Autist Micronation - supporters

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John Browning brings up a good point. While the village could get by on a thousand acres, it is not set up for industrial zoning. It would provide many advantages for picking neighbors, who could use some of the available labor. I myself do several things I would not do in the village.

Spatial relationships have been ignored in the DSM, but those who score high are very different than Neurotypicals, most who could not build anything, or make repairs, and in general should avoid things with moving parts. I may not get the social part, but the village as machine is very clear.

Government funding is the kiss of death to anything. Grants from Foundations are just as bad. I am in the Private world. I much prefer living under the regulations of The Security and Exchange Commission.

I do see a Private Placement, and all offers are by Prospectus. I do write those things.

While I am sure others will be involved, the main two groups are autists, and retired. The retired have skills, and can be depended on to die within forty years. Autists might take longer, but there is a planned turnover involved. I will block real estate speculation, buyback agreements, covanants that restrict the population, so that it continues.

Once built it will be worth more than it cost, so it has to be restricted to it's intended use.

Not being very good at people, I guess at a 50-50 mix. I see a need for stability, and forming two parties, Autist and Retired, both have enlightened self interest in it working. I have no idea how autists would, could, self govern. I find Wrong Planet a reasonable place, it is possible they might, and a 60-40, 25-75 mix might work. It will take ten years or more to figure out. Autists are expensive to place, retired folks are common.

I see an unmet need that is growing, and most thoughts on meeting it are expensive. I lived through it without knowing just what it was, it could have been better. Now we have a lot of educated parents who know, and seek the best possible future for their children. Sending them to life in a Group Home is the best product on the market now. Group homes are limited to six, and perhaps a million need a place.

People who live in group homes do go out, have activities, they just have a supported place to go back to. It is a standard product that might be more than most need, as it has to support the few with the most needs.

There is not much of a border between them and the ones who live independantly. They may still need some support, but it is hours a month.

From my own life, there are many never Dxed, who live independently badly. For us there are bumps in the road of life. We never got economic or social support, but I did find a few Mentors who helped.

We may be a hit and miss lot, but our hits were worth it. We were productive, had to be better at some things to survive.

That is my view that the autistic could be even more productive, if they lived in a place set up to reduce the common problems with the world, and had something we lacked, a peer group support.

Warehousing the autistic in group homes does not form large enough groups, and I am yet to hear of a group home with a machine shop.

Many do fit in the spacial relationships, builders sub group. Gather enough, with tooling and skilled teachers, and the lifeblood of the economy, new products, will be produced.

The Patent Office has been called an aspie home, inventors are a subset of autism. I do draft patents.

Of the autistic I have met, many through my work in computers since punch cards, others in machine shops, the better mechanics, and musicians. I have zero musical talents, avoid it, but have had many friends who do nothing else? Like the non verbal who communicate when they get a keyboard, the writers I have met write better than they speak. Writers are also autistic. We do have talents, to the degree of afflictions.

In Applied Autism I do not seek to Cure, but to develop what is a lifetime condition anyway. It may be productive, but at least we will enjoy it more.

The Persuit of Happiness was enshrined in the Constitution as a universal human goal. I may be a soulless lump of flesh, but I have a Social Security number, so I am covered.

Many autistic people have not found their calling in life, but examples of those who have could be a guide. Having been sheltered by parents is in some ways worse than being kicked out on the streets. People need a chance to gravitate toward thier intrests and functional ability. My musican friends gave up on me, but I did fill the role of doorman at the club.

I am too self centered to know what other people do. They do it a lot, it is not a problem to me.

I am not concerned with the parents, or their autistic children, I like that Autism Speaks is trying to do something, but I am not involved. As for the Government, I am active in ignoring them. there are problems, they make them worse. I show a lack of emotion.

In my world I like solving problems. How things work, the parts of things, attract my mind. I have a drive, energy, focus, and enjoy working out solutions. The answer is always make a new whole out of the parts.

The autistic can be part of the plan, but I find them limited, their focus is narrow, and they are self centered. The Plan, is something must be done to remove ten million people from the economy. For one, they cannot afford to live there, Two, they are taking space, jobs, that the young need to establish themselves. A slowdown for some, a recession for others, youth unemployment exceeds the Great Depression.

Old people are now a larger cost than schools, jails, the army, combined. Humans are living longer, and those who flunked math went into government. In 1933, they could be depended to die at 64. Now it is 84.

Most are not wealthy enough to retire. They have plugged the pipeline.

We need some post life on earth besides the grave, for as old as they are, they have two guns each.

The Plan is to make expensive useless people cost less, and produce more. A lot of the excess house building was because they just lived and lived, and the house did not turn over to the young. Many war babies have figured out they can retire at 110. The bright, entergetic, and creative young people cannot drive the economy except at the McDonald's drive through.

