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| The New Plantation Life Style | |
| What is a "New Plantation" (NP) ? | |
A New Plantation is a home, a home which is tailored to the exact requirements of its Owner. (We are going to capitalize "Owner" because he, or she, is a very special person in this context.) In order to do this tailoring, we rely on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs. To take care of all of a person's needs, a home must be a "Home in the Round" a kind of holistic home. It needs to be as different as the Owner is different from other Owners.
This a tall order for a house, or even a home. True, it needs an integrated life style. It takes a combination of a house surrounded by a sympathetic environment and culture. Maslow didn't just define the kinds of needs each person has, he organized them into a hierarchy. Their urgency, their power, is in the order in which they are listed above. Unless the lowest (ie first in the list) are reasonably well satisfied, the rest get little attention, and so on from the lowest to the highest level. We add another requirement. A house cannot do all of these things, economically speaking. It needs financial support. Which brings us to the second part of our definition of NP. There must be sources of income, productive elements, associated with our NP. In the crudest sense it has to do with the fact that the very low level need to eat, if left unfulfilled, saps our Owner's interest in everything else. If there is some resource left over, some of it can be used to support the infrastructure of love, and maybe a little something to impress the neighbors and finally to create something to make the world a better place, in the eyes of the Owner. | |
| What went wrong with the old plantations? | |
| Firstly, concentration on the needs of the Owner, to the exclusion of everyone else associated with the plantation, led to slavery. Required it, in fact, to be an economically viable system. Plantations in those times were a rural thing. The rise of urban societies (we focus here on the New England Abolitionists) created a powerful constituency who saw no advantage for themselves in the plantation system, thus no justification for the evils of slavery. Bending morality to fit economics wasn't possible for them. The mercantile class didn't find slavery economically (or morally) sound. Taking full responsibility for the minutiae of care and feeding of the productive assets (the workers), was an inefficient way to organize resources. (A lesson communists had to relearn later, to their cost.) So, the plantation system, as a recognized, and acceptable, way of organizing resources was thrown out along with its essential infrastructure, slavery. The misery and loss of life and resources and the social and political dislocation incurred in doing this constituted the greatest disaster ever to occur on US soil, rivaling the consequences of the rise and fall of Nazi Germany 80 years later in Europe. | |
| Why draw to an inside straight? | |
| As mentioned above, the Plantation system was a rural, productive institution. It was destroyed by an urban, mercantilist society in order to extirpate the injustices of slavery. (Of course, there were other reasons too, to preserve the Union, for one.)
Urban merchants developed their own way of organizing resources. Central to these were markets in various forms, using money as a method of exchange, in order to share out the benefits of trade. In fact, free competition is essential for this system to work. But, the cost is high. A substantial part of the workforce is engaged in the totally unproductive administration of these markets and the money system (read financial sector). They produce nothing and shower contempt and distain on those who do. They merely use their access to information and tools (people and machines) of processing it to control and direct investments in production and distribution of goods and delivery of services, and to rake off a lions share of whatever passes by them, or through their hands. This is not quite what capitalism and free markets was supposed to deliver. The idea that a person is expected to share some of the value he created (like, say, a sharecropper, in the system which replaced the defunct plantations in the South), seems fair to most people. In contrast, the idea that a bank should claim the lion's share (frequently, all) of the interest earned on its depositor's money, doesn't seem fair to most people. Many of the institutions and byproducts of organization of human lives around markets and money are seriously deleterious to the people's "pursuit of happiness", one of the inalienable rights enumerated prominently in the US Declaration of Independence. For one example, the institution of commuting is well on the way to calling into question the very viability of urban conurbations and cities. The time spent commuting is greater than any one industry or productive pursuit (and rivals even watching television). The land and energy and other resources, even human lives, gobbled up by commuting is greater than our wars, or any other single disease. The misery caused directly by traffic deaths and injuries and indirectly by disease from traffic pollution exceed any other cause in modern life. Most commuting does not support production, manufacturing, mining, agriculture nor fishing. It supports gathering people together so that they can be controlled and managed and fed information while engaged in administration (and manipulation) of markets and money. In the larger cities, like London, traffic is approaching permanent gridlock. In desperation, London (again) is trying to use taxes (ie the Congestion Charge) to reduce commuting by car, in favor of forcing commuters to use the overcrowded, hitherto neglected, resource starved and poorly managed public transport system of underground trains and over ground busses. It is too early to tell if this will make matters better or worse. At least it will bring in some more tax revenue to finance some more waste, mismanagement and jobs for the brothers (read core constituents). Another serious problem is the psychological anomie (or "spaced out" state) brought about by isolation and forced focusing of workers productive effort of (abetted by extreme specialization) on work that has no apparent productive output or purpose, at least not to the worker, and little relationship to his needs structure. This point has been belabored by countless writers and dramatists, famously by Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World. Some reviewers of this book credit Huxley with predicting and, possibly, advocating the popular modern habit of zonking their brains with various forms of chemical additives, now called leisure drugs. Without doubt, he himself experimented disastrously with LSD (this was before it was made illegal). Whether this was a product of his writer's curiosity, or a honest search for a means of making life tolerable under the circumstances that he envisaged, we shall never know. Huxley's hero in Brave New World, the savage, killed himself rather than live under these conditions. We now offer a less drastic solution for a select few: set up your own New Plantation. There are no coherent programs by governments or other societal forces to combat or alleviate these problems. However, several trends are already apparent, designed to alleviate or fend them off by "popular subscription". One such which comes to mind is the Escape Artist website, where, not