
OVERVIEW
The Rainbird Village concept is the result of extensive research into community and organizational structure, identifying what has worked and what has not worked - irrespective of ideologies – for delivering not just long-term viability but genuine thrivability.
Thrivability is defined as: “The ongoing ability of life to thrive at every level within a living system” – The Age of Thrivability, by Michelle Holliday. There are several societal problems that prevent thrivability and keep people slavishly locked onto an economic treadmill, chasing the next buck and too busy to pursue their true purpose for being.
PROBLEM: Jobs – Wage Slavery

Around 80% of college graduates are earning a living in jobs other than in their majors. According to Pew Research, only 49% of American workers are very satisfied with their current job, while 30% are somewhat satisfied, and the remaining 21% are somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. Working just for the buck at a lackluster job one must spend hours commuting to and from that could evaporate at any time for reasons beyond your control causes frustration, stress, poor performance, and poor health. Nearly half of employees believe they have gained weight at their current job, and 25% of all US workers say they have gained more than 10 pounds at their current job.
SOLUTION: No-commute Purposeful Employment

Imagine working at a job at, or very near, your home that aligns with your mission in life, your purpose for being, your “ikigai” as the Japanese call it. A job that includes what you’re good at and love to do, that contributes to what the world needs, and provides more than just adequate compensation and benefits. Maybe you have a hobby that would make additional income and you could spend more time doing it. Wouldn’t that be better?
PROBLEM: Housing - The Mortgage Plantation

The housing market has become so expensive that young people can’t afford to get into a first home. Single-family homes are being bought up by private equity and other financial institutions and then the price goes up out of reach, at which point one must rent instead of own. Even if one could secure a mortgage, homes are a bank-owned asset that extracts ~40% of income and could be seized for nonpayment until paid off, if ever, given average 5-year turnover. Any equity buildup, which is dependent upon the booms and depressions of the real estate market, gets used as piggy bank by the “homeowner” resulting in lifetime debt servitude. Inflation is making your savings and assets less valuable. Your wealth and status are no longer in your hands. Moreover, most homes are in “food desert” suburban “mortgage plantations” that add to urban sprawl, traffic congestion due to the necessity to commute, and utilities overload.
SOLUTION: Housing as a Benefit of Employment

What if, instead of just an office to work from, your company provided you with a home to work from. A home that was free of mortgage & insurance payments, property tax, repairs & improvements? What if, in addition, the company gave you equity in the company and profit sharing, returning control of your equity into your hands rather than dependence upon the booms and depressions of the real estate market; that provides more rapid equity buildup without interest payments, and with profit sharing is a much safer opportunity with less risk since you would benefit from everyone’s productivity instead of just your own? All this as a benefit of employee ownership.
PROBLEM: Education – The One-size-fits-all Assembly Line Model

The more students in class, the harder it is to target each as an individual. Students are lumped together by age instead of talent and treated like widgets, taught to the test by rote memorization without context or application. This model fails to target the interests of students or to recognize their unique needs and talents. Consequently, young people have few survival skills. They may be great with electronics but don’t know how to feed, clothe, and house themselves, and there is little opportunity for knowledge transfer between generations.
SOLUTION: Personalized Education – Mentored Self-Directed Learning
Students can now access many resources. Learning can happen anywhere, anytime—not just in the classroom. Students can study a topic for a course or for fun. Mentored self-directed learning is designed to engender life-long learning, creativity, experimentation, and innovation by enhancing skills in any of their 9 innate talents:

· Visual-Spatial
· Linguistic-Verbal
· Logical-Mathematical
· Bodily-Kinesthetic
· Musical
· Interpersonal
· Intrapersonal
· Naturalistic
· Pedagogical
Problem: Industrial Agriculture - Mechanized & Chemical Warfare System

Global trade agreements undermine local production. Inflation, over-regulation, and vulnerable global supply chains makes us utterly dependent on the global market economy and is causing food prices to continue to increase while the rural farmland is bought up by foreigners, developers and food conglomerates who degrade soil health by monocropping, which destroys ecosystem functionality and is totally dependent on life support with toxic chemicals and expensive heavy machinery. In addition, this heavy input system depletes moisture retention and ground water, undermining the hydrological cycle and causing erosion and droughts. What we get in return is greater vulnerability and depleted nutritional value, causing illnesses and increased medical costs, increased food costs and more food deserts. Rural areas often lack good technical connectivity and applications.
SOLUTION: AGROECOLOGY -NATURE’S STEWARDSHIP MODEL

Agroecology works with nature rather than treating her like the enemy. It creates polycultures in tune with nature by improving ecosystem functionality, soil health, the hydrological cycle, and thus moisture retention eliminating erosion and droughts. It replenishes ground water rather than depleting it and requires minimal inputs while boosting nutritional value, thus improving health while decreasing medical costs. Consequently, it enhances the local market economy, decreases food costs, and eliminates food deserts. We integrate technical solutions with nature.
PROBLEM: Industrial Healthcare – The Drug, Cut & Burn Sick-care System