It is a Demographic log jam, and I am looking for the key log.

Autistics are cheap, no one cares, they will make good lab rats.

The problem is known, overloaded systems and reduced performance.

So how do you downsize an economy, and increase it's performance?

1. A lot of people must live on less.

2. More centers of production.

3. Low cost high skilled labor.

In Germany the Middstad companies are small, but there are a lot of them. They are mostly family and friends, ten or twelve, and they produce many things, with one thing in common, they are the best in the world. Their income is applied to new machines, and product improvment. They do not wish to grow, or sell out. Thousands of companies target one small market, were they can supply the world. They do not have stockholders, profits are reinvested, and if the Chinese copy their work, that was last year's model.

It works, Germany has a strong export economy. The government will pay them to not send jobs out of the country. Full employment at home.

The government understands it does not create jobs or products, so it does everything to support those who do. Not tax cuts for potential job producers, but two years education for your next hire, wage subsities, which keep wages high, and jobs in the country. Their investment comes back in taxes.

We need to change with demographics and economics, because the current system is on the brink of default.

Doing it with autistics and retired people, proves it can be done with anyone.

My secret plan is to bring back the joy of living. Current depression rates aside, in much worse times people enjoyed living.

Inventor - There is much in your post (and your Plan) that disturbs me.

For now, I think I'll let it be, except to say that I don't think things will work out as you hope, and I don't think I'd want to live in such a place.

Edited to add: Please see a long post I wrote on this shortly after. I have reread the post with care and have come to understand Inventor's post and ideas much better. I find I agree with his post now.

Last edited by AlanTuring on 29 Aug 2011, 7:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Belgium, Flanders (dutch speaking part)

Yes... the country with the world record of not having a government and still nobody cares

I think that would make us both happy. Change is always iffy, autistics resist it more than most, and if you have a secure world, why part with it for any reason?

I am a decade older than you, plus some, it took long enough to become stable, I can see your point.

For a million people and more, what they had is ending, and there are not a lot of choices. Group homes may be open, people come and go, but still get instituionalized. The greatest freedom, the most personal growth, is always the goal.

To reduce risks, restricts freedoms. Would my plan be better or worse than the current plan? The current plan is safe, but lacks a potential upside.

"Those who will trade esential liberty for temporary security, will get neither." Ben Franklin

Some would never think of moving to such a place, others might want out, but for some it is going to be the best life possible.

I am only looking for a thousand out of millions, Unlike politics I do not have to please, con, half the people. Those who want nothing to do with it should follow their own advice. That people disagree with me is a given, I was born one in a hundred, I do not seek or expect social support.

It is not just the autistic that doubt, to most people, the Government should set up camps run by FEMA. The idea of a private venture is beyond them. They do not understand how the world they live in works. I would not lobby the government to convince them that this is the best for the voters, for they have little to do with how things work.

I would just do it, and the thousand will be those who think it is a better life than they have.

If you look at the colonies that invaded America, someone drafted a Charter, a private corporate structure, and raised funding to move a bunch of misfits across an ocean, to settle in a raw and hostile land. They did it because it was a lesser evil than staying in Europe.

Ibn Khaldun summed it up in 1300, "Money and talent will move toward freedom." While they may be unsure what freedom entails, they are very aware of what they are leaving.

Of course the ones that stayed in Europe told them they would be murdered and scalped. Now it is it will all go horribly wrong and Home Land Security will come and machine gun all of you.

I do not think one needs live under a Patron. Raising Capital is easy in this economy, we are flooded with it, CDs pay 0.08%, Bonds 2%, and an investment secured by land, with improvments, and a thousand people, who have income, can labor, is sounder than Enron, Worldcom, Lehman Brothers, Borders, Circut City, and many others.

There is no market speculation involved, the people can and will buy the property. At every stage of development it becomes worth more. The advantage of Private Placement is you get the wisdom of the investors.

To me that is worth as much as the investment, and does not have to be paid for. Investment is a knowledge business, capital is a tool. Where the stock market is forward looking, where the market will be in six months, investors look forward for years, decades.

Besides being killed in stocks, everyone who bought oil futures when it was $100, lost everything invested. In times past, the answer was buy real estate. Not this time. Land and gold are the last lines of defense, they will hold value through the worst of times.

Of course timber and paper are down, but food production is gaining value. Making land productive, with a group that operates it at no cost, and will pay to be there, is about as secure as it gets in this economy.

It would be in the enlightened self interests of investors to direct more economic oppertunity to the project. There are also edges to all things, other investment that can run side by side, and secure the whole.

I doubt Alan Turing actually meant any of that at all.

