Sociocracy

Common Good

Local Investing

 

Local Investing

There is a website devoted to local investing https://localinvesting.org that is well worth spending time on and be sure to watch the video on the home page.

The LION idea is at JeffersonLION.net https://www.jeffersonlion.net/ 

The impact study is worth looking at in some detail.

 

Slow Money https://slowmoney.org/ This group has well thought out Principles https://slowmoney.org/principles/ that are worth reading.

 

Michael Shuman publishes a newsletter and has a website devoted to the local investing movement. 

The Main Street Journal   

 https://www.themainstreetjournal.org/  Here is a sample from the website:

Start With the Food

The Main Street Journal V.2, N.47

May 09, 2024

About twenty years ago, Stewart Smith, the then Commissioner of Agriculture for the state of Maine, analyzed the cost of a typical foodstuff item in the years 1900 and 2000. In 1900, about 40% of a food dollar spent went to the farmer, and the rest to inputs and distribution. That distribution number included processing, refrigeration, packaging, transportation, retail markup, and more. By 2000, seven cents went to the farmer, and distribution accounted for more than 73 cents.

It doesn’t take a math genius to observe the obvious: Whenever distribution costs are significantly larger than production costs, there is a powerful case for localization. Even if local farming doubles the production costs, say to 14 cents on the dollar, you can bring down the cost of local food if you can reduce the wasted expenses in distribution with less packaging, less processing, and direct delivery.

This is one reason why the local food movement has taken root all across the planet: Why ship, say, soybeans halfway around the planet (which are mostly water) when you can grow the soybeans yourself? But for massive subsidies to fossil fuels, large farms, water, and shipping “infrastructure,” much of this globalized food system would never pencil out.

And if you think the current system is delivering affordable food to all Americans, you haven’t been paying attention to the huge number of food deserts in the country. In 2017, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that nearly 40 million Americans did not have access to affordable food. COVID, of course, greatly worsened this problem. But these numbers also suggest an opportunity for local investment to help fix the problem.  (continues in the Main Street Journal)

​

https://library.solari.com/unpacking-your-financial-ecosystem-links-resources/

​

Crowd Funding

 

Here is an excerpt from the Crowd Lift website comparing the leading crowd funding websites. https://crowdlift.ing/crowdfunding-platforms/gofundme-vs-kickstarter-vs-indiegogo/

 

“Choosing the right crowdfunding platform can be the key to your project’s success. Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and Indiegogo offer different advantages depending on your needs. Let’s compare.

Kickstarter uses an all-or-nothing funding model, meaning you must reach your goal to get any money. This creates a high-stakes environment but also assures backers that their funds will only support viable projects.

Indiegogo, however, allows you to keep the funds you raise, regardless of whether you meet your goal. This flexibility can be attractive but may also make backers more cautious.

GoFundMe stands apart by focusing on personal and charitable causes, relying on the power of personal stories and connections rather than the innovation of a project.

Understanding the fee structures, user support, and audience of each platform is critical to your campaign’s success. Kickstarter and Indiegogo cater to a crowd looking for creative or innovative projects, while GoFundMe appeals to those wanting to support personal or social causes.

When deciding where to launch your crowdfunding campaign, consider these differences carefully. The success of your project depends not only on your idea but also on the community and the rules of the platform you choose. Assess your project’s fit with each platform’s unique characteristics to enhance your chance of achieving your funding target”.

Here is what Solar Roadways succeeded in doing on a crowdfunding site:

https://www.startengine.com/offering/solar-roadways and check out the other offerings.

