
Squad Wealth - Kinrany
https://otherinter.net/squad-wealth/
======
legerdemain
With the exception of streamers with a substantial regular audience, people
taking active part in social justice events, and devs lucky enough to work on
lively community projects, average people in my peer group have not started
organically bonding into bands of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers of the
information superhighway.

For example, I've watched a lot of roommate groups in shared houses fall apart
as housemates pack up and go home to live with their parents.

This essay honestly feels like the author has transferred the style and
cliches of mid-90s techno-utopianism into an essay promoting the benefits of
neoprimitivist permaculture, buzzwords and all.

~~~
cinquemb
I'm starting to see something like this happen with devs that pursue many
contract work (non community projects) and pool effort/work and split the
spoils (its a group of two, one usually does db stufff, one usually does
application stuff, but both can write/ship code. I might work with them in the
future, working with one them now).

But overall, I'd agree, something like this is a non starter if each
individual in a "squad" cant some how contribute meaningfully in part to its
wealth.

Analogy might be to a specops squad to killing: might have a sniper, a couple
of riflemen, a grenadier/demo, someone who can handle heavy weapons, and maybe
a tactical communications/CAS person; all them can kill you in their own way
and in a variety of environments, missing one reduces their ability in said
environments.

------
BTinfinity
With the amount of memes used throughout and constant informal langauge i'm
not sure if this is a serious post or if i'm missing out on a joke. Not really
sure if it was trying to put specific point across either

~~~
jborichevskiy
It's serious, though I agree it's a bit muddled in all the memes and
references.

The core point as I understood it: the internet is quickly blurring the line
between a company and a group of friends working together. Two of the limiting
factors are our communication tools and financial/corporate structures.

My take: as this model become more prevalent, more alternatives to traditional
employment and education routes open up allowing creators, researchers, and
engineers to work on interesting problems without having to find one another
through educational institutions and corporations.

~~~
luckylion
Is there even a legal distinction in the US? Germany has a somewhat
complicated and sometimes surprising law around all of that, but essentially
you can form a "company" without any official acts. It's not necessarily a
company to earn money, it's mostly about liability, e.g. who pays when it
falls apart.

I couldn't quite make it through all the memes, because I found them too
annoying, but I believe that, at least over here, the Squad would likely form
a GbR ("Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts"), which includes individual
liability for everything done within that company. It's somewhat fuzzy what's
part of the Squad's work, but essentially you could be on the hook for
something your buddy does with your personal savings, without limit. It's
probably better to formalize it and choose a limited liability company.

~~~
rswail
Sounds like a "partnership" where the liability for debts are shared between
partners (as is income and equity).

Australia has 3 "corporate" trading structures and trusts for holding assets:

* Sole Trader

* Company

* Partnership

[https://www.business.gov.au/planning/business-structures-
and...](https://www.business.gov.au/planning/business-structures-and-
types/business-structures)

------
rboyd
Anecdotal observation but from living in a kind of squad in my early 20s, two
main problems ripped ours apart: 1) wealth distribution among unequal
contribution and 2) romantic relationships and the changing dynamic they
introduce.

When I think about groups that survive they seem to either have strong top-
down power hierarchies (as in the cult or the corporation), or otherwise de-
emphasize money and sex (as in the monastery).

~~~
_delirium
> When I think about groups that survive they seem to either have strong top-
> down power hierarchies (as in the cult or the corporation), or otherwise de-
> emphasize money and sex (as in the monastery).

There's also the 'clan', essentially an extended family with strong financial
and social ties, often treating wealth quasi-collectively. Varies by culture
and era, but my clan (in the Mediterranean region) has been around in current
form for about 100 years and is fairly resilient. Varying incomes and romantic
relationships (among other things) cause problems here too, but the social
structure has developed ways to manage them. There's a fairly elaborate
culturally rooted system of gifts, obligations, unofficial hierarchies, etc.
that keeps some of it working.

