant here by ‘normal business structure’ in that I’m not familiar with business structures in general. The purpose of using a digital currency - not necessarily a crypto currency - is to leverage the purchasing power of the business to buy land. For example a $100 property is brought into The Commons. 100 LCs (LC is the name of the currency) get minted. Those LCs get sold at market for 99% the peg fetching $99. That $99 is used to purchase another property for $99. 99 more LCs are minted and those are sold at market for 99% peg fetching $98.10 dollars and so forth. If LCs can maintain a market value of 99% that gives the business 100x purchasing power. That said I’m all for finding a better way of quickly getting land into the commons if there is one.

I hope this was clarifying.

I didn’t mean to be confrontational. I have been observing digital currencies since they first started and I have always been confused with what they add to a process like this.

To buy the land, a legal entity will need setting up for ownership - likely more than one as in most jurisdictions the operational entity and investment entity need to be kept separate - traditionally then the capital to acquire the asset - land in this case - would be raised either through selling equity in a business, through taking debt, or through setting up an investment vehicle to invest on behalf of others.

Often, this third approach is used, and there are various ways of structuring them, in all cases the investors have strict legal protections on their capital (assuming this is being done in a country with a well functioning legal system).

Digital currencies are typically used as a method to raise capital for the investment vehicle (the third approach), but while regulations and laws around digital currencies have improved, they still have fewer protections than a more ‘traditional’ approach. This means that people who buy coins are a further step removed from the asset and with fewer legal protections than if they invested through other methods. For those reason, all I see them doing is disinter-mediating the investors from the asset and creating additional governance complexities.

My assumption is that I must be missing something, as their use for purposes like use are becoming so common.

(I am not a lawyer, I have just spent some time working in spaces related to investment).

Sorry it took awhile to respond here. I wasn’t sure how to tie this into the idea I proposed. Here’s my crack at that.

In a system where land is common property and exclusive use to a location is awarded to the party willing an able to pay the most for it, like what I’m proposing, access to land everywhere - not just rural areas - is much more affordable. In that scenario, groups of people - whether grouped by psychographic development or shared interest or whatever you can think of - could form local communities much more easily

Thanks for welcoming me to the community. I appreciate it.

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Yes. Yes. Yes.
I haven’t listened to this interview (I’ll be listening as opposed to watching) yet. I’ll respond with my thoughts on it after I have.

Edit:
I’ve listened to the majority of this interview now. The basic ethic of the plan I proposed is that everyone has an equal right to be here. The plan addresses this at an individual level and it would be easier for individuals to move closer to the other individuals in their community. I’m using ‘community’ here the same way it was described in the interview - a group of people who are communing with the same soul.

What this plan doesn’t address, at least directly, is nation states. Communities and societies (interview’s definition of soulless groups of people) may become nation states. Nation states are the actual landlords in that they’re the ones doing the actual enforcement of territory. Nation states are inherently unethical in that they don’t recognize everyone’s equal right to be here. They’re based on the notion that (for example) Americans have more a right to be in the central portion of North America than non-Americans or (to be more controversial) Israelis/Palestinians have more a right to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean than non-Israelis/Palestinians.

A way to address this problem on the level nation states, within the context of this plan, might have to wait until the fruition of the plan. The fruition would be that all land is in The Commons and is in perpetual auction with exclusive access (title) to parcels awarded to the highest bidder. In this scenario let title holders choose which nation to be part of. In this way nations don’t need go to war to claim territory. Parities that hold title could simply change allegiance and the territory switches nation states. A party from one nation state could outbid a party on a parcel in another nation state, claim title for the new nation state. Of course a lot of formal changes in international law would have to happen before something like this could occur.

Anyway, that was my thoughts on this interview within the context of this topic.

First, I appreciate the engagement and didn’t feel confronted, at least not in a negative way. That said, this may be beyond the scope of my knowledge to comment on so take what I say with a grain of salt.

The digital currency proposed in my idea can also be thought of as shares of a real estate investment trust. I don’t know how the part of the business that manages and issues the shares would fit with the part that manages the land trust that backs those shares. Part of the business plan would be to figure that out in its establishment. The legal and possible ethical hurdles in getting land into the commons may make this plan unfeasible. I just don’t know what they are. This said, I think the biggest hurdle to establishing this plan is financial. ChatGPT and I discovered last night it would take $38M - $45M to start the business and bring it to self-sufficiency. I have no idea how to access funds at that level.

A lot is changing, I’m in no position to teach/preach. So I’m left with cliches. Aum, let the personal AI agents figure out who comes together where and under what agreements. There enjoy

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For ideas like this, we need to also look at what those ideas are up against. This idea is sort of a transition structure from Orange to Green economic style, or true communism, but only concerning the ownership of land. Could this be combined with other structures or experiments? The promise of collective land might not net the most attractive early adopters to the land ownership community - I’m assuming we expect this land to ultimately be as productive as the private ownership style. At what threshold does that become true? There are many barriers to startup and adoption, of course, but there’s a lot of nuts and bolts to get into. The Integral answer is typically to consider from all Levels and Quadrants. Be prepared for those responses. :rofl:

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You’re taking an extrinsic position on the idea. I think it’s will take more on alignment between humans before it gets to the extrinsic aspects. Making an open model on basic physical needs will work sort of until the human alignment necessity becomes the issue.

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There is a concept called “tragedy of the commons”. Some also refer to the “prisoners dillema”
This is where it is better for the whole if individuals dont exploit a situation, but better for individuals if they exploit a sitiation before others do.
This is the conundrum that sank communism. Its not so much “human nature” as it is a logical problem.
This logical dillema would need to be solved for communal solutions to succeed. Societies have to mature to a certain point first. Unfortunately the US is emotionally and psychologically " developmentally delayed". The archaic medical word formerly used was “retarded” and we are moving into a period where society is regressing further.

Communals do work on smaller scales, though but there has to be some way to exclude violators and exploiters. In previous ages banishment and shunning were effective punishment to prevent violations against the commons

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