Freedom Building

A Freedomist Response To The Growing Threat of Global Authoritarianism

Bill Collier July 23, 2021

The methods of 1776 don’t apply today in our response to modern, and globalist, authoritarianism, but the spirit of unilateral resistance and refusal to be cowed or owned must be reinvigorated among the populace!

In America, both the Democrats and the Republicans seem infected with different strains of the same disease: globalist authoritarianism.

For today’s Democrats, and by this we mean shot-callers not rank file registered Democrats, authoritarianism is sexy and the Bill of Rights or even the idea of America as a Union of sovereign and free Commonwealths, a Republic of Republics, is execrable. They don’t hate America, but they love monopoly power and they do hate anyone who won’t bow before their alt-gendered rainbow gods of wanton depravity and collectivist regimentation.

The bogeymen of the establishment left include racists, “phobes”, clinate change skeptics, cisgendered Christian white males especially, “insurrectionist” white supremacists and anyone on the “right” who isn’t down with the Democrats.

On the other hand, Republicans, again the shot-callers not rank and file registered Republicans, don’t hate justice and equality but they do love the blue-blooded Chamber of Commerce “cronyism over people” riches. They seem to evince a design of corporate monpolozation of the economy and worker exploitation to fatten the few at our expense. They may seem less authoritarian now, being out of power, but they are in fact just as likely to seek a world without competitors.

The bogeymen of the establishment right include “illegal aliens”, “Islamic terrorism”, “communists” who aren’t communists, and anything that hurts corporate profits and the stock market.

On one hand we have woke communism and on the other cronyist monopolism, two sects of the same “religion”, that of globalist authoritarianism, two factions of a ruling class whose aims against the interest, rights, persons, and property of the People are becoming more blatant and unchecked. Where human rights, human dignity, and human flourishing are concerned, the establishment, in both major factions, has nothing to offer but bogeyman fears and fake utopian promises and unworkable schemes.

While there are major surface differences here, the heart is the same. But there is another real difference of substance: today’s Democratic Party has evidently purged all non-authoritarians from leadership while the Republicans still face internal opposition at the leadership level to this spirit of authoritarianism. Basically, the Democratic shot-callers are almost 100% authoritarians while the Republican shot-callers are divided between the ruling class and outsiders who reject the siren call to monopoly power.

While we assess the woke communists as the main and strongest threat by far, we remain skeptical of the Republicans and vigilent against their authoritarian establishment, led by the likes of Mitt Romney and company. The fact most Republican leaders, office holders, and candidates refuse to even name “woke communism” and the authoritarianism that permeates the Democratic Party establishment is seen by many as proof the GOP has settled into a role a controlled opposition for theater only.

Authoritarianism is a growing threat to everything from supply chains and freedom of movement and commerce to individual rights and the good of the people. Policies aimed ultimately at restructuring society in every aspect to be easily managed by the few and for the few at our expense will not produce the monopoly power desired but can cause harm to the innocent caught up by their machinations.

The pushback will likely include political and civic action, but at the deeper level it must involve unilateral freedom-building actions by individuals and groups of people by freewill participation. It is proposed that freedom builders seek individual to local food, energy, health care, education, housing, and true press independency and the transformation of locales into freedom havens through official support of the Bill of Rights. These may be the most important foundational actions needed to begin to turn the tide and transfer power from the center and top to individuals, families, and various types of freewill participatory associations and communities.

In our natural sin state, humans will tend toward corruption and moral depravity against the laws of nature and nature’s God. In our natural redeemed state, when we actively seek God’s standards of righteousness and justice, humans tend toward a family-centered, as in a mother and father with their biological or adopted children, state of individual liberty within a free and pluralistic society of equals.

The one path leads to violence, poverty and ruin as the price for enriching the few and giving them absolute monopoly control over civilization itself. The other path leads to freedom with liberty and justice for all along with a high quality of life and universal opulence.

We don’t see the authoritarians winning, but we do see dark times and crises for those who righteously oppose this authoritarianism and its vehicles of power, including the alt gendered rainbow totalitarianism over culture, the wanton assault on marriage and family according to thousands of years of Judeo-Christian orthodoxy, and the monopoly corporations owning most vital aspects of our economic structure.

Even after the woke communists are vanquished, and unless they are we face a stunning collapse of the quality of life for all save the very few, the work of remaining vigilent against other hazards to our interests, rights, dignity, flourishing, persons, and property as free and spiritually sovereign human beings will remain a necessity.

