Atlas City Project

Hi guys I'm new to your site and project, Frescos TVP and RBE concept over the past few days. Which is great for me as it the first time i have found people with similar ideas to my own.

However the main problem i came up against is in the initial stages of developing industrial capacity in a viable time frame that would represent an "alternative" economic system in the best way to show without question the advantage over monetary for RBE.

Due to the nature of RBE, and without holding out for Fresco's full scale economic collapse to force transition...

How are you going attain resources, extract, process, manufacture, distribute?

What skills and labour will need to be allocated to each industrial sector?

What amount of initial capital do you predict being needed to allow for sufficient quantity of resource acquisition?

What amount of initial capital do you predict being needed to allow for sufficient breadth of industrial capacity?

How will you handle utilizing existing patented technologies?

I also noted you are not looking to establish the city outside of the US and primarily looking for cheap land.

How will you secure mineral rights outside of the city limits?

How will you secure mineral rights outside of the US?

I start with just these for now before it begins to get too extensive for a post.

For the initial stages we will need to get materials through grants and donations. We will need to continue to have ties with the monetary system for certain aspects until there are other societies such as ours making products we need. The key for this proof of concept model is that there is no money within they city.

The capital needed for this city still has not been projected. We have places (such as the architectural and conceptualization threads) discussing building types, sizes, and materials, however, have no definite numbers yet.

We are not extremely concerned with patents. The hope is that being non-profit will work to our benefit if we need to use patented ideas, but it's likely to be easier just making our own variation that is not under patent limitations.

The city could vary well be made outside of the US, but since we all live here it may be easier to stay. Plus our surrounding infrastructure will make it easier to get materials that we can't necessarily get/create within the city.

There's a few things to start you off with. There are constant changes being made as we attempt to mix our philosophies in a very opposing system.

In regards to the above question, we will need alot of skill sets to accomplish our goals, and who knows, maybe we have a variety of industries with which the city is involved. (dont have all your eggs in 1 basket as they always say) now, as far as labor goes, we will need labor but we will attempt to eliminate as much as possible with automation.

At present there must be millions of factories making hundreds of millions of different products, many products are "variations on a theme" some are targeted at different price points, we need to look at each type of product and redesign it to use the best science and technology of the moment, resulting in a much smaller catalogue of products for the city to make, this catalogue will need to be redesigned every 5-10 years, bear in mind that without money, we cannot buy stuff so the city MUST make it itself.

Factories will in some cases be similar to existing factories in that they can turn out thousands of the same product each day, other factories will be "general purpose" using flexible manufacturing cells to turn out different products on demand, one factory may be programmed to produce 10,000 different products but may only make a few hundred units per day.

As well as a choosing from a catalogue of standard products, users will be able to customise them to their own taste or even design something new (with the aid of a CAD program to supply technical details they do not have the training to supply themselves).
People who want branded products will be disappointed as they will be protected by trademark, copyright and patents, we must be careful not to infringe any of these.

Some products will not be available to citizens, deemed either protected or harmful.

At first, this will be a difficult part of the city. Until we can have several cities there will be limitations in such production. Then again, most of those products are fairly useless or easily replaceable so it will be understood ahead of time.

We just need to realize just how materialistic we are and what we are willing to change about it.

I personally like the idea of doing an inventory of what products are needed, and then designing an industrial infrastructure around what is necessary to produce those products.

There are actually very few important things which could not easily be produced in a relatively short time period within a single community. The vast majority of those things are categorized as "commodities" (like steel, lumber, cotton, oil) and are already acknowledged by the modern economy as having geographic limitations to their production or extraction. The few other things are very complex components (and therefore very important) such as Integrated Circuits or Precision Instruments (Microscopes, Gene Sequencers, Etc.)

There is no satisfactory long term solution to the problem of commodity distribution, and it is the particular area of the economy Adam Smith originally proposed to be the focus of Free-Market Systems. In my mind, the community can operate without an internal monetary system and still participate in a free market with other communities. This is the best of both worlds in my mind, a dynamic flow of commodities regulated by the free market between otherwise self-sufficient and independent communities.

