THE RESILIENT COMMUNITY

THE RESILIENT COMMUNITY

It should be clear, as we watch the gyrations and excesses of global markets, that no organization/state/group has any meaningful control over its direction. The same is true for almost every other aspect of globalization, from the environment to transnational crime to energy flows. In short, we've lost control and our collective future is in the hands of a morally neutral system that is operating in ways that we don't fully understand (nor will we). The best defense against this emerging situation is not to call for new Manhattan projects or global treaties or Marshall plans, which won't work since we can neither marshal the resources necessary nor collectively agree on anything other than the most basic rules of connectivity, it is to slowly introduce organic stability into out global system. The concept I've latched onto as a solution is what I call the resilient community.

This conceptual model creates a set of new services that allow the smallest viable subset of social systems, the community (however you define it), to enjoy the fruits of globalization without being completely vulnerable to its excesses. These services are configured to provide the ability to survive an extended disconnection from the global grid in the following areas (an incomplete list):

• Energy.
• Food.
• Security (both active and passive).
• Communications.
• Transportation.

The resilient community has broad applicability beyond just improving the ability of those of us in developed economies to preserve wealth and a quality of life despite severe system shocks. It can also be applied to the problems of counter-insurgency in semi-modern urban environment (to radically update a process that was built for the last century) and provide the potential for organic development in underdeveloped areas of the world. The key is that we need to support the open source efforts currently underway to expand this capability underway such as the transition towns movement to MIT's low tech solutions effort.

I touched on this concept in Brave New War and here on this blog. Might need to put out a short book that really explores the concept in a way that allows people to get their heads around it.

THE RESILIENCE RETIREMENT SYSTEM (IRA, 401K, etc.)

Here's a think piece on how to generate the huge funds required for a shift to resilient communities.  Still need to work this through, but it offers some amazing opportunities for financially bootstrapping local organizations working on community resilience.  

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The American consumer is likely dead.  A new frugality has swept the nation in an attempt to ward off lower standards of living in the future.  The question now becomes: what comes after frugality?  The answer is based on the following observations/assumptions:

• High debt (up to 375% of GDP, 85% over the peak in 1929, in the US and still growing) and the death of the American consumer will lead to slow or negative growth in GDP for years to come.  This means that liquid financial assets will generate low returns for as far as the eye can see.
• Financial markets are only suitable for sophisticated participants (despite claims to the contrary) and not accessible by the average citizen. Scams, booms/busts, and all sorts of predatory behavior abounds -- and the government has become completely unable to mitigate it.   
• Costs, for most basic elements of life such as food/energy, will rapidly increase over the next decade.  Whether it is peak oil (or its cousin, faster growth in demand for energy than supply is able to provide), out of control inflation (the fed attempts to inflate our way out of our debts), a weak job market (which depresses incomes), etc. these costs will likely outpace incomes.

The solution on an idea that should be apparent, but maybe not to most.  Simply, that the ownership of productive assets (essentially, those assets that generate goods/services that can be sold) is vastly superior to ownership their financial derivatives (stock funds, retirement accounts, etc.) -- we once were a nation of entrepreneurs, now we are a nation of indentured servants.  

A Real Ownership Society

The judo move to pull this off is the creation of community -- county, town, neighborhood, etc. -- funds/mechanisms that enable individuals to move a portion of their tattered/depleted tax protected savings in IRAs/401ks into accounts that build/own/operate local solar energy production and food production.  At the entry level, the capacity required is only aimed at one customer: the investor.   With the long lead time and preferential treatment of tax deferred retirement savings, this mechanism has the ability to offset the extremely long payoff cycles of local solar/food investments and thereby turn cost centers into savings vehicles.

The typical solar transaction would look like this (I'm using aggressive numbers):

Cost per kWh:  $0.20 

Installation of a 8,400 watt solar PV system (able to generate 10,000 kWh per year in New England):  $62k after tax treatment

Return on investment (if retail rates are paid):  $2,000 per year or 2.4% on the investment.

If the payment to the account for the electricity is tax deductible (assuming a 20% bracket) as an investment, that return jumps to:  $2,400 or 3.9%.

Not a bad rate of return, if you can achieve it, particularly if you consider the benefits of turning a cost center (the money you pay for electrical energy currently) into a savings mechanism.  Further, as returns accumulate, it makes possible new investments in productive systems with additional cash flow opportunity.  