The Distributed Freedom City Concept

Bill Collier July 19, 2021

We are casting a vision for the future in which people can build distributed freedom cities as private developments and subscriber-based networks within an area. People who love freedom, want success and prosperity, and desire to fulfill their own dreams, need a way to connect and collaborate in a larger area network of relationships and associations.

Together, these networks and nodes basically resemble the emergence of a large city that is self-contained, self-sustaining, and comprehensive in its scope of services and resources. It is a city distributed within and among all the communities of a specific area but that, despite being distributed, is for all that still a fully functional city serving its netizens, online-based subscribers, and the public.

The Freedomist is all about unilateral actions to promote real freedom and prosperity that leaves nobody in any demographic or community behind. The distributed freedom city concept takes the idea of a privately developed free city, as if it was an entire city created intentionally on freedom building principles and ideals, and distributes it throughout an area in the form of a digital platform and distributed facilities where its netizens can gather and access activities, social events, services, and resources.

Instead of one city in one single place, parts of the city, as facilities that provide services or even clustered housing developments affiliated with this virtual city are distributed all over, here and there. Parts of the distributed city, in the form of physical facilities and hubs, exist here and there in every village, township, town, county, or other municipality in its service area. The netizens include eResidents, eCitizens, Freeholders, Ecclesians, Peers, Electors, and Nobles, which are different types of subscriptions based on freewill participation. These netizens of the “virtual-to-local” distributed city live throughout the area, some in clustered housing affiliated with the virtual city and most wherever they already lived before the city came into existence.

What does the city offer? Through an economy of some scale, pooling of resources, and the ability to connect thousands of people for mutual benefit and profit, the city could meet most basic human needs of its netizens (what all the different subscribers are called) and ensure the protection of their rights, persons, and property from all harm. This is mostly through legal aid, practical mutual assurance among members, clubs that meet different needs, including a safety and home security cooperative, lobbying governments, viting en bloc, and a strong media presence and web presence.

While our distributed cities may be owned/developed and managed by a local chapter organization of our society, as the administrator, they will serve a broad and pluralistic community of freedom builders and freedom seekers. This is the private city concept wherein the administrators serve the netizens as clients and customers whose free market demands form the basis of a truly democratic feedback loop. The city serves its netizens, not the other way around, or it goes bankrupt.

A freedom city is a city ruled by the Bill of Rights and the core ideas and principles of freedom for all with a strong foundation of virtue, liberty, and independence. A distributed freedom city is basically a virtual-to-local community of people within a larger area who act in harmony to build freedom for themselves and for others.

In our terminology we call these Upo Shires, using the term shire from the Middle Ages to denote an area that is within a larger Duchy or Kingdom but which is also more or less self-reliant and self-governing as well self-sustaining. The term Upo denotes the fact these distributed cities would adhere to the UPDR ideals of governance, among other concepts and practices. In old England a Shire was equivalent to a County, more or less, so we often use the term Freedom Shires to describe a County wherein most to all local officials adhere to the spirit and intent of the US Bill of Rights as the highest law and standard of the land.

But a Upo Shire as a distributed freedom city isn’t a County, it is a virtual-to-local community that resembles a freedom shire, only it’s private and being part of it as a netizen of any kind is strictly based on freewill participation. Imagine a service area for a Upo Shire, as a distributed virtual-to-local “city”, including around 12 or so Counties. Imagine then a new county was formed, based on a city, with its own name and identity, only instead of being in one place, parts of it, from its facilities and core infrastructure to its people, are placed within each of the constituent communities within all of the Counties.

Conceptually this can be difficult to fathom. The reader who thinks maybe this is a literal physical city or that it is just a virtual or imagined city without substance would be understandably confused. Our concept is different than those but also somewhat like those cities. We ensuing a city that is is planned, like most cities, albeit in stages and phases, with various types and levels of both virtual and physical developments arising both from the city planners and administrators on one hand and private initiative by netizens and constituent entities or subdivisions on the other hand.

Above is an illustration of service area for a distributed Upo City, with buildings, hubs, and netizens distributed throughout a larger area that includes all or parts of 20 some counties and more than 700,000 people.

Setting up the virtual space and holding local gatherings to impart the vision, gather city-builders and leaders, and creating a master development plan to guide both virtual and physical developments is the first major stage of development for such a distributed private city. In our case, we will gather people through an international platform called “The Virtual Commonwealth of Upadaria” (VCU) and, from those who become Peers of our international society, a core area chapter organization will emerge which will take on the city-building responsibilities.

As with everything we share, your idea of a virtual-to-local distributed city may differ from ours, and in a given area just as there are multiple physical cities, there may be multiple distributed private cities, although one hopes these multiple private cities, if they are freedom cities at heart, will cooperate and collaborate with one another.

