Rejected · 2023-05-25
Community Sovereignty Doctrine v3 (Rejected — never reached consensus vote)
A 2023 redraft of the federation-wide Community Sovereignty Doctrine covering community vision, cross-community access, property sovereignty, and banishment procedures. Never put to a vote; the unresolved community vision section (six competing options, no agreed text) blocked the draft from reaching the proposal stage.
- Decision type
- constitutional
- Layers affected
- L0, L2, L4
- Vote
- Never formally put to a vote — author noted it was not ready to pass consensus
- Status: Rejected — never formally put to a vote
- Submitted: 2023-05-25 (last revision date on document)
- Submitted by: Fruit Haven community members (author unstated)
- Decision type: Constitutional
- Authorized decision path: Would have required all current Fruit Haven owners via consensus method, unanimity-minus-one rule, and a 15-day no-contact clause (per Art. V of the draft)
Summary
A redraft of the federation-wide Community Sovereignty Doctrine, covering community vision, cross-community access rights, property sovereignty, banishment procedures, and ratification. The document itself carried the note: “To be proposed to owners once a version is written that may pass consensus,” indicating it was withdrawn before being formally tabled. The primary blocker was Article I (Community Vision), which listed six unresolved competing options and included no agreed text. The draft was never voted on.
The content that was agreed upon in this draft was later absorbed — in amended form — into the adopted Federation Protocol (layers/2-governance/04-federation-protocol, decision record: proposals/passed/2019-05-17_community-sovereignty-doctrine, RCOS-integrated as v1.0.0).
Affected Layers and Artifacts (as proposed)
- Layer 0 — layers/0-identity/01-purpose-charter (Art. I: community vision — unresolved)
- Layer 2 — layers/2-governance/04-federation-protocol (Art. II–III: community area and property sovereignty)
- Layer 2 — layers/2-governance/01-decision-matrix (Art. IV: banishment decision rules)
- Layer 4 — layers/4-conflict/02-accountability-protocol (Art. IV: formal banishment procedure, written grievances, prior-warning requirement)
Full Article-by-Article Content of the Draft
Article I — Community Vision
The draft presented six competing options and did not resolve to any single text:
- Include a shared vision (similar to the 2019 FH1 bylaws vision). Pro: unifying. Con: harder to pass with 40+ owners.
- No shared vision — each property writes its own in their community contract. Pro: easier to pass, more local sovereignty. Con: less federation cohesion.
- Option 2 plus a vague guiding statement — e.g. “Fruit Haven is an ecovillage of like-minded people. Valuing decentralisation and sovereignty, we invite each group of Fruit Haven property owners to form their own vision of our shared future.” Properties then add their own specific vision locally.
- Balkanisation / dissolution — Fruit Haven as a federation name is dissolved entirely; each property aligns with Terra Frutis, Liberty Homesteads, or another identity. Pro: maximum sovereignty. Con: rebranding, budget and infrastructure agreements required.
- ChatGPT-authored vision (pasted in full in the draft, four paragraphs). Notable features: embraced dietary diversity rather than declaring veganism as the community identity (reflecting a split of ~80–85% strongly vegan vs. ~15–20% no longer identifying with the term); included raw foods as an aspiration rather than a rule; added “sound money” and “alternative living” to the value list. One sentence was modified by the author: “In our community centers, only vegan foods are allowed.”
- Use ChatGPT text as website copy only and write a separate minimal vision containing no contentious points that a group of 40+ owners could disagree on.
Status of Art. I: Entirely unresolved. No option was chosen. This was the primary reason the draft was not put to a vote.
