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The generic hythe of land provides its owners with the material to build their family home, their food, water and energy needs. It also provides them with space for recreation and enterprise. They need no mortgage. No weekly food bill. No electricity or gas bills. No water rates. In fact, they do not actually need to buy to survive. Therefore the dispassionate forces of a free market could never hold them to ransom. Nevertheless, their standard of living could benefit significantly from certain specialist products and services offered by others through a truly free market system.
As an economic unit the ideal generic hythe has two functions.
So as far as the outside world is concerned, each hythe-based economic unit is a specialist producer. It provides products and services to which the hythe-owner's natural talents lend themselves. On the other hand, as far as each hythe-based economic unit is concerned, the outside world is a generalist producer. It makes available to each hythe-owner the full range of all the specialist products and services from all the other hythe units in the world. Each thus benefits from the specialist talents of all.
A hythe-owner may therefore increase his quality of life by exchanging a large amount of his single specialist product for a small amount each of a wide range of different products and services provided by others. This requires a system of trading. It could be a barter system. It could be a money-based system. It could be a charity-based system of simply giving what one produces to whoever may have a need or desire for it. It could be a composite of all three. But however it is done, its function is simply to let all benefit from the special skills and abilities of each.
In addition to providing the materials and resources for generating his goods and services for trade, the hythe of land is also the source of its owner's basic needs of food, water, energy, clothing and shelter. But the weather is not always equally kind to everyone every year. Drought and famine are facts of life. Some years the hythes in some parts of the world will yield abundance while the hythes in other parts of the world will yield little. There is a case therefore for those with plenty to pass some of their plenty to those with little.
In today's capitalist economy those who have plenty sell food to those who have little. Those with little thereby become indebted to those with plenty. If they cannot pay they must work off the debt over time, paying interest on what they owe also. They steadily become ever poorer. The disparity of wealth between them and their creditors grows relentlessly.
The citizens of Hythe World, however, recognise that it is not by the personal virtue of those whose hythes yielded plenty that their land received rain in due season and that the sun shone before the harvest. Those who received little probably laboured just as hard and diligently. Therefore if merit be the scale for reward then both are equal. That those with plenty should give to those with little is therefore recognised as a duty: not an opportunity for profit. Trading in the basic needs of life is therefore a candidate for the charity mode of exchange:
What gain or motive is there for those with plenty to give to those with little? Both gain what both would otherwise lack.
These are the foundation on which mutual understanding can take root. They are the conduits through which human thought and culture may flow. They are the force which could galvanise mankind into a true global family.
The charitable motive for fulfilling a need provides a level of individual security which the commercial motive cannot. One community has had a bad harvest therefore those who have had a good harvest supply their food. There is no cause to subject those in need to error-prone bureaucratic means testing. Their neighbours know from direct every-day observation and interaction that their need is genuine.
A family's home has burned down or been destroyed by freak weather. Therefore their neighbours get together to help them rebuild. In a hythe-based society, all the necessary materials will be immediately available. That their need is genuine is all too obvious. The unfortunate home-owner does not have to worry about being able to supply acceptable documentary evidence as to what was lost when in all likelihood all the relevant bills and invoices would have gone up in flames along with the things they represented. Nor is he in any danger of becoming a victim to a 'get-out' clause by which his insurance company can cleverly escape liability.
In providing insurance to the individual, the hythe-based society's only motive is to alleviate the individual's hardship: not to make a profit. The giving and receiving of help in times of emergency and trauma is one of the most powerful catalysts of social bonding. It is perhaps the ultimate crucible within which group reliance and personal trust may be forged. Alas, in our present capitalist society, such noble attributes have fallen victim to the cold numerics of commercial risk assessment and profit, and the bureaucratic impersonality of a faceless insurance claim-form.
So we have established that in the hythe-based economy, disparities in basic needs are rectified through a mode of exchange based on moral duty. And the wealth-generator - the land - is not traded, but inherited.
This leaves the fruits of the artisan's specialist skills. Since these are not essential to basic survival, it is reasonable for them to be traded through a free market system. To me, a truly free market is one which offers me an unbiased choice of everything which everybody has to offer. No matter who they are, how big or how small they are, how near or how far they are, or what they offer. It could therefore have little if anything in common with our modern so-called capitalist 'free' market of today. The difference is one of motive.
The capitalist's motive is profit. His aim is to make his profit as large as possible. His means of generating his profit is trade. The particulars of what he sells, who makes it and its means of production are incidental. His success depends on his having sufficient capital to buy enough of the right kind of marketing experts to establish and maintain the largest possible share of the 'free' market at the expense of his competitors.
The capitalist 'free' market of today is therefore closed to all but those who have sufficient capital to make their voices heard above the ever-rising mêlée of modern high-powered high-tech corporate advertising.
The capitalist's health, wealth and his very survival depend totally on his ability to compete - and continue to compete - in this marketplace. The artisan's motive is different. He is driven first and foremost by his natural inherent human craving to develop, exercise and fulfil his given talents by creating something of use, of beauty, of value and perfection. The particulars of what he creates are the things which are important to him. They are his ultimate means of self-expression. They are the things by which he is known. They are the essence of what he is.
The true free market is the means through which a hythe-based artisan makes his creations available to others. In it he is free to sell or not to sell. He is quite separately and independently also free to buy or not to buy. He is free to do both, one or neither. He can enjoy a satisfactory life-style without buying or selling anything. However, his life would be definitely enriched if he were to exchange his own special creations for those of others through the free market.
