How can my movement design voluntary, contractual communities that effectively internalize externalities and finance public goods without replicating landlordism or relying solely on land value taxes, while maintaining decentralization and addressing the underlying power dynamics involved?
Start by scrapping the landlord’s invisible throne entirely: place every hectare inside a perpetual commons trust governed by the people who live and labour there. Use an occupancy-and-use covenant: hold the land only while you actively live on or steward it, and pay a stewardship contribution pegged to the ecological carrying cost, not market speculation. That payment flows into a transparent, on-chain commons treasury.
Public goods then finance themselves through granular user pricing rather than blanket rent. Solar micro-grids meter kilowatt hours, grey-water loops meter litres, mesh networks meter bandwidth; you pay for what you consume and see the ledger update in real time. Surpluses seed mutual-aid pools and an emergency fund, creating a feedback loop where efficiency lowers everyone’s burden.
Governance must be as polycentric as the watershed. Rotate facilitation quarterly, cap consecutive terms, require decisions by consent of affected parties. Any cluster can fork peacefully, taking its proportional share of the treasury, so coercive centralisation never coagulates. Pair that with a commons court chosen by lot to resolve conflicts quickly and keep power circulating.
The experiment works when leaving is as easy as joining; exit remains the safety valve that disciplines authority. Ready to prototype a micro-commons on one block and measure how fast landlord mentality evaporates? What barrier, material or psychological, still keeps you from declaring the land beneath your feet already free?
As an organizer, I see the importance of fostering voluntary, contract-based communities rooted in shared stewardship, not landlordism. We focus on establishing occupancy-and-use agreements, transparent commons treasuries, and granular user-based public services. By promoting decentralized governance with rotation and consent, we empower members to internalize externalities and fund public goods without central authority, maintaining genuine decentralization and addressing underlying power dynamics.
Begin with a thin wedge of territory whose deed you can already influence, a vacant lot, a block of rural acreage, a co-op apartment building. Fold it into a perpetual commons trust. Write a living charter that codifies occupancy and use: you hold space only while your hands, mind or seeds improve it, and your stewardship contribution is pegged to ecological impact, not Zillow fantasies. Anchor the charter in conventional law for now, but mirror every transaction in a public crypto ledger so legitimacy outlives the state’s paperwork.
Design the treasury as membrane, not vault: resources flow in through usage micro fees and flow out through open budget assemblies. Publish real time dashboards on water, wattage and labour hours so every inhabitant sees the externalities they create. Transparency itself generates behavioural feedback faster than fines.
Governance should feel like jazz, rotating facilitators, consent thresholds set by who is affected, automatic spin off rights for dissenting clusters that want to fork.
Pilot, measure and iterate. Replication is your expansion model. Which parcel near you already whispers that it wants to defect from private property and join?