Owning the Commons (3/3)

January 10 2023, by Matt Perez

1024 Families

By the time we all accommodated and helped 1024 families, there was no more land that they Americans recognized as under their protection.
They told us of other tribes that had been working with palefaces^∇ like us and they were growing stuff as well.
Also, like in our own town, they had taught Europeans their picking technique (i.e., which should have been called take-care-of-the-plants instead).
We had perfected the low water technique and combined it with another township who had perfected vertical farming instead. Together we do more with the land and water we had. Plenty of RADs were given as we all participated and benefited from each other’s results.
In fact, we were producing more food stock than we consumed, so we started training with other townships. They were afraid of RADs, We’d rather trade with coins ‘sted of them RADs.

So we figured out how to work with rCoins.
Distributing them was easy enough through our RADs.
RADs really represent, in this case, a percentage of rCoins.
Everybody was very happy with the results.
We took our percentage of rCoins and bought some of the goodies that came from those other townships (e.g., they were cheaper and better crafted than online).
A few of the towns tried out RADs and they liked them and adopted them. In particular, they like how they were growing with help from other townships that they our 1024 families had founded or settled.
The rCoins didn’t go away because we wanted to trade with farther away townships, in particular a huge one called Smelly Onions.^∇ In spite of its name, the food they made there (e.g., Pizza, hot dogs, and White Castle depression era mini-hamburgers) was unique and out of this world. It was later renamed Chicago.
As a matter of fact, the rCoins fit right in with RADs and even decentralized banking.^∇

Well, not quite.
We considered hiring rõnin to defend us, but we didn’t want to resort to violence.
We listened to their demands. We celebrated when we could, but mostly we talked in calm tones.
Even then, they kept trying to force us to give them tribute.
Then, people from the other townships started arriving. In their covered wagons, of course. Electric covered wagons, that is, of course.
Faced with such odds, they started talking and it turned out that they were scrounging for sustenance. They didn’t know how else to do it. That was the way of where they came from: work for a master or become one.
After much talking, a few of them decided to join us. Eventually, they learned to collaborate rather than to always resort to deadly competition.
They gave food to the others before they went away.
Almost a year later, these people came back and they had completely changed. As they tried to harass other townships, the same thing happened (i.e., more people showed up than they could count). This happened a few times until they shed the shame of being rōnin and joined the people.
They wanted to “repay” us in some way and they brought back the pizza oven technology they had heard us talk so much about.
We didn’t want to tell them that we already had it or that, in fact, it wasn’t the over, but what they were feeding their cows.
Sorry, no movie. Yet.

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No offense meant. This does come from very, very old shoot’em up western movies.
Hats off to Chicago, my third home town (i.e., after Güines, Havana, Cuba and Llanes, Asturias, Spain).
Matt Perez. rCoins. <https://radicalcompanies.com/2022/05/07/rcoin.html>