entirely coincidentally, you could (used to) find an ad for this author's own neonate NP, in London. There are no balloting booths to vote for or against the NP concept, so people vote with their feet. There are many websites, magazines and TV shows set up to aid people to escape from the rat race by moving to the country, or to another country entirely. Unfortunately, currently, there is a minimum of assets needed to establish a self sustaining NP. Our research suggests this is about one million pounds sterling (over two million US dollars at the current exchange rate). Land and buildings for the Owner's manor or "great house" will take about $900k in most desirable locations. The rest, $1.1M, is needed to capitalize the income producing part. If it is used to purchase "safe" assets in the form of securities it will return from 3% ($33k) to 5% ( $55k), say, $44k /year before taxes. This form of investment will require professional help to select and safeguard the investment and fill out all the forms and tax returns etc. The residue leaves too little time or money to enjoy a really gracious lifestyle for most families, with all their low order needs satisfied and something left to support serious self realization. Alternatively, let's put, say, half the $1.1M in the safe investment, and the rest in higher yielding assets closely overseen and managed by the Owner, from the vantage point of the big house. Then, the $44k is cut to $22 but the other half will bring in 8% to 12%, say an average of 10%, or $55k, totaling $77 annually. This improves the overall situation by $33k, or 75%. Herein lies one of the principle benefits of the NP concept, as opposed to just owning a house and some other assets for income. Another is the elimination of the cost, in time, money, boredom and danger to health, by cutting out commuting. Another extremely important factor in New Plantation planning is taxes and fees:
You are taxed on what you earn. You are taxed on what you spend. You are taxed if you try to give it away or leave it in your will. (See above list.) You are taxed to maintain a huge civil service establishment to tabulate, demand, control and enforce the whole system of taxation. The tax system sops up from 40 to 50% of all the wealth created in most "developed" countries, year by year. The excuse that this is needed for national defense is ludicrous, except maybe in the USA. Police and fire: in the UK, the best police in the World costs less than £600/person/year. Over half of the total burden falls on 5% of the population (putatively the most productive). Taxes vary hugely in value and kind from country, from State to State, county to county, city to city and within a political jurisdiction, on individual situations (So much for equal treatment under the law!). For example, an immigrant who invests in Canada and meets certain conditions, can be free of income, capital gains, gift taxes and death duties for a period of 5 years, without any necessity to become a citizen or assume any obligation to leave his money or stay and pay taxes normally after the 5 years is up. However, it will cost you about $2,500 to hire a lawyer to show how to qualify for this program. But, if the emigrant is a US citizen, the IRS will still impose taxes on his Worldwide income, allowing a credit for taxes paid elsewhere. As he doesn't pay any in Canada, that means he pays all his US income tax. If he trades through a non-US company, which does no business in the US, he may be able to live on his dividends, depending on the exact provisions of the new dividend exemption in the US, when it is passed. [Now, in May 2003, this is judged not likely to happen at all.] Still there are states which tax dividends, whatever the Feds do. If you try to give up your US citizenship to get out from under this, the IRS are allowed to use the courts to disallow this, plus refuse to allow you to visit the US ever again, even as a tourist or to attend your mother's funeral. By way of contrast, in Panama, any foreigner of good repute, over 50 years of age, who can prove a certain minimum income from abroad can "retire" there and receive discounts on medical bills, hotel stays, travel and restaurant bills and pay nothing on any income from sources abroad (ie outside Panama). In the US, several states have no state income tax (this does not affect the federal tax, however). Ted Turner, who owns homes in several states, has selected one of these, Florida, as his "official" residence, putatively where he pays income tax, if there were any, but barring any other state from claiming tax on it. The Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development [OCED], an extra governmental club representing the interests of the World's richest nations, has been conducting a fitful campaign to intimidate the less developed countries from taxing less than the so-called developed countries. If they succeed, it will remove the last refuge of the most productive 5% of society who pay for the support of the bloated welfare roles of non-productives who vote for the legislators who passed these laws, thus keeping them in power. The OECD claims it is "unfair tax competition" to charge less taxes than their members do. If this kind of unholy cabal were attempted within the USA, they would all be thrown in jail under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The part of this that interests us is that millions of professionals, lawyers, accountants etc (aside from the civil servants mentioned above) are required to represent the taxpayers, fighting off their own government, and prepare all the documents and make all the reports they are required to submit. The prospective NPer needs to know which of these he really needs and which are just out to rip him off. In fact, the World needs a new breed of professionals to guide people through the maze of experts and advisors in extra-national, national, state, county and city tax laws. BE means to put that into place, starting here and now. But this new profession is really more complicated than just finding the right people to give tax advice and manage the bureaucracy associated with taxes. Taxes are just one of the problems of planning and constructing an NP. There is also getting a match between the social, political, climatic, economic and physical geography of the location, and the needs system of the new Owner [Planter?]. The Owner may need help in assessing his own needs and allocating available resources to get the right balance for their optimal satisfaction. If that weren't enough, then there is the spouse and family to consider. The NP is a FAMILY home. If it didn't start out that way it will soon become so. | |
| How to tell an NP from a home and a job. | |
| There is a popular observation that, when a man's wife becomes pregnant, he begins to notice numerous other pregnant women that he never noticed before. The same thing happened when we formulated the NP concept. We began to notice many structures which resembled NPs. We became friends with a charming lady with a large property where she lived and ran some of it as a bed and breakfast, while holding gatherings of artists from time to time. It was in the middle of a city, but it was a boutique NP with very short commute lanes [inside the great house]. The income from the bed and breakfast part allows her to live in the middle of a large city, surrounded by the shopping, entertainment and service resources of the city, accessible on foot or, when necessary, by a short taxi ride.
