LivingConfluence: Community Wellbeing-Rooted Economics, Law, Governance, and Education (ELGE)
The LivingConfluence is an ecoweb-rooted knowledge-technology-practice (ecoliving) system that presents an innovative transitional and regenerative alternative to the extractivist ELGE system. The LivingConfluence is an income-generating, resource-sharing, co-working, co-learning ELGE entity involving ecoweb-rooted community households, nonprofit organizations, and outside investors.

Through misappropriation, control, ecocide, and inequity, the globally imposed extractivist economics-law-governance-education (ELGE) system severs individuals and communities from their own ecoselves, leading to severe ill-being for humans, other living beings, and the planet.
The extractivist ELGE system is a non-symbiotic system purposely built to exploit human and ecological resources without replenishing them (i.e., an extractivist system), so that a handful of individuals can amass immense wealth through unmitigated profit-making. The main way in which the extractivist ELGE system operates is through reducing/eliminating autonomy, self-sufficiency, and self-reliance of individuals and communities. The various components of the extractivist ELGE system operate to further its goal.
For example, national and global economic policies generally favor shareholder-enriching corporations that monopolize resources and trade to the detriment of humans and ecological webs (ecowebs). Laws are mostly designed to protect and promote extractivist and exclusionary practices by profit-making corporations, at the cost of human and ecological wellbeing. Governance structures generally vest decision-making power in a handful of people, often reducing/ eliminating individual and community autonomy. And education institutions appear to inculcate beliefs and behaviors in children, adolescents, and young adults that make them likely to participate in and expand the extractivist ELGE system.
Human and ecological wellbeing cannot exist in a world dominated by the extractivist ELGE system.
Alternatives to this system must be created and implemented, so that community autonomy, self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and dignity — without which wellbeing cannot exist — can be restored.
The LivingConfluence
One such system is called the LivingConfluence, an ecoweb-rooted knowledge-technology-practice (ecoliving) system) that presents an innovative transitional and regenerative alternative to the extractivist ELGE system. The LivingConfluence is implemented in land-based FiveBecomings projects that have the goal of (re)establishing integrated self-reliant wellbeing for communities by: (i) revitalizing their ancestral and/or adopted ecowebs; (ii) reconnecting them to their ancestral and/or adopted ecowebs; and (iii) (re-)introducing ecoweb-rooted knowledge-technology-practice systems (ecoliving systems) that are ancient Indigenous and/or modern regenerative.
In rural contexts, a FiveBecomings project lies at the center of surrounding villages that are within an accessible distance (optimally, within 2-50 km). Together, the inhabitants of the villages served by a FiveBecomings project form a community. One of the objectives of each FiveBecomings project is to implement innovative ecoliving systems that approach economics, law, governance, and education (ELGE) in ways that are ecoweb- and ecoself-rooted. The linchpin of such innovation is the LivingConfluence, an income-generating, resource-sharing, co-working, co-learning ELGE entity involving village households of an ecoweb-rooted community, nonprofit organizations/ cooperatives, and outside investors.
Each LivingConfluence has at least the following characteristics:
- it must be rooted in a specific ecoweb-rooted community and its ecoweb
- it is tied to the activities, commodities produced, and services provided within a specific FiveBecomings project that serves a specific ecoweb-rooted community and also the commodities produced in each village of that community
- decision-making is performed jointly by the Operational Consortium of a specific FiveBecomings project and the ecoweb-rooted community it serves (“decision-making stakeholders”)
- the combined stakeholding of decision-making stakeholders must be at least 70% of the total stakeholding
- if there are outside investors (up to 30% of total stakeholding), they do not have decision-making capability, but may — at specific times of the year — choose to be paid their full share of profits on external trade commodities, i.e., outside of intra-community trade (see below)
- investment capital is provided monthly by all stakeholders
- in addition to investment capital, decision-making stakeholders must also contribute work (labor) to the FiveBecomings project to sustain its activities, commodities produced, and services provided
Intra-Community Trade
One of the objectives of the FiveBecomings project is to restore/ establish internal economies for ecoweb-rooted communities. Thus, each FiveBecomings project has a community gathering space that functions as an intra-community trade market both for commodities produced in each village of the ecoweb-rooted community served by the FiveBecomings project and also for commodities and services produced within the FiveBecomings project. Community members may choose to trade using barter or currency. Community members can trade all commodities they have contributed to producing on the FiveBecomings project without purchasing them, as long as the commodities are not meant for external trade.
External Trade
Each FiveBecomings project aspires to be financially self-sustaining within 10 years. Thus, external trade may be necessary to ensure integrated self-reliant wellbeing for the community the FiveBecomings project serves. Decision-making stakeholders of each LivingConfluence jointly make decisions about which and how many commodities and services should be used for external trade, with the understanding that sufficient commodities and services must remain within intra-community trade to ensure integrated self-reliant wellbeing for the community.
Ecoliving Systems Transfer to Community Villages
Each FiveBecomings project serves as a practical demonstration of how to transform extractivist systems to transitional and regenerative systems that ensure ecoself- and ecoweb-rooted integrated self-reliant wellbeing of a community. Thus, aspects of the ecoliving systems developed and implemented at a FiveBecomings project will be transferred to each village of the community served, should each village wish for such ecoliving systems transfer.
If you or your organization are/is interested in implementing a LivingConfluence by creating a FiveBecomings project for your community or a community near you, please contact us.
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