These distributed private cities are real things, as we envision them: they will have some sort of city-center or hub, perhaps the size of large village, and multiple smaller hubs, little villages, all over as well as various facilities to serve their netizens. The city, as an incorporated entity, will own land and property. In our case, the lands are owned by a land trust operated by an area chapter organization for our mutual benefit, missions, and refugee support society, which local chapter acts as the private developer and administrator of the city.

We envision the proliferation of multiple distributed free cities, even in one area, as a step toward creating permanent and robust alternative institutions that protect the rights, persons, and property of their netizens, advance a free market, and grow prosperity.

As noted, and to reiterate, a key aspect of a private city is that it’s not a democracy, it’s basically a private entity that has clients, the netizens, who use the power of association and how they spend their money to give ongoing feedback within a free market environment. This is a perfect democracy: the consensus of the clients is always dynamically shared with the provider who either serves their needs or faces a loss of netizen subscribers.

Your version of a distributed freedom city may be more like a traditional city in its governance. Our version does have a governance structure and indeed a city government, but real ownership of assets isn’t democratic in the classic sense, it is the pure democracy of the free market.

The city itself starts as a sub-network within the virtual platform of Upadaria, but its physical aspects include an area chapter community of our society, a land trust, mutual benefit corporations, clubs, and other entities chartered and/or licensed by the area chapter organization.

The deliberate creation of these distributed freedom cities, whether or not it is through the Upadaria Platform as a catalyst and a local society chapter as the project developer, is the next evolution in the cause of advancing freedom for all that leaves nobody behind.

Housing Freedom and The Family Freehold

Bill Collier July 18, 2021

The steep cost of housing and a system of regulation that adds needless burdens while perpetuating non-sustainable designs over more autonomous housing designs are denying Americans fair access to housing freedom and an unencumbered family freehold.

What is housing freedom? Quite simply it is housing that is affordable and that enhances one’s personal freedom because it contains elements of food and energy freedom as well, which basically means you can produce your own food and energy without the need for external help beyond a local freewill participatory association of some kind.

A family freehold is the core property, including real estate, that is needed to sustain a family at an higher material level commensurate with an advanced modern society. To be unencumbered means it is affordable to own outright without debt, it isn’t regulated beyond absolute necessity, and it isn’t taxed.

Every American and every American family, regardless of demographic background or location, deserves afford, quality, spacious, and self-sustaining housing that enhances their quality of life, wealth, and freedom! We call this a family freehold.

Basically, the freehold is what we have in mind as the ideal for all Americans to become as materially autonomous and self-sustaining as possible so that little government control is needed and so that mega corporations cannot gain absolute monopoly power over all aspects of our culture and society.

We are seeing a housing crisis emerge, especially for younger people, that would make everyone debtors to banks, slaves to the tax collectors, and materially dependent upon government and monopolistic corporations just to survive. This is truly the front line of the battle to defeat the freedom takers and liberate the people from their exploitation and control.

While legal reform at all levels is needed and sought by Freedomists, unilateral actions and tools are also envisioned, as well as public pressure campaigns against exploitation and consumer fraud. The goal is to make it feasible for young couples, or anyone, to find and purchase their own family freehold at an affordable price and for that freehold to be quality, sustainable, and beneficial to their lives.

The perpetuation of the people cannot happen outside of a high birth rate which requires the presence of mothers and fathers who raise their own biological or adopted children together in a loving home. This isn’t an appeal to a law requiring this of anyone, it’s an observation of historical lessons which show that the devolution of family from extended families to atomized individuals doesn’t bode well for any society.

The family freehold, whether alone or, as we may recommend for saving money and pooling resources, some form of shared estate or villa (a Freehold Villa), is an affordable, quality, dwelling that has within it some of the elements that lead to food and energy freedom as well.

The problem with housing today is speculation coupled with regulations and taxes that work together to produce mammoth costs both in terms of building and the final price. The local government is incentivized to keep property “values” high in order to extract more tax revenue, so it cannot even begin to address the problem of rising prices because it benefits from that!

Some ideas we have include things like housing clubs that would help a group of people building homes save on materials while providing legal protection and local lobbying to deal with outmoded regulations and codes. Other ideas include the freehold villa and the creation of local credit unions to secure low-cost financing that is reasonable and fair.

We have to find and use gaps for freedom within existing laws and then push the boundaries of those gaps for freedom until the legal, regulatory, business, and economic ecosystem tends to produce equitable and accessible opportunities for all Americans to obtain a family freehold of their own at an affordable price.