Inventor:

One large commune that can fit everyone's needs and be self-sufficient is unlikely. If you had high functioning individuals where most of them grew up in towns smaller than 1000 people you might have the skills necessary for maintenance, but you would be a long way from having job skills to run a large enough industry that commands big enough profit margins that will support everyone. You will need a bigger, more inclusive community, though it would still be a lot more socialist than what I would prefer to see in my ideal world. You will need service jobs for middle and moderately low functioning people. They may have basic skills that some savants may be missing. And if you are going to have a truly inclusive community and avoid criticism from some parent groups, you are going to need a means to provide comfortable group homes for those that cannot offer any services, and a charitable public/non-profit partnership to provide them with a high quality of life. It's only proper since there will be many of us who narrowly avoided that fate, and it will also silence critics who claim we are trying to pursue some fringe neurodiverity agenda to make a more evolved race. I'd like to see churches play a central role in offering services or at least activities, but it's impossible to tell how long (if ever) it would take for that option to be available. It would take a small town or at least a district to make this work. When you talk about trying to pack 1000 people with little or no skills or experience into a small commune, for some reason shotguns and kool-aid come to mind.

Gentlemen please, can we at least set up a community of willing individuals before we talk about the specifics of economic specialization and organisation?

One of my conditions for being willing to try it is that I would not live in a commune. I would consider working for a co-op but not living in one. Putting a lot of autistics in such close proximity for a long time will end up looking more like a bad reality TV show than a stable self-sustaining community like the Amish have. What we are doing now is probably as close as anyone has come to building a predominantly autistic society. The group psychology of such a social structure has never been studied because it has never existed. Therefore there will be psychological and sociological issues that cannot possibly be foreseen. All that can reasonably be predicted is that some people's eccentric behaviors, bigger people skills issues, and [normally] innocent habits are going to seriously set some others off and you will either need lots of space and privacy to keep people off of each others' nerves or NT counselors for mediation. No matter what you do, there will be a huge demand for public mental health services, and unfortunately probably a chronic shortage as well.

Okay okay, I'll just continue looking into setting up an Aspie school tailored to Aspie needs, and setting up a businesses around that which cater to the tastes and needs of the students and staff. You're welcome to help.

I aint going to force you to live with anyone longer than you have to. Okay?

A self-fulfilling prophecy. Given what people want to believe about themselves it washes them of all personal guilt of doing so and so they do it.

The perfect reason for building slowly

I wont need any 'NTs' to have to do a job we can very well do for ourselves and as for eccentric behaviours, what 'NTs' call eccentric behaviour I think we will call it less unless a few of us are guilty of double standards.

Well you see the problem is that I don't need any mental health services and anyone else who believes in themselves enough to want to do this project probably will and can as well. I aint going to draw people here who are unwilling or pessimistic because they are usually the ones who need all that mental health help. It's a vicious cycle.

An acre per person, 640 per square mile, is low density. Most people live at a higher density, such as villages. Any plan for the future should forget automobiles. Walking distance urban, a village square that supplies most needs, and a buffer of countryside about for nature walks and green views.

I have no idea about a commune, I am a recluse. One system of rights for all, such as the Constitution, all about rights, one hanging crime, treason, going against the rights of the people.

I would not expect a community of autistics to even try to live up to outside views of mental health. First we were burned as witches, then declared soulless lumps of flesh that could be killed, then until 1974 locked up for life without a hearing, then experimented on with drugs, and only recently declared a difference of thought and perception, that exibits no sign of mental illness. Autism is not a Sin, Crime, Illness, it is just a hobby.

At the Goodwill the staff says I dress funny, I hear the Art Police are looking for me, and at least a quarter of the people who find out I have a motorcycle tell me my brains and guts will be spread over the pavement. I do not pay attention to public opinion.

The Church smells of burning flesh and drips blood.

Before the industrial age, and we being post industrial, there was no smokestack fouling the air and water, no factory whistle to regulate wage slaves lives, and I can live without it. One large employer is the model that is failing. The Village survived for thousands of years before then, and has outlasted all Empires. It is a human sized unit.

The first cities failed, the second wave of cities failed, the third wave joined them, and this forth wave is following the program. Cities are a Ponzi, it only lasts as long as it is growing. The village is a stable unit that can live in isolation for hundreds of years.

The Greeks that developed it said Democratic Government could not work with 5,000, after that the evils that the democratic method was developed against return, and despots arise.

I view things from my point of view. Living alone in the mountains I had no problems. Nothing intruded on my freedoms, it did lack a support system, it was forty miles to food shopping, but life was good. Being closer to food, UPS, Postal Service, Broadband, would make it better, and I would put up with seeing other people, sometimes, mostly in the distance.

I have one neighbor I speak to at least twice a year, the rest are given the freedom to not speak to me, and I agree, I would not speak to them. I speak to people in shops, but I am not a social person. At the Chinese takeout they see me and say, the usual, as I put the exact price on the counter.

