School Community

PS1, You're our Only Hope

The issues at hand

Ummm, let's see.  Artificial Intelligence in Facebook, Google, and Twitter have changed the world by manipulating human opinions and bringing crowds into common cause - even if the cause is nefarious.  And, like the Coronavirus Pandemic, it's not even smart.  I mean, it's a relatively stupid, compared to human general intelligence, collection of algorithms that is doing this work.  The Pandemic has shifted so many aspects of our lives and some of these changes will stay.  Similarly, social media has shifted so many aspects of our lives and some of these changes will stay.  Of course, few people are talking about the threat of nuclear annihilation even though the computers are set to respond automatically if they detect nukes in the atmosphere but they have been tricked by flocks of birds and glare... yeah, like the glare from the Sun.  whoops, humanity is gone.  The threat of cybersecurity is real but it is heavily infused into the problem I spoke about above concerning social media.  Because as bad as social media can be at helping pedophiles, racists, and conspiracy theorists find a community all on its own - it is often these very technologies that are leveraged to change people's ideas about themselves, their immediate situation, and the world they live in.  But that doesn't even account for the fact that hackers are stealing personal data every day, as well as locking up civilian, school, and municipal computer systems and holding them ransom - and so much more.  Is China going to control the world narrative and economic systems?  Did I mention climate change yet?  Right, the economy built on the necessity of burning fossil fuels and the impending ecological collapse seem to be facing off in an ever accelerating war.  Smaller, but no less substantial, threats include meteor impact, supervolcanoes, ozone depletion, another pandemic but worse, ocean acidification, overfishing.  Need I go on?  Bottom line, if we want to live, we need to act together and act together quickly to eliminate or minimize these threats or prepare for their eventuality and attempt a plan that minimizes suffering and losses.

No?  Or am I alone here?

So, if you're still reading, I assume you're with me.  We need to solve and prepare for the problems above.  Likely, the only realistic solutions for most of these issues will require us to act in concert.  And likely, without addressing these quickly, many of them pose rapidly increasing likelihood of happening or getting worse.

So, what's the plan?

The plan must have immediate effects that include resources for developing or maintaining income while learning about and taking action on these issues.  It also must have long term implications for continued income, learning, and action.  Seeing as participants are also likely to be in the minority at any given point or place and that their well-being is proportional to their capacity for income, learning, and action - we need participants to be healthy in order to really have an impact.

Soooo, what's the damn plan!?

Schools.

What?!

Well, initially, a single school?  With a mission something like: For the protection and well-being of the human and all other species as well as the economic health, educational growth, and action oriented cooperation of all people.

A non-profit, benefit corporation with a mission to do the above.  The action would be to open centers (that may or may not legally be able to be called schools.) that would provide the physical spaces where the missions can be enacted by members.

If a member has kids of any age, the center should provide high quality day care, pre-school, k-12 educational services, adult education courses for training, retraining, or wellness courses such as yoga, meditation, running, woodwork, carpentry, plumbing, etc.  This increases the capacity of the individual to care for themselves and their children and their homes while reducing their expenditures in healthcare, medicines, child care, and home and car maintenance.  

That's a school.  

But what if all members with children simply unenrolled their children from school and declared them home schooled and bring them to the center where the task of providing childcare and education is guided by professionals but shared by the community.  A co-op model.  A non-profit, benefit corp cooperative in which people work, learn, and act in concert with each other towards the ends listed in the mission.

Innovation and marketplace

The key for market participation is the ability for this school to make money.  If the school charters itself, it will earn some funds for each child being educated.  But that's chump change and it is only in the interest of educating the child and thus will be used up for that purpose.  The only people directly benefiting from that money are teachers, school administrators, and other school staff - but that is a group of people who are now employed in this center.  Another goal here should be to make this center a place where individuals can make, provide, and trade products, goods, and services.  This arm of the center will be shared resources for setting up small businesses and helping them to licence, organize, advertise, bring goods and services to market, and work with the partnership of other members.  Lastly, the research and development would be a shared cooperative expense.  Meaning, in an ideal world, some number of people will have novel ideas that they could bring to market.  So, collectively investing in an auto shop, for example, not only lowers the cost of car ownership for all members but it could act as a place to develop novel technologies with the tools and instruments available.  So, whether it be direct employment by the school, small scale artisan trading, sharing of skills and resources, opening a small business, or inventing an innovation - I see the school as the central space for community engagement and growth. 

Scale

So, what I'm really talking about is a movement to do this.  Because one school would have value, but the real value comes in multiplying that value.  See, if one school had an auto shop and another had carpentry shop - members from both communities benefit.  There is a law of diminishing returns with distance but in urban and suburban spaces - this works very well.  Even in rural spaces, you could imagine multiple facilities drawing on different communities from some central location where all communities meet.  So, once you make the trek to one of the centers, the others are all available to you as well.  Like a cluster of 4-5 centers depending on the size of the surrounding communities and the distances involved.