​

“a mind convinced against its will is of the same mind still”

This is from a search on Mojeek  https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=a+mind+convinced+against+its+will+is+of+the+same+mind+still+Franklin&kalid=88c1ea3868025c4a 

This search engine is way better than Google or Bing or DuckDuckGo,

 

Summary

The quote "a mind convinced against its will is of the same mind still" is attributed to Benjamin Franklin.  This statement suggests that even if someone is persuaded to change their opinion through external pressure, they may still internally hold onto their original viewpoint. Franklin demonstrated this idea when he convinced the Pennsylvania Assembly, which was initially resistant to charitable spending, to pledge money towards a public cause.  However, it is important to note that Franklin himself believed in the power of reason and science, advocating for their importance in personal growth and societal advancement.  He did not view wealth as a source of happiness or contentment.  In summary, Benjamin Franklin's perspective on a convinced mind aligns with the quote in question, emphasizing the enduring nature of personal beliefs despite external influence.

 

Summaries are experimental and generated by large language models. Please double check for accuracy. Learn more.

 

buy up the small, profitable companies

https://deeprootsathome.com/popular-small-health-food-companies-sold-out/

​

Consent-based Self-Governance Handbook

​

The purpose of this Handbook and the following Educational Survey is to:

• help remind us of who we really are as a creative force with the power to create the world we know in our hearts is possible, i.e., the ideal universal society; a free, peaceful, healthy, just, collaborative, life-empowering, and regenerative world where we all thrive;

• help us realize how we have been deceived about who we really are; 

• Identify problems, discuss solutions, provide the ideas we need to enjoy fair and sustainable abundance, and evaluate what is involved in terms of time, money and effort;

• elicit from members of self-governing and jural assembly communities common values, thoughts, and opinions, and how to best act on their agreed to decisions;

• help members determine their agreement and alignment with the intended purpose of a republic form of bottom-up consent-based self-governance. 

 

The 1776 Declaration of Independence states:

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator (Nature’s God, not by Charter) with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

 

Therefore, in our current “Course of human events:

 

Do we have a government that secures our unalienable rights?

 

Do we have a government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed; i.e., WE, the People at large?

 

Do we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people?

 

Is the implied intent of the four organic law forms (listed below) to safeguard the rights and freedoms of WE, the People at large, from intrusive government - being honored and fulfilled? 

 

The Declaration of Independence 1776

The Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union 1777

The Northwest Ordinance 1787

The Constitution for the thirteen united states of America 1787

 

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs 

https://www.loc.gov/rr/program//bib/ourdocs/articles.html 

https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/index.html?dod-date=713 

 

Is the implied intent of the four organic laws: the Unwritten Law, Common Law, Maxims of Law, and Treaty Law - to secure, protect, and defend our unalienable rights pursuant to Article VI of the Constitution for the united states of America - being honored and fulfilled? 

 

https://constitution.org/1-Constitution/bouv/bouvier.htm

https://constitution.org/1-Constitution/bouv/bouvier_n.htm

https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Common%20Law 

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/common-law.asp

https://constitution.org/1-Constitution/bouv/bouvier_c.htm

https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Maxim 

https://www.lawyersincyprus.com/news/articles/latin-legal-maxims-and-phrases 

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlevi 

 

Are our unalienable rights being undermined and subverted by propaganda and fear mongering?

 

In the United States of America, did some of the founding fathers allow the replacement of the Republick* with a Corporation in 1790?

*as spelled in Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755

 

Was the 1791 Bill of Rights (Amendments 1 - 10), sufficient to protect the unalienable rights of WE, the People at large?

 

Did most of the Amendments 11 - 27, from 1794 to 1992, breach and/or nullify Amendments 1 - 10?

 

What of Thomas Jefferson’s statement: “The idea nearest to my heart is that the people learn to provide the functions of government to each other”.

 

Do WE, the People at large, have the same powers that had been granted to the government?

 

Have WE, the people at large, without full disclosure, granted to the government powers that we ourselves do not have?

 

Has the government abused these powers? 

 

Have our nations’ governments (local and international) limited the rights and freedoms of WE, the people at large, with unconscionable and adhesive contracts?  For example, deceptive banking contracts that allow banks to conjure the money, supported by the divided loyalty of the lawyers (members of the BAR, British Accreditation Registry).

 

Had the Republick been usurped by a hidden sovereign, namely a centralized banking system represented by the BAR (British Accreditation Registry)?

