The Emperor Has No Clothes A Practical Guide for Environmental and Social Transformation (26 page)

In general these communities do not have the
capability to produce all the necessities and must participate in
the wider economic system. Most of the commercial activities are
comprised of a variety of small scale enterprises. These
enterprises usually sell something they produce or offer some type
of service. Communal manufacturing usually consists of handicrafts
and cottage industries. Some of the communities operate
construction businesses or other related types of services. They
occasionally own and operate small retail stores, restaurants, etc.
These enterprises are usually sited on their own property or in a
nearby location. The types of services they offer are dependent
upon the capabilities and desires of their members such as;
education, medical, counseling, design, etc. Twin Oaks for example,
makes hammocks, tofu, and offers cataloging services to generate
cash. In some of these communities some of the communards may work
outside the community to produce income.

The most fundamental capability for this type
of social organization is that it must provide a social system that
supports an environment that produces enhancement of desirable
personal and collective traits while diminishing destructive ones.
By having this type of society its activities will automatically
act as a constructive force for enhancement of the surrounding
system of natural processes and personal happiness. A second
important characteristic of the new society is a capability to be
highly adaptable in order to cope with the anticipated more
variable environment. These requirements can be realized by having
the individual segments participate in a loosely organized
interdependent system of exchange. The system of exchange should
include; material things, specialized capabilities of communards,
social innovations, specialized production capabilities and new
technical innovations. The networked segments can provide all this
in addition to the formation of structures capable of undertaking
large scale collective endeavors. A few examples might be the
production of shoes, apparel , tools, or more complex types of
equipment. Efficiencies of scale would originate from the large
numbers of people that would comprise the network of segments.
Thus, these networks would be able to produce the necessary volume
requirements for efficient production in addition to the expertise
and other resources to produce such items. This could be
accomplished by direct exchange of labor credits or material
objects between the participants or possibly in a co-op type of
system. For some kinds of endeavors requiring a conglomeration of
specialized skills and resources a temporary community comprised of
members with the needed skills could be formed. This type of
temporary community could draw on their source communities
resources to accomplish a particular task and then dissolved.
Another less specialized use of conglomeration could be applied to
seasonal tasks where a single segment has a periodic inadequacy of
personnel. At the present time some of the types of exchange just
discussed is taking place between communities through the transfer
of labor credits. The Federation of Egalitarian Communities (FEC)
has a program called LEX (Labor Exchange) for this purpose.

In order to produce new scion segments all of
these forms of exchange could come into play. By using this system
the scion segment could be provided with some type of business from
the parent segments. By providing this type of economic support the
scion would have a solid capability to pay the parent segments
back. This process of formation would also integrate the new scion
in the parent network and the wider economy through the means of
exchange. For things that require very large scale such as high
level educational institutions, large machinery, etc., this
principle could be expanded where a number of networks may pool
their resources.

This type of networked system has the great
advantage of not having profits extracted by the original producer
and at every subsequent step of the exchange process, thereby
eliminating the constant economic drain caused by the diversion of
resources into the coffers of economic drones. The net effect would
be to greatly reduce the costs of goods and services. The other
great advantage is that all the participants in this type of system
would receive fair treatment as a result of the elimination of the
deceptive, extractive, excessively wasteful, and aggressive tactics
that are the hallmarks of the laissez fair capitalist system. It
also has the advantage of a local/regional means of the production
of necessities. Having its own organic production capability also
provides the additional benefit of isolating the participants from
world economic and social perturbations. As discussed above these
types of destabilizing forces are inherent in the global economic
system and will become magnified from increasing political and
environmental instabilities. A final advantage is that it is not
based upon a high degree of financing. By having low levels of
financing these communities sensitivity to the vagaries and demands
of the prevailing financial system would be reduced.

In the United States and abroad a large
number of intentional communities exist with a a very broad
spectrum of underlying visions for their purpose. Some of these
existing communities could also participate in a network either as
a regular presence or on an ad hoc basis if their vision and
economic system is compatible. For example, there are a number of
communities that are dedicated to providing specialized services
such as; conflict resolution training, medical or wellness
services, etc.

If you desire to pursue the formation of an
intentional community a lot of very good work has been done on the
“nuts and bolts” of the process. The organizations listed below can
also provide various kinds of help from sharing expertise to
attracting potential members. The FEC has listings on their web
site for these purposes.

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Let's consider how the American political
system actually works. The observations that are being presented
are based upon my own personal experience. I have worked in about 8
– 10 municipal elections and also on a national election for a
third party (the NLP). Have you ever noticed that it's quite
uncommon for an independent or third party candidate to succeed in
winning an election. The reason is that it is not a level playing
field for independents or new parties; the two major parties enjoy
great advantages.[105]
In America politics runs on
money
. The largest chunks of money the two major parties
receive come from the owners and/or operators of big business.
These businesses also provide further support by providing both
material and PR for election campaigns. This is not done as a
result of altruistic motives but because they expect and receive a
return on their investment (remember the Ford / Dodge court
case).

