A commune or intentional community is seen by many (including me) as an ideal way of living. Shared land and chores with like minded people, and a focus on self-sufficiency and appreciating what is local.
Reality of course is different. Getting the right mix of people is difficult, and all groups of people involve disagreements and power struggles to some degree. Also, land is expensive, communities are hard to organised with legal frameworks etc, and often the location isn’t convenient for your other aspects of life.
What if we could take some of the good aspects of a commune, and let them happen virtually, away from a certain piece of land?
Community – like-minded people can still have gatherings and shared experiences, although these do work best with a common purpose and a location they can call their own. This already happens to a degree with community centres, community gardens, farmers markets and the like. I envisage expanding that to community meals, like the World’s Longest Lunch or a BBQ. And seasonal social gatherings around things like a solstice or Halloween or “Harvest Moon”. Adding these into the mix can make that location (community centre, sports pavilion, town hall) more of a part of every day life.
Bartering – while they have worked occasionally, local currencies and LETS have mostly not worked. There might be an alternative way, simply by having a club.
There are numerous ways businesses give discounts to a wide-variety of customers. They include loyalty schemes (buy 5 coffees, get 1 free), coupons, and reduced prices for senior citizens or members of certain clubs – in Australia many large businesses give discounts to automobile club members. A 5% or 10% discount to attract customers is quite common, and can be used for our purposes.
At its most simplistic, you can just give a discount to locals, to encourage them to shop locally. But that is hard for merchants to get enthusiastic about, because while locals might spend a lot of their money non-locally, the merchants mostly cater to locals anyway, so they would just lose money. This is why local currencies are being tried.
I’m thinking of a bartering club, but without the bartering. Keeping it open to as many people (while still being an exclusive club) and being the easiest to run and use.
Local Organic Operators and Providers
That way they can call themselves LOOPies 🙂
Local is easy to define, and can be adjusted to suit. Special allowances can be made for those who almost qualify as local.
Organic is important in many ways, but for this context it needs to have a wider definition that normal. Think more like “needs to be green in some way”. That means the local mechanic – who otherwise can’t be very organic – uses solar power.
Operators and Providers is the key that makes it a club, and not just a discount free-for-all. You must be someone who creates, provides or serves locally. And you must offer reasonable discounts to other members (as in, not a 0.5% discount). Maintaining membership might simply mean being actively in business.
The purpose is to stimulate and strengthen the local circular economy.
A key to making it work is the big spending local businesses, for example the local council or municipal services. They can give a 5% “discount” for members tendering to supply them, to help them be more competitive versus national corporations.
The supermarket will be more inclined to sell local produce if it is 10% cheaper.
The factory that makes alpaca clothing can use the local cafe for their Xmas party catering.
The key is that it is easy. You’d need a committee of sorts… but otherwise approving membership is easy, all members need is a membership card (a new card each year), and what discounts they provide is up to them. No need for any accounting or even any computers. No overheads except say a $10 annual fee to cover the printing of the cards (no delivery costs, they can fetch them) and biscuits for the committee.