Housing freedom itself isn’t a right, but access to obtain housing freedom through your own effort or in collaboration with others must be considered a right.

Nobody who is willing to work and invest in themselves should find obtaining housing freedom is beyond their reach in an advanced society.

Shifting Power To Free Local Communities

Bill Collier July 18, 2021

The Freedomist Town Meeting System will shift power at the local level to the people and eventually shift power from the federal center to the individual , the family, and both freewill participatory associations and the local community.

At the very local level, Thomas Jefferson proposed a “ward republic” where the citizens gathered in a town meeting and, through open and free debate, chose their local rules and the such via direct democratic votes. This idea has had more modern layers added such as a consensual decision-making processes that goes well beyond mere democracy and prevents the abuse of the minority.

Our present systems of government at the very local to county level are not set up this way plus anything beneath the state level is just a subdivision of the state without any real autonomy. The concept of a Union of 50 states hasn’t made the logical leap that counties are combinations of locales as the primary constituent entity and states are federations of their counties, which ought to be the primary political powers in each state.

The radical, in a good way, devolution of power from the center to the provinces, from the top to the base of society, and from federal and state to county and locality, hasn’t occurred. Instead, power went from the states to a bloated and increasingly authoritarian federal power high on its hubris and a slave to its corporate masters.

The response we propose for Freedomists at the local level is to both find gaps for freedom and institute a unilateral Freedomist Town Meeting system at the very local to the county level.

Freedomists will gather first to form Teams of 5-10 people who plan and organize the local effort to develop a Freedomist Town Meeting by conducting educational outreach, canvassing, creating a people-powered free press, and activism aimed at gaining voters who sign the Freedomist Pledge.

The gist of the town meetings system is Freedomists and citizens who sign a Freedomist Pledge gather in a town meeting of their own to pass Resolves and Remonstrances as well as Instructions to their elected officials.

Freedomists work to gain a majority of local voters who sign a Freedomist Pledge to only vote for candidates who offer a tangible defense of the Bill of Rights according to the original spirit and intent and interpretations that are most generous to individual liberty. These electors gather online and/or on person to conduct a consensual decision-making process to review acts by local officials and people who have a public trust (including the press) and then issue Resolves to express their will and desire, Remonstrances to address issues of concern, and Instructions as to how that official or governing body or person who has a public trust should act.

The Freedomist Town Meeting then publishes and distributes its acts and findings to the public and works to ensure all those who tend to defy its acts face things like boycotts, peaceful protests, votes against them, or even recall efforts. The consequences for ignoring a Town Meeting become burdensome on the offenders.

A Town Meeting would also vett candidates and officials and may elect to vote “en bloc” whereby all members agree that in such a scenario they will all vote the same way. Voting en bloc would even give a local to county Freedomist Town Meeting leverage where it doesn’t yet have a majority of voters who have taken the Pledge.

The Freedomist Town Meeting sets up a vehicle for power that actually empowers average freedom-loving people and makes them, as a whole, a rather tough target for the freedom takers. Through this, there is a de facto mirror popular self-governance structure to the local government which has a real and legitimate means of exerting its influence in a manner the local officials and people who hold a public trust cannot easily ignore.

The details you can find as you stay tuned to The Freedomist, we always have new ideas and content for the freedom builder meant to give insights and direction that enable you to expand the influence of freedom based on virtue, liberty, and independence at the local level.

Our aim is to see faith, family, and community, on a strictly freewill participation basis, become the driving force for change and renewal throughout all of this country, in every locale and among every demographic group. Our aim is to effect, through practical acts, the transfer of wealth and power back to individuals, families, communities of trust based on freewill participation, and locales governed at least on a de facto basis as united popular democratic republics (UPDR Communities), and states as the primary political sovereignty of scale which are themselves unions of counties.

As for America, our long-term goal is to see this land become a truly free, prosperous, and pluralistic society of equals with maximum sovereignty at the lowest levels. Our country would become a grand Commonwealth of Freedom with prosperity, liberty, and justice for all through the protection of every citizen’s right to life, liberty, and property.

Every community in this country, regardless of its demographic makeup or socioeconomic situation, deserves to become a consensual democratic republic with freedom based on virtue, liberty, and independence as its standard.

Our approach is to build the mirror governance structure unilaterally with whomever wishes to become a Freedomist and strive to both build freedom in their own lives and in their own locale as the basis of a statewide to countrywide effort to firmly place freedom based on virtue, liberty, and independence at the pinnacle of American governance and jurisprudence.

