I'm currently saving for land with the intention of purchasing in 1 to 1 1/2 years. Simple, sustainable living is one reason. The second is that I want to help solve some of the problems in the world (pollution, unhealthy crop/animal cultivation, nuclear meltdowns, and overall destructive behavior). The third reason is to take as much control of my life as I can because of our broken systems in America. After deciding to do this I started wondering would other people want in on this? Well it just so happens they do! There are anywhere between 50 to 150 interested after about 3 weeks of putting the idea out there.
We still need to decide on pretty much everything like location, voting method, etc. The general idea for location is to build in a state/county with minimal permitting/laws/regulations outside of city limits. We're wanting to build affordably and sustainably so we're leaning towards cob/strawbale houses. We want to eventually take care of all of our needs and then some including food, energy, building materials, child education etc.
As of what I've said so far this is a typical intentional community. Here's where it starts to deviate. One of the biggest issues I see in society is the belief that land is something to be owned, divided, and treated as a commodity. I feel the earth is plentiful enough for it to be shared with everyone. People, plants, and the rest of the animal kingdom. So how can we live by that ideal? In America, we have to play in the system to change it. You have to buy land plain and simple, as I am. But in buying the land I'm doing it so I can give it back to the people, us. After the land is purchased, we start becoming more self efficient, and make some extra funds to do with what we please; then we can start on the next and I think one of the most important parts of the community... we can help people that want to step into our way of life that don't have the funds do so do it. I feel many of the communities truly do have good intentions, but for most people that are interested in trying this alternative lifestyle simply don't have the funds. Having joining fees, maintenance fees, and the like just makes it harder for them. If we put the extra work in so we can take care of ourselves AND also help new residents build homes/integrate into the community, then we're not only making a difference by living sustainably.... we're making it possible for others to do the same. With building for instance cob homes, acquiring most if not all materials on site would make the biggest cost for building a new resident's home the sweat on our backs.
If this works out, then it would be an awesome next step to help groups or extensions of are own to start other communities so we can spread the love (hopefully close to our area). The first question is, how viable do you guys feel setting the community up in a way that it can take on new residents without charging them to move in?
The second part I wanted to talk about was another possible step to making real change. One of the reasons for moving to the kind of area specified above is so we can create a city (to take charge of our city laws, then take over our lowly populated county by majority vote. There's obvious reasons for wanting to have authority over our city and county laws. In Texas for instance, the county is delegated the power of collecting property tax. If we have control of the county, we can do away with property tax in our area! I'm sure many if not all of you in the US despise property tax as much as we do. We'd have to make budget cuts, but we can do so in ways that it isn't unreasonably harmful to the county compared to the benefits of actually owning your own land. To take over the county (even if it has a couple thousand active voters), we'll need to network with other potential communities to have them move to our county (possibly our city). After we make the area much more hospitable for alternative living, it can become not only a safehaven to intentional communities, permaculturists, etc, it will also be an example to others... something that is repeatable.
So the second question is, is this idea of majority voting our way into county power feasible?
I do believe these are very possible and doable ways to make positive change. I just respect many of the voices here on this forum (I've been lurking for years) and I would like some honest, but critical criticism. Sorry for the longer post, I actually minimized it as much as possible.