~~~
sersi
That's super interesting, can you expand? How is wealth treated quasi-
collectively despite varying incomes? Is it shared between members? Or do
members help with certain expenses like education, health, housing? I'm rather
curious about this

------
rdiddly
I have to hold myself back from "Oh brother"ing and scoffing myself to death
with this, because I respect the fact that they're paying attention and their
ideas aren't so mired in the past the way mine, basically, are.

------
eximius
There's a 600 acre plot of relatively cheap land near me that I 2/3rds joking
suggest me and friends should go in on together and start a hi tech commune.
So far plenty of interest but no commitments. :(

~~~
xur17
What does something like that go for?

~~~
ybot
It can vary a lot depending on location, but here's a search on zillow to give
you a sense of the market in California:

[https://bit.ly/3gEqOkw](https://bit.ly/3gEqOkw)

(bitly link, because the URL specifying the search filters is unreasonably
long)

------
goodmattg
This essay is both extremely poignant and nearly unintelligible, which is a
vibe.

------
PaulHoule
I am careful with that word. I start with

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squad)

and would expect it to mean "8-14 members" \-- if at all possible I would call
a 20 person organization a Platoon comprised of 2 squads.

~~~
steveklabnik
The article seems to agree with you:

> the ideal squad count is no more than 12.

~~~
Ntrails
Which is dumb, because that's around the size forums die forever due to lack
of individual posters

~~~
Kinrany
These squads are supposed to exist in a different format: as group chats where
everyone knows everyone else.

------
megameter
I get the vibe. Squad, maybe not. But collective? Gang? Tribe? Yeah, that's
been a thing for a while, but it really accelerated lately. It's easy to
stumble upon the "permeable boundaries" Heather Marsh writes of online and
create an organism that isn't a legal entity and isn't for life. And there's
more of them all the time.

------
lifeisstillgood
I heard Michael Munfer on a podcast recently taking about higher education -
that it is being dis-intermediated or broken down (cannot remember the right
term)

And he suggested a new university that is likely to arise - where there is no
campus but you are housed with (your squad) you get weekly tickets to the
Proms or a new theatre etc etc. A whole rounded but decentralised education

I think not that squads are our future but the active conscious creation of
them are

~~~
Smaug123
A word I've often heard for the "dis-intermediated or broken down" sentiment
is "unbundled", by the way.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Thanks !!! That's what i meant :-)

PS Michael Munger not Munfer

------
VectorLock
Small cliques of ~12 users is pretty much the long tail of Discord servers.

------
darawk
I related pretty strongly to this. If you didn't, I highly recommend trying to
form a tight-knit little group or two like this. It's really great.

~~~
venantius
Seconded. I notice a lot of comments scoffing at this and talking about group
disintegration - have now been part of the same “group chat” / squad for 6-7
years and it was inchoate but there even before then. We do everything
described in the essay. Reading it was eerie.

~~~
darawk
Ya, I felt the same way. Like they had been reading our channel or something.
Good to know other people are doing the same thing.

------
chrisjarvis
I thought I was gonna hate this but I ended up enjoying it a lot haha, thanks
for sharing!

------
igor47
Makes me think of the bash' from Too Like the Lightning

------
dash2
Twenty-somethings often think that friends are more important than family, and
friendship groups will last forever. They’re not.

------
analognoise
This sounds like the kind of thing a couch surfer with no family or job would
be really amped by.

~~~
groby_b
It appeals way beyond that. Marginalized groups have known that concept
since... well, forever. It's "chosen family" or "framily" (friend family) in
the circles I'm familiar with.

The more technical term is "intentional communities". If you search for it,
you'll find an extremely wide range of them. This particular "squad" thing has
more of a tech bent, but it still falls within that concept.

The page also highlights one of the problems that squads face - it's a highly
cohesive group with very closely aligned interests. That often makes their
communication less interesting/understandable/relatable to outsiders.

(Which poses an interesting problem - the more uniform the group becomes, the
more efficient in-group communication is. To the point where you cannot
attract new members to the group, and it slowly withers away)

~~~
analognoise
Those concepts don't give me the couch surfer "all you have to do is bottom-up
the economy" but "you'll mostly be paid in memes" vibe.

