Topic: Lets kick start the NTR with an Inter Tribal Economy

I fundamentally disagree with you that tribal businesses are harder, more demanding, less secure etc than normal businesses.

It would allow people who don't have fringe (in the sense that only a small minority can successfully pursue them) passions like music, film, or circus, to be able to participate.

The more room a new tribal economy creates for itself outside of the civilized industrial economy, the more room there is for ordinary folk (like me) who can do ordinary, but fulfilling work (from hunting, foraging, permaculturing, scavenging off of civ, to selling "things" to the civilized, writing computer games, whatever) to make a living for a fraction of the time and stress of a civilized job (and, of course, a fraction of the useless things that come with them to fill the voids they create).

One cardinal rule of the ITE would be that all members must know and teach others how to hunt, gather, and garden their own food, both to dodge hierarchy as much as possible, and for daily practical purposes.

There would be room for trades people of all varieties, from carpenters to engineers to masons who would help with shelter for the ITE (for those that want those kinds of shelter), as well as contract to the civilized, if they wanted to.

The traditional entertainment and media types would actually be the last thing the ITE would have room for, but they could contribute as much as they liked.

Expect an e-mail from me today. It's good stuff

However, other tribal businesses have to compete directly with the basically unlimited ability of hierarchical businesses to increase production and capture larger market share. On their own, they are definately more demanding and nigh impossible to keep affloat. Check out the link Mat provided. I go into more detail there.

Recycling might be a good business though. Scavenging for the express purpose of cleaning/refurbishing and re-selling is a fine business.

I know that you hate rent, but until people in the intertribal economy have enough resources to purchase land, they're going to have to spend some revenue on rent.

This is a big hurdle. How do we get these kinds of businesses, that have a hard/next-to-impossible time, competing with hierarchical businesses, to join the intertribal economy?

I really have to figure out what the economic terms for "the two kinds of businesses" are.

Just a note on self-sufficiency. An intertribal economy that is not self-sufficient is still good because you are less a part of the culture of maximum harm and getting more of what you want and need. That's a good thing and a great start. But an intertribal-economy that IS self-sufficient can withstand the collapse of its host.

First off -- I have thought this a few times, but been disinterested in posting at the time -- I fundamentally disagree with you that tribal businesses are harder, more demanding, less secure etc than normal businesses.

I think what you are expressing, perhaps, is a common reaction to ANY small business/entreprenurial venture. However, being an entreprenuer myself, I can say with some confidence that if (when) it became tribal, it would be MUCH easier and MUCH more secure.

Somthing like Gaviotas?

Well, yeah. That's exactly what I was getting at... This factor will be the same for ANY small business... but for a tribal small business, it will be easier than a non-tribal small business. See?

Well, the first are generally service businesses.

On the other side are 'production' AND cottage industries. (The difference being size and focus)

I know this is the general thought process of most here.... but we bought our first house because we could not afford to rent. It can be done, if you are willing to adjust your wants-needs-must haves...

This is where region becomes important. If you are somewhere like the Pacific Northwest, you can generate business simply because you are following a new model. Use it, exploit it, find ways to make that priority one amongst your customer base.

All restauraunts are small businesses. Hierarchical ones have a little bit of an advantage because exploitation means that they can pump out more food faster and likely have lower operating costs.

A tribal cable business CANNOT grow in this manner. There is only X amount of customers that they can handle and that's it. Eventually, because the hierarchical businesses offer the same service but with all the speed and glitz and bells and whistles of a large corporation, they simply get outcompeted.

These "UNLIMITED" sectors are the ones where tribal businesses find it hard to compete on the open market because these are the sectors where the hierarchical Annihilators reign supreme:
-Coke
-GM
-Ben and Jerry's

A tribal business is great because they're a snap to set up; whereas, hierarchical small businesses require all kinds of start-up capital. But small hierarchical businesses have the advantage in the open market in that they can expand.

Seems right intuitively, but it's not true.