 

Did we actually win the Revolutionary War?

 

See No Treason. (No. I, II and VI), by Lysander Spooner, Publication date 1870, Chapter 3 of Pawns in the Game, by William Guy Carr (1958), and https://theultimateweapons.blogspot.com/2018/12/as-juror-presented-with-this-evidence.html. 

 

Do we now have a government of, by, and for the corporations?

 

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/3002 - 28 U.S. Code § 3002 - Definitions

 

(15) “United States” means—

1. Federal corporation;

2. an agency, department, commission, board, or other entity of the United States; or

(C) an instrumentality of the United States.

 

https://constitution.org/1-Constitution/bouv/bouvier_u.htm 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. The name of this country.  .  .  .  

5. The United States of America are a corporation endowed with the capacity to sue and be sued, to convey and receive property. 1 Marsh. Dec. 177, 181. But it is proper to observe that no suit can be brought against the United States without authority of law. 

 

Shall we avail ourselves of the three part remedy penned in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence?

 

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people (1) to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and (2) to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should (3) declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

 

The causes that impel WE, the People at large, to the separation may be summarized at the following links:

 

Realizing the Promise of the Declaration of Independence

 

A Summary of Causes for the Separation; The Problems and Challenges

 

In “[assuming] among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle” WE, the People at large, it is generally recognized that we are independent, with unalienable natural rights pursuant to natural law. To secure these rights, governance is to be instituted among WE, the People at large, deriving its just powers from our consent. 

 

This handbook is a guide for WE, the People at large, to assume our “separate and equal station” to which “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God” entitle us, and to revendicate (reclaim) the promise of the Declaration of Independence, namely consent-based self-governance and the seigniorage rights of money issuance.

 

First, what should self-governance look like?

 

• Shall it be bottom-up beginning with the individual, then families, then communities, then the townships/cities, then the counties, then the nation-states?

 

• Shall it resemble Thomas Jefferson’s Jeffersonian Ward Republic, governance in the wards?

 

Second, what shall be the purpose of governance?

 

• Shall it be to establish a social compact that secures, protects, and defends our indefeasible and unalienable rights, namely to do whatever we choose, voluntarily as inspired, as long as we do no harm?

 

• Shall it capitalize our capacities?

 

• Shall it prohibit unconscionable and adhesive contracts, which render WE, the People at large, as human capital debt and wage slaves, contrary to Article 1 § 10 of the U.S. Constitution?

 

• Shall the essence of the social compact in our respective wards be to adjudicate and remediate harm?

 

Third, what does consent look like?

 

• Shall it be among all members, as equals, in self-governing communities?

 

• Shall it be based on the active consent (i.e. “good enough for now and safe enough to try”) of deliberating members, with a method of evaluation and appropriate time-frame for evaluation?

 

• Shall objections be welcome to account for unforeseen and unintended consequences and to improve a proposal or policy?  

 

• Shall consent-based self-governance be bottom-up with selected delegates and representatives representing the will, desires, and determinations of WE, the People at large, based on our active consent?

 

• Is the Jeffersonian Ward Republic using Dynamic Governance a good model of bottom-up consent-based self-governance?

 

What shall our social compact include?

 

Shall it have a purpose statement, such as the following?

 

The purpose of a union of WE, the People at large, is to revendicate the promise of the Declaration of Independence (without ambiguities).  Guided by the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, we are voluntarily and divinely  inspired to co-create life-empowering consent-based self-governing communities that assure liberty, justice, and abundance for all.

 

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - R Buckminster Fuller

 

Could it be an agreement that we are all free to do as we please as long as we do no harm, and that we all need to be involved in the functions of governance to adjudicate and remediate harm with a Grand jury, petit jury, and due process pursuant to Natural/Common Law, i.e. the U.S. Bill of Rights Amendments 1-10, and Restorative Justice? 