Apply the same methodology to lawn gardening or farm "shares/subscriptions" and the same results are likely to apply.  Food expenses are turned into savings.  Ownership of local food production is the result.

Please feel free to critique this concept: or provide new insight that could make it better. 

"I'M YOUNG AND NEED ADVICE"

Over the last couple of years, lots of young people (from high school through recent college graduates) have asked me:

What should I be doing to prepare myself for an uncertain future?

Since I get this question a couple of times a week, I'd thought I'd publish it for posterity.  To the extent it's useful (it may be utter trash), here it is:

You will need train yourself to be an entrepreneur, to run your own business.  This requires an ability to do everything from designing your own products to selling products to keeping the books straight.  

That being said, you should still go to college (if you haven't already).  For the most part, it's not going to play much of a factor in how you make your living in the future (for most people).  Instead, do it because it improves you as a human being.  Learn about everything you can while you are there, from philosophy to physics.   However, don't spend much money doing it (state universities are more than good enough).

How do you prepare for making a living?   

Here's the maximal strategy for those that can pull it off (I'm assuming that if you are reading my work and you understand it, you certainly have the smarts to pull it off).  

Learn to make/repair things.  Learn computer aided design CAD/CAM.  Ride the wave in learning laser etching, 3D printing, and other fabrication techniques.  Learn how to use traditional tools and explore materials science and basic electronics/circuit design.  Hack existing products (copy what others have done to spool up on the process) to improve them or put them to unintended uses.  Add some biohacking to the mix if you are so inclined.

Learn how to communicate/collaborate with others online.  Better yet, learn how to use a scripting language and design/operate an interactive Web site.  Learn how to build a database and structure/share data (xml).  Get the hang of publishing online and building/growing an audience -- it's a great way not only to market product/yourself, but find collaborators on ventures.

With the skills above in hand you are now capable of converting a wide variety of ideas into thriving entrepreneurial ventures (from scratch and for a pittance).  

The final layer you need to succeed is to learn about running a business.  The most important thing you need to learn is how to sell.  Take any job that puts you close to a GREAT salesman.  Learn the process, from finding customers to closing contracts.  As a final layer, teach yourself some small business accounting (it provides discipline).

In short, this is what you need to become a one person company and be routinely successful.   

NOTE:  In reflection, this recipe is also a route to become a one man/woman army.

LOCAL SCRIP

Resilience requires more than redundancy, it also needs dynamic flows of goods, services, and energy in the local economy. However, globalization and modern financing works against this. Globalization emphasizes a winner take all approach to economic and social life. It concentrates all of the production of goods and services and energy with the "winners" of global competition. The result is that many communities have increasingly become economic black holes -- pure consumption and little else. Worse, the global economy can denude an area of even this consumption potential in months if it deems it a "loser." One way to turn this around is through the use of local scrip (aka currency). Community Loyalty Programs: 

"Ithaca HOURS is backed by our relationships" Rebecca Nellenback, HOURS board member.

To counter this, a growing number of communities now use local scrip (aka currency) as a loyalty program to help keep business local. Examples range from the Ithaca HOURS, Berkshares, to the Totnes Pound. For example: there are over 900 local businesses in Ithaca that take HOURS in exchange for goods and services, a small percentage of employees even get paid a portion of their wages in HOURS, and businesses can get interest free loans of HOURS. Unfortunately, in almost all cases, these efforts have fared about as well as many "green" initiatives:

• participation is relatively low relegated to a lifestyle choice) and
• coverage is spotty (national chains don't accept them).
• as the local economy contracts, participation falls off due to a scramble for a dwindling amount of global currency (dollars, etc.).

RESILIENCE AS INSURGENCY

Open source insurgencies and resilient communities are both decentralized networks. Critical to the success of both are people that serve as catalysts (like Henry Okah and Rob Hopkins). What do catalysts do? They accelerate growth and effectiveness by increasing the trust and connectivity of the networks they inhabit. You can find a surprising good examination of the personality attributes and characteristics of catalysts in the book, "The Starfish and the Spider" by Brafman and Beckstrom. Unlike traditional leaders, catalysts don't organize structure, aggregate power, and give direction. Instead, the serve as

• Connectors. Able to map, mine and connect loose networks of people with similar needs/interests.
• Onsite helpers and Trust builders. Willing to work with people on the ground in the role of helper. Forges emotional bonds and encourages trust.
• Supporters. They let the network navigate itself forward by walking away from leadership responsibilities/roles. They trust the network and embrace its ambiguity.