An intertribal economy will likely have a mix of part-time and full-time tribal businesses. Some businesses will have taken off and can be a primary income source, some take more work than they give back. That's fine

In practice, and maybe particularly in the US, this is NEVER the case, because owners of small businesses are entitled.

In a tribal format, however, there is no one person that can dictate how the proceeds are spent AND everyone is vested in making the business work. So when profits are down, everyone takes a little less, and works a little more. When profits are up, then they are able to 'recover' from the down-times.

I have often pondered the concept of a cooperative network of tribal businesses... like, all in a single sector with overlapping regions. I hadn't considered something like cable companies... but perhaps Dairies... instead of having a Dairy company that buys from individual farmers, have a dairy comprised of individual farmers. You could 'brand' the network, and in theory, the network could stretch out 'infinitely' while maintaining localized cores: ie each region with its own processing/bottling/distribution center (with distribution being fully local as well), each facility bought and paid for by the local farmers.

In a lot of ways, this is exactly how the old-time dairies work, except that the network itself IS hierarchal, and so the network itself always gets a portion of the farmers labor....

You're right, no small competitor is going to directly challenge Coke... but it is QUITE possible for a local 'gourmet/organic/old fashioned/whatever soda company to compete in a particular localized OR specialized market.

Ben & Jerry's, on the other hand, began as an idea almost kinda like what we are talking about here. But at some point the opted for growth rather than ideology. What would they be now if they had gone the other way back then? And, of course, they did EXACTLY what I was just suggesting to compete with Coke. They came out with a unique product that could, therefore compete for a niche just off the edge of the main ice cream market.

Its not necessarily true that tribal businesses are any cheaper to start than hierarchal ones -- all depends on the business at hand. MY small business has involved almost zero investment... (and what investment my folks made back in the day were predominantly worthless compared to the low budget operation we eventually developed)

However, if someone wanted to start a tribal cable company, just the equipment neccessary can run into the millions of dollars.

As far as expanding... that's when we go back to the network concept. The tribal business can expand up to a point... ie to the labor value of +/- 150 individuals, or self imposed, lower limits... but there is nothing stopping a tribal business from talking to other interested folks, sharing thier business model, and perhaps thier DBA...

Doesn't work with the newspaper... but it could work for a large variety of products, and almost ANY service...

hmmm... perhaps, in an ideal world, we would see limited sector full time businesses and part-time unlimited sector businesses... ie, people that already work in those unlimited sectors could, in theory, have regular jobs, but then start building their tribal business based on ONLY members of the tribal economy. That provides the tribal economy with a required node, while providing a 'safe harbor' for people in those businesses...

God damn it, Woman, we've gotta stop arguing about shit we agree about

I was speaking more about productivity. If you have ten members of a tribal business, they're only going to work so hard. But if you have ten employees, you can demand they work overtime, threaten to fire them and use all manner of coercion to increase production.

Their operating costs can be lower. These entitled jerks you're speaking of increase the PROFIT MARGIN by lowering OVERHEAD, ie, operating cost. Salary is a great way to reduce operating cost.

Economies remain healthy when people are spending in them.

I disagree; however, that the network is hierarchical. It's not. It's intertribal.

The danger is that a monopoly would form; however, the central collector tribe is limited in how much milk they can process. That's a good thing. It's always important to maintain diversity.

Intertribal networks are themselves limited in size.

Did you not read the part about niche markets?

Your organic soda dude will do fine until Coke decides it's no longer a niche market and buys them out or launches it's own product.

They occupied a niche market. They DIDN'T compete with larger businesses. They didn't compete with ANYONE. NO ONE had Cherry Garcia and Banana super-duper brain explosion (I don't actually eat ice-cream so I don't know the names). That's the advantage of a niche market. You're the only producer. You have 100% market share.

If we're smart, tribal businesses swamped with demand will undergo tribal mitosis.

The intertribal economies will have to learn to do business differently. Things like intellectual property and patents lead to monopoly. Open source and GPL will have a huge place in an intertribal economy. It'll be the Post-Information Age.

