Is Cabin a business or a government?

[jon]

Cam, this post is a beautiful vision for Cabin. Thank you for writing it.

@camlindsay

As Cabin orients towards suppers, community organizing, and family-building, it doesn’t feel far-fetched to see a future where the annual dues from Cabin Citizens help Citizens serve and build their local communities via the services Cabin provides.

I get excited by the idea of Cabin building a grassroots decentralized network that scales to fill-in the holes that our government (and many others) fail to sufficiently support their citizens

I get excited about this idea too, for three main reasons:

1. Community members are showing up who want to grow Cabin neighborhoods where they already live

As I’ve been talking to community members (like @savkruger in Boulder, @stephen in Texas, @jxn in LA, @phil in the SF Bay Area) and thinking about my own roles in both a rural neighborhood and an urban one, it’s becoming clear that the Cabin community wants to build neighborhoods on top of existing urban infra where they already live.

2. This vision fits closely with The Neighborhood for Families

The big takeaway from Phil and my trip to Colorado was that there are excellent existing urban environments that would make a great fit for Cabin neighborhoods:

@jon

While much of the built environment for families in America is cookie-cutter tract homes and car-centric soulless suburbs, there are plenty of lovely towns that buck the trend and offer alternatives for walkable, family-friendly, small-scale urbanism.

In fact, one of the neighborhoods we explored as potential candidate was North Boulder Park, which is exactly where @savkruger lives and wants to build a neighborhood!

3. Urban-embedded network neighborhoods are validated

Projects like Fractal in NYC, The Neighborhood in SF, and Radish in Oakland are demonstrating a successful model for co-housing: put out a bat signal for a small, walkable area of an existing built environment and get good people to move there. This allows people to build a network of nearby friends without needing to build a new place from scratch.

What does it mean to act like a government instead of a business?

You asked:

@camlindsay

As Cabin builds out the offerings of citizenship, would it make sense to think of Cabin as a decentralized government serving it’s citizens vs a business serving it’s customers?

I think what’s special about Cabin is that we don’t treat the network city as a metaphor. We are building a network city, so it’s reasonable to think about ourselves as an internet-native civic government.

Most of what is required for Cabin to act as a decentralized government is baked into our DNA. Our token enables decentralized governance, and our culture practices it. In that sense, I think we already are approaching Cabin as a decentralized government. But we can do much more.

Clubs → Neighborhoods

We can start with clubs and build neighborhoods. You asked:

@camlindsay

• What are the services that governments aren’t providing that Cabin could feasibly start addressing (I think funding local clubs is a fantastic first step, but what would be steps 5 and 6 look like?)?

Here’s a possible Steps 1 - 6 to start a Cabin neighborhood in an existing urban area:

Step 1. Supper Clubs
Step 2. Civic engagement (eg trash cleanup, park potluck, natal support group)
Step 3. Urban improvement (eg build a park bench, fix a pothole, start a garden)
Step 4. Coliving
Step 5. Cohousing
Step 6. Third Spaces

Bonus Step 7. Relocate the squad to a rural area and build a solarpunk village.

I thought you said it beautifully here:

@camlindsay

what if we focused on funneling resources to the intangible services that underly a healthy society, with the hopes that building a healthy decentralized society will eventually sprout enough committed citizens who will be down to invest longterm into the properties and communities of our dreams?

@Matai is working on a more detailed memo outlining plans for developing clubs into neighborhoods.

How do we pay for it?

Funding local community infrastructure collectively sounds awesome. But where does the money come from to pay for it?

Businesses make something people want and are willing to pay for. Governments make you pay taxes whether or not you want the product.

I liked your framing here:

@camlindsay

Do you know what doesn’t suck? Paying an annual subscription to an org that helps me and my fellow citizens foster spaces for crucial interpersonal support, curiosity, and civic activation.

This may sound odd, but after Thursday, I’m feeling less inclined to call my payments to Cabin “fees” and feel more like “taxes/contributions” to a greater whole that my (and many other) communities will benefit from.

FWIW, I was originally a proponent of calling it the Citizen’s Tax, but people told me this was a horrible idea People hate taxes. I still like the idea, but we should only frame it this way if it attracts Citizens to join vs. deters them.

Whether or not we call it a tax, the question remains: how do we overcome the collective action problem of funding local public goods without coercive taxation? @Matai shared the idea that it could be a collaborative effort where local clubs can unlock funds when they have a certain number of Citizens join the club. Would love your thoughts here as well.