I'm not sure how much I can speak for the group as a whole, but my views are:

> How are you going attain resources, extract, process, manufacture, distribute?

I imagine by buying them, and building them with either money obtained from our own businesses, donations or grants. (Most likely I imagine our own businesses, as that is something we can rely on more I reckon.)


> What amount of initial capital do you predict being needed to allow for sufficient
> quantity of resource acquisition?

As much as we can

I think to be fair, any amount is a good start, though small would mean just a tiny community of perhaps one, for an entire city, it would need to be more, but I see more that we would start off as a small community and grow, rather than wait until we have millions and then build. (On the basis that a growing community would generate more income than us sitting around seperated geographically doing our own thing.)


> How will you handle utilizing existing patented technologies?

As mentioned, either using our own patent free versions, and I imagine simply by paying a royality in hard cash. (Though we might be able to come to some arrangement and pay in resources.)


> I also noted you are not looking to establish the city outside of the US and primarily
> looking for cheap land.

I think this group is mainly US folk, but I'm in the UK and intend to build a community here, so I'm here to cooperate and help as I can anyone who wants to build anywhere, as I'm sure we will have a lot of problems in common. (Eg we will both be worried about toilet systems!)


> we need to look at each type of product and redesign it to use the best science and
> technology of the moment,

I think one has to be careful doing that in that one could easily waste too much limited resources doing so at the expense of other aspects of the city.

Eg. it might be better to have cheaper products in abundance than a few quality products in short supply.

But try to design cheap products to be more easily recyclable and non-polluting.

(Eg. I'm working on low cost solar vehicles made mainly out of wood, on the basis that wood can be easily locally grown and manufactored items made from it and recycled, and its cheap!)


> bear in mind that without money, we cannot buy stuff so the city MUST make it itself.

I see the community still using money to buy outside products that it doesn't produce. (As such, it will need export products to exchange for cash.)


> I personally like the idea of doing an inventory of what products are needed, and then
> designing an industrial infrastructure around what is necessary to produce those
> products.

Generally agreed. (At the moment one of my focus projects is on low cost transport, in particular a solar velomobile, as this can not only transport people at low cost, but also small amounts of freight. Transport I see as one of the vital steps in helping build any community.)


> In my mind, the community can operate without an internal monetary system and still
> participate in a free market with other communities.

Agreed.


> This is the best of both worlds in my mind, a dynamic flow of commodities regulated
> by the free market between otherwise self-sufficient and independent communities.

Agreed.

My thought is that at first, a community can entirely 100% use money, but over time, as internal resources are created, that will slowly drop, perhaps one day to 0%, but more than likely to a low level that is neeed so people can still trade among themselves and the outside world, but not need for the basics.

For example, I can imagine once I have created a large enough fleet of solar vehicles, they could be used to provide say a free taxi service for members, a first step towards any kind of RBE world.

I'm also working on forum software, with the aim to provide both paid for accounts and free ones, so again, an online RBE world.

(The aim is to sell or rent solar vehiciles, but keep a small number that can be used for other tasks, be it freight delivery between factories/workshops of parts, or say lent for free to the unemployed to find work, or provide a free taxi service.)

> There is no satisfactory long term solution to the problem of commodity distribution

I quite favour an equal ration system plus extra rations if you work.

Eg. everyone might be entitled to say one ton of wood a year, or 10 kg of steel, and any time they want a product, the resources for that product are extracted from their ration of materials.

Being that not everyone is going to use all their rations of everything, it thus seems useful to allow trading of unwanted items, so that people who want something which uses more rations of X than they have, can trade Y for it.

(Though this could mean some people get rich by being commodity traders, if we build a very good trading system that people can use, this exploiting of people I reckon can be kept to a minimum, as most traders are simply taking advantage of the lack of information generally to the seller in a market to profit. (Eg. provide tools so that a seller has as much information as a smart trader, and you can help reduce the chances someone will rip them off.))

To that end, I'm keen to develop/help/code a global trading system with zero tax/fees to encourage this kind of solution.