RESILIENCE AND DISSIPATIVE STRUCTURES

If we view our world as a thermodynamic system, a simple application of the second law of thermodynamics wouldn't suffice to explain its behavior. Everything doesn't get progressively worse over time. 

Based on our collective experience, the global system, as well as simpler biological systems, operate on a different basis. They don't run down with the conversion of energy. Instead, they increase their structural complexity over time. The modification of thermodynamics necessary to accommodate this observable fact was formulated by the Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine in a theory called "dissipative systems" (read his excellent book: "The End of Certainty" for more). 

One important leap in this theory is that a dissipative system isn't a closed system. Rather, it lives within a larger system (an "environment") that it can interact with. This upshot of this is that it can extract energy from this larger external environment to increase its structural complexity (build itself up through a process called self-assembly). It can also use this external environment to dump the entropy created during the energy conversion process to minimize the deleterious impact on its structure. In summary, the global civilization we inhabit fits nicely within Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures. Unfortunately, there are numerous signs that that our system's structure has grown so large, that is now nearly equal in size of its external environment. This implies that disruptive fluctuations will likely increase in intensity (positive feedback loops) until the global system either reverts to a much simpler model (closer to thermodynamic equilibrium, think Kunstler's "World Made by Hand") or evolves into a more stable configuration (think "Resilient Communities").

VIRAL RESILIENCE

Historically, economic recessions that last longer than a year have durations/severities that can be plotted as power law distributions (Ormerod and Mounfield).* Given that we are already over a year into this recession, it implies that we are really into black swan territory (unknown and extreme outcomes) in regards to our global economy's current downturn and that no estimates of recovery times or ultimate severity based on historical data of past recessions apply anymore. This also means that the system has exceeded its ability to adapt using standard methods (that shouldn't be news to anyone). It may be even more interesting than that. The apparent non-linearity and turbulence of the current situation suggests we may be at a phase transition (akin to the shift in the natural world from ice to water). 

Basic changes to the rules of the systems operation -- for example, a much higher ratio of non-linear vs. linear feedback, put in place to improve the system's performance -- may have altered the global system's underlying mode of operation. This means that the requirements of this new system may have obsolesced much of the current control system (collectively: governments, treaties, regulations, laws, models, behaviors, etc.), although which parts is not clear. As a result, a new control regime may emerge. To get a glimpse of what is in store for us, we need to look at the sources of emerging order (newly configured dissipative and self-organizing systems/networks/orgs that are better adapted to the new non-linear dynamics of the global system).

The last time something that closely approximated this happened was during the last great 20th Century depression. In that situation the sources of emerging organizational order were reconfigured nation-states that took a more active role in economics (total war economies during peacetime). In this situation, we are seeing emerging order at the local level: small resilient networks/communities reconfigured to handle this level of systemic environmental non-linearity and survive/thrive (see the brief: Transition Towns). Further, it appears that these emerging communities and networks are well suited to drawing on a great behavioral shift occurring at the individual level, already evident in all economic statistics, that emphasis thrift/investment rather than consumption/gambling (the middle class consumer is becoming extinct).

So what does this mean? These new communities will eventually start to link up, either physically or virtually (see the diagram for the Transition Towns network), into network clusters. IF the number of links in the largest cluster reaches some critical proportion of the entire system's nodes (Kauffman has indicated that this proportion is 50% for simple networks), there will be a phase transition as entire system shifts to the new mode of operation. In other words, resilient communities might become the new configuration of the global economic system. *NOTE: I would argue that basic changes to dynamics of the system, such as tight coupling via instantaneous media and supply chains as well the relative shrinkage of control mechanisms vs. the size/complexity of the system, likely shorten that time horizon dramatically as compared to historical experience. As in recessions in the current environment can be well less <<1 than a year till we enter black swan territory.

