Iām very much aligned with this.
If I may add a large braindump of what iāve(and friends) have been thinking about for a long time here. If it has legs Iāll happily start a new thread or move to a tangential Metacommunity to discuss deeper.
Follow through to the end if it seems like I am going in different directions because I will tie it together. Meaningful contributions to this will be greatly appreciated and serve to inspire me more because I care deeply about this.
On really helping the world, alternate economies and local physical communities.
There has been many concerted efforts(in my city and others) to do local currencies but a lot donāt seem to get the foothold they need.
All my rabbit holes goes back to āwe need to capture/empower the generated value firstā
Its all flakey unless there is a baseline and mechanisms to empower generated value at it lowest point on the human neediness specturm.
Generated Values of a Physical Community roughly ordered by how far they are abstracted away from basic needs. (feel free to suggest additions, but this is more for context)
- Natural Produce (Food, Herbs, Hemp, Wood, Etc.)
- Clean water (if it rains, Rainwater)
- Safe Spaces to live, sleep and do things
- Healthcare
- Time spent on doing things that other people value
- Craftsmanship & Manufacturing
- Marketing
- Art
Of those, produce of the earth is where I believe we should be starting if we want to āfeed as many birds with as few scones as possibleā on the mission to reshape society in a meaningful way.
It is the most universally applicable, can be run/tested at many scales and approaches, it can be standardized(for functions of efficiency) and at the same time diversified, decentralized, local and global. Obvious I know right, its produce we are talking about here. Also see Vinay Guptas recent tweet storm in line with how urgent this could be needed.
So here Iāll lay out the Vision. and to @david 's point, my theories on how best to condense it into baby steps and put it in practice.
Big Vision: "The LionTurtle DAO"
Lion Turtle taken from Avatar the Last Airbender because the Lion Turtles were what gave the first avatar access to all of the elements earth air, water and fire. And the Avatar is the one who restores balance. Thereās a lot of cool branding/memeing to be done there.
This DAOās objectives would be to develop/invest/partner with projects and products that
- Increase the accessibility of rich earth based produce.
- Increase the resilience of our (good quality) food supply chains.
- Contribute to the āre-earthingā of lands in a meaningful way.
^^^ Thats a pretty robotic way of saying developing a distributed agriculture network and tools whose (high quality) produce can be used locally or sourced to flagship products that people buy, such that by purchasing will develop the reliance and circular economics of local food supply chains.
Here are two examples of what I mean (In implementation there would be more work to do to better understand exactly how to approach going 0-1)
We all know we need Bees right? There pretty important. Theyāre dieing all over.
Bees make honey, honey makes mead. People love to drink alcohol. Craft beer, cider, and mead is an exploding market. People will pay premiums.
It turns out its not that hard to have bee hives and there are setups now that make it fair to the bees and easy to extract the honey in a sustainable way.
(Requires more research) But by the looks of it, its also not that difficult from a regulatory standpoint to sell your local honey. I buy local honey a lot where I live, and drink drinks that use the local honey from here.
And do to the influx of hipster craft breweries, it 1. might not that be hard to partner with someone(fairly well connected to the micro-breweries in my city) or 2. good standards for (eventually) operating microbreweries.
Product Idea A - "Bright Wine"
Bright Wine is what you drink when you are toasting to the fact that your actually helping the world. Bright Wine is to celebrate life.
Bright Wine sources local bee honey, and(through some TBD and tested mechanisms)
uses a % of the revenue to support.
- The re-population of beeās by way of easy-to-setup and maintain hives
- Storage of reserves of honey in case of global crisis.
- Developing and supporting decentralized agriculture supply chains.
I know your probably thinking, alcohol is not what the world needs right now. Youāre right about that. Although mead in particular has a degree of nutritional value, infusability with other herbs, shelf life, etc that differentiates it.
Product Idea B: "Circle Meal Pack"
Circle Meals is a placeholder name for a wholefood bar(think of like the army MREās) that is created and distributed in a way that accomplishes the following.
- Uses easy to grow foods with a relatively decent nutrient profile (think sweet potatoes, moringa, etc)
- Longer shelf life (in order to store reserves)
- Can(eventually) be produced and distributed in independant food kitchens.
% of the revenues go to
- Development and distribution of āeasy to growā urban ag kits, education, testers, etcā¦
- Maintaining a reserve of Meal Packs, seeds, soil for crisis.
- The development and support of a decentralized agriculture supply chain.
You get the idea. These are two ideas but Its all about developing products that can replace what people are already consuming, but are designed to develop a better food supply chain infrastructure.
With this generated value, currency systems can be added and overlayed to community in many ways that can be developed over time(think about trading hours for food packs in local farms, rights managements for new recipes, etc.)
The basic premise is though to start with easy to create, standardize and ship food-based products that are function of efficency for the network to get from 0-1. Serve them at enough of premium that the revenue covers costs for the other functions of sustainability(diversity, decentralization, autonomy, etc) so that the network itself can mature to a anti-fragile point.
The possibilities on top of something like that foundation are endless, but It needs to start with an intelligent transitional approach. But for brain candy LionTurtle DAO could do things like.
- Continue to develop & source whole-food products sourced from the network left and right.
- Invest in creating/partnering/distributing efficent urban ag kits.
- Run āStampedesā which are like taz assemblies for setting up gardens (if you have ever heard of āPermaculture Blitzā that is what I am taking that from)
- Crowdfund/source shipping container farms. Franchise them?
- Develop localize currency models in partnership with communities that overlay more of the generated values of their area.
- Etc. Etc.
I could keep going, but iāll stop there and seriously appreciate anyone who took the time to read through that carefully. If you feel the urgency like I do for something like this then please reach out.