The Freedomist Town Meeting is the first step toward American renewal and advancement that will move us out of the past and beyond an authoritarian present into a glorious future of fulfillment and happiness that leaves no American behind. Until every American of every demographic background and socioeconomic status in every single place everywhere in this country can experience the benefits of freedom based on virtue, liberty, and independence, our work is not done.

Our guding light for this countrywide campaign is “leave no American behind!”

The Town Meeting System is important because it will effect a real local transfer of power from the local ruling class to the average person in a way nothing else can do. Eventually, as we gain influence in every state, our intention is to codify a local united popular democratic republic as the core constituent entity of every state and the highest political sovereignty within each state.

If there must be a state as magistrate and protector of the rights, persons, and property of all its citizens, then let it become a diverse and decentralized Commonwealth of Freedom that leaves no citizen behind.

Using a Town Meeting System every locale can be won for the People and real power can devolve back to them as it should have always been. No locality that stays within the boundaries of the Bill of Rights in their original spirit and intent, with the most generous interpretation favoring individual rights, should be dictated to by any greater power and all political authority should be deemd to flow from these local UPDR Communities to the other larger combines such as counties as Freedom Shires, states as Freedom Commonwealths, and our whole Union of Freedom Commonwealths.

That’s the big vision and we may be a few generations from achieving that vision. But the Freedomist Town Meeting System is something you can embrace and pursue with some realistic possibility of success within a few years of hard and disciplined work.

FOOD FREEDOM: A Local Farm-Fresh Food Buying Club

Bill Collier July 18, 2021

Food freedom, or food independence, is another way to both get out from under the influence and control of the ruling class and create a more sustainable and earth-friendly future. The basic approach is a group of around 100 or so people come together and form a Food Freedom Club that provides locally produced food from farmers to club members.

A few thoughts are that the club either finds a member or recruits/hires an expert to handle the administration and this person arranges to find both local providers of food (meat or plant-based food) as well as local processors, with an emphasis on those who use sustainable processes and renewable resources. The marriage between farmers and food processors is important. Additionally, the club would use the Victory Garden idea wherein members combine expertise, land, and labor to produce whatever can be raised or grown by them on their own properties.

The goal is for the club to be able to produce enough food for members to meet their basic nutrition needs with 80% or more via renewable and sustainable resources.

Food freedom is as vital as voting, in fact it’s far more important, and, if pursued, would lead to tremendous results for all concerned.

After getting all that food, what could be better than having a large common meal with participants to celebrate your food freedom and perhaps invite some folks who aren’t as well off as you.

Food freedom is not a about politics. It is about not being controlled, it is about building a sustainable future, and it is about community connections that are warm and caring.

Everyone Needs A “Tribe”

Bill Collier July 17, 2021

We live in a topsy-turvy world. Compared to just 20 years ago, the amount of small to serious incidents of uncertainty and chaos we might experience has seemed to rise. Things like “prepping” have become mainstream and most of us have experienced some sort of privation due to recent global events, including lockdowns and sudden supply distributions or rising costs.

Tribes may provide us a clue as to how to manage this.

Tribes are extended kinships that nurture the individual without smuggling them. They balance the need for individual spiritual sovereignty with the need for warm and connected bonds that help make us more human and more humane.

The insanity of the hour and the deprivations don’t have to spell the end of the world to have a major inpact. It’s not likely to get better and the hits are going to keep coming. Most of us, mostly alone, are not prepared to handle such things with our wits and resources.

For anyone who isn’t independently wealthy and well-connected with lots of friends and family, the prospects for weathering a repeat or a more dramatic version of recent events isn’t that awesome. We literally recommend striving to become independently wealthy and well connected with lots of friends and family and, within the Upadaria Project we will aim, in part, to facilitate this for as many people as we can.

But even if you do acheive this, or if you are on the road thereto, having a tribe of people connected to your life at the personal level and through larger-scale networking possibilities is going to be vital to maintaining your convictions and values in relative peace and happiness while being materially well situated.

Building tribes is going to become a necessity. You will either build one with your own friends and family and then invite others to join in a network of such clusters of people or you will have to find and join one.

A tribe is a body of people who have a kinship bond, even if they aren’t related by blood, that connects them to each other in such a way that the well-being of each participant is of equal value to every other participant.

You may have multiple tribes, like people in your religious denomination, people of the same sociocultural background or ethnicity even, your extended family if it is close-knit, people you went to school with or fellow veterans, people in your profession, and the like.