105 I am referring to elections above the
local level such as school boards etc.

The two major parties have several other
techniques for reducing or eliminating outside competition.
Election Laws in the United States are the prerogative of each
individual state. The details of these regulations vary since they
are produced by the individual state legislatures. In the area
where I was working an independent candidate or a new or small
third party were required to collect 20 times the number of
signatures to gain ballot access compared to the major parties. The
rational for this was that the large parties have primaries. When I
was working on the third party's national campaign one of the
states required that political parties hold a primary. In order to
be able to hold a primary in this state, a party had to have gained
5 % of the vote in the last election. This requirement was
obviously designed to make it difficult or impossible to gain
ballot access since any new party had not participated in the last
election. Thus, ballot access was denied. This brings us to the
next group of strategies employed by the major parties that is
making it difficult and costly to gain ballot access. Of course, it
is illegal to have the type of election law for primaries described
above. The NLP party challenged this in court and won which was no
surprise to anyone. However, the law operated as intended, that is
to use up resources. The legal expenses for these court challenges
are large, thereby using up funding that would be directly applied
to the political campaign. These tactics also use up party members
time and delays the parties campaign. Another routine technique is
to challenge the validity of the ballot access petitions. The
petition format is closely scrutinized for flaws and challenged if
any are found. To avoid this we closely modeled the petitions we
used on the ones used by the major parties. Once the signatures
have been obtained the petitions have to be signed and notarized by
the signature collector, party officials and a notary public. In
one of the elections I worked on some of the petitions that were
collected were successfully challenged and rejected. This occurred
because there were several notary publics sitting at the same table
validating the petition pages and one person inadvertently picked
up the other persons notary stamp and stamped the petition, thus
the notary stamp did not correspond to the correct notary
signature. The other common petition challenge technique is to
scrutinize the signatures which can also be challenged. The
signatures must written in ink, be the persons official signature
(no initials), have a correctly written out corresponding address
with no abbreviations and be dated correctly. To file a petition
signature challenge a signature simply has to look suspicious. The
objectives of this process is to eliminate enough signatures so
that ballot access is denied for an inadequate number of
signatures, use up resources, and cause delays as described above.
In some cases even if the challenges are overcome it may be too
late to have the candidate's name appear on the ballot. If this
occurs then the candidate has to run as a write in, which greatly
reduces their chances of success. In the elections I participated
in we collected ¼ to 1/3 more signatures than required. The minimum
number of signatures that should be collected is 20% above the
legal requirement to survive a petition challenge of this type.

Another common means the two major parties
employ is to divide and conquer. The method is to create some
additional competition to split their rivals potential votes. This
method was used by John F. Kennedy who had no political experience,
yet he was able to defeat an incumbent senator. The method that was
used was to find a person with the identical name to the incumbent
senator who would agree to appear on the ballot. Petitions were
circulated and ballot access was gained for him. When the voter
entered the voting booth they were confronted with a ballot with
Kennedy's name and two other names that were identical, the
incumbent and Kennedy's man. This split the vote and allowed
Kennedy to win the election. I worked on a series of municipal
elections where the party I worked for was beaten soundly in the
first election and in the subsequent election lost by about 150
votes, a photo finish. The third election seemed promising but the
incumbent party utilized the divide and conquer strategy. Some
ambitious people were found to start an additional party to divide
the vote. Members of the incumbent party provided funds and help
for the additional party to operate their election campaign. The
vote was divided and the incumbents won the election. This maneuver
relies upon the fact that the major parties have a reliable party
constituency. Where this election took place their reliable voter
base was around 20% out of about 45% of the people who usually
turned out to vote. In the following election cycle a few of the
people from the diversionary party which no longer existed were on
the incumbents party ticket and succeed in winning political
positions.

Next a way to reduce the state of affairs
just described will be presented. First though, one should realize
that as long as our societies central driving force is greed all
that can be hoped to be accomplished is a reduction in the
influence of money in our political system. The proposed system
would utilize a non-for-profit organization that would maintain a
website with capabilities designed to level the playing field for
candidates. The website would provide the following services for
political candidates; a venue where they could list only their
positions on the current issues and a brief biographical sketch. No
criticism of anything about other candidates would be allowed. A
nominating petition service; the petition service would operate by
asking persons using the site if they would be willing to sign a
nomination petition. If this was their desire, they could leave
contact information such as their e-mail address. The next step in
the process would be to notify them about times and locations where
nominating petitions would be available for them to sign or send
someone to collect their signature. This could be done efficiently
by having all the various candidates petitions in one location
allowing voters to sign a variety of petitions of their choice both
for political candidates and referendums. A second feature of the
web site would be to provide for the voter a simplified method for
candidate selection. This could be done by having a list of the
current issues with a spectrum of numerical scores (possibly 1-10)
representing the strength of the voters preferences for each
campaign issue. The computer could compare the voters preferences
to the candidates positions and produce the best overall match.
This would enable the voter to separate the candidates with
agreeable goals from the ones that are undesirable and simplify
candidate choice for the voter. Initially the web site could be
funded by a small setup fee paid by the political candidate to be
listed and also by small donations from voters using the service.
Eventually public financing to operate the site could be developed
eliminating the need for fees.