But we have so much fun doing it

Yes...but... it HAS been shown with some rigor that individuals are NATURALLY more productive in a cooperative model compared to a competitive one. The heirarchy can coerce people to work MORE, spend more time, more energy, compete with thier co-workers for status, etc... but the end production tends to DROP in these scenarios.

Dave Pollard wrote about this recently... which led to a discussion at our house a week or so ago... in heirarchal models, employees spend a lot of their energy on covering thier butts, resolving issues in ways that LOOK good, but are often less effective, less efficient and/or less long-term than they could/should be, politiking, sabotaging other employees to thier own benefit, etc. Add to that, when people are doing something that they totally believe in, love to do, find satisfying and gratifying in and of itself... they will work not only harder and longer... but will generally ALWAYS look for (and find) the best solution rather than the flashy one.

But it is really EASY to accept the 'common knowledge' that hierarchy prevails because it is the most effective/efficeint system available. Point blank... that's a lie.

Well... technically...salary IS an operating cost.

No... I was talking about 'old time dairies' being hierarchal. Morning Glory and such... that this network idea is simlar to how things USED TO BE done... except for that.

Well... that's why I wouldn't want to see a central 'collector' tribe form under this model. The same families/groups/tribes that are raising and milking the cows should be providing the funds and labor for the proceessing and distribution. That prevents it from becoming a true monopoly, by virtue of the nature of rhizomatic nodes...

Not if it is, in fact, a rhizomatic network. Think Daisy Chain....

I think I'm just looking at it from a slightly skewed angle. Coke could never truly compete in that soda market -- because a multinational soda producer CANNOT be a local 'gourmet soda.' (Although they can 'mock it up' by using a different name... it all depends on whether people catch on or not.) The frame is part and parcel of the model. At the same time, IN that local market, the local gourmet soda company IS competeing with coke for the general 'soda market.'

Sure they competed with Breyers and the rest... but maybe you could say that Breyer's didn't compete with them.

So yeah, tribal small businesses can go toe to toe with hierarchical small businesses so long as the hierarchical small business can't expand. They can't expand in a limited sector but they sure can in an unlimited one.

But larger hierarchies can certainly produce more. Ohh, snap!

Well... technically...salary IS an operating cost.


Which is why reducing it reduces your operating cost

We don't have to worry about monopoly in an intertribal economy.

By your rationale, a tribal grocery store would be out of the question. Also, restauraunts would have to buy directly from the farms. HArdware stores would have to make their own hardware and clothing stores make their own cloth, design, cut, sew and sell their own clothes. This isn't the case.

There's nothing wrong with having a number of tribes produce milk and one tribe collect and process it and another distribute it. That's how the complex division of labour in an economy works. But because of the invisible hand, as soon as there are more milk producers, you're going to need more collectors and perhaps more distributors.

Rhizomatic networks are not permanent.

Daisy chain?

I'm thinking tribe of tribes here. Ie, the network of tribes is limited to +/-150 too. Remember? The math was something like, a tribe of tribes could support 22 500 people.

But hey, having multiple intertribal economies is a good thing. Diversity, diverstity, diversity. Who wan't a globe-spanning intertribal milk producer?

If by "slightly skewed" you mean "wrong" then yeah. Ohhhhhh, boom, headshot

Yes, Coke will never be a local producer. But that doesn't limit it's response.

1- It could buy the company and retain the brand.
2- It could launch it's own brand.
3- It could sell below cost and watch as the local company died off.
4- They could find a way to destroy the market outright.

You're right that Breyer's didn't compete with them. A niche market is generally unatractive to large businesses. It's just not worth the effort. So small businesses don't have to compete with anyone when they occupy a niche.

Similarly, no, they didn't compete with Breyer's and for a number of reasons.

1- They didn't sell in grocery stores.
2- They sold gourmet flavours. Breyer's had no equivalent. The point is not that both companies were selling ice-cream, but that Ben and Jerry's was selling a specific type of ice-cream that no one else was.
3- Ben and Jerry's sold through their ice-cream stand (a limited sector). Breyer's didn't do that until they bought Ben and Jerry's).

