Is a AS Community possible?

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There every County has an agent seeking the same, and mostly they offer cheap labor, and reduced taxes.

Being small gives an advantage, if you can provide some service other than machine operator. The job shortage is with the simi skilled, and there is not much out there as emerging industries. There is demand for engineers, who will work cheap, part time high tech, Web Developers, but as contract workers.

Employment shows no sign of improving, perhaps for a decade.

I look inward, because when you cannot make more, reduce expenses.

Some costs like gas, food, have been going up at a rate where I fear what they will be in years to come. The buying power of wages has been in decline for forty years.

The Global Economy is rethinking us, we need to do the same. The old model is not coming back. People who live on less will be the new rich.

Turning labor into food is something that can use labor no one else wants.

ok, then we need a Euro-Autism land for non US people who can't easilly get US visas.

I lived nearby, toward Clayton. It is high country, near desert, that white stuff is snow, where most of the water comes from. 13' to 18" maybe, but desert is under 10". It is summer pasture for a cow, open range unless you fence, so a herd of hundreds night just wander through.

The soil is about half exposed rock, with one to two inches in some places. It supports short grass. There is no ground water on the mesa.

Once the snow falls, there is no getting in or out, Nov. to May?

This is almost a mile above Denver, 9,400 foot, and fifty miles to Raton, (RatTown). A hundred mile round trip, dirt road, to the nearest Interstate, I-25. I went as far for food and gas.

Some deer summer there, and some very big bears, who are curious, and inspect these people who come to their world, and bring food, which bears can smell at five miles.

Bring your own water.

The good, at night the sky has texture as a hundred times as many stars as you knew existed fill the sky, and metor showers are wonderful. So are the electrical storms that sweep over the high plains, then discharge thousands of lightning strikes as the clouds reach the wall of high country. It is a leading cause of cattle death.

The fleas on the local rodents carry Bubonic Plague, and there is another disease that comes from their feces, which has been killing people. I think a Hanta Virus.

The rattle snakes are large, and agressive. Worst at night, when you can hear them rattle, but not see them.

The locals are old Mexico, the ones who survived when the Comencheros were killed by the hundreds, because they slaughtered whole wagon trains of American settlers, all along the Santa Fe Trail. They were land pirates, and the social relationship with Anglos is still bitter.

When a bounty was put on indian scalps, they too had black hair.

Mora, County Seat of Mora County, is unincorporated. Wagon Mound, is on I-25, does have gas, and I think that is where the dead were buried from a wagon train. Apache and Comanche still live in the hills. The place has history.

Building codes are strict, how they keep people out, and Septic is required, based on per person, and having water.

Just getting in is fifty miles of dirt roads, most not maintained.

It is not like life in the city.

Inventor, are you are refering to the New Mexico location mentioned by KenG?

I was wondering about the location, since there was such a low population density around the area.

That I was, I lived on the other side of I-25, Wagon Mound was the closest town.

The better roads are dirt graded by the County, most are pickup tracks and going up, cow trails. I was prospecting, and the motorcycle went places that nothing but a horse could reach. After that I walked.

The Santa Fe Trail came from the east, cut like a ditch across the land, then turned south along the path of I-25. Along the trail I found signs of slaughter, burned wagons, broken dishes, spurs, axe heads, shell casings. The bones were long gone, the mice eat them, but here in 1845 was mass murder.

Anglos took the lands east of I-25, the Old Mexicans and indians held out in the mountains to the west. All of the villages to the west are all spanish today.

This land is fifty miles of dirt road back in the spanish and indian side.

Rain is rare, most water comes from snow, and only along the few rivers did people survive. In the high country water evaporates faster, boils lower, and it is dry, so extreme fire hazard. Lightning strikes the high points, the mesa is the high point.

Throwing away my pick I lay flat on the earth as the hair on my body stood up and moved just as the dry grass around me did, I could feel the swell of an electric charge gathering, moving, pulling on me like flowing water, as the wave passed over me heading for the hill top a hundred foot away, then came the flash and crash as a million volts discharged between the hilltop and the sky. I got up and continued my walk to the top of the hill, discharged for now. I could smell the toasted grass, the ground was warm, where a minute before was like plasma. The air smelled with the sharp scent of Ozone.

It is not from storms that you can see, the air brushing over the land, crossing the High Plains to the east, builds up a charge, then flows into the foothills of the Rockies, deep rooted rocks of another polarity, and along ridge lines, hill tops, there are no tracks of deer, elk, bear, for they know.