Autoimmune diseases, chronic illness, and neurodevelopmental disorders are all increasing in the western world. Healthcare costs have gone through the roof. Young people, especially, have increasing mental health concerns. They are depressed and feel alienated. Yet our sick care system simply diagnoses and determines A) which drugs to prescribe or B) which surgical or radiological treatment will best treat a condition because it is based on perverse incentives created by insurers, namely payments for surgeries performed and drugs prescribed. As such, it treats the symptoms rather than the whole person and often misses prior medical histories or other doctors’ treatments for lack of centralized database, thus failing to detect and avoid prescription contra-indications & interactions. Consequently, medical error is the third largest cause of deaths, with increasing costs and suffering.
SOLUTION: Heath & Wellness - Integrative & Functional Medicine System

Integrative & Functional Medicine treats the whole person rather than the symptoms, relying upon whole person research, diagnostic techniques and integrated modalities focused on prevention of disease, thus capturing prior medical and family histories, analyzing prescription data, and finding chronic causes or imbalances. By applying predictive technologies or interventions based on those findings, it profits from percentage of well patients rather than number of surgeries or prescriptions. Consequently, it improves health outcomes while decreasing medical costs, suffering, and deaths due to medical error.
PROBLEM: Remote Centralized Supply Chains

Almost everything is manufactured in Asia. Clothing, automobiles, appliances, and more… All those things used to be made in America. This undermines regional self-reliance and makes us dependent and vulnerable to breakdowns at any link in the chain, and thus shortages. It extracts trade from regional economies while adding layers of middlemen with their unnecessary transportation, brick & mortar, energy, and labor costs. This not only increases retail prices and thus deprivation, but limits variety to banal mass market demand. Even worse, we no longer know how to produce these things. It’s very wasteful, inefficient, and dangerous.
SOLUTION: Economic Resilience – The Regionally Self-reliance System

Regional economic self-reliance eliminates long, wasteful, inefficient supply chains by keeping trade and jobs within local economies, eliminating unnecessary middlemen and their attendant transportation, brick & mortar, energy, and labor costs. This not only decreases retail prices and thus deprivation, but creates an abundant variety of available goods distributed through reliable regional supply chains from localized production. increasing local prosperity.
PROBLEM: Remote Centralized Governance

Our remote self-interested so called “democratic institutions” have become the victims of corporate capture and Orwellian ideologues. The people have lost confidence in our most basic institutions. Globalist agendas are creating terrible conditions for farmers and ranchers. For example, many family-owned farms and ranches are going out of business. They are being picked off one at a time. Abdicating responsibility to remote central managers and ideologue politicians results in one-size-fits-all “solutions” that create more problems, and undermines regional self-reliance and personal freedoms under layers of bloated bureaucracy. By extracting regional talent, unnecessary labyrinths of idiotic regulations and inflexibility become the order of the day, along with increasing taxes, fees, and deprivation. Moreover, it exacerbates political rivalry and gridlock resulting in a monoculture resistant to experimentation and innovation.
SOLUTION: Localized “Home Rule” Governance

Home Rule governance obviates bloated, inflexible remote bureaucracy and unnecessary regulations by utilizing regional management talent and local citizens, who are familiar with local issues and conditions, to take responsibility and create workable, common sense, context-based solutions, thus mitigating political rivalry and gridlock. This promotes regional self-reliance, regulatory flexibility and personal freedom while minimizing bureaucracy, taxes and fees, and thus cost of government, thereby increasing the disposable income of the citizenry. Moreover, it creates a polyculture of experimentation and innovation that increases overall prosperity.
PROBLEM: Extractionist Economy
The average Utahan earns $66,000 per year but spends 118% of that figure on basic expenses:

• 31% on housing and utilities
• 29% on 2 cars
• 11.37% on Federal Income Tax
• 10% on groceries
• 9.39% on education
• 8% on furniture & appliances
• 4.97% on State Income Tax
• 4.07% on credit card debt
• 3.9% on travel & entertainment
• 2.77% on medical & dental expenses
• 2% on clothing
• 1.33% on other expenses
The economy is rigged to extract as much income as possible and require you to go into debt just to maintain a livable middle-class lifestyle.
SOLUTION: A Cooperative Economy

What if people did not have to worry about mortgage payments, property tax, repairs & improvements; buying, maintaining, insuring, and fueling two cars; education expenses; medical & dental expenses; and the credit card and auto loans needed to make all that possible? The average Utahn could save approximately $26,000 per year on average and THRIVE!
Major corporations already provide not only livable compensation but host of benefits – medical & dental insurance, a company car, an expense account or per diem, work-related training and higher education expenses, stock ownership, a retirement fund, and an office to work from.
Well, what if there was a producer cooperative that provided all of that as a benefit of employee-ownership ON-SITE.
OVERARCHING SOLUTION: The Rainbird Thrivability System

Our whole-systems solution implements, through Rainbird Development Co., the cutting-edge infrastructure of components for a self-reliant village. Rainbird Village Producer Cooperative Municipality creates all the component solutions above to maximize the thrivability of its resident employee-owners and a resilient local economy.
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