 

Here are examples of social compacts:

 

The colonial Mayflower Compact

 

Massachusetts Constitution 

​

PREAMBLE

​

The end (i.e. purpose) of the institution, maintenance, and administration of government, is to secure the existence of the body politic, to protect it, and to furnish the individuals who compose it with the power of enjoying in safety and tranquility their natural rights, and the blessings of life: and whenever these great objects are not obtained, the people have a right to alter the government, and to take measures necessary for their safety, prosperity and happiness.

The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals: it is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good. It is the duty of the people, therefore, in framing a constitution of government, to provide for an equitable mode of making laws, as well as for an impartial interpretation, and a faithful execution of them; that every man may, at all times, find his security in them.

We, therefore, the people of Massachusetts, acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the goodness of the great Legislator of the universe, in affording us, in the course of His providence, an opportunity, deliberately and peaceably, without fraud, violence or surprise, of entering into an original, explicit, and solemn compact with each other; and of forming a new constitution of civil government, for ourselves and posterity; and devoutly imploring His direction in so interesting a design, do agree upon, ordain and establish the following Declaration of Rights, and Frame of Government, as the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

​

The Bill of Rights

 

Sample By-Laws for Jural Assembly Communities

 

Shall our self-governing communities include “jural assemblies”* that are autonomous, independent, sovereign, and largely self-sufficient, made up of “qualified electors” who agree to serve when chosen by lot to adjudicate harm, and whose Representatives and Delegates are selected as the best person deemed to be honorable and capable of representing, with integrity, the will of WE, the People at large?

 

*“an unincorporated association of people who join together for the purpose of defining and enforcing local law” https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jural_assembly, namely “do no harm”. 

 

Shall each of the “qualified electors” create their own “Oath of Office” acceptable to their community?

 

Resources

Sample ByLaws for Jural Assembly Communities

Oath of Office for the Township level

 

What shall the common values, purpose, vision, and mission of our self-governing communities be?  

 

The purpose of the following Educational Survey is to:

• help remind us of who we really are as a creative force with the power to create the world we know in our hearts is possible, the ideal universal society; a free, peaceful, healthy, just, collaborative, life-empowering, and regenerative world where we all thrive;

• help us realize how we have been deceived about who we really are; 

• provide the ideas we need to enjoy fair and sustainable abundance;

• elicit from members of self-governing and jural assembly communities common values, thoughts, and opinions;

• help members determine their agreement and alignment with the intended purpose of a republic form of bottom-up consent-based self-governance. 

 

The following additional resources are for review, consideration, collaboration, and use:

Seminar

The Ideal Universal Society Booklet - Unifying Ideas

Practical Application to Survive and Thrive

Union Resources

Union Table of Contents 

These are a collaborative assembly of documents by “The Unity Team”, a collaboration of like-minded members committed to co-creating a Union of WE, the People at large, and the Ideal Universal Society. 

 

***

Sociocracy

Group Size 

https://www.sociocracy.info/maximum-size-for-rounds/ 

​

This is a link to Sociocracy - a brief introduction.  It is like a slide show and well worth taking the time to read all the way through.

There are two books by Ted Rau:  Many Voices One Song and Collective Power.

 

From the Intentional Communities website

https://www.ic.org/community-bookstore/product/many-voices-one-song/ 

 

Description

Many Voices One Song: Shared Power with Sociocracy

By Ted J. Rau & Jerry Koch-Gonzalez from Sociocracy for All   www.sociocracyforall.org 

​

Many Voices One Song is a detailed manual for implementing sociocracy, an egalitarian form of governance also known as dynamic governance. Sociocracy means governance by those who associate together. This book is based on the Sociocratic Circle-Organization Method (SCM) developed in the Netherlands by electrical engineer Gerard Endenburg, based on earlier work of educator Kees Boeke.

Available in print and ebook, in both English and Spanish language, this book includes step-by-step descriptions for structuring organizations, making decisions, and generating feedback. The content is illustrated by many diagrams, tables, examples, lists, skits, and stories from the field. 