Here and there are the bones of cattle, as it is the leading cause of death. They dont know, and do not live to find out.

The pattern of the trees shows it, some places that seem perfect have no trees, hill tops and ridge lines, lightning rods, but some other places, it is a sign of highly mineralized ground, where the iron runs high, and other things of interest, which draws the lightning strikes, killing the trees on the surface.

One thing I look for, quartz veins rich in iron deep rooted, old, and now covered in dirt and grass. In openings in the quartz, pockets where crystals form, from long ago gas, a perfect form of a pure subtance.

To the north, Mount Antareo, at about 15,000 foot, is a Beryl pegmatite, more a tube than vein, where Aquamarine crystals are found. Also the ore source for Berillium. Access is about 90 days a year, mostly it is snow covered, and there is no road.

There is a lot of gold left in the high country, as it is hard to get to. Stay too long, stay forever. Snow can come a month late, or early, or mid summer, all of it will kill you.

It is bear country.

Inventor, as always, I defer to your knowledge on these matters.

I'm aware that there are those who would be interested in a more urban location, which also would have a smaller start-up cost and presumably easier access to existing economic markets and services. That is not to take away from a "rural" location, which is something that has equal value. I just know more about a proposed urban community concept.

One of the issues holding back discussion of an "urban" AS community is what services would the proposed community want from the surrounding enviroment? Jobs would presumably head the list, but I was curious to find out what services the WP readership would be interested in.

I would take a shot at that, for I have been working on it.

Access, and close to population centers. I looked along Amtrak routes, but busses would do, because driving does not cover everyone, then you have to park. With drought and global warming, water as rainfall, and more important, ground. A soil that can be developed, and a long growing season.

I depend on Mail, Fedex, UPS, and public transport to get in and out. Utilities, for even off grid, it is worth having a power pole.

The permit process for septic is being defined, down to for a two bedroom house, another larger size for four bedroom, and larger it helps if it is on a Public Sewer, as the cost of building septic for twenty houses is high. High enough that laying out a village for 200, compact, and running water, sewer, gas, electric main lines, building a septic system, will cost more than the land.

Jobs are lacking all over, it has to produce it's own. I like food, it has fixed prices and demand is constant.

I do Publishing, so I need to be on a hard road where Fedex and UPS will deliver.

The closer to services, the higher the cost. When there is a sewer line run down the hard road, with power, water, phone, it is priced into the land, and when it is a short drive to stores, jobs, that is priced in. Making more is doubful, spending less is possible.

I think we agree more than disagree on the high-level concept, and are focusing on different concepts. Free speech strikes again!

An "urban" community, which would be probably smaller than the proposed "village" concept, has an advantage that it has lower start-up costs, and is closer to existing markets. A major disadvantage is that it is'nt as easy to scale up, and it does require accepting the existing civic enviroment (transporation, energy costs, water/sewer, crime, education, health, etc.). Another disadvantage is that it does not have as much flexability as the "village" community for "exports" to outside the community. The "urban" community would be dependant on the job market in the area, or on any affilated businesses.

A mini-AS neighberhood (Let's call it "AsperBURG" for the moment) could be started by something as small as one property. However, I'm very concerned about what sort of scale one would need to provide the desired services to AsperBURG. I'm thinking that the required start-up scale might be far less than the previously thought number of 50-200 residents, which would transform the concept from something requiring 7 figure start-up costs to something an order of magnitude less.

What sort of community services would possible residents of AspieBURG want? As mentioned above in the thread, jobs would be a requirement for the concept, and I'm interested to find out what other services people might be interested in.

A serious issue you will have to overcome for making an ASD community (assuming your talking about a city or something like that) is taking care of people who are unable to work :\ + it would be kind of discriminating to only allow ASD people to inhabit it.

No, an AS community is not possible. The NT world will always be "in the loop!" The best bets are to increasingly involve and educate the whole gambit of thoughtful NTs on Aspergers.

The Aspergers community has only "scrathed the surface" on finding and bringing these awesome NTs "into the loop." It can be surprising just how many thoughtful NTs are receptive to the lives of people with Aspergers!

In short, let's refrain from "throwing the NT baby out with the bathwater!"

Thank-you

You seem to be conflating several different concepts into one attack in your above post.

An Aspie community, defined (at least for my purposes) as a group of 10 or more Aspies who live in the same general geographical location, is possible, in that there is no practical limit on the idea. I'm not sure what your basis for your first sentence.