This is conflict resolution 101. The only time there IS conflict is when competitors CLAIM the same resource. In this case, Ben and Jerry's and Breyer's NEVER claimed the same resources. It was only when Ben and Jerry's became so successful that the market grew that they became attractive to Breyer's.

A watermelon produces more volume than a grape... and your point is????

Except... we were talking about the inflated salaries of the owner, not the crunching of the employees... I mean, really... the owner may squeeze his staff for an extra percentage point or two (because they are already barely making it)... but his salary, by comparison may be 3 or 4x the combined total of his staff.

Therefore, he is NOT decreasing his operating costs...

Top that, buddy.

You're the one that was concerned about a possible monopoly... I was just responding to that.

No... not at all. I DO, however, think that there are certain business models that are MORE INCLINED toward inherant exploitation... and 'middle men' are sort of the definition of what I mean. That does NOT include retailers... the service they are providing is obvious... but in a localized economy, distributors become less and less necessary and more and more redundant as you go. If a grocer is selling food exclusively produced in the local region, why NOT get all thier product from the source, directly? If either the grocer or the farmer wants to pay 'joe bob' to do the pick ups and deliveries, then fine. But when a distributor comes in, they tend to accumulate the influence to say, NO, you' can't buy from farmer joe... it HAS to go through me... he's not available to you. Oh, and BTW, I'm gonna charge you for my brokering...

At the same time, I don't REALLY have a problem with this... unless ALL of the distribution tribes are cooperating to the detriment of the rest of the community. Once you create that dependancy (for the farmers AND the retailers) it can be really hard to figure out that, you know what, they are not ACTUALLY dependant...

sez who?

Daisy Chain: I know you, you know bob, bob knows george, george knows bubba and bubba knows leroy.... everyone is always working with people that they know and relate to as persons (or as interdependant tribal businesses), but I don't NEED to know everyone that you know, in fact, its likely that I don't. Its all about the edges.

#1 Only if the company wishes to be bought. See Doctor Bonner's Soap

#2 Only so long as people did not see that Coke was behind it: they cannot by definition, be a 'local gourmet soda bottler'

#3 Not if it does not have a product to sell...

#4 Maybe... but I think you are giving them too much credit. Certainly it CAN happen, and it HAS happened... but I think in general even the mega corps are somewhat beholden to the market itself. They can twist and distort and coerce ... but they can't QUITE control.

A niche market is a focused, targetable portion of a market.

By definition, then, a business that focuses on a niche market is addressing a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers. You can think of a niche market as a narrowly defined group of potential customers.

A niche market usually evolves from a market niche, where potential demand is not met by any supply.

Why should one bother to establish a niche market? Because of the great advantage of being alone there; other small businesses may not be aware of a particular niche market, and large businesses won't want to bother with it. The trick to capitalizing on a niche market is to find or develop a market niche that has customers who are accessible, that is growing fast enough, and that is not owned by one established vendor already.

I think you're looking at it backwards. Breyer's didn't compete with them, because Breyer's didn't have the capacity for innovation that Ben & Jerry's brought to the table. Neither did anyone else. So they created a new 'sub' market based on thier innovation. They could have kept it small and eventually others would have heard about them and tried it for themselves... creating multiple localized sub-markets (and each region being effected by reduced sales of Breyers at the grocery store...whether they knew WHY immediately, or not). Instead, Ben & Jerry's decided to expand thier market by expanding themselves... and in the process destroyed thier own future.

Of COURSE there was a conflict. But it was the conflict of a gnat buzzing around your head. More effort than it is worth to do anything about it. Do you honestly believe that the locals were buying thier normal share of grocery store ice cream AND going and buying from Ben & Jerry's at the same time? NO. So sales for the megacorps dropped off. But it was only when Ben & Jerry's started to seriously expand that the gnat became a swarm of wasps and THAT is when the megacorps dragged out the bug spray.

