The basic unit in the social structure for SEE is the household. This may be a traditional nuclear family, an extended family, a couple, two or three couples, or a group of single people, among many other possibilities. When a household is made up of singles, four to six is a likely number. Taking into account families which will have two members, twenty members are likely to be in three or four households.

SEE will have a mixed ownership structure. This means it will be neither a commune in which almost everything is owned in common nor a system of totally private ownership. A household will be made up of individuals. Adult individuals are likely to own a computer and possibly an automobile. The household will control its house, major appliances, and possibly some vehicles. It may not be possible for the household to formally own its house, but we expect to establish an informal equivalent. A group of households will make up a "cluster." A cluster is likely to control a garage, a common house with laundry facilities, guest quarters, meeting space, and entertainment facilities. A group of clusters at one location makes a "settlement." The settlement is likely to own such items as a gym, a cafe or restaurant, a video theater, and shops for metal or wood working, along with the land and utilities outside of dwellings.

The "community" is the entire population at any given time. Thus the community will be about one cluster when there are twenty people, a settlement when there are 100 members, and later, several settlements.

The household will have charge of their house. We have a strong preference that the household own its house, although regulations may push us into some other legal structure. One possible legal arrangement is a condominium. A multi-family dwelling would be essentially single-family houses joined by storage space. The household would then own their house as real property. Another possible legal structure is a housing cooperative. It would formally own all land and buildings. However, the structure of the leases used can in effect allow each household to control its own house.

Within the household there will be considerable sharing, especially of kitchen, dining, and entertainment facilities. The members of the household determine how its space is used-private bedrooms or one dormitory? What about space for children-shared or individual? Large private spaces with little common space or vice versa? Queen Anne antique furniture or pillows all over the place without a stick of furniture? Rock music at 110 decibels, or classical music in the background, or silence with those who wish to listening through earphones? Formal work credits or an informal division of chores? Rotation tasks or specialists? While some households may elect to prepare their own meals, "meal clubs" for more than one household are also possible. Households may adopt a name for themselves and their structure.

Families, however they arrange their living space, are strongly desired by the community, and the community can offer them many benefits. Families make a community more stable. In addition, arranging for care of children when both parents work, opportunities for "hand me down" chains in children's clothing, and spare cribs, etc. are some ways that a community can help young families. Young singles may be hoping to attract a partner and start a family.

Ownership of property will be by members of the settlement corporation who will pay a membership fee that will cover capital costs of cluster and settlement property. As a subsidy to children, members will be adults. Households make their own arrangements on supporting minors who live among their members.

The membership fee may be structured so that some of it is paid on joining and additional amounts are paid annually for a few years thereafter. This possibility would allow members to join for less initial total capital, which would mean that money from FMF sources could be stretched further. This possibility would be paid for in delay of purchases of common property.

There will be operating costs for household and common facilities in addition to initial capital costs. The responsibility for these operating costs will be specified in the lease or other contract.

It is envisioned that the settlement as a whole will own several significant assets. We do not expect all the settlers to arrive at once, so this settlement property will be bought as funds become available with more settlers arriving. High priority items are all utility facilities outside of household structures, a garage, a laudromat, and meeting space. Also, a common garage is expected to eliminate the need for formal roads within a settlement, and to serve initially as a storage space for construction materials. (There would be access to all houses, however, for the occasional large truck, moving van, or delivery of a manufactured house.)

Three possible ways have been identified to get housing we can afford (Appendix 2). The first option we call the Comfortable House, the second the Healthy House, and the third the Organic Growth House. Of course, each household is free to choose its own housing and to spend more or less-as the members wish.

The Comfortable House is single-wide manufactured housing. Since the introduction of HUD code for production of manufactured housing, this form has become very popular-it now makes up a third of new housing. These houses are quite standard and comfortable; however, their indoor air quality is poor. They are moderately easy to modify, and a few separate units can be arranged to make an interesting single house with a courtyard. The Comfortable House has the advantage of being well certified to meet building codes. Building on this model can therefore be financed by banks or other commercial lenders.

