From Science to Sci-Fi
Guidelines and punishments that be drawn up and adhered to. While corporal punishments are not allowed isolation and social punishments are far more effective within a close knit community. Regular habits and routines breed discipline and these in turn help the community function.
Equal entrance levels then will mean the all members receiving equal treatment on arrival. The same utensils for each person with no excess; cutlery, a bowl, cup, plate, bedding and 7 days worth of identical clothing to be distributed to every novice joining the community.
Each person will be provided similar sleeping arrangements, a futon, space and necessary items for hygiene (towels, tampons, nail clippers, soap, tooth brush). This can grow and change based on the needs of the time but it is necessary to give only the bare minimum to each person this is almost an induction of rebirth.
There are also obvious exceptions to this rule:
Merry Christmas one and all, it’s a good time to remember how lucky we are, the things we can appreciate it and if you’re fortunate a family who you can say “I love you” to,
So I’ll post 5 entries today, hardly an amazing present but it’s the best I can offer.
In Entry 24 I have made a few changes to clarify my thinking at the time. Including calculating an actual compound interest rather than my guesswork while writing on a bus. It should be noted as well that in my head there is a lot of information not yet mentioned on how the community works that directly affects payment.
I won’t go into detail now because these thoughts mature in future entries but essentially the community works on the basis of monastic or kibbutz like structure, all the members are fed, have room and board, electricity and basic required utensils given to them. Thus there is no need to have actual money in hand aside from a petty cash allowance for freedoms sake and the liberty to do things outside of the community.
Even more important it should be noted that these are just hypothetical predictions and don’t take into account variance in interest, possibly different amounts of payment but they do show how a community can give value to individuals without effecting their position within the community.
Most graduates leaving university can expect to be paid €25-30,000 if they can find work. But most of this goes into food, accommodation and general lifestyle costs. The community offers a fraction of this allowing it to be economically competitive in the technological and R&D; market but due to the payment into savings the member will most likely end up better off than by trying to work independently.
For pure speculations sake let us say the community actually is slightly more successful and pays €10,000 a year into an account of each member the graduate now would receive €105,274 on leaving and the 30 year member €500,246. I would actually hope that the community could pay more again than this but it does at least show some feasibility of the concept.
There should some idea of ownership within the community and of recompense and savings for work done while a being a part of it. this would mean that while you start with nothing you can buy more, save money and have an improvement of situation during your stay/lifetime.
This to an extent is merely a reflection on society at large [1] but there must a very different system implemented for payments and savings to avoid merely creating a mini-capitalist community not much different from the external one.
The community will pay a dividend twice yearly into a high interest savings account for each member. let’s say for example €4,000, this money is then only accessible to the member at the point of retirement from working life, leaving the community or for a request of purchase to the administration such as a luxury, required materials, a house, a sabbatical journey, a computer course e.t.c.
On top of the twice yearly payments there should be a petty payments into a current account allowing member the possibility of minor luxury purchases in life like a night out drinking, buying a favourite food, presents for friends or family and such like. This could be an additional €2,000 making a sum of around €41 per week in petty cash.
With these example figures we would be paying out €10,000 per year, per full-time member. While this seems a trivial amount for each individual it is important to note how incredibly fast these savings will grow year on year. Very few people save excessive amounts of money, a large proportion of what we spend goes on food, rent, electricity and is frittered away on impulse buys.
To illustrate this example let us take a 21 year old graduate member becoming a full-time member of the community. Each year the community is placing €8,000 into a savings account with an interest of 3.12% for that graduate. Let us for simplicities sake assume he spends all his petty cash and doesn’t touch his savings during his time in the community. At 30 decides he will leave the community as he doesn’t want the lifestyle any more he will leave with €84,219. Someone working 30 years and leaving would finish with €400,197.
1. Modern industrialised society to some extent is based working for capital, building savings, procuring property and economic growth to gain prestige or comfort within a community.
