Team:Core Forum
Activities: General discussion forum and project coordination
This is the Wiki page for The RBE10K Project's Core Forum Team.
Minutes of Sun 14 July 2013
Minutes taken by Mel, with some updates by Ziggy
There's a new active member from Argentina who's reactivating participation within the Spanish community. He's Mauricio Manattini and speaks English too.
We're considering a new approach in case we have significantly less than 10,000 members to settle with. The lawyer member from Ecuador (Rafael Villacrés Muñoz) said the laws for cooperatives are expiring and cooperatives will change into companies. We might start something like an eco-village that would also be a company, offering sustainable services, such as helping companies become more sustainable or building websites for ethical organisations. It would be non-profit, meaning it wouldn't profit in terms of luxuries but for the benefit of the community.
If we choose to do this, we'd have to think of more services it would offer while people are living there. We should also be careful we do not sell out like some ethical organisations have. Our aim is still to distance ourselves from the system.
We would keep rbe10k and Gaia Community separate so the 10k plan is still there. Possibly have separate websites for the two.
Andrei talked about a money-free community in Russia and that there's plans for an rbe-like community in Ukraine.
Next we talked about building materials: We would need a solar powered brick maker. Cement is otherwise good but awful for environment, so compact earth bricks are better but more difficult to build with. One problem point is glass-making. We need information on this.
Aquapini - there are people willing to finance construction and see if it's commercially viable. This would give us valuable experience!
Earthbags - great for small buildings but cannot make large ones. Aquapinis are designed for using these for all retaining walls.
Communal living could be a problem because people are not used to it. People are used to living in small families and not with hundreds or thousands of people. But what if we were to build small houses instead? We would need more space, material and time for building and there would be more walking as the houses would be spread out. Also, people would be tempted to own more stuff because they'd have a place where to store things. But the idea of an rbe is to think differently about owning things! It would also be difficult to track resources and share equally. We'd need a piping network, electricity grid etc. It's okay for people to build their own if they want; we should keep space for that. However, we would not want some people to buy their own houses while other cannot, as this would go against our principle of equality.
We're thinking of having sleepboxes for sleeping. It's like a small room with a bed (they have them in some airports). Since this would only be used for sleeping, it doesn't need to be big. And it offers people some privacy. We also discussed the option of fibre-optics to get sunlight in the morning. Another option is to have bunk beds, which would be cheaper but offer no privacy. People would have their choice of which to go for.
TO DO:
Anyone: Find info on glass-making
Andrei: Find a link for the Russian money-free community
Anyone: think about the company idea, what skills we could offer
Anyone: think about communal living vs small houses; what are the pros and cons; what are people's ideas about privacy, how would they feel about accommodation for hundreds of people? (Ask from friends!)
Anyone: find out more about the legal differences between companies and non-profit organisations (charities). We might want to collect donations as well. And we are not aiming to gain profit, so it would essentially be a charity.
Anyone: Think of better ways to coordinate research. Many members would want to do something but don't know where to start and need someone to tell them.
Members
