
On a farm in Missouri, a radical experiment in self-sufficiency (2013) - benbreen
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-civilization-kit
======
scarmig
I'm filled with awe and respect when I look at this guy. He's brilliant and
clearly dedicated to human wellbeing and liberation, and I can only aspire to
even approach what he's accomplished so far.

But now comes the but.

I can't help feeling like he's focusing on the wrong scale, in a way that
seriously impedes the likelihood of success. Let's be clear: the material
basis he's living on is pretty shitty. He shits in a bucket? Freezes at night?
That's the norm only in rural areas in developing countries, and his current
focus isn't even on improving those things: other priorities trump it.

And that's directly because of the scale, which is too small. A group of a
couple dozen people, even brilliant and hard-working people, simply cannot
generate even the basic amenities of modern life, given contemporary knowledge
and technology. But a town or smaller city? Problems that now seem
insurmountable with his approach become routine.

I totally get that it seems awesome to re-invent the world from scratch, with
a group of buddies and passionate volunteers. But it's ultimately escapist. It
seems to me like open sourcing cheap manufacturing methods with a target
economic scale of the metropolitan area would do a lot more to build a
genuinely liberatory society. Sure, you end up more alienated from the
material basis you live on than with his approach. But it's a much smaller
transition--dare I say, a more agile one--than from global hyper-economies to
hyper-local economies. And advances there would easily lend themselves to the
hyper-local economies he desires.

Then again, I'm here bloviating, while he's out there doing stuff. Godspeed.

~~~
mjhoy
I will defend shitting in a bucket (although I agree with you in general).
With a nice seat, some sawdust, and some care, there's absolutely nothing
wrong with it, and in fact after using it for a while normal toilets seem
outrageous.

[http://theorganicsister.com/on-composting-toilets-and-
humanu...](http://theorganicsister.com/on-composting-toilets-and-humanure/)

------
Animats
I heard about this a few years ago. So this is how it came out.

Think of this as a startup. The basic concept is interesting. A decade on,
it's clear that the execution was botched. The article indicates at least the
following problems:

\- Trying to do too many things, and ending up doing them badly, rather than
doing a few things well. Take a look at the list of machines being built, and
the "percent completed". None have reached 100%, and only four are over 75%.
This is after ten years. \- Employee retention problems. (A major problem with
any volunteer effort.) \- Founder not into delegation.

This has been done before, better. There's a classic series, "Build Your Own
Metal Working Shop from Scrap" ([http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-
Metalworking-Shop-Scrap/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Metalworking-
Shop-Scrap/dp/0960433082)) from 1982. You start with charcoal, sand, wood, and
metal scrap, set up a forge, and cast parts. With the forge, you make parts
for a lathe. That's book 2. Book 3, a metal shaper. Book 4, a milling machine.
Book 5, a drill press. Book 6, precision tools so you can do accurate work.
It's a lot of work, but people have successfully followed those directions and
made machine tools.

Further back, there are the Foxfire books, from 1962
([http://www.amazon.com/The-Foxfire-Book-Dressing-
Moonshining/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Foxfire-Book-Dressing-
Moonshining/dp/0385073534)). This was the bible of the hippie "back to the
land" movement. A number of communes were set up using those books.

~~~
DanBC
In the UK this book started a movement of people wanting to be more self-
sufficient, using small gardens and allotments to grow food and sometimes
livestock.

We had chickens when I was young (about four, five?) and goats when I was a
bit older.

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1405345101/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qi...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1405345101/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1412149937&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40)

(It would be nice if Amazon could offer cleaner URLs for sharing.)

~~~
akadruid1
They do exist, I don't know why they don't publish them more.

The following are valid on the UK store:

[http://amzn.co.uk/dp/1405345101](http://amzn.co.uk/dp/1405345101)

[http://amazon.co.uk/The-New-Complete-Book-Self-
Sufficiency/d...](http://amazon.co.uk/The-New-Complete-Book-Self-
Sufficiency/dp/1405345101)

and on the US store they have even shorter variants:

[http://amzn.com/1405345101](http://amzn.com/1405345101)

------
iandanforth
I know some insanely talented mechanical engineers and none of them work
remotely like this. The one characteristic I would say I've noticed in them
that sets them apart is _precision._ They do all of the stress analysis on all
the parts, up front, before they build _anything_. Then they prepare; testing,
practicing, taking notes, and revising build plans. This way when they get to
actual fabrication whether its a metal part, a complicated assembly, or a
simple wooden box, things work. Period. Coupled with drive (which this guy
apparently has in abundance) there is an unshakable, unflappable ability to
concentrate. From the article and watching videos linked elsewhere here I
simply do not get an impression of _skill_. (e.g. his welds are really really
bad)

~~~
john_b
I am a mechanical engineer by training, and I think you are missing the point
of this experiment.

