We are the Human Union. We come in piece. But together, we are one.
Today is the first day of the year 2022. Some believe 2’s are lucky. We believe we can create and propagate our own luck, especially for the unlucky.
Regardless, two is a pretty cool number. It is even, and even is good. And, with a multiplying force, two can become four and four can become eight and eight can become sixteen and sixteen can become thirty-two and thirty-two can become sixty-four. Do that six more times, we’re at 4,096. Six more, 262,144. Six more, 16,777,216. Six more, 4,294,967,296. Nearly the number of people alive today, all by doubling two just thirty-two times.
Apologies for starting off the very first post with a math lesson. We’ll try to avoid that in the future. The point is that our aim here is to make a movement that can amplify and enable us to build a new society. Our goal isn’t to seize the means of production; our goal is to create a more productive means of production.
We figured we’d start things off by giving a quick rundown of who we are, what we’re aiming to do and what problems we’re trying to solve. So, let’s get on with it.
Who are you?
The Human Union is a group of independent individuals from around the world who believe that society is fundamentally broken but that we can be the cure. We derive from a diverse background geographically, professionally, economically, politically, and personally, yet we appreciate the unifying characteristics that make us one. Some of us originally met through the Progressive Coders Network, while we have since added mission-aligned people from our respective networks.
We have so far completed our first two doublings and are close to our third. By the end of this year, achieving ten doublings (1,024 people) seems like a reasonable goal to ensure that we can grow at a sustainable rate while not spinning out of control.
What problem are you solving?
The truth is, there are a countless number of problems out there that are being worked on by a countless number of individuals and organizations with varying levels of effectiveness. Our goal is not to try to solve any one singular problem but instead to provide the tools and information that these groups need to be more successful.
We want to provide the CORE – Connections, Opportunities and Resources for Everyone and we want to do so with all, TODAS – Tools that are Open, Decentralized, Accessible, and Secure.
How are you different?
Well, we’re not, really. In that we believe that, at our core, every person wants to contribute to their tribe through collaboration and competition. We’re also not unique in that the Human Union Project was here well before us. But, the vision laid out there is closely enough aligned with our own so we decided to roll with the name.
That said, the major way that we are different is that we aim to establish a symbiotic non-profit/for-profit organizational structure, in which the Human Union, a non-profit, owns for profit subsidiaries. This will allow us to compete in any industry while ensuring that profits are used for the benefit of all instead of the few early movers.
What are these for profit businesses?
We have three fundamental layers to our structure:
- Networked.Community – the foundational social, identity and data layer. We want to build a social network the way that social networks should have been, instead of focusing on creating addictive divisiveness in order to generate clicks, data and ad revenue
- Modern.Business – we are working on creating a platform that will enable any person to start their own business, initially through a self-service offering then scaling through the Modern Business Suite, a collection of open-source tools
- DeFin – our decentralized finance platform, a low/no-code solution that will enable organizations to easily connect to common financial tools like mobile wallets, QR payment or tap-to-pay. Our goal is to provide banking and capital to the unbanked with a crypto-based central fund
Unlike traditional for profit businesses, which exist to extract as much profit and data out of its users as possible, our aim is to provide these tools while covering only operating expenses by charging our top consumers while everyone maintains ownership of their personal data.
Who is going to make this happen?
Well…me, you…us. We want to focus on being volunteer, member and small-dollar donation driven, especially at the beginning. We recognize that large dollar grants and massive corporate partnership can come with imbalanced influence, so we want to ensure that the Human Union can be established without compromising on our values.
That, and a phat SWAG shop full of jawns.
What are you working on now?
This isn’t just some pie in the sky rhetoric backed by nothing but hopes and dreams. I mean, we do have hopes and dreams, but we are also making rapid progress on all of our fundamental layers as well as the Human Union itself.
With Networked.Community, we have a privately-hosted Element instance (like Slack, but encrypted and open source) and Next Cloud (like Google Docs, but people aren’t the product) where we are doing all of this work. For Modern.Business, we are creating TrueFans.Love, a platform to enable performers to connect with their fans. And on DeFin, we have completed most of the back-end and are establishing partnerships to bring our MVP to market.
The major thing that we need now are core contributors for these efforts, hence this website and blog post. We are going to focus on small, sustainable growth so that we can ensure that a strong foundation is established before we expand our awareness efforts.
What are you trying to achieve?
We aim to enable 1,000,000 people to start their own business over the next ten years while also providing mutual support to one another. Longer term, we want people to be able to control, manage and prosper from their own data.
We believe that fully automated luxury, gay space communism is within our reach, however we believe the way to achieve this is through capitalism, not communism. However, we also believe that the way we’ve always done capitalism is not going to get us there. Therefore, we need a hybrid approach that enables people to support one another to achieve a better life for themselves, their community and society.
What are your rules?
No divisiveness. That’s it. Well, I mean, we’ll write up community guidelines and whatnot but, fundamentally, the most important rule is no divisiveness. Our underlying hypothesis is that manufactured Us vs. Them in society is what has landed us in our current predicament and the only way out is by creating a human union to enable support and prosperity.
We take this a step further and say that we have no enemies. Politicians, corporations, the media, these are all things that have evolved through society and no one person is to blame. At the end of the day, these institutions are comprised of people and we believe people are aligned in creating a better society for all of us.
If you’re interested in more, check out some of our other posts or Join the Union and help us create Society 2.0.
