The Communitarian Manifesto
Your Community Has Rights!
I felt it might be important to explain fully what the vision is of a Communitarian nation.
What is Communitarianism?
Your Community Has Rights!
Communitarianism is the fundamental idea that human beings live naturally in families and communities. These families are formed by fundamental transactional relationships between one generation and the next, and the need for the specialization of individuals and families forms these communities.
We live as humans not as the end point but as part of a larger line of human genealogy. We are never meant to be the end point; we are born into a set of parents, we will become parents, and our children will become parents. This line of humans has an ancestry and a future of descendants.
Our children will marry other members of the community, creating new humans who will complement the community. This is how humans have lived since we were in trees millions of years ago and even before that as smaller mammals.
In order to make sure that humans continue to be made in your community, you need a common culture. This culture belongs to every member of your community. It is an asset and resource to be passed down and cherished as much as any financial asset.
Your community's cohesiveness is based on its shared culture, which is formed by geography, economics, language, history, and ancestry. I know people are screaming that religion should be included here. Religion should be the glue that holds your culture together, with practices that celebrate your cultural heritage.
Founding principles.
Your community should have the right of refusal to any outsiders moving in.
The community has the right to refuse access to businesses that wish to purchase land and operate or compete in your community’s local economy.
Any business that was built in your local economy should not be able to move out of your community without compensating the local inhabitants who helped build it.
Your community should have the right to dictate the local customs and rules regarding how its residents behave.
Your community should manage local food production.
Community residents should have exclusive employment rights to businesses in their community.
Young adults starting off in life should have exclusive rights to real estate in the community.
Children should be prioritized and treated as a net positive.
Community protectors, veterans, firefighters, ambulance drivers, etc., should be given homes.
Communities should have the right to ostracize those who are unhealthy for the community.
All residents should grow food.
Property taxes will all be abolished.
Your house is now a home that will belong to your entire family and not just an individual.
Investment firms will no longer be able to buy homes in communities.
A nationwide sales tax will be put on to maintain roads, infrastructure, and defense.
Basic Understandings.
The prefix com comes from Latin, meaning together or in association. Communicate, Community, Compliment, Compute, Comradery, Commune, Commingle, Combine, and Compare are all forms of this basic root word plus a suffix. The Cold War propagandized us away from this idea. This, though, is not communism! This is Communitarianism.
This basic structure restores healthy transactional relationships between community members. It ensures that those who contribute to a community's health work towards furthering their own culture, solidifying the idea of what the future will look like.
Having all members grow food ensures that people's interactions will be transactional. If you like blueberries, you will treat the grower well.
The exclusive access to employment and real estate ensures that children have a future in your community.
The clause about businesses competing ensures investment in businesses in your community.
The clause requiring businesses to compensate the community ensures the long-term stability of businesses that serve workers. Restaurants or local grocery stores.
The ending of property taxes ends the perverse incentive structure for communities to prioritize curb appeal to raise home values, in turn raising tax revenue. This will allow for more freedom of use with one’s own property. For instance, you can put a swingset out front for your children.
The clause about homes belonging to families inhibits the idea that your home is an asset that can be mortgaged three times to buy a boat. This prevents cheap cash from chasing basic goods in the economy, dropping prices. It also stops the debt cycle and keeps banks out of your community.
Summation
These principles allow communities to welcome new people or let people do whatever they want, but they also allow communities to create more stability if they desire it.
This system will work better in rural or suburban areas with more land, but it could also work in cities that desperately need stability.
Each community will have to choose how it governs itself. These principles can be ignored a la carte or wholesale. However, the federal or state governments will have nothing to do with the basic lives of the people in your community.
This is the way humans lived worldwide until the 1850s; it is a return to the norm, not a new concept.
These ideas have been thoroughly considered and seem to solve many of today's issues. Please leave me a comment to tell me what you think.