This is the mechanical equivalent of a series of quick hacks. I don't think
anyone expects these machines to last long or work without frequent
maintenance. As I read it, the goal is only to enable a small community to be
self sufficient; the machines should last long enough for them to accomplish
their purpose. When they inevitably break down, the tools and materials will
exist to repair or replace them, and the community will have the knowledge to
do so.

The kind of up-front planning and precise design that you reference works when
you have a large organization with a large pile of capital that is willing and
able to spend the time and money to do something right the first time. This is
optimal when that environment is present, but impossible for a small community
of semi-skilled workers and farmers. The whole point is that the approach
described in the article should work in the absence of professional skills.

------
jessaustin
_...the tractor developed a leaky transmission. Jakubowski took it to a repair
shop, which charged him two thousand dollars. Two days later, the tractor
broke down again..._

Transmissions can have a variety of problems that render them unusable without
repair, but my first response to "it's leaking" would not be "spend $2000".
Rather, it would be "spend $40 for another 5 gallons of hy-tran".

I think this guy just wanted to design and build some tractors. Not that
there's anything wrong with that!

~~~
rmason
Most people would take it as an incentive to learn how to repair tractors but
few would go in the direction of building their own tractor. For such an
obviously smart guy it's not a very efficient use of either his time or
capital.

------
marincounty
I spent a few weeks in Joplin Mossouri. It's kind of boring compared to the
Bay Area; but I am seriously thinking about living there, at least part time.
There's a zen like charm to that area--and it's not just because it's hot. The
people were genuine, honestly nice, and trustworthy. The people ate horrid
compared to our standards, drank, and smoked, but I have never saw so many
functional old people. I met guys who were pushing 90--still working, driving
across the country to see their girlfriend, and genuinely active? It was like
walking in an episode of the Twilight Zone. It was probally just my subjective
observations, but family and friends seem to have stronger bonds than here,
they believe in a higher power, there was definetly less pollution, and
housing was dirt cheap. It was definetly different than what I was expecting.

~~~
angrybits
I was raised in the midwest and this comment really resonated with me. Most of
us make fun of these people as "backwards rednecks", but most every backwards
redneck I have met has been genuinely happy and led a pretty care-free life. I
left KY to seek out my fortune, but sometimes I think I might have left it
there instead.

------
DanBC
This article is unsatisfying.

It describes him as having a laser focus, but as other commenters have said
many projects are not finished and they are not self sufficient for food.

If you want to make open source sustainable tech you ret a warehouse and buy
parts and do it. If you want to live sustainably off the land you buy John
Seymour's "Self Sufficiency" book and buy a cow and some chickens amd plant
crops.

The article talks about making things "from scratch" \- but doesn't really
define what that means. They're not smelting steel or winding their own
motors. So, some things can be bought. The article doesn't mention what is
bought. The tractor is a grwat example - farming is dangerous partly because
of the machinery. A tractor is a tool and people tend to want their tools to
be reliable and efficient. Learning how to repair older tractors is probably
more useful than building a dangerous bad tractor.

The article doesn't explain whether he's learning from other people's
experience.

Even the bit about living off rabits and chemical slop - he has to have the
gloop-food because you can't live off rabbit (although they are tasty) but I'm
not sure from the article whether he knows this.

Having said all that I freaking like the idea he has and I do wish him well.
My criticism is mostly of the article than him.

~~~
azernik
I think your criticism of the article is really about the subject - this man
has an ideological commitment to self-sufficiency, but the article is making a
point that he has had to compromise that conceptual purity in order to get
things done. Time and time again, the article points out Mr. Jabukowski's
conflicted relationship with his farm's dependency on the outside world. For
example:

    
    
      The HabLab had been connected to the local water system
      after a well ran dry, and in May it was hooked up to the 
      electrical grid. “It was an emotional trauma,” Jakubowski 
      said, and, he insisted, a temporary measure. “When we have 
      windmills and solar power up and running, that will end.”
    

He's building a dangerous bad tractor rather than learning to repair older
tractors because he sees the former as morally and ideologically superior.
He's using his homemade brick compactor rather than the commercial alternative
(which the mentioned DC contractor switches to) because, in his view, the
means _are_ the ends. Unfortunately, because the means are so completely nuts,
this collective has a hard time maintaining that level of ideological purity
on the day-to-day level.

I wish them good luck in the future. I think the influx of veterans, who seem
to have a more task-oriented approach, may save the GVCS as a practical
project, but that will be by throwing out the insistence that it will be
created by a society that practices the ideals of the GVCS project from the
get-go.

------
forkandwait
A link to the person's website:
[http://opensourceecology.org/](http://opensourceecology.org/)

Also, I always want to remind folks of an immensely successful experiment in
communal living, the Hutterites (who love technology, by the way, unlike the
Ahmish):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite)

~~~
nsxwolf
The Amish don't hate technology, they're just very careful and deliberate
about what new technologies they adopt.

