Businessman in office and exterior construction model. Mixed media
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.
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.
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.