 Many Voices One Song covers four major areas:

1. Sociocratic organizational structures based on linked teams (circles) that distribute authority from the top of organizations to the most frontline teams that are appropriate. These teams are linked by both top-down leaders and bottom-up delegates to ensure that influence and power are shared in a circular rather than linear hierarchy. Organizational diagrams illustrate different ways to structure organizations in an egalitarian way.

2. Decision making by consent, defined as no one having an objection to a proposed decision. Consent is a participatory and inclusive approach to decision making, in contrast to win-lose voting and most forms of consensus. Decision-making steps (understand-explore-decide) detailed include proposal generation and the proposal to consent decision-making process. The book also outlines the steps for selection of people to roles in open dialog processes.

3. The insights of compassionate communication (Nonviolent Communication/NVC) are integrated into the context of decision making. Meeting format and design, including facilitation skills and processes that ensure that all voices matter in decision making.

4. Feedback processes for evaluating the effectiveness of meetings, policies, workflows, and role performance support an ongoing learning cycle and continuous improvement, not just in production and delivery but in the embodiment of equality itself. The intent of this book is to contribute to the spread of sociocracy by making information available. Egalitarian self-governance needs to be simple enough so everyone can share power in a healthy way.

 

From the Amazon Website:

Collective Power: Patterns for a Self-Organized Future by 

Ted Rau (Author)

 

Humans form groups, organizations, movements, countries. What are the deeper patterns at work that determine how those entities work?

 

This book shows the those underlying structures of alignment and autonomy, centralization and decentralization, power-over and power-with in teams, organizations and beyond.

Based on cultural evolution and Ostrom's work of the successful management of the commons as well as Beer's Viable Systems Model, this book opens our eyes to an invisible world: the world of governance. Governance rules who decides, how we decide, and who decides who decides what and how. Governance is the key to our collective power and agency - without governance to balance the powers, there is dysfunction, chaos, groupthink, or tyranny.

The book focuses on power-with governance and self-organization based on choice. Power-with governance is possible when every actor fills their power responsibly, with an integration of individual, collective and planetary needs.

All levels have their special emergent strategies: teams need topic management and decision-making, skills around pacing and agreements to move forward together and effectively. Organizations are effective when they let workers decide autonomously while fostering alignment and cohesion on strategy, values, budgeting, and information flow. New forms of power-with government need to consider economic factors, identities, education, legal system and planetary boundaries.

​

Common Good

The video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=LCbO1WNGk74&feature=youtu.be 

Slide Show goes here:

Common Good Payment System

The slide show from the Unity Team Seminar

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/113lLljIyW_ls3E1zYRUdlXx7KudPm6pCH6se3nAYztQ/edit?usp=sharing 

THE SLIDES HAVE TO BE LOADED

 

A few sample pages:

Social Credit

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Not to be confused with China's Social Credit System for trustworthiness.

Social credit is a distributive philosophy of political economy developed by C. H. Douglas. Douglas attributed economic downturns to discrepancies between the cost of goods and the compensation of the workers who made them. To combat what he saw as a chronic deficiency of purchasing power in the economy, Douglas prescribed government intervention in the form of the issuance of debt-free money directly to consumers or producers (if they sold their product below cost to consumers) in order to combat such discrepancy.

In defense of his ideas, Douglas wrote that "Systems were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic."[ Douglas said that Social Creditors want to build a new civilization based upon "absolute economic security" for the individual, where "they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid."[3][4] In his words, "what we really demand of existence is not that we shall be put into somebody else's Utopia, but we shall be put in a position to construct a Utopia of our own."]

The idea of social credit attracted considerable interest in the interwar period, with the Alberta Social Credit Party briefly distributing "prosperity certificates" to the Albertan populace. However, Douglas opposed the distribution of prosperity certificates which were based upon the theories of Silvio Gesell. Douglas' theory of social credit has been disputed and rejected by most economists and bankers. Prominent economist John Maynard Keynes references Douglas's ideas in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, but instead poses the principle of effective demand to explain differences in output and consumption.”

​