He benefits from their special products and services. They benefit from his. Indeed his ultimate sense of personal fulfilment is to hear others express their satisfaction in, and tangible benefits from, his works. This hythe-based system of production and exchange is shown below:
The artisan, like any artist, creates because he wants to express himself in terms of a material or intellectual object, performance or service. He will do this anyway. His sole purpose is the fulfilment of his talents and the benefits his work may bring to his family and hythe. Replicating his work for sale to others is to him incidental. Nevertheless, its effect is to stimulate social interaction which, in turn, enriches other people's lives. And it is this, not profit, which should be the primary purpose of trade.
The hythe system, as has been so far described, is a two-tier economy. It comprises a first tier which provides the necessities of life in a way which renders each family largely self-sufficient, and a second tier where the artisans of each hythe produce luxuries which they may sell through the free market in exchange for the different luxuries produced by others. It must be said that the term luxury in this context is not synonymous with the term 'trinket'. It refers to any product of artisanry or expert service.
For the hythe economy to work, it is vital that the three commodities of:
be kept separate. They must be regarded as being fundamentally non-equateable and therefore non-exchangeable. Land may in extreme cases be leased. Necessities can be exchanged as gifts. Luxuries can be traded by barter or for money. But land must never be exchanged at all, and necessities must never be exchanged for luxuries.
Money can therefore be the currency only of luxury. That it will inflate in value is inevitable. Inflation is an unavoidable result of human vanity. Each artisan naturally thinks his own product is better, and therefore of greater worth, than that of his neighbour. Consequently he puts a higher monetary price on it. His neighbour follows suit. The cumulative effect is a steady but relentless leap-frogging of prices within the free market.
But whatever may happen in the luxuries market, the basic needs of life must never be allowed to slip out of reach of the unfortunate as a result of inflation. The needs of life must always be freely given according to need: not as perceived reward for artisanic or entrepreneurial merit.
And finally land - the essence of our planet's life-sustaining biosphere - can never be sold. It is not ours to sell. The naturally implicit terms by which every human being should inherit his hythe of land simply grants him its use for the duration of his economically active life for the sole purpose of supporting his family. With it also is implicit the obligation of good stewardship, namely to preserve it in good working order for all the generations which shall come after him. The only choices he has regarding his land are either to work it or, if he is not able to work, to rent it out in return for a share of what it may yield.
This two-tier economic system ensures that the needs of life are always available to everybody. And it does so by guaranteeing everyone direct access to their own fair share of the natural means of producing them. It thus insulates their fundamental economic well-being from the chaos of the inevitable booms and recessions of the open 'luxuries' market.
The centre of a hythe-based society is the home. This is dictated by the distributed geography, physical structure and economic mechanics of a hythe. This necessitates that the hythe-owner's house be rather different from the suburban 'box' most of us live in today.
Personally, I like man-made structures like houses to blend with nature. Nature does not seem to favour shapes which have right-angled corners like squares and rectangles. Most of nature's structures, from mountains to trees, tend to favour roundness. My idea of a pleasing house would be a design based on circular, cylindrical, conical or ellipsoidal shapes. One of my favourite themes for the design of a hythe-based homestead is the multiple mushroom configuration depicted below:
I also like shapes that resemble small natural rock formations and out-croppings. The latter could perhaps be arranged to enclose a small private garden or protected 'wild space'.
First of all, unlike a weekly shop at Sainsbury's, the hythe supplies food on an annual cycle. The hythe-based house must therefore be equipped with a purpose-built long-term food store which is easily accessible, cool, dry, dark, clean, well-ventilated and large enough for a year's supply.
Secondly, unlike the suburban home with its basic services piped from the street, the hythe-based home must obtain its own water and energy directly from its immediate natural environment. It must therefore have its own small-scale water extraction, purification and storage system. It must also have its own cutting and storage facilities for firewood plus apparatus and storage tanks for extracting fuel oils from oilseed crops. It must also have its own facilities for generating and storing electricity. Finally it must have a workshop to keep everything in working order.
Thirdly, because of the dispersed nature of the hythe-based population, it is necessary for the hythe house to include ample reception space and overnight accommodation for visitors. These must be planned in a way which preserves the privacy of the hythe owner's family. The segregated locations of hythe homes allows almost unlimited scope in the artistic diversity and technical innovation which may be applied to their design.
My design is based first and foremost on a detailed activity analysis of family living. This includes a formal Organisation and Methods study of all domestic and home-based economic and cultural activities. The hythe homestead is then designed as the optimal physical environment within which these activities may take place.
Naturally, other elements of the hythe structures may be placed away from the main living complex. Barns, grain stores, water and fuel tanks, wind and solar generators, battery tanks, vehicle accommodation and workshops must all have their places somewhere on the hythe of land. Everything would be aesthetically designed. My preference would be to make use of the geometry of fluted cylinders and geodesic domes. But this is just my preference. You can build to whatever design you prefer.
Within the present-day capitalist market economy, the construction of a hythe-based home as described would not be a practical proposition. Its geometry would be way beyond the scope of present domestic building technology. Its complex water, fuel, electrical and all the other systems would be too expensive to manufacture. Also, today's farm machinery is designed for large farm operations. It would be neither practical nor affordable for use on the scale of a family hythe. However, within a hythe-based economy, appropriate design, flexible technology, standardisation of components and interfaces coupled with universal demand would make all such things fully available and affordable.
Yet I have always wanted to apply my analysis, design and programming skills to what are called the Alternative Technologies or Egalitarian Engineering. Consequently I have embarked on an ambitious project to develop a model for the kind of family hythe which could form the basic element of the alternative social order outlined in this chapter. It is known as The Hythe Project.