EXPONENTIAL IMPROVEMENT

The tech visionary Kevin Kelly has an excellent must read article on why Moore's law (and similar exponential improvement rates in other technologies -- see graph to left on months to double for other technologies) works. His conclusion, and I suggest you read the article yourself, is:

• Technologies that are amenable to exponential growth rates, do so by leveraging the microcosm (the very small -- as in, "there is plenty of room at the bottom", nano, etc.).   This makes a doubling in performance a technological imperative (it will happen no matter what, only the rate of doubling is in doubt).
• The rate of exponential growth is a function of competition, economics, and belief (in the curve of improvement). Which means the rate of progress achievable is a function of our how our system allocates resources and our belief systems.  Lots of competition and high velocity money = fast rates of improvement.
• There isn't a fundamental constraint (like energy use) that limits progress. A better explanation is that STEMI (space, time, energy, mass, and information) compression must be able to occur across all phases of the process and not be artificially limited/restricted in any way.  That's why improvements in the speed of transportation haven't happened -- you can't shrink the weight or volume of a human being....

Here's some blue sky thinking I'm running through my head at the moment, it may be of use (or not):

Based on the explanation above, we may see a rapid exponential doubling in the performance of society/economics as well.  However, to see this improvement, we will need to shift to resilient communities.  Here's what it will require:

• A technological imperative.  In short, a suite of technologies that can increasingly replicate the functions of the global economy at the hyper-local level (the equivalent of the very small or nano level of the global economy) -- with headroom for advancement/improvement as far as the eye can see.  There are signs that this is potentially true: think 3D printing ("fab labs"), computing, bio, communications, etc.  Is it true for agriculture and energy too?  The jury is still out but super-empowerment is in the air...
• New beliefs and well funded processes drive improved productivity at the local level.  The beliefs and process improvements required are already being developed at the organic level, but it's not getting much help from commercial sources.  A good example of this is the Transition towns effort.  However, new access to vast cash flows (like my proposal on using IRAs/401ks for investments in local resilience) would radically increase the velocity of money involved.  This money would likely speed up the rate of doubling, dropping it from decades to years, by supercharging commercial and open source competition.  
• No hard constraints.  An ability to avoid or work/route around "hard" constraints on any of items on the STEMI list.  The best way to avoid these limits is to obliterate thinking related to the current legacy economic system.  For example:  exploiting rapid advances in virtual presence and collaborative software to achieve an order of magnitude improvement in worker productivity.  This obliterates the need (which we would be unable to achieve) for exponential improvements in cars, transportation infrastructure, etc. for commuting/travel.  Another example:  exploiting communications systems to share or purchase virtual product designs that can be locally fabricated.  This is in contrast to manufacturing products in remote global locales, packaging them, storing them, marketing them, shipping them, putting them on shelves, etc. in the hope that you will purchase them.  

NOTE: This leads back to the notion that the only truly dangerous (in that it will upend everything, for the better or worse depending on where you sit) idea out there is a societal/economic bifurcation/phase change driven by the rise of resilient communities.

TRANSITION TOWNS AND PARTICIPATORY PROBLEM SOLVING

Rob Hopkins, the founder of the Transition Towns movement and I have been working on methodologies by which communities can become resilient for about the same amount of time (since 2004-05, building on the earlier work of others).  We have developed different approaches to the same goal and still need to find the time to share notes.  His approach, informed by peak oil and climate change, is focused on a radical reduction in energy usage.  In short, it's a plan to achieve community "energy descent," to provide a buffer against oil price spikes/shortages and reduce any contribution to climate catastrophe. 

However, as I pointed out in my earlier post on the movement, the real value of the Transition Towns approach isn't its emphasis on energy descent (which may neither be sufficient nor ultimately valuable for resilience), but rather its concisely crafted methodology for catalyzing community participation via a messy open source organizational process (which allows people to deviate from the "energy descent approach" if they desire to).  This is exactly the conclusion Jon Mooallem, who wrote a long article for the New York Times on the Transition Towns movement in the US, reached.  The conversation he had with Councilman John T. Reuter, of Sandpoint Idaho (a Transition Towns site) illuminates this:

What Reuter said he felt was wonderful about the Sandpoint Transition Initiative was how quickly it was rejuvenating people’s faith that the changes they craved were worth working for. “To say the group has only created a community garden so far really isn’t sufficient,” he told me. “It’s something really more substantive: they’re bringing people to the process.” It was easy to argue that at the initiative’s core, in place of any clearly defined philosophy or strategy, was only a puff of enthusiasm. But Reuter seemed to argue that enthusiasm is an actual asset, a resource our society is already suffering a scarcity of. “There’s just something happening here that’s reviving people’s civic sense of possibility,” he later said. “Politics is ‘the art of the possible,’ right? I think what the Transition Initiative is doing is expanding what’s possible in people’s minds. It is expanding people’s ability to dream bold. And that’s what we need to do: dream bold. Because people have been limited by their own imaginations.”