Limits

I believe the functional limit for working in such a cooperative way functionally would be the Dunbar number.  So, centers would max out at 150 members and if there was a 151st member, then the center would splinter into two and the preparations for the establishment of a new center falls to all members of the original center.  The deciding of who goes where might be somewhat unimportant since the centers would likely not grow so fast as to avoid continuing to be interactive but it also might be organic in that some people or families would most certainly opt to stay together.  Others could just be selected randomly.  So, these centers maximize the innate and biological capacity for humans to cooperate by keeping the size close to the approximate range of an ancient band of people that might have hunted together 50,000 years ago.

Isolation

Another functional limit would be the ability of centers to be very effective at any meaningful large scale project with such as small number of people.  This was briefly addressed with the idea that one center might cooperate and share resources with another local center and that seems very doable and organic in nature but that is still quite limited.  To compare, Amazon currently employs 1.2 million people globally who act in concert and cooperation to produce a service (which also happens to enrich a small number of coordinators.)  This organization would be much more interesting.

If, hypothetically, everyone was a member of a local center - we might call that layer, the Local - capitalizing it to make it look cool and feel more important.  The Yonkers 252nd Local.  The building would be the Yonkers 252nd LocalCenter.  But I could even imagine this happening with little or no 'official' building.  In any case, in that imaginary world, there would be 7.674 billion people involved in their own Locals. Divide that by an average of, say, 100 members per Local - that's like 76 million, 740 thousand locals.  How could they all coordinate on global issues?

Well, sticking to the Dunbar number, each Local could belong to a Regional of 150 groups.  But again, if a Regional hits 151, the Bacardi number, then it splits. So, again, we can estimate an average Regional would represent 100 Locals on average and each of those Locals would represent 100 people.  That means a Regional would allow conversation among about 10,000 people.  Bear in mind, a Regional meeting would be like an assignment from each Local to send a Representative.  That person is not injecting their own ideas (and minutes would reflect that.)  That person is just sharing thoughts from the decisions of the Local in order to see if agreement at the Regional level is possible.  Hypothetically, one could imagine this done over the internet but I, personally, think that an endeavor like this should be inherently human.  The machines are here and they are here to stay and in many ways we bend to the world they create, not the other way around.  That being said, this idea here is a human idea.  A way for humans to interact with each other Locally and at scale.  Because, after all, the only thing that has ever driven human progress or terror is the stickiness of an idea.  We should be actively working as a species to defend our humanity with commonly agreed upon ideas that represent our best attempt at the ideal behaviors for our collective well being, the well being of each individual, and the well being of the ecological system upon which we depend.

With the same logic, the third level, say the City level, represents 1 million people.  The 4th level, let's call it the State level now represents approximately 100 million people.  It's pretty insane.  If you could imagine the bulk of human beings involved in discussions with their very small Local group but being able to rapidly share these ideas and projects with 100 million people... or at level 5 - literally 5 discussions away - 10 billion people or, the entire planet Earth!  It's kind of nuts.  

Practicality

I mean, functionally, one could imagine a 5 week cycle in which representative members of a Local rotate, as in jury duty, being sent to a meeting.  Sometimes you'd get lucky and have to go to a meeting in Tahiti but, of course, you might end up in Yonkers too.  I kid, I kid - I love Yonkers.

But in this cycling 5 weeks, the Local would be in constant communication with each level.  Mostly we're talking about decision making and sharing information and resources.  But ultimately, it is just the project of being a human being among other human beings and working to  preserve each other's autonomy by creating non-destructive norms that allow all people, and all people of the future to live in general good health, well educated, in peace, and seeking to satisfy personal goals and self actualize.  

Well, I got that off of my chest...

I feel like I need to analyze some real world examples and juxtapose them against our current way of doing things in the US and in other countries and maybe even some past iterations.  That would round out the thought experiment.

Case 1: The Nazis

This is an interesting one and I'm not going into the research - I'm just going off and I'm open to fleshing it out or correcting it.  Broad strokes.  First, I don't think it would've happened.  If every person (or let's say most) is intimately linked to a Local, then I think the spread of such an idea becomes more difficult.  But two caveats: one, I will address it assuming the bad idea does spread because I still want to test this further but two, there is probably a good chance that Locals become small bubbles in which certain ethnicities, religions, or "races" interact.  That would be a problem.  It is not a new problem - it is already a problem - but could it amplify it?  My guess is that the requirement for splitting at 151 and the regular meetings with other groups would make it much more difficult to be ignorant or intolerant.  Considering that education and the common good for all are foundational tenets of participation, I would lean toward these ideas being extinguished by exposure to better ideas but, again, let's keep going.  The bad idea living only amongst similar people has emerged AND the bad idea of Naziism has taken hold in certain circles.  The primary defense for bad ideas is exposure to more compelling ideas.  In this case, the Regionals would do a lot of heavy lifting.  Since education and dialogue are so central along with the idea that the well-being of all members is important, I believe the only defense against Naziism I can offer - and I wonder if this will be true with my other examples - is that there are more opportunities for good ideas to challenge Naziism.  The isolation of Germany from the greater world of nations states after WW1, the isolation of individual families and groups within Germany, the polite protocol of not discussing politics, the overlay of a form of free markets that promotes individual wins and short term benefits over collective wins and longer term benefits.  All of these contributors are reduced while cooperation, interdependence, mutual respect, and a broader goal of well-being are instilled into conversations almost daily.  I find this one a difficult case to nail down in any way stronger than that because the spread of ideas is defined, at least in part, by the conversations we have, their frequency, and reach, etc.  In this way, I think the structure does provide a stronger buffer, although not a total immunity, to the spread of bad ideas.  

