THURSDAY, MAY 31, 2018: NOTE TO FILE
WaterShed00AB
The sea of grass
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: COOPERATIVE, FROM THE WIRES, SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY
Abstract: Although watershed boundaries define watersheds, in an expance of a vast plains area, the size and shape of management units would approximate a grid of hexagons. The economy would be based on animal agriculture other than home gardens with some irrigation provided by roof runoff storage.
TUCSON (A-P) — Following the general principles of watershed management design allows for variation within the limits of what works. Designs follow local environmental resources, especially energy, the real wealth of nations watersheds.
WS00AB is within the Great Plains in a flat region characterized by grassland. Aside from small garden areas supported by supplemental roof runoff, the region's rainfall supports grass and such livestock as graze it, so the human's 20% is managed as pasture (the 80% supports buffalo, antelope, prairie dogs, predators), and animal agriculture is the foundation of their biophysical economy, as it is for their neighboring watersheds. Leather work, cheese making, jerky production, and craft products could be produced. As the topography is flat and rain runoff minimal, each watershed management unit is in the shape of a hexagon of area up to 3.14 million hectares as each management unit is a section of a sea of grass with no obvious watershed boundaries although boundary lines do follow locally apparent ridges. The environmental resources and features are about as simple as can be imagined, so the design is largely an exercise in human ecology.
From 20 to 40 small family ranches cluster together to create a community and the communities are spaced about 5 km apart. Each ranching cooperative occupies the center of 7,850 hectares (19,400 acres) for a total of 80 coop-villages within the watershed. Ranching involves a dispersed population, but each of the 2,400 families has a small home in the central city that is largely uninhabited except during monthly gartering times when most of the watershed's 13,000 residents gather for a few days before returning home. When the elderly can't travel, they become permanent residents of Big City. Families provide support and members of each coop take turns providing care.
Policies for Climax and Descent
Being a large watershed management unity, when approximately 130,000 refugee applications have been accepted representing perhaps 26,000 non-divisible households averaging five humans each, all households will liquidate their industrial society assets to fund the purchase of WS00AB land (120 ha or 300 acres per family or less as not all acreage need to be purchased initially, just half or more) within a region selected that allows for other near-future watershed management units. For self-defense, all coop-villages would come to the aid of other villages and each watershed will come to the aid of any other watershed that is attacked or is hit by a natural disaster. The guardians will provide for interwatershed transport of trade items and people during times of peace, and be able to mobilize all guardians to counter invasion from outside the Federation of Watersheds.
Property
Land use management will involve selecting 20% of the watershed for support of humans and their mutualist plants and animals. Refugees would have on average significantly more financial resources to buy land than those of WaterShed0000 so environmental resources will be greater and some interwatershed trade will be supported. Areas for development: agricultural, industrial, and residential, with prescribed buffer areas, will be determined by best-guess methods, together with interconnecting transportation corridors with six roads radiating out from the central city to connect with other central cities. Developed areas will include one or more refugee centers to provide short-term housing for up to five years, work and construction areas, storage area, and supporting infrastructure:
- Food production, processing, preservation areas
- Medical, dental, health clinics
- Educational areas
- Recreational areas
- Breeding livestock areas
- Security/militia facilities.
WS00AB will possess moderate environmental resources supporting agriculture. Private property will be personal possessions. Within the watershed area selected, existing property owners who refuse to agree to WS00AB policies will be given enough money to agree to move and live in luxury elsewhere. For a price, most consumers will sell their property and move to live in luxury, for a time, elsewhere. Those who inherit property from those who refuse to sell will likely sell for a price. Thus, within a few generations, all private real estate will be acquired without conquest by force of arms.
Food
By becoming early refugees, a lifetime food supply of dry foods could be acquired while the acquiring is good and stored in anoxic containers, e.g. rice, wheat, corn, beans, other grains and dry foods. The dry food would be processed as needed to support the surplus population. The watershed's ability to grow fresh foods would supplement the stored food until death by natural attrition lowered the population as it transitioned to self-sufficiency in food production and ability to import some food from watersheds suited to dryland farming assuming the less agriculturally favored watershed had resources to trade.
If current ability to produce food via industrial agriculture were used to divert production from feeding animals to produce meat/milk/eggs, to long-term grain storage to support one generation and their elders as excess human population, then corrective negative feedback loops involving Malthusian deaths and Calhoun type loss of social functionality could be avoided. Animal agriculture involving grain or feed grown on land that could produce grain could be downsized to only maintain breeding stock. The stockpiling of grain and dry foods could precede the widespread realization that such food storage (sans overconsumption of meat) is adaptive. When the need to transition to managed watersheds based on biophysical economies of enough become more evident, the stockpiled food could be distributed to new watersheds as they form provided refugees agree to United Federation of Watersheds policies (e.g. land use management, adjusting animal populations to carrying capacity).
Global Malthusian deaths secondary to overshoot could be avoided within all watershed management units provided universal birth control was implemented with provision to support populations in excess of carrying capacity until reduced by natural death.