I consider this oppresive, and village life to me is having the food delivered to my porch, say once a week, on Tuesday, at 3:00 PM.

My neighbors neurotypical wife is called The Batwoman. The automatic garage door opens, she comes down the street, and into the Bat Cave, as the door closes. No one has ever seen her. She does not answer the door, he will. I am not the biggest recluse around.

Most country people stay at home as much as possible. If you wish to see them you park on the road and wait. Anything that comes in the yard belongs to the hounds.

All time, this is how most lived, in a world of their own. Autistics should be naturals at it. Most of our problems come from other people, who being one too many rats in a cage, are looking for someone to bite.

All of the places where people live the longest were investigated. Different climates, diets, ethnic past, they had only one common factor, they were very very quiet. Even the dogs barked in a whisper.

They had no economy, may live on toasted Barly and goat cheeze, but they were happy, and liked each other.

The current dominate culture is not the only way to live.

Gedrene is right - that isn't what disturbs me about Inventor's post and Plan.

I can't bring myself to read through that post again and break it down, but I remember that it contained things that struck me as inhuman and inhumane.

If others don't see the same things, I'll face it again and see if I was misreading it.

Edited to add: Please see a long post I wrote on this shortly after. I have reread the post with care and have come to understand Inventor's post and ideas much better. I find I agree with his post now.

Last edited by AlanTuring on 29 Aug 2011, 7:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't see anything inhumane... inhuman, possibly, but not inhumane.

Alot of what he said was blunt observation about the relationship of society and autistic people, and life in general. He is a story teller, not a fact machine like many of us. He uses a great deal of metaphor. That's an interesting mix, blunt observation and metaphor.

He brings up some good points, that I too have observed; many people stereotype Aspies as computer geeks that are harvard educated, forgetting those that work with their hands and are spatially oriented that never considered college as an option, that will probably never receive a diagnosis, or are likely aware that there is a syndrome called Aspergers.

He's lived among those people and knows there are a tremendous number like himself.

I can see how someone might interpret his wording differently at second glance, if they did not read between the lines the first time. Story telling is his method of communication; I've asked for clarification before for some of his opinions and he has been congenial in his response.

He tells it like he sees it, but like no other that visits here. I don't particularly agree that his specific plan will work, but with his experience he may be seeing somethings here that I can't see.

Thank you for your insights into how he posts.

I'll read through it carefully and reply in a bit.

Life is inhuman, business more so. government lives off the lack of services to people in need. The old pillage the future of the young. It is called Progress.

I am not a social person, I do not see solving problems through Steering Commities, Group Think, or making people change to fit some plan.

My views come from history, the mechanics of economics, and my goal is a structure that works, will continue, that has food security, the least reliance on outside economics, where the people who live there will become the owners, and maintain their personal freedoms.

My main goal would be the most services at the least cost.

I agree with John Browning that some will need more services than others, can work less, and others can do more than just sit around. Parents will have input, and there are tiers of public and private support. While one may have nothing but SSI, an economic bottom, they should be able to live without being "The Poor." Others may need more support, and only come out sometimes, they are still members.

I support the laws of the country where I live, Robbing banks is Federal, Murder State, lesser crime at the County level, and local communities are left with Disturbing the Peace and Animal Control. It is good to have a fire plan, perhaps a Constable, but government exists, no need for making copies.

What would be needed is a wider social support system. Meltdowns do not call for the National Guard, but someone should reduce the problem. Perhaps not waiting, but doing a bit of mentoring beforhand, so that everyone will know someone, who can teach and defend them.

Public health would be important, for autistics do not seek medical attention until a major limb stops working, or falls off.

Another reason I think half retired people who can offer support.

I see the limits of autism, but a while back I read of a wilderness program where autistic symptoms faded. Social and sense stress seem to play a role, that is planned for reduction.

As was mentioned, the need for services for the autistic is growing, and social programs are being cut. We are going to have to get by with less. What most likely will continue is Group Home support, some need it, and it can produce jobs for others. Having a retired Nurse in the community is better than no medical care at all, and combined with local EMTs, we likely need more services than most. Most small communities have Volunteer Fire Departments.

On the up side, compared to other autistics, we are alike. I think there is a culture on Wrong Planet. That should lead to less stress in a mostly autistic community. From the background of open green space, a quite walking village, people more like yourself, the system by which the village operates reduced to a book, clear goals and instructions, the mechanical aspects will reduce problems.

My hope is for more than a residence and an activity, I have known some gifted and productive people, call them obsessive if you will, but they can and do focus on mastering an art. Being exposed to arts and crafts, they might find an interest, and a thousand people use a lot of goods and services.

On one person, I am hopeless, on groups worse, but the overall will function just as humans always have.