Cas 2: The Car

The car was invented in the free market but was pushed along by multiple factors including but not limited to government assistance.  Oil, at the time, was being sold as kerosine for lamps and then the light bulb came out, effectively destroying the business.  The oil companies sought another customer and saw this new car technology as a perfect marriage.  Throw a combination of assembly innovation, more people in cars, and a the co-dependence between these two industries and the promise of faster travel, shipping across land, and commerce - it's a revolution.  It would have only been a fool who would advise against it with concerns over the atmosphere.  The atmosphere is so big!! So, let's quickly say that the access to education and tools and having the same demands of human and cargo transport - I feel like the better educated and more communicative culture would've designed the car even earlier.  The structure of businesses would likely be more aligned to the overarching goals of the various communities so I imagine labor safety would have been emphasized, fair pay, distribution of some of the proceeds toward education and other community goals, and so on.  I think it is not extreme at all to think that as people choked behind the exhaust of early cars and as pollution became distinctly notable in urban areas, the conversation about what these cars are doing to the atmosphere would have started much earlier.  We have newspaper articles from the NY Times in the 50s that look forward to the effects of the pollution and CO2 on people, ecosystems, and the planet.  So, I argue that this conversation would have been broader, better understood by average people, and solutions would have been on the table as proposals before 1940.  Solutions would be able to be rapidly shared and disseminated into the market early.  Solutions such as catalytic converters, low lead gasoline, cleaner burning fuels, carbon capture, and even solar and electric power sources would have been broadly adopted all around the world before 1960.  Likely before 1950.  I know, I'm making it all up.  But we have to imagine a world in which the conversation is very human and rooted in good schooling.  We are not competing with each other in business or for votes or for power, money, or influence.  We are cooperating toward stable futures to extend our goal of well-being to each other, the entire planet's ecosystems, and our future generations.  The mission, in a world like that, is to uplift one another.  To seek those who have run into barriers and try to help them overcome.  To protect the natural world that supports our very existence.  The enemy would be those that seek to serve themselves at the expense of those things.  Free market is good.  It's a good organizing principle.  It's good at innovation.  It's feels good to contribute and to consume.  The enemy is not that.  The enemy is the cost.  Is unlimited freedom the only goal?  Is that it?  Then why impinge upon the freedom of mass murderers?  Why lock them up?  It's obvious.  It undercuts everyone else's freedom to live and to live with some level of peace and security.  But I think we all agree it's a good trade.  Our freedom's end when they threaten the freedom's of others.  I think we all believe this mostly but a failure of our imagination to consider how impactful our actions are (i.e. driving to work every day or reposting nasty memes.)  A flood of bad ideas and actions can be created with a billion small leaks.  That is the impact of bad decisions.

Case 3: Wall Street

I was going to go with the internet but changed my mind at the last second.  Basically, the internet would be a lot like the car.  So, Wall St.  Would it exist?  Let's assume yes.  It exists.  But again, communication, education, lofty goals, blah blah blah - we'd do it better.  Maybe some radical transparency in corporate actions and communications.  Maybe cooperative structures that protect laborers and consumers.  Possibly much more regulation on how and when stocks can be traded such as if you buy a stock, it is like a bond and has a 5 year horizon.  Maybe a 1 year, I don't know.  But the whole idea of day trading and moving money around for short term gains might not exist.  Maybe board members would have to be heavily vested even after termination for some period.  Maybe workers are the first to get stock holdings and maybe consumers can earn in as well?  It just seems to me that with good communication, education, and goals - we really change the game for the better for all involved.

Side note.  I watched Judas and the Black Messiah last night and what the Black Panthers were doing with the breakfast for the kids was along these lines.  But a continuation of allowing charismatic leaders to do the bulk of the talking is inti-democratic.  They should certainly have a voice and it is their gift to be persuasive but in the end.  100 or so people will have breakout conversations, informal conversations, and receive feedback from other Locals nearby.  In this way, the cult of personality is also undermined. 

Thoughts? 

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Al B. Einstein Productions