So, I’ve been thinking about…things.

Common knowledge is always like “lol, just niche down, become a cog, don’t think big. Suck.”

On the one hand, common knowledge has some point…it works fine in this current system.

On the other hand, common knowledge can get fucked, as can the current system.

So, I’ve decided to ignore all of that so-called common knowledge and decide that the reason my previous ideas didn’t work wasn’t because they were too grandiose but because they weren’t grandiose enough! They were thinking within the limited box we call “the system” and, man, you can’t trust the system.

THAT SAID, I will take some lessons from weak ass common knowledge. Specifically, we shouldn’t try to immediately build a perfect, alternative system from the outset…that’s just doomed for failure.

Instead, what I’m wondering is how we can approach building a new system piece by piece, immediately generating value and creating a positive feedback loop of sorts that can reinvest in itself.

This is what I’m ultimately referring to as System B…you can go find more about System A on your preferred legacy social media platform, relentlessly complaining about whatever symptoms totally out of our control to change.

Within System B I’m seeing two primary components: Public Cloud and Public Ground.

• Public Cloud is basically a continuation of the internet…decentralized, open and secure, with Stabledyne as its first component and expanding outward infinitely.

• Public Ground is what I also call a “multi purpose farm-based community,” also known as a compound, commune or kibbutz. But, those have many connotations, so the “multi purpose farm-based community” is my preferred word salad for now.

The idea here is generating a symbiotic relationship between digital and physical projects…one enables the other in a recursive feedback loop, etc. So, I could see in addition to Public Ground being used for producing food and creating bamboo crafts, it could also be a place where Public Cloud contributors live…their food and shelter covered by the contributions they make the System B.

Utopian fantasies aside, the challenge @Eoxcutis and I have been discussing lately is, well, how do you actually make something like Stabledyne viable? We have plenty of ideas for generating non-parasitic revenue (e.g., no ads, sharing prosperity with other members, providing tools to support creators, etc.), however all of those require pretty significant technology and community to achieve.

And, let me be absolutely perfectly fucking clear: we are definitely not interested whatsoever in going the investment, series A, B, C, D, QWERTY route, sell your soul to the machine, exit and make billions while yet another promising platform is enshitified.

This isn’t to say we’re completely dismissing investment, it would just come with pretty significant strings attached. Specifically:

1. Community members are equitably rewarded
2. Creators and their communities (i.e., us, but also other projects…getting there) maintain absolute control
3. No investment from public institutions or the funds they fund

The larger idea here is, if we can create an investment paradigm that isn’t complete fucking bullshit, then people might be more incentivized to abandon the other platforms that are complete fucking bullshit. Rather than putting your creation out there for the megacorp to scrape and reproduce in their shitty AI, what if the creator maintained control of what they make and was rewarded accordingly for doing so.

The other point here is, rather than hot take memes about eating the rich, wouldn’t inciting a capital civil war be better? What if the wealthy cogs a couple levels up the food chain suddenly decided to move their money to the system I’m describing rather than giving it to JP Morgan or BlackRock or whatever to destroy the world?

Again, such investment could create a tidal wave influx as people abandon the legacy system which, frankly, is a sinking ship where anybody with half a brain can see that we hit that iceberg a long, long time ago.

So, I’m thinking, we need a Public Fund to enable investment into initial System B development. This would work in a couple ways:

1. Identifying people committed to dedicating the time in exchange for equity, food/shelter, or, as needed, funding. This would include digital and physical builders alike
2. Identifying people who would want to contribute their assets (e.g., housing) to the Public Fund in exchange to food/shelter and System B equity
3. Identifying people who want to contribute liquid capital, which could range from crowd sourced funding (preferred) to synbiotic private investment

One somewhat interesting insight from all my weary traveling is that along the way I’ve met a handful of people in the latter group. And, while they have bigger salaries and nicer houses than the average person, they’re just as perplexed about the shitshow as any of the rest of us about the system’s current state.

Something that escapes the typical Reddit scholarly article is that if you have a salary or need to sell assets, you’re not actually anywhere close to society’s upper echelon of wealth. While most CEOs earn disproportionately more than the average worker, they have bosses called Boards of Directors and those boards have bosses called Owners; very rarely do the owners degrade themselves in engaging at a filthy bureaucratic CEO’s level.

The final and most important point here is that I believe pretty much everybody is well intentioned, save some nepo baby sociopaths generally lurking behind the shadows with a handful taking center stage of their three ring circus. The challenge is, well, there more often than not isn’t a great place to invest that well intended time or money, especially as good sounding things are more often than not co-opted to maintain and expand the rotten cesspool known as the system.

But eventually, that bubble might burst. And, if it does, we’ll definitely wish we got to work on building an alternative when we had the chance.

I am riding down Baltimore Ave past a bunch of shops that were in business recently but not anymore. I mean a breakfast and lunch place that is closed at breakfast time . Unless they just do weekends? Many others two coffee shops in this yuppie neighborhood. But this is archaic capitalist stuff. That adage that oh build apartments and put retail on the first floor: everywhere.

Then you have the small business guys free market their way through this, succeed and fail. I was just thinking about the initial markets every body in one place, competing , negotiating with sellers.

But , moreso, back to the free market in conjunction with some of your ideas. The entities, government and builders just dangle the promise of business and tax revenue and over build, like throwing shit and see what sticks. Builders don’t care they already made their money building.

The issue is there is no analysis of things in free market. No determination of if the business is actually needed. Maybe they don’t need those two coffee shops but they shouldn’t have wasted time and money opening them in the first place. No real, direct support for the business people to insure the enterprise they are trying to run will succeed and maybe because they are filling a need; and not with the illusion of capitalist, free market competition even.