Is a AS Community possible?

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For businesses to be the starting point for an Aspie community, let's say a major manufacturing facility, there would have to be an adequate amount of Aspie's 1) willing to relocate for a job, 2) willing to do said job, 3) able to meet the demands required of said job.

In this sense, it could only be accomplished in or around a major metropolitan area.

Major manufacturing is almost surely out, pretty much for the reasons you mentioned. Short of the unlikely event of the heads of a major manufacturing company suddenly deciding to support an aspie community, the capital intensity issue alone is several orders of magnitude outside what we could realisticly look at.

You might very well end up right about the major metro area. There are some cases where the opposite would be true, but "Aspie Community 1.0" has the shortest path to fruitition in a metro area.

I am for sure right about the major metropolitan area. The only instance where it would work outside of that is in a colony-type situation where the community creates it's own resources and finances to pay for the associated costs of living in the community, and given the previously described reasons as to why a major manufacturer would not be feasible, this also would not be feasible.

[Joke] When I'm ludicrously wealthy, I'll fund it for you. [/Joke]

If you wanted to find wealthy people with emotional ties to the disorder to help fund this, there are lots of CEOs with autistic children/grandchildren/nephews/nieces/cousins. You could always write letters with a petition attached to show that you and others are serious.

I think the best way to make this work would be to find a suburban area halfway between a nature preserve and a city.

It would probably be easier to raise funds with an operating example. Few donors have ever been generous enough to give money for such an idea without some sort of example.

OOC, why did you mention a nature preserve?

OOC means out of character. o.o It's used in text RPs.

Because if people might have meltdowns, they need multiple escape paths. Nature preserves are good because they provide a means of exercise and usually a round trail, so no one gets lost.

I think it would be awesome. But, in the current conditions, not possible.

Does the community have to be in the US? Is there even a future for people with AS in the US?

I would assume that in an AS community you would want to have meaningful jobs, not a welfare state.

Arran, I'm not sure why you question if there is a future for Aspies in the US. The issues that aspies face are comparable to those facing Aspies in other countries.

No Funding == No Community

Somebody has to pay for it!

Yes, but it's still an unanswered question as to whether or not Autists could self fund it.

So what we're writing is that the only limitation on an Aspie community is financing?

Without financing, even the most brilliant Aspie minds will not be interested ... not for very long, anyway ...

(Part 1 of 2)

Hmmmmmm, I wonder how much of this is a definion issue, such as the comments above stating that the two major options are heavy industry or a "colony" (presumably in the economic definion, not the political "imperialism" sense). I think we may have differing views of the required scale of an early-stage AS community.

I'm going to break this out into two posts, because I think the analysis might be too much for one post.

Realistically, any large community that we would be discussing needs one of two things, a "critical mass" of an internal economy that would gainfully employ it's residents, or two, an external source of employement for the majority of the residents. A hybrid case would probably work as well, where a material amount of the employement "units" (measured in Dollars, Euro, Yuan, FTE, hours, etc.) are provided by "export" businesses that are aligned with the hypothetical community.

In the "critical mass" case, the majority, if not a super-majority, of the employement "units" need to be provided by internal demand. Without getting deep into macro-economic therories, the number of residents required to support such demand is likely to be outside any reasonable short-term projection. Thousands of Aspies are not going to get up and move to (Insert Location) tommorow, and manufacture an economy from whole cloth. It is just not going to happen.

In the case of an external employer(s), lets call it the "willy wonka" case, you would'nt need a "critical mass", you'd just need employees for the employer(s), who may or may not have a direct relationship with the AS community. In this case, you'd need some sort of highly improbable set of events to create an instant labor shortage, or have to have a set of employer(s) who have large amounts of capital, and a limited supply of labor. This is almost as unlikely as the 'Critical Mass" case.

I believe that these examples below are what people are refering to when they take the position that an AS community is not possible. I aplogize if I am putting words in anyone's mouth, but this is my understanding of the issue.

(Part 2 of 2)

The issues above are for a large AS Community. Could a smaller AS community function?

I believe the answer is "yes".

As I noted earlier ITT, there are 3 major issues when it comes to financing an AS community, Start-up, operating costs, and employement. The smaller a stable community is, the smaller the capital required to start-up the community, which leads to smaller operating costs, and smaller required labor markets. What that means in practice is that the community is not as tied to large metro areas with the associated high start-up and operating costs.

Because of the lack of an operating community, a determination of the interest in a community is effectively a wild guess. I believe there is substantial interest in the idea, others believe there is minimal interest in the idea. For purposes of this analysis, I will assume that there is sufficient interest to continue with the concept.

If....and this is the big if, you have an entity that is willing to pay residents of the AS community for an exchange of labor, then you have the start of the hypothetical community. That right there solves the 3rd major problem, that of employement. With the 3rd problem solved, and hopefully in a relatively inexpensive area, you can make an informed choice between start-up costs and operating costs. If an AS community exists, and people like it, it will naturally grow. If people do not like the idea, then it will go away like yesterday's fashions.

I think the hypothetical issues here are the required size of a community, and what services are required. While I would love nothing more than to conjure up a set of employer(s) that could support an AS community, I'm not able to do that ATM. However, I think we might be able to determine what size and services would be required.