Workforce Development
I don’t wonder why our country is failing. We treat labor as a disposable commodity and then wonder why in the biggest market in the world nobody can afford anything. We incentivize labor through threat of starvation and homelessness, and wonder why “nobody wants to work.” People want to work, it is oppression that stifles productivity.
When you pay someone by the hour, you do two things: You incentivize them to take as long as possible to do as little work as possible, and you make them feel like their life is only worth the pennies you can’t pinch from them. We have an unbelievable potential of wealth and productivity in the People that get things done. You don’t get things done in a suit and a meeting, you get things done in dirty clothes and with the sweat of your brow.
It has been over a century since the Industrial Revolution, where we developed machines that allow one person to do the work of hundreds. Why are we worker harder now than ever before? Why do people need to work two or more jobs to have a bare subsistence living in the supposed wealthiest country in the world?
We have been sold a lie. We have been divided and conquered and if we do not change course the end of the American Experiment looms on the horizon.
I see the potential in our workers. I meet brilliant workers regularly who are driven by their passion and rewarded by their service to their community. I believe everyone has that within them, and to bring it out we need only create the conditions necessary for humans to flourish.
Ecosystem Industries is built around those conditions.
Growing what sustains us
We have major problems with our food supply. Between waste, low quality and unreliable vendors, and now cost the way we currently produce food is both unsustainable and inefficient. Unsustainable due to our heavy reliance on fossil fuels, not just for growing the food but for getting it to our communities. What happens when we run out? Will we be scrambling to replace an inefficient model with something slightly better, or should we begin now to move off of the fossil fuel based food supply chain and create a future where nourishment is a given, and wholesome food is cheap, local, and easily accessible?
In World War 2 America mobilized not just its industrial might, but its agricultural potential as well. Landowners were encouraged to become food producers, and through our incredible ability we were successful. We called them “victory gardens” and they took a lot of work. Now we spend our work in ways more valuable to us, but in doing so we have overlooked that food is the foundation of all value. Without it nothing gets done.
The Ecosystem Industries model combines property maintenance services with personal gardening, using proven techniques to increase yields in small plots. The plan is to maintain personal gardens on YOUR land, your own private Victory Garden, in exchange for a split of the product between 80/20 and 90/10, as economics demand. We will then use this produce to prepare large scale meals with a focus on flavor and nourishment. This is an untested hypothesis and may take many trials and errors to successfully accomplish, but with American ingenuity and human perseverance we will find a way: Not to replace farmers, but to create a secondary market of food production and distribution that will help ensure no American ever goes hungry, and that flavor that feeds the soul is accessible to everyone.
The key feature is that the profitability of food production alone is not necessary to fund the labor required to do this. We will already be providing home services to our clients, whether just mowing or complete property maintenance. Reducing travel hours and costs is an efficiency gain that can make the math work.
Future Expansion
Our primary drivers of growth will be in the efficiency of well incentivized basic labor. Tasks that do not require significant training (i.e., non-licensed trades) will be easier to expand into with a team composed of varied backgrounds and skill sets. I already possess a respectable knowledge of many basic home services, and in most cases far beyond what any other contractor can currently accomplish. As we grow so will our repertoire of ability and network of highly skilled contractors we can reliably connect with our customers for those trades we are not licensed or skilled to do. Ethical contractors are few and far between, but as our reputation grows so will our ability to find and cooperate with them.
From property maintenance we will expand first into land development. Too many builders today are being exposed for corrupt, fraudulent, and incompetent practices. No one of integrity should tolerate this condition in our country, yet they have grown so much wealth off the back of their misdeeds they seem impossible to shake. National builders are selling brand new homes unfit for habitation, with safety and code violations up the wazoo!
Combining our knowledge of property maintenance with ethical and efficient construction practices driven by rewarding labor rather than compelling it, our land development projects will prove to be the envy of the nation, if not the world. Aiming to cater to all price points and with food production built into the property design, our profit will be maximized not by perfidy but by efficiency.
Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency!
Solving Social Problems
My home is America. I love this country for the potential it offers, but what our forebears and elders have molded it into sickens me. What kind of a culture denies any of its members a home? “Home” is an oft overlooked word, it is not simply a building. It is your heart. It is your life. It is where you can retreat from the chaos and violence of the world, knowing that in safety you can discover who you really are. Denying that to anyone is not only a crime against humanity, but it is a crippling of our productive potential. How can you perform at your best, with such a fear in your heart? Who could sustain any measure of performance, burdened by such a weight in your soul?
Homeless people are not monsters, when they act out it is a reaction to the violence our society perpetrates against them on a daily basis. It is a conditioned response to the endless trauma visited upon them by nature of this existence, one often forced upon them by traumas unresolved from their past. I take heed to the words spoken by who our society holds as a paragon of virtue; “As you have done to the least among you, so have you done unto me.”
Whether it’s economically feasible to simply build people homes is not a relevant question to me, a home is not a house. Any shelter can be a home, provided it has the necessary qualities of a home:
Privacy, security, and community.
I see solar development as the solution to this. A field of solar panels provides acreage of structures perfectly adaptable to habitation. They need only strong walls, windows, and a keyed entry. The power generated by the panels would more than fund the necessary services to maintaining both the property and the communities that will form in them. The panels can power wells to provide fresh water to their inhabitants, inductive cooktops either in a communal kitchen or individual cooking spaces. The revenue generated can provide gainful employment to inhabitants by maintaining the grounds and panels, offering even the least able among us some means to provide themselves comfort and a future.
It will not be without complications. Especially starting out, bringing many traumatized people together will certainly create new problems. We can solve these problems, and as they learn they have escaped the endless trauma and can see their shelters as a home, even temporary, all will see the healing power of community.