But we foresee and are partly inspired by the idea that tribes are likely to become more important and more formal. The need to protect your sociocultural values from being a liability in a society that defies and demeans those values will require a more robust approach to having a larger support network for mutual profit and benefit.

Basically, if you have a large enough tribe of people who deeply share your sociocultural values you will have economic and business connections who will sustain each other even in the face of the cancel culture authoritarians who want to punish anyone who isn’t willing to change their values to meet the woke totalitarians’ demands.

Tribes as we are using this term are sociocultural and socioeconomic networks of people who connect and bond at the level of identity based on shared values. They have a common name/identity that represents their shared values and bond so that whenever they meet anyone who shares that name/identity, they know to prefer them and that they share their core values.

You cannot hope to endure these times of uncertainty and all these crises without a tribe of your own. Otherwise you will be easy prey to the cancel culture authoritarians and their woke totalitarian agenda.

Another form of tribe is our concept of a spiritual nation of people whose God is the Lord. This is definitely outside the immediate life-experience of most Americans who may equate things like race or citizenship to nationhood. We don’t mean those things. A spiritual nation is a larger tribal/kinship bond with a common identity based on shared beliefs, values, and convictions as expressed in ideals, principles, practices, and mandates that connects people through freewill participation.

The nearest equivalent we have to express this concept in a way you might understand is a fraternal benefit society or fraternal order, only with more of an emphasis on mutual self-reliance and self-sufficiency as well as maximum material independency from the agents of influence and control in an godless culture.

Our “tribe” is more formal, albeit not excessively so. It is based on 17 Protocols voluntarily adopted and used in mutual support for each participant to approach more and more degrees of independence and self-sufficient. But we are certain our cocnept and implementation of some form of tribal community of people, connecting online and clustering in person, will be more reflective of the norm in the future, especially for those whose values are virtually proscribed by society at large.

Whether you find your tribe through the Upadaria Project or not, the basic idea is to be very deliberate about engaging in connections that can scale to hundreds or more people that become your social safety net, your natural market, and your support system. Through our platform and other genesis structures, people will have a more convenient and accessible opportunity to be part of a tribe of people from around the world whose ideals, principles, and practices harmonize with their own values and facilitate greater levels of material prosperity and independence for themselves.

In a culture whose sociocultural and socioeconomic, not to mention political, structures are run by and for a ruling class who despise our Judeo-Christian morals and traditions, being part of some kind of tribe based on those morals and traditions is the only way to personally endure and to preserve those morals and traditions for future generations.

Safety In A Time of Uncertainty: The Home Security and Safety Cooperative

Bill Collier July 12, 2021

Safety and security within your home when riots or violence are nearby, or against criminals, should be of utmost concern to responsible adults. Simply leaving these matters to the police or hoping for the best, or just having firearms yourself when if you use them some prosecutor may punish you, isn’t enough. This is especially true in urban areas or areas bordering them.

One idea to consider is the home security cooperative. This is a cooperative owned in some combination by its workers and by its customers. This would be a fully vetted and licensed armed security service working with customers not only to patrol and monitor, and respond, but to help them with basic home safety and security preparations and with firearms safety and training, something everyone should applaud.

Within our fictional story about Upadaria, set as a history looking back from 2147, the world enters a major crisis of massive and violent upheavals and the response is a Civic Guard, basically a security and safety, and civil defense and emergency preparedness, cooperative. The Civic Guard in the story has a global structure to pool resources and provide training and support but operates local franchises owned by workers and customers, the customers being members of an international association called a “Commonwealth.”

While this idea is partially inspired by the fictional idea, and in the platform we are building their “Civic Guard” is mostly just a color guard and paintball league, it can be adapted to your own neighborhood needs in the real world.

What this isn’t is a private “militia” of any kind. Let’s be clear, this is a legitimate security company set up by homeowners to meet their home security needs and provide professional backing, training, and support. There is absolutely zero politics involved and this is directed at gamgs, criminals, riots, unrest, and actual disasters and emergencies, including medical, not “the government.”

Indeed, for those concerned with the mercenary nature of some police or those who desire reform, the local security cooperative could become a workable and efficient alternative to burying cops who aren’t connected deeply to those they serve.

The privately owned neighborhood or local home security cooperative, perhaps maybe even call them the Civic Guard, could become a strong means for local people to take their power back from the bureaucrats and corporations and become more materially independent of the influence and control.

This concept is consistent with a Freedomist principle that states:

Whatever you can do privately on your own, through free market exchange, or by collaboration and cooperation, should be done in order to increase material independency and decrease being under the influence and control of others who interests aren’t aligned with your own.