The Healthy House is a design based on component-by-component analysis of cost and health. While it is designed to meet building codes, architectural certification would be required in order to get bank financing. The design calls for concrete floors as a way to achieve both health and cost goals. True, concrete floors are not particularly comfortable. The Healthy House is built on the site and should be relatively easy to modify. However, it is designed with an air-barrier approach to indoor air quality, and maintaining the air barrier during extensions would make extension somewhat more difficult.

The Organic Growth House model is based on the observation that at a prescribed budget, comfort, health, and sustainability cannot all be afforded. Thus, this is a plan for minimal construction of housing, with the expectation that the full, desired facility would be grown over time. Since this house is unlikely to get bank financing, it is fortunate that it is also the lowest cost of the three, and therefore the one that we can manage from our own resources.

One basic guideline is that the household is largely autonomous within its walls. If the household's 110 db rock music is audible outside the structure, there are grounds for others to request a reduction in the outside noise level. But the household should determine whether to put in a sound-absorbent layer or turn the volume down. The questions that come up about the relationship between the household and the settlement are the kinds of questions that have generated heated discussions on fmf-social. Indeed, as broader groups of organization come into existence, the interface between each group and one of its constituents will generate a lot of discussion.

Another basic guideline is that the residents of SEE will determine how it works. The formal mechanism will be the settlement corporation (Appendix 7). A likely formal structure is a cooperative. This appears to be one way out of subdividing the land, which may otherwise be a difficult process. It is standard, in a cooperative, that each member has one vote, and this is in line with our desires.

Rather than trying to design some specific notion of perfection in a decision-making system, the corporation is minimal in design. It is expected that it will be specialized as residents find out more about what they want and need. It is expected that SEE will use direct democracy. While the population is less than about twenty, it is expected that small group processes aimed at consensus decision-making will be possible. As the SEE community grows larger, we will explore electronic means for maintaining direct democracy.

Initial planning is for equal monetary investments in the settlement corporation for community property, although the amounts which can be attributed to housing may vary. Mondragon, the Basque cooperative, is a major collection of businesses which the workers control through equal votes. Its total revenues are about five billion dollars annually, so this is not an untested system. It would seem possible, then, to keep voting equal per person, whatever may happen to investments in the corporations.

Appendix 9 discusses in detail how site selection has proceeded. Three factors have played the largest role in preliminary selection. One is the need for a nearby city in which most potential settlers could expect to find work. The second is the need for land at a low price. The third is a desire for land without building code so that we have as much flexibility as possible in what kinds of housing we build. The search was thus for counties with low population adjacent to counties with high population. This has led to focusing on the area of Austin, Texas. While Austin has about 650,000 population, two adjacent counties have populations of about 40,000 and 30,000. These two counties have no building codes except for septic-system construction. With the $30,000 allocated for land, we expect to be able to buy ten to fifteen acres.

By the time SEE reaches a population of 100, we expect to have made substantial progress in four areas-establishment of businesses, permaculture, waste recycling, and electronic democracy.

An important goal in establishing SEE is to reduce the cost of living so that substantial investments can be made in businesses that will develop the many kinds of expertise that will be needed in an ocean or space colony. An important feature of Mondragon is that it includes its own bank. The members use the bank, and the bank in turn is able to provide services for the cooperatives. In the U.S., banking regulations force banks to be quite conservative. We may develop a credit union at some point, but the initial plans call for the establishment of a venture-capital corporation along lines described in Appendix 8.

The expectation is that, after paying off existing debts, residents would invest ten percent of their after-tax incomes in the venture-capital company. A study (described in Appendix 5) of the detailed breakdown of expenditures by households in the U.S. suggests that by lowering the cost of housing and by sharing of other items, residents could expect to reduce their expenditures by 28 percent. If we can establish that level, then a ten percent investment in the venture-capital corporation to further the goals of the Millennial Project should be possible.