There's wide adoption of technologies which improve upon, but don't radically
alter, a traditional technology. For instance, many communities accept the
battery powered lantern in place of a gas lantern.

~~~
aaron695
I believe they fully except modern medicine for instance?

I though they believed many technologies disrupted happiness, because it took
away from peoples interactions with each other. Or something like that. Which
quite frankly is a totally plausible theory. Other than medicine/health
technology I don't think there's a lot of proof other tech makes us happier
directly. (Obviously someone needs to use a computer to make drugs, grow
enough food, but it doesn't have to be them)

~~~
lutusp
> I believe they fully except [sic] modern medicine for instance?

Wait a second. "Except" in this context means to refuse. The word you want,
"Accept", means to give consent. Normally a malaprop like this is benign, but
this one reverses the meaning of the sentence in which it appears.

~~~
jnbiche
Yeah, I had already parsed the phrase 3 or 4 times by the time I finally
understood what had happened.

------
quick111
His TED talk -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S63Cy64p2lQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S63Cy64p2lQ)

His OSE -
[https://www.youtube.com/user/marcinose/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/marcinose/videos)

Looks like the initial ambitions have been scaled back to what they use to be,
at least in time frame.

------
michaelbuckbee
Here is a good video of the Compressed Earth Brick press, the workshop they
built with the bricks and a brief shot of the interior of the dorm:

[http://vimeo.com/49864277](http://vimeo.com/49864277)

Also their FB Photo stream has lots of interesting work in process pics:

[https://www.facebook.com/OpenSourceEcology/photos_stream](https://www.facebook.com/OpenSourceEcology/photos_stream)

~~~
Animats
There are lots of brick presses available on Alibaba, starting at about $900.
Some of them look very much like this one. Cheap ones are available from India
and Zaire. China mostly uses larger, higher-volume machines. Also, most people
put a little cement in earthen bricks, about 5%. They hold together better.
It's common to put in holes for rebar, which is pretty much mandatory in
earthquake country.

If you want to build from earth, there's rammed earth construction. It's even
simpler than compressing earth into bricks. You set up wood forms, as if
pouring concrete, put in about 4" of dirt, and pound it into sandstone. This
can be done by hand, or with an air hammer.

All this works if the soil composition is reasonably suitable. There are
simple tests. (Too much clay is bad.) It's usually possible to find nearby
sources for suitable dirt.

This guy seems to be re-inventing the wheel.

~~~
azernik
The whole point is to reinvent the wheel. Which I think speaks to the
practicality of this whole endeavor.

------
VikingCoder
"radical experiment in _self-sufficiency_ "

"It took him two months and seven thousand dollars, _most of it donated,_ to
build the tractor."

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.

Also, if you find the topic interesting, I highly recommend the techno-
thriller duo of books, "Daemon" and "Freedom(TM)" by Daniel Suarez. They end
up touching on this topic, by the second book.

~~~
clarry
Perhaps your understanding of the word is a little extreme. Self-sufficiency
doesn't imply everyone has to survive on their own from day zero, starting
naked and fisting trees to build a crafting table...

------
wamatt
One has to admire this man's grit, discipline and inventiveness. It's
inspiring in a way, and makes you want to cheer him on.

OTOH, a part of me feels this effort more resembles idealism driven by a
historical scarcity event. I suspect this emotional subroutine could be
fueling his mission, rather than the logical post-apocalyptic rationalization
he puts forth.

~~~
jackbravo
Why can't both be part of the reason? You experience a scarcity event, and
driven by it you try to find a logical reason so you can have a better
response next time. I think the response to his scarcity event is great!

~~~
wamatt
They can both be, but there are two things to note. One is to make the
distinction between being _logical_ and being _rational_. So in this man's
context I think it's fair to he may have logically coherent reasons for doing
what he's doing. (ie it's internally consistent within his own framework).

However, I'd question the overall rationality of this. I mean we're on a path
of accelerating technologization, AI, robots etc, and this guy wants to head
back to the bronze age. So while there's a certain charming appeal to his
vision, one should consider being a simple land dweller has traditionally not
worked out so well, for those less advanced cultures. [1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel)

~~~
clarry
> I mean we're on a path of accelerating technologization, AI, robots etc, and
> this guy wants to head back to the bronze age.

I don't think he wants to head back to the bronze age. The reverse seems to be
true; he wants a future where _everyone_ has vast knowledge and a wide set of
skills, and _everyone_ has his own CNC multimachines, robots, all that. Why
not AI?

But to achieve that, you need to take a few steps back from the technology
that is currently operative in large corporations with the capacity to invest
millions into it. If they can bring the price point down and simplify the
machines enough that they're accessible to everyone, then the capability to
produce more and more advanced technology is spread wide. Through open source
design, people would share recipes, ideas and improvements into these homemade
devices; technology would advance faster and it'd be easier to get machines
that solve special problems for which the solution right now would be far too
expensive because there's no mass market for it.