Reuter had a utopian vision, too: the one laid out in the U.S. Constitution. And the Sandpoint Transition Initiative seemed to be moving Sandpoint closer to that ideal in its own small way, even though it was working out of a totally different handbook. They were managing to make the functioning democracy in their town a little more productive. For a wide range of not-always-consistent reasons, people in Sandpoint decided that Transition could help them build the world they wanted. And now, only because enough people stepped forward and made that decision, Transition actually looked like a good tool for the job. They were picking it up by whatever handle they grasped. They were swinging it as earnestly as they could.

So, being the open source pragmatists that we are, let's borrow/steal from what seems to work (Rob's open source methodology for "unleashing" community participation) and build from there.

SCALE INVARIANCE

In the second installment of the excellent Terminator movie series, Arnold Schwarzenegger (playing a robust robotic Terminator able to absorb terrific damage) faced off against a superior new series of robot, the liquid metal T-1000.  In contrast to Arnold's character, this robot was resilient.  Specifically, if it was blown apart the parts were smart enough and mobile enough to reassemble themselves back into a fully functional T-1000.  What enabled the T-1000 to do this was a weak application of the concept called scale invariance.  Essentially, scale invariance means that across all scaling factors (large, medium, small, tiny, etc.), the properties that define the whole are conserved (intelligence, mobility, form, productivity, etc.).  

Scale invariance is a requirement for societal resilience.  It is also something anyone seriously thinking about the topic of resilience must be familiar with.  Here's why.  Our global system is composed of intermeshed and tightly coupled networks.  These interlinked networks enable our system to be efficient and relatively robust against random shocks.  However, large shocks can overwhelm this type of network design, causing it to either act erratically (turbulence) or break apart (into smaller clusters via cascades of failure).  We saw systemic turbulence in action via the recent brush with a global financial meltdown in September 2008 and we are seeing it currently with erratic swings in markets, trade, and other forms of economic activity.  Examples of network failures that result in disconnected clusters are seen with every black-out in the electricity network.  A pandemic would be a mix of the two, intentional clustering (quarantines) and high turbulence.

In either case, system recovery could be catalyzed and the damage largely mitigated, if our global system was scale invariant.   Basically, this means that if we had communities that could produce at the local level many of the essential products and services currently produced at the global level, handling disconnection or buffering turbulence would be of little consequence (also, it would be much easier for us to find ways of protecting or making redundant the products/services that ONLY could be produced at the global level).  Fortunately, particularly given the substantial uptick in dynamic instability at the global level, we are seeing movement towards scale invariant resilient communities.   These communities can and would be able to operate autonomously regardless of availability, pricing, or quality of external goods/services for extended periods of time.  Unfortunately, this movement may not spread quickly enough to provide any meaningful support to those communities that are utterly dependent on the smooth functioning of the global system.

URBAN FARMING PLATFORMS

To become resilient in food production, urban areas need more than the conversion of empty neighborhood lots and terraces into gardens. They need true farming platforms that can bundle commonly needed goods and services into an easily accessible package located in the middle of the community. One good example of this is the Community Food Center put together by Will Allen (a MacArthur award recipient) in downtown Milwaukee WI. In a small two acre space, the food center has packed 20,000 plants, thousands of fish, and hundreds of livestock. This farming platform prototype includes (note the intensity of the operation):

• Greenhouses, hoop-houses, and hydroponics systems that support the growth of plants, fish, worms and a wide variety of livestock (chickens to turkeys).
• Agricultural services such as a large rapid composting system and an apiary (beehives).
• Self sufficiency via a retail store and energy production from anerobic digester that produces energy from farming waste.
• Training services and classrooms to teach the community how to do nearly everything the farm does for themselves (with an eye towards helping entrepreneurs start their own efforts).

In short, this looks like an excellent prototype for a local farming platform that can serve as the basis for a revival in community agriculture. In particular, given the small footprint of this model, it may be the perfect way to return abandoned urban retail space to productive use in the years to come.