Birth Control
All refugees would agree to universal birth control with abortion as backup in case of failure, and to no permitted births during a refugee's first five years during which time refugees could vote with their feet and leave. Thereafter, permitted births would be by a birthpon rationing system distributed by lottery until wanted births equals needed births, which would occur within 30 to 50 years of initial flux of refugees. The carrying capacity of WS00AB is 13,000 to allow for a relatively high level of prosperity in that members work 20 hour weeks to support their coop's biophysical economy of enough. Llife expectancy is 76 years, therefore the monthly allowable replacement birth rate is 14, though most who are permitted to become pregnant opt to cease using birth control in the fall so most births are in the spring. Over the centuries, as carrying capacity or life expectancy change, the birthpon ration would change. In temperate areas, birthpons would be distributed annually so births would tend to coincide with the most prosperous time of year. Humans and all other organisms can live within the carrying capacity of their environment or overshoot with emergent corrective negative feedback loops even though no one voted for them. Only humans, exercising foresight intelligence, have the potential to manage human demands on Nature's resources to avoid overshooting environmental production.
Housing
Each refugee center will include an area with resources for construction of huts using local building materials, e.g. sod.
Transportation
Primary mobility will be by walking. Wheeled trovis pulled by humans or draft animals, from dogs to horses, may be used when needed.
Education
Children will have access to Rosetta Bliss and Encyclopedia Bliss as required by the Constitution of the United Federation of Watersheds, but all will be encouraged to listen to and learn from Nature. What those who listen to Nature have to say will also be considered. Those who excel at reading Bliss to partake of the world of ideas may apply to the Federation Academy and those who are accepted will be encouraged to return to WS00AB. What they have to say will be listened to. Those who do not listen to Nature will be pitied.
High Value Technology
Information is of the highest transformity and as no solar PV, wind, water or steam powered generators can be make in watersheds whose biophysical economy is based on agriculture can make industrial products, none will be depended on and no electronic technology will be depended on, but perhaps 50Wh/day of solar PV per capita would be possible. Metal, in the form of pots, knifes, and farming tools such as shovels and hoes may be traded for but will not be depended on. Information will be contained within minds and transmitted mind to mind via lifelong listening. To think is to listen. Those wishing to prosper long-term listen. Copies of Rosetta Bliss and Encyclopedia Bliss will be considered and some information may be recorded, but will not be depended on.
Cooking
The ability to cook food is a practical necessity unless a watershed's population is less than would support a population of hunter-gathers who cook. Small cooking fires will use locally available biofuels, e.g. manure.
Food Preservation
Cooked or fresh foods will be eaten before they spoil and stored to avoid loss to rodents or insects.
High Value Services
Central population areas may support medical clinics, nursing and hospice care, and dental clinics. The people will benefit most from a health care system, instead of a sickness care system, that starts with preventative care, provides baseline medical care, and ends with palliative care.
Repair facilities are needed to maintain such technology as a watershed can support. High value services cannot be depended on and expectations can always exceed sustainable ability to deliver.
Recreational Drug Use Policy
Secondary to a cowboy culture, alcohol is the preferred recreational drug, but is consumed only during the monthly gatherings.
Local Exchange
Needed consumption will be rationed according to need and surpluses by barter.
Local Government
Following Federation determined policies is required to be a member watershed entitled to the benefits of trade, information, and protection. That residents can claim 20% of a watershed for use by humans, their domestic plants and animals—is a given. Residents can only choose to secede from the Federation. Population management, of humans and their livestock and pets, is a local issue. Exporting surplus population or exploiting the resources of Nature's 80%, is not an option. The carrying capacity of a watershed is determined by best-guess of those who listen to Nature. No one gets a vote. If per capita consumption is increased, then population decreases. No one gets a vote. If residents want to increase per capita consumption, then, as a matter of personal preference, per capita consumption can be increased, and those who understand the consequences, who maybe know enough to have an opinion, will get a vote.
Other issues may involve matters of preference or expert judgment. In such cases, the merit of each voter will be assessed. All will get a vote, but each voter's level of understanding of the issue will determine the value (1% to 100%) of a vote. Those assessed to have less than a 70% understanding of relevant information relating to making an informed judgment will have their vote discounted. Those assessed to have a 70% to 100% grasp of relevant information will have their vote prorated to count from 1% to 100%. The results determine matters that involve preference or judgment. Only if an issue is entirely a matter of preference, without foreseeable consequence, such as what color a public building should be, will all votes count 100%.
Naturocracy involves listening to Nature. WS00AB will be a managed range-ecosystem 'ruled' by the best guess of those who listen to Nature, who could be wrong. WS00AB will have a special interest in what is needed vs. what is wanted. Mobility is a need, but walking works. Shoes may or may not be needed. Pulling a travois, with or without wheels, works to move materials that cannot be carried The question of whether wheels are 'needed' will be considered. If wheels are considered a 'need', and can be make locally, then WS00AB will be more likely to adopt the use of wheels. If they must be imported, they will likely make do without them or with few because they actually can, so as to not be dependent on such technology. A watershed that depended on bicycle technology, perhaps even with electric assist for the elderly or handicapped, would be far more dependent on trade. For most consumer technology, "nah, no need" is a viable response. The real wealth of a watershed might be better spent on higher value technology such as machetes or metal cooking pots than bicycles.
When what Nature is saying, metaphorically speaking, is not clear enough, yet action is required, a meritocratic vote will determine the best guess that could be wrong, so consequences will be especially closely assessed and revoted on as indicated.