~~~
delackner
Your comment clarified exactly what is so willfully foolish about this whole
enterprise.

"he wants a future where everyone has vast knowledge and a wide set of skills,
and everyone has his own CNC multimachines, robots, all that"

It is a nice fantasy to imagine everyone everywhere being self sufficient, but
unlike the movies, a single person does not have the time nor the mental
capacity to become an expert at everything. Specialization begat the modern
world (and vice versa).

Mao had a great idea to make everyone self sufficient by forging steel in
their back yards to instantly industrialize. No one knew what they were doing
properly, so you got massive quantities of nearly useless scrap, fueled by
wasting previously productive inputs. The parallels are striking.

~~~
clarry
You missed the point about "open source", or information sharing. With the
right machines and a library of shared knowledge, you don't have to be an
expert at everything.

But if people actually strived for it, and their lives began in communities
where building, maintaining and operating your own machinery is a part of
life, most people could actually actually know heck of a lot about them.

------
moron4hire
>> apart from a small grocery in nearby Maysville (pop. 1,000), the closest
supermarket is fifteen miles away.

This might sound insanely far to urbanites, but this is par for the course for
anyone living outside of the suburbs. I grew up 2 hours outside of DC. Driving
30 minutes (which equals 30 miles) to do your shopping once a week was not
uncommon.

Now, being in DC, I've had to adapt. Thirty miles is an hour, at least,
probably closer to an hour and a half. It feels ludicrous. To not be able to
travel wherever I want, whenever I want, in a predictable amount of time, is
very disconcerting. And don't get me started on public transit. Travel is
either long or short. Long is over 4 hours and involves me being a passenger
and getting work done while I'm doing it. Short is anything else. Anything
over half an hour for short travel is unacceptable for me. I can't make money
during short travel.

I've been keeping track of--and secretly hoping my urban-born wife would
volunteer for--the Global Village Construction Set project for years. It's had
some progress issues, but ultimately the reasoning is sound. For the same
reasons we love FOSS in the software development world, Jakubowski is pushing
towards an earlier time when fixing your own truck was not outlandishly
difficult.

But I do have to say this:

>> He likes things to be scheduled,” his fiancée, Catarina Mota, a forty-year-
old scholar of open-source technology, says. “I’ll say, ‘I want to go buy some
bread.’ He’ll say, ‘What time?’ ”

Is concerning. I've personally found that people who couldn't be flexible in
one aspect of their life were unlikely to be flexible in most other aspects.
In other words, the people I know who like strict schedules, or readily admit
to "hating change", are the most likely to harbor rather deep-seated,
irrational prejudices of some kind. And it just continues with stuff like
this:

>> We foresee an equal playing field of competent, well-organized, small-
scale, decentralized republics after the borders of empires dissolve.”

No, I'm sorry, that's not how civilization works. If you read between the
lines of the "big government" scare mongering, that's all it's talking about--
big versus little government. And the "little" that such people talk about is
not one that is more just, free from corruption, it's the road back to
feudalism. Large, federalist government has provided us a means towards
equality and justice unlike any the world has witnessed prior. There is a
reason developed countries don't expect their police to be "funded" through
"voluntary donations" aka bribes.

Being able to service your own equipment is orthogonal to discarding 250 years
of hard-learned facts about government.

~~~
baddox
> Large, federalist government has provided us a means towards equality and
> justice unlike any the world has witnessed prior.

Those two concepts are fairly vague and subjective, but assuming they have
increased, what makes you think that large federalist governments are the
cause, rather than, say, the industrial revolution, medical breakthroughs, or
population growth?

------
baddox
Zero pictures. I guess we'll take the author's word on it.

~~~
andrewliebchen
It's the New Yorker. They spell "coordinate" different than the rest of the
English-speaking world.

~~~
dalke
I find it endearing, alternating between slightly pretentious and
iconoclastic. But in the words of Yoda, "no, there is another" \- MIT
Technology Review.

See
[http://www2.technologyreview.com/tr35/profile.aspx?trid=976](http://www2.technologyreview.com/tr35/profile.aspx?trid=976)
\- "Rybalchenko is currently seeking ways to detect similar bugs that can
appear when many processors work simultaneously on the same task but fail to
coördinate properly and begin competing instead."

and [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428330/startup-has-
lang...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428330/startup-has-language-
learners-translating-the-web/) \- "In 2000, he helped develop the Captcha—the
test that websites use to distinguish humans from spam-spewing robots by
asking them to reënter blurred or distorted strings of letters and numbers.")

