Without the weapons to protect us from the allies, we finlandize immediately into their country. Or, so history suggests.

Maybe there's an ethical / moral nation out there to ally with.....

}:) Lokifreign: quality poopin' on the statehood party since '96

Personally, I think one of the things that is "killing" burningman is a division of the community into the empowered, and the disenfranchised.

There is no blasphemy in Floatingman -- except possibly a wish to make a profit off of the project.

If you have an idea completely contrary to what we're planning or doing, let us know. It's quite possible that your idea is better than ours. :-)

But we have a plan which we think is pretty good, and we're moving forward with it.

> can you apply other measures like other financial models or even marketing models to this thing? the idea is marketable, and by that i mean you can talk about it and get people excited but how far will you go?

Give us ideas. What do you think will work?

> is the model you have chosen concrete? 100 people at 3,000 a pop? what if i said we can get fewer people with more money in? and if you can't afford the buy in, you do something to pay yourself in?

The model is not concrete. If a better idea comes up, I think that we would be willing to change it.

But we chose an amount which was intentionally low in order to allow as many people as possible to afford a share.

And we decided that we would not allow people to provide labor to cover part of their share. _Everyone_ is supposed to be contributing to making this happen. Why would we give one person a discounted price in exchange for labor, but not everyone else? I think that we're all in this together, and we all need to pay an equal share.

> what if we got a few rich people to sponsor it and then let them earn a lifetime membership as a guest? just saying, what if?

Well.... if they're accepted as an owner, for only $3000 they'll have a lifetime membership with rights to come to the island whenever they wish anyways.

Personally, I'd be very happy if a wealthy burner decided that they wanted to support the project with either a large donation or a large loan. However, when we discussed this previously, and decided that large contributors would have no more say in the running of the project than any other owners. Their extra contribution would have to be solely because they wanted to make this happen.

Is this a path we should start pursuing more heavily?

> where is that threshold we are looking for? that turning point, where people start believing this is gonna happen and so they easily join?

Here are my personal thresholds: When we reach 50 applicants, I'm hiring a Nicaraguan lawyer to research the title. When we're over 100 applicants, hopefully more, we'll be ready to buy.

There is also talk of holding a small regional burn on the island this winter. It would be something of a try-before-you-buy event. We could rent out the island and see if we like it. I'm not sure if this will just be a lot of work for not much progress, or if this will be a good way to get people inspired, in addition to allowing more people to check out the property before we buy it.

We're only officially 3 right now. But Wisecat sent in his check, and the letter somehow didn't make it to Trae's new address, and was returned to him. I just sent a message to him asking him to resend it. A'lan has said that he'd sign up - I'll call him tomorrow. Someone mailed me on tribe and told me that he loved the idea and was ready to sign up, and that he had some friends who might also want to sign up. I'm meeting with Organizizer on Thursday, and I'll try to convince him that we're not going to be evil and that he wants to join us. So... we could potentially be at 6 or 8 one week from now.

> how do you make that jump?

How do you make that jump indeed?

How do we find 95 more people passionate and crazy enough to build something amazing and new?

I'd have signed up but have concerns about the particular country chosen.

Was Mexico considered?

I have a friend, who I attended law school with here in the states, who wrote a very helpful guideline for purchasing large property in that country. It is a more predictable country imho. Isee is correct that for some people this seems to be an interested dream but "far fetched".

An attorney, a title search (know how to do it here...not there tho), and other things should be clear before even bothering checking with realtors. Do we even know if the realtor himself is able to sell this particular property or could he be a full of shit person ready to swallow whatever funds are gathered for said purchase?