Key Ideas & Goals

Our four major goals for the community (in no particular order) are:

• Social - We want people around to watch movies with, to go to the beach with, to comfort us when we are sad, to tell us when we are being foolish, and to make our lives richer, and we don't want to have to get in a car just to see them.
  
• Network - We want the synergy of living near lots of interesting, competent people who have a wide variety of skills and interests. There should always be someone who says "I'd love to help you build a trebuchet", or "Maybe I can help, I know a bit of hungarian."
  
• Trust & Safety - We want to be able to leave things outside when we aren't around, to leave our doors unlocked when we go for walks, and to trust our neighbors to watch our safety as they watch their own. We want a safe place to live, to grow, and eventually, to raise children.
  
• Efficiency - We don't want to each buy our own circular saws. We don't want to have a huge TV in each of our apartments that sits unused 95% of the day. We want a jacuzzi, a pool table, and a T1 (and it would be neat if we could use them all at once!)

Some of our key principles for the community are:

• Independent & Trustworthy Citizens - Because we have a small community of like-minded individuals, we trust them to act within the interests of themselves and the community. The "honor system" will be used whenever practical.
  
• Reality - While trusting in our community, we also acknowledge the realities of human nature. An example: At our college, there was a coffee cart, which supplied juice, bagels, and legal stimulants to students between classes. For a while, payment for this cart operated on an honor system, with a list of prices and a basket for bills and coins. Our college had a strong sense of community and many things operated on the honor system, but this one did not work. Whether because of outsiders, because it was too easy to say "I'll pay tomorrow" and then forget, or because people simply didn't feel like being honorable about thirty-five cents, the experiment was a failure. That is Reality.
  
• Expandability - Our IC may start with as few as 4 people. Ideally, it will peak at 50-100. Thus we need a flexible physical and organizational structure that allows us to grow as the years progress.
  
• Distributed- We believe that decentralizing authority and responsibility is an important part of forming a community of peers.
  
• Efficiency and Economies of Scale - By sharing the costs of group facilities, they become cheaper and available to all. When each individual owns a computer, it often goes unused. When shared, fewer are needed per capita, thus reducing the cost to all. Facilities such as jacuzzi's are rarely practical for individuals, but are practically required for a community.
  
• Simplicity - We will attempt to keep guidelines simple, trusting in our community to interpret and obey the spirit of the rules correctly in individual cases. For example, a community pool might only be open until midnight on weekdays, because its noise disturbs those who live in the single nearby building. If the inhabitants of that residence are out of town for the week, there would be no reason to limit swimming hours.

Some things which are not goals of our community, although they are important to other IC's, are:

• Spiritual Enlightenment
• Zero-Impact Environmentalism
• Complete Independence From Society
• Communal Property and Income
• Homogeneity

To learn about some of our governmental and organizational issues, continue on to the next section.