I don't think it's possible for many reasons:

1. Obviously money, and this is something everyone can agree on. No-one has the money to go and start off a new system like this, if any of us did, I'm pretty sure we'd not worry too much about finances in the first place, where we currently are.

2. It probably wouldn't be a very safe place, criminals who know about it would obviously think it an easy target and thus the crime rate would be rather unacceptable.

3, In conjunction with number 2, autism in general has become a bullseye, and anyone who hates people on the spectrum enough, then will have a place to vent their anger, and what better place (for them) to do so than a known Asperger community?

4. Single location, doesn't mean social. I can't speak for everyone else, but I personally have agoraphobia as well, I wouldn't leave my house or meet knew people even if I thought they'd accept me, and I'd still be the odd one out. For me, a community changes nothing other than others knowing who I was, and where I live.

5. It would seem too much like a secluded community and that only reaffirms that we're not accepted by the current social establishment.

... Need I go on?

You can go on if you'd like, it probably won't change my views much.

I would like to respond to your objections above.

1. I think cost estimates, at least if we're talking about the so-called "AspieBURG" model, arn't anywhere near as high as previously projected. "Aspie Acres" is still cost prohibitive, since you'd be talking about at least $500,000 in start-up costs when I last looked at it. There's a thread on that topic elsewhere.

2. I don't see concrete indications that an Aspie community would be the target of additional street crime. Crime is a constant, but at least with an AS community you'd have better social connections and better ability to work with local law enforcement.

3. There's a difference between stupid comments on the internet (and we've all read them), and people trying to phyiscally harm an Aspie community.

4. One could reasonably expect that most of the issues that lead to social anxiety would be less present in an AS social community.

5. Yes, it would be secluded and you'd have Aspie neighbors. In point 2 and 3 you indicate that we're at higher risk of crime, and a "bullseye". Either an Aspie community would reduce such things, which would render point 2 moot, or it would confirm something that already exists. I doubt an Aspie community can make social exclusion worse.

2. Doesn't mean that crime wouldn't be at an unacceptable level, and it doesn't mean we're less of a target because of how other people think. Criminals target what they perceive is the weakest link in the chain, a community housing only people with a neurological difference (often thought by the public to be a "mental disorder") would inevitably be their first target, simply because they think it is an easy one. They don't even have to be living there, criminals travel for opportunity.

3. and 5. You clearly don't hear the news often enough about how people on the spectrum are being singled out by other people, even for small things, and treated like criminals or worse. They've been beaten down, abused by teachers, at least one kid who's 7, and on the spectrum is possibly facing "battery charges" because he threw a tantrum due to the teacher not following behavior sheet instructions. At least one has been killed because of a meltdown that I've heard of. All of this since Adam Lanza. You can't tell me that that's not targeting the spectrumites. Then you've got all these other people who are specialists trying to get the word out that Autism/AS isn't a precursor to violence, and they wouldn't be doing that if people weren't reacting badly to those on the spectrum, instead they'd say it once or twice, and then let the bad theories die. Not to mention how many people on the spectrum currently saying they're going into hiding, because of the hostility towards AS and Autism that is currently out there. So, yes, we have a big, blazing bullseye on us. It's actually not hard to miss, sadly.

2. I'll let crimonology experts argue if an Aspie building would be a high crime zone, but I'd point out that the crime risk can be mitigated through location selection.

3 & 5. I assure you I am capable of reading the "news" section, and I will note that I myself have posted some of those stories, some of them long before 2012.

I fail to see how an Aspie community will cause more abuse towards Aspies.

I didn't say it would cause "more" abuse, only that people would then know where to go if they were planning something, whereas before they wouldn't necessarily have the knowledge on where there are those on the spectrum.
I do agree that location is an important role, but it's not as simple as picking a plot of land, a prospector has to check the land for viability, and if it's not stable in any way, you can't build on it. Furthermore, there's not enough data for experts to conclude one way or the other right now because of their criteria, but based on what we know already, we can make an assessment ourselves and determine whether or not we feel society is safe, and a lot of people don't think so, the fact that they're in hiding proves that.
Right now we're all scattered and anonymous, the hardest targets to hit. But if we were all localized in one big community, that would give a face and location to what people have hostile feelings for, and that can lead to very unsafe situations for us.

Granted, however, if we had some kind of security gate that was rather inpenetrable, then sure it might work. But at that point, wouldn't it feel like a garrison?

I don't deny there could be benefits, I'm just pointing out some very real possible problems that I think should be addressed.