Your own locally owned and operated home security and safety cooperative that fully supports and engages the homeowner ensure your safety, without compromising your independence, even against hazards beyond the scale you as an average person can handle.

Clustering At A Local Scale For Mutual Benefit and Profit

Bill Collier June 24, 2021

We present a larger-scale, albeit still local, idea for decent-sized groups of people to gather and cluster, using the ideas and standards of a pluralistic free society of equals, to become materially self-sufficient, to increase their own level or material independency, to protect each other’s civil rights and well-being against major hazards, and to become prosperous.

We call this idea a “Freedomist Homestead Community” and it is a concept for protecting your family from economic, natural, or man-made disasters while increasing your level of wealth and happiness. Unless you are financially secure and self-sufficient to the max, you will find it difficult to insulate your family from major crises, such as the pandemic, or to invest in something that could increase your wealth without increasing the burden on your time and energy.

A Freedomist Homestead Community could be urban or rural. In fact, for Freedomists who live in an urban setting, clustering together in one larger, mutually-benificial and self-sufficient community may mitigate some of the economic, social, and political problems faced by that city.

In presenting this concept we are not proposing that you have to use our exact terminology. You can call your project anything you like. Sometimes we use terms like “clustered housing” or “clustered living”, for instance.

Pictured above: what a smaller Homestead Community or a Homestead Cluster within a Homestead Community might look like under construction.

Basically, a Freedomist Homestead Community is a larger housing and business development consisting of 3-5 main clusters of around 200 adults each each, interspersed with housing and commercial space leased for profit to the public, using renewable energy and locally-sourced renewable products to meet its most basic material needs.

These Homestead Clusters consist of 3-5 Homesteads for around 15 adults who are members of a fraternal benefit community (more on that further along) or related by blood and around 5-10 other adults who simply lease space based on fair housing laws.

A Homestead might be a single multi-use and multi-family building with a few shops, offices for home businesses, a gym/pool, and surrounding land with food production in the form of greenhouses, hydroponics, a fish farm, or small animal enclosures. Or all these things, including residences, might be separate buildings on a single estate.

Pictured above: an urban Homestead Community might blend right in as a larger city block.

Let’s talk about a fraternal benefit community. If you research a fraternal benefit society, they are formed on the basis of a “fraternal bond” and they bring mutual benefit to members. A fraternal bond can be religious, ethnic, vocational, or any number of different things.

A Homestead based on a fraternal benefit community is basically a housing cluster owned by a mutual benefit corporation that consists of members of that fraternal benefit society. A mutual benefit corporation is an incorporated entity designed to benefit the owners of its shares, but it can conduct for-profit activities for its members.

The Homestead Community’s land would be owned by a land trust, dedicated to promoting certain types of mutual benefit corporations. It’s common facilities and infrastructure would be owned by a parent entity, which also owns and land trust. In addition to the Homesteads, the parent entity might also own residential and business spaces it leases to the public and other spaces for its benevolence and charity work.

It would benefit is shareholders in providing them great housing, letting them be around peole with whom they feel a warm fraternal connection, and allowing them to derive profit through financially self-sustaining activities, such as leasing residential and business spaces, or even doing special events for profit. It is conceivable such a community and its mutual benefit corporations, if it had multiple types, could earn enough money to both provide for no-cost housing and even generate income for members.

Too often people think in a one-dimensional and single-faceted manner and don’t realize that an intentional community reflective of higher freedom standards must, like existing public entities (like municipalities), include and consist of diverse organizations and entities.

The Freedomist Homestead Community would consist of multiple interconnected but autonomous entities which use existing legal structures to their maximum effect because no single entity can be what we are striving to build. It would be the very picture of a free and pluralistic society of equals which provides for your inherent right and innate desire to cluster with people you feel a warm connection to without allowing any form of discrimination.

There are smaller scale ways to build toward this goal and it is conceivable that a single Homestead Community may not occupy one space, it could be a distributed community with individual residences and properties, clusters or Homesteads of around 15 adults, or the like, distributed here and there with larger common facilities somewhere accessible to all. Whether it is concentrated or distributed, a Homestead Community could meet all basic needs through free exchange, collaboration, mutual benefit, and mutual assurance alone without any need to depend on the corporate world or the government.

Building physical spaces for gathering and clustered living and to achieve material and economic self-reliance through mutual support is the only practical way to protect yourself from the impact of larger scale systems that are not beneficial to most people or from man-made or natural disasters.