As the community develops, there are several other ways it can help entrepreneurs start businesses. As we get some businesses going, we will locate competent bookkeepers, accountants, and lawyers. Just having recommendations for these services can be valuable. Some community members may be able to offer such services. Before it had a bank, Mondragon had a school. A school to teach entrepreneurial skills could be useful. Space in which to start a new business, located either in a settlement or in an urban setting or both, is another possible aid that the community could provide.

Permaculture as originated in Australia presents a set of ideas on developing land and perennial plants to conserve resources. Plantings and ponds can moderate daily temperature swings and thus save on heating and cooling bills. (Near Austin, we are at least as concerned with cooling as with heating.) Plants can be used for cutting wind and to produce a fire-resistant border. "Swales" are mulch-filled ditches with the earth turned out on the downhill side. They hold rain water for use on the land, letting it soak in slowly rather than run off. Trees on the downhill side help hold the swale in place and provide an immediate user. Permaculture plants are multipurpose-edibility, decorativeness, shade, and wind-breaking are among attributes which can be combined.

One specific permaculture direction that we want to develop is waste management. Some options are discussed in Appendix 11. We will probably begin with septic tanks because that is so standard that it can be arranged quickly and from a distance. However, septic tanks simply discard the water and nutrients available from the waste stream. We would like to develop a more closed-cycle approach to water usage. Artificial marshes can clean the water, allowing its reuse. The Texas regulations for on-site sewage facilities do allow many options besides septic tanks. The more elaborate possibilities require professional planning and approvals which will make them slow to start. However, the value to us of direct experience with water management is great, so we expect to pursue it.

A part of the vision of Aquarius is a direct democracy for a city of 100,000. As stated, we expect SEE to start as a direct democracy, and that is feasible with small group processes for groups up to about twenty in size. Beyond that we will need either to use a system with subgroups that are small (such as chapters), or begin developing electronic approaches to permit direct democracy with a larger and more dispersed population. Electronic means are now becoming available; the question is how well they work in practice.

We do not know how large a settlement can become, although, as Appendix 6 suggests, a size somewhere between 100 and 500 seems possible. The initial plans call for getting ten to fifteen acres of land, which should support 100 comfortably. At some point we will hit either a physical or a social limit. At that time, we expect to use an idea from the Hutterites, which is to split the settlement, providing physical construction to help establish an entire new settlement.

The new settlement would have its own settlement corporation, and a community corporation would be established as the legal framework to contain the two settlements. The venture-capital corporation would be a single entity for the FMF community.

One option in setting up a second settlement would be to make it more remote than the first one. The people who moved would then be people whose jobs had been made independent of location, or nearly so. This might be done incrementally by household size, by coordinating a move into the first colony by people from a waiting list with a move to a more remote colony by people leaving the first colony.

Another option in setting up a second settlement would be to purchase more land than was purchased for the first. We want to learn how large a settlement can become, but the first location is severely limited by budget and is more likely to reach a physical limit (using up all the available land) before it reaches a social limit (people choosing not to stay in the settlement). More land would allow a higher physical limit.

Other entry colonies may be needed. It might be that a geographical range of colonies would attract more people to enter them. Extensive development of and around SEE might also make it less suitable as an entry colony.

Another class of land-based colonies has been proposed also. These are called "Points of Departure" (PODs). They would be urban based and probably small, each about one household in size. They would serve people who wanted to live in an FMF environment but are constrained by expense (like leaving twenty years of work credited towards a pension) from moving elsewhere, or people who were saving towards the entry capital needed to move to a full colony.

We are attempting to develop social structures that would be suitable for closely packed ocean and space colonies. This suggests that we will develop an architecture that reflects the colonies we want to model as well as reflecting the social structure evolved. Then we would try copying the social structure into the new architecture.

Another dimension to explore, however, is how well habitations can cooperate when they have significant geographic distances between them as ocean colonies would. Will the electronic communications of the time solve this problem, or do the resources required for necessary levels of cooperation increase greatly with distance? In particular, with increasing bandwidth, video telephones may become common, and would help people feel that they are truly in touch. Even the current technology for this, video conference rooms, may be adequate.

contact the webmaster: Dmitri Donskoy Last modified: Tuesday, December 1, 1998

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