Profit isn't an operating cost.

Uhhh... what?

Why would they want to hurt their community?

If I'm a business man and my distributor starts to fuck me, guess what? I'm going to another distributor and if there isn't, I'm going directly to the source. And if they're colluding? That's not even legal in a market economy, why would people tolerate it in an intertribal one?

Sez Vail, Biahitchislapistanitrondijikistan

You'd have to school me about this, but my immediate reaction is that this IS how the intertribal economy functions. Each business is a tribe and they interact with other tribes. No one CAN know everyone. But this isn't the case from an organisational standpoint. For each tribe to function INTERNALLY, it can't be about edges, it's about core relationships.

1- If you will not be turned to the dark side, then you will be destroyed!
2- Most consumers are "unconscious". They don't buy based on ideals. If they did, WalMart would be dead in the water. Also, they can market it as locally produced (somewhere). If the market is lucrative enough, they'll set up a local producer if they have to.
3- If it doesn't have a product to sell it's because they haven't bothered trying to fulfil that demand. If that's the case, they aren't competing.
4- Corporations have all kinds of ways to destroy small businesses. All they really need is to want to do it.

Of course they weren't. When they wanted regular ice-cream for the house they wen't to the supermarket and bought a valu-tub. When they wanted "special" ice-cream and a treat for the kids, they all piled into the SUV and went to the Ben and Jerry's stand. That's not DIRECT competition.

Is anyone interested in this changed-mind's-project, even if it might involve moving at some point?

Matthew J

OOOhhhh... I see the disconnect. You are equating the owners salary WITH profit... but I am looking at it from an accounting perspective. From the perspective, an owners salary (in all but the smallest, usually emloyee-less sole proprietorships -- like Jim) IS an operating cost. It goes through the payroll system, decreasing corporate profits (and taxes and capital gains).

Yeah... the premise is that there would be no good reason for the distributors to hurt thier community... but so long as we are raising fears... this is one that I see. Why with distributors in particular? Maybe its the whole teamster framing... I dunno.

The basic problem, I think, that I see, is the idea of entrenching the idea of 'this is how it works'... And the distributor -- unlike the producer OR the Retailer, is an invisible force in the market from the 'consumer' perspective. Does that make sense? Its easy for a consumer to boycott a particular retailer or producer... but how do they boycott a distributor? The retailers and the farmers can do so... but if the idea of a distributor is entrenched, then are they going to be effectively shutting themselves down in order to make a point? I dunno. Like I said, its just a worry of min...

I musta missed that bit. And I think it is incorrect... Rhizome is flexible, changeable, perhaps 'always in motion', but because of that, I don't think it can be framed as 'temporary'.

yeah... in my original post on the topic, I was trying to get at the idea that perhpas in tribe formation drawing together many edges might be a really good way to go. Then, in practice, of course the internal tribe becomes your core... but at the same time, you still have some personal core connections elsewhere... which then strengthens the inter-tribel edges by default. Make sense?

1 -- tell that to Doctor Bonner
2 -- But that's the point... I am positing a product that specifically appeals to an ideal, rather than consumption itself. So in that case, it DOES matter. If someone wants to buy local, organic produce... no way that DelMonte is going to be able to capture thier business. Because it is by definition NOT what they are looking for.
3 -- Or because they cannot provide that particular product by default
4 -- So long as they are in a market where they CAN compete. Local organics is a good example where they cannot.

Check me on this... did Ben & Jerry's originally only offer cones (etc) or did they sell tubs? And if they sold tubs, how much of thier business was this? If it was a lot (which I am assuming, at least by the time they started to consider significant expansion) then I have to assume that it DID impact other sales of tub ice cream from all other sources...

"Where you get that
big, welfare, green-pepper burger?"

And you cry.

"My mother made it."

And long slob...
When little kids cry,

some long slob come
out of their mouth

and it hangs this far to the ground.
And it won't break.