One might begin woth a Homestead for 3-5 families and attached single adults connected by a fraternal bond, with 1-3 residences for the public, and expand, adding new Homesteads to form a Homestead Cluster and multiple Clusters forming a Homestead Community.

The gist is this: it is necessary and wise to begin working toward building physical spaces that would result in the support structure for a self-sustaining free and pluralistic society at the local scale.

Freedomist Essentials: Enjoying Free Association In Housing

Bill Collier June 23, 2021

Free association in housing means you are free to choose who you “live with” in your immediate vicinity and it means you are free to form clustered living arrangements with people with whom you are related or have a fraternal bond.

The mutual benefit corporation is designed to benefit its members, a given class or group of people who own shares in the corporation while the corporation owns the assets and property used to benefit the members. We propose the vehicle of a mutual benefit corporation to provide mutual benefit housing, or clustered living, while preventing the abuse of this right to prompt intolerance, discrimination, and segregation.

Mutual benefit housing is housing owned by a mutual benefit corporation for the benefit of its members. Even if some housing is leased to the public at large, the profits are used to benefit the shareholders who may also, as shareholders, have access to housing. In the case of members, by owning shares they gain access to the housing, they pay only for the shares and/or actual cosgs, like utilities and maintenance.

A group of, say, 30 or so families who form an MBC could buy a condo development with 50 units, using 30 for members and leasing 20 to the public. It may be that the profit from the leased residences covers more than half the cost of the other 30 units occupied by members.

Such MBC’s could be limited to members of a fraternal order or a church or to people in certain income ranges, to people of color, or whatever. It stands to reason that an MBC would be able to limit its membership to people it serbes, as described, thus providing a vehicle for like-minded people to cluster together for close cooperation and mutual support.

In researching the law, it seems possible to have an MBC limited to a specific group of people on the same basis as fraternal benefit societies are formed.

The danger and concern from a Freedomist perspective is that, taken to extremes, this legal device could be used to essentially segregate communities by “race”, though we consider “race” a negative social construct. Imagine whole neighborhoods with “no Jews” signs and you begin to see how this vehicle for mutual benefit could become a cover for racist exclusion.

Clustered living is conceptually the aggregation of a few dozen or so families whose organic cohesiveness allows for very close cooperation without sacrificing individual autonomy or requiring a strong system of command and control. The idea of a group of such families and attached single adults clustering together for very close mutual support, and benefit, seems basically nothing more sinister than an extended family group, which used to be prevalent in most societies.

The issue of using this as a means of racial exclusion comes both when it is scaled behind a few dozen related or organically cohesive families to encompass whole areas and when people not considered in the “in group” cannot access housing.

Our proposal for such clustered living approaches recognizes the instinct and right of individuals to “cluster” but also recommends a limitation to scale while also recommending that even such “clustered housing developments” should offer some housing to the public on the basis of fair housing laws. Segregation and exclusion promote conflict and also tend to marginalize people, denying them equitable access to a basis necessity.

On the other hand, denying people the right to cluster together in such a familial way, whether as relatives or because of some fraternal bond, is also a violation of a fundamental human right to free association. A balanced approach, using an MBC that allows for clustered living on a reasonable scale and that also offers housing to the public, seems the best way to respect both sets of rights. It is also makes economic sense.

What is more, we propose, an MBC as a “landlord” will likely be a LOT better than a private landlord as all MBC members are shareholders and will be available to ensure their clients, those leasing from them, are happy.

We can envision a clustered housing development with 30 or so residences for members, 20 or so for the public, with some common areas for members only and some for all residences, perhaps some shops or a market area, and even facilities for a fraternal benefit society or some subcriber-based club or online community whose members live near the development but who aren’t residents.

Unlike traditional housing where you own the deed, in an MBC the corporation holds the deed, you hold the shares, but, on the downside, if you cease to gualify as a member, like if membership in a fraternal benefit society is the basis of membership, then you could face a scenario where your shares are bought back from you and you either move out or become a renter.

Nothing is perfect and within the scope of existing law and practical necessity, it seems an MBC that also offers housing to the public is a great way to honor our inherent right to free association and to cluster together while ensuring that nobody loses access to housing based on intolerance, bigotry, or discrimination. We therefore tend to promote this idea and would support clarifying legislation making it more clear and easier for people who desire to cluster together to do so. We also would propose laws that incentivize MBC’s to set aside at least 30% of their total inventory of housing spaces to serve the public.

People deserve to be able to form clusters, including through clustered living arrangements, that give them close connections for mutual benefit with people they are related to or have a fraternal bond with. The balance we must maintain is to ensure that in exercising such rights we remain sensitive to the rights and needs of others.