We found many other facilities in the city which fitted, or nearly fitted, the NP model. Everybody has to have a place to live. Everybody has to have a source of income to sustain him and his home. So why doesn't everybody have an NP? What makes a NP different is the close integration of its elements and the family it serves. For example, the sources of income are near enough to the big house that commuting to the office is eliminated. Occasional, varied travel can be a pleasure and an inspiration to self realization. Daily drudgery just to get money to buy food to eat, and to shop for it, stifles the mind and steals time. The income producing investments of an NP are more than symbols on a ticker tape. They have a physical existence. You can walk downstairs or stroll across town and visit them. And that is just in the city. In the country, Proto-NPs abound, along with some fully formed ones. All but the smallest farms or ranches could be the nucleus of an NP. The Queen of England presides over a Super-Multiplex NP, with Buckingham Palace at the centre, Her Majesty's NP actually straddles several great houses, several cities, just about the whole country. Few people have the resources to set up such a structure or the money, power and privilege to maintain it and protect it against the enemies which its very existence inevitably generates. Study of this system is profitable, however. During the formative stages and until a few years ago, the King/Queen paid no taxes. That must have helped quite a bit. A little more relevant to us at the moment, is the remains of manor houses, palaces and castles which dot the landscape of Europe. Denuded of their productive assets by death duties and other forms of hostility, and the ravages of time on the blood lines, these plantations' big-houses have have fallen into disrepair to the point that governments will sometimes subsidize their upkeep. Their chatelaines, provided they will submit to giving public access to their architectural wonders, can have their maintenance income (partly) provided by the state. Not all NP are equal. Their viability and (need) satisfaction per buck is closely correlated with:
An approach, popular in some quarters, is to develop "gated communities" with condos, social clubs, sports grounds etc, inside the fence. How much better it would be to select an ambiance that an Owner would want to invite in rather than fence out. Obviously, security is a factor but there are better ways than building a high fence which challenges certain kinds of people to breach it whether they want what is on the other side, or not. Sometimes these are billed as "retirement developments". This may be as much a matter of necessity as a desirable feature. The developers typically do not include income producing resources (for the Owners) in their designs. It can only be assumed that they expect the Owners to already have all the money they will ever want, and so will not work any more or, if they do, only for charity. If this is your bag, we will help you find a good one, but this is not, truly, an NP. Let us not forget, either, that the Owner's needs, tastes and preferences are paramount. One man's NP is another man's Blot on the Landscape. It is possible, but not likely, that an existing NP will be the best choice for you. The emphasis on tailoring the design to the Owner makes it improbable anyone, other than your identical twin (raised with you on the same brand of Pabulum and who married the identical twin of your spouse), can just move in without substantial re-jigging. We can help you decide whether to re-jig or start with a new bag of makings. Just ask. Update: March 2008 Late last year, we found a really new idea: a new Utopia called "Masdar", under construction by Foster + Partners in Abu Dhabi, new homes for 50k people. (See: http://www.fosterandpartners.com/Projects/1515/Default.aspx) For people living in Europe or America, to really take advantage of this would requiring moving to the United Arab Emirates. Our thought was to build another one, just outside of London, removing most of the problems and taking advantage of most of the fantastic advantages. We just decided to do it, especially for anyone interested in an NP. (Of course, we had to substitute autogyros for airplanes and cars.) To get re-launched, just click on GO HOME. BTW: We plan 898 more in every other Continents : Let us know if you are interested. | |