Article II — Sovereignty of Community Areas
| Clause | This draft | Adopted federation-protocol.md |
|---|---|---|
| II.a | Each community area may create its own rules; rules must be clearly posted to be in effect. | §1.1: each community may create and maintain its own bylaws. No posting requirement stated. |
| II.b | Invitees (of any status) residing in one community area may visit other community areas for social events, unless specifically prohibited. | §2.1: FH members/residents may access any community area unless behaviourally restricted. Guests/volunteers need permission from a resident/member (§2.3). |
| II.c | Invitees of private lots on any FH property may visit any FH community area for social events unless prohibited, but must be accompanied by their sponsor on their first visit for introductory purposes. | Not present in adopted protocol — guests/visitors need permission from a member/resident but no sponsor-escort requirement. |
| II.d | FH owners have access (not residency or regular-use rights) to all FH community areas unless restricted by that area’s owners or inhabitants. | §2.2: FH trustees may access all community areas unless behaviourally restricted. Substantively equivalent. |
| II.e | All invitees must abide by the posted rules of the community area they are in. | §2.4: all participants must follow local rules. Equivalent. |
Key divergence: The draft’s II.b–c extended cross-community social access to any invitee (including non-member residents and private-lot guests), which was broader than the adopted protocol’s approach of limiting automatic access to recognised FH members and trustees. The sponsor-escort requirement for private-lot guests (II.c) was novel and had no equivalent in the adopted version.
Article III — Sovereignty of Properties
| Clause | This draft | Adopted federation-protocol.md |
|---|---|---|
| III.a | ”Aside from this document, there shall be no other formal bindings between Fruit Haven-denominated properties.” | §4.1: “Except for this charter, Fruit Haven properties are not formally bound to one another.” Substantively equivalent. |
| III.b | A property may leave the FH network if all owners agree via consensus and unanimity decision rule. It may continue voluntary trade/interaction with other properties. | §4.2: same unanimity rule; same provision for continued voluntary cooperation. Equivalent. |
| III.c | On exit, remaining property owners shall negotiate compensation for road use and other shared infrastructure. | Not present in adopted protocol. |
| III.d | FH-denominated properties are bound by this document, except where enforcement would violate owners’ sovereignty on legal-risk removals or decisions significantly affecting property value or legal risk. | §4.3: same carve-out for legal-risk and property-value decisions. Equivalent. |
Key divergence: III.c added a road-use and shared-infrastructure compensation clause on exit that was not included in the adopted protocol. The adopted protocol left post-exit arrangements entirely to voluntary negotiation without requiring it.
Article IV — Banishing Inhabitants
The adopted federation-protocol.md contains only a brief reference to behavioural restrictions (§2.1–2.2). This draft contained a detailed six-step banishment procedure not present in the adopted protocol, drawing on precedent from FH1 and Terra Frutis:
| Step | This draft |
|---|---|
| IV.a.i | Community discusses the matter using the consensus method. |
| IV.a.ii | Decision rule: unanimity-minus-one among community area residents, OR among property owners; owners’ decision always overrides the community’s. |
| IV.a.iii | If passed at a meeting, decision is effective immediately (or per proposal terms), but pending owner review. Owners may support or rescind, but are advised not to rescind in most cases, as non-present owners may not be experiencing the issues firsthand and may offer undue leniency. |
| IV.a.iv | Community must present a written list of grievances/complaints/transgressions with approximate dates. |
| IV.a.v | Some listed items must have previously been discussed with the inhabitant (prior-warning requirement). Exception: transgressions severe enough that no prior warning is necessary (example cited in draft: “the case of the schizophrenic monk at FH1”). Prior warnings given at other communities also count (for long-running cross-community problems). |
| IV.a.vi | Each community area may add further terms, but may not contradict these. |
Status in adopted protocol: The banishment detail from this draft was not adopted into the Federation Protocol. The substance is closest to layers/4-conflict/02-accountability-protocol and layers/2-governance/01-decision-matrix, but neither currently contains this level of procedural detail.
Article V — Ratification and Jurisdiction
| Clause | This draft | Adopted federation-protocol.md |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Applies to all Fruit Haven properties and their community areas. | Same. |
| Passing threshold | All current FH owners, consensus method, unanimity-minus-one, plus 15-day no-contact clause (objections by acquainted individuals must be known and declared within 15 days). | Not specified in protocol — decision record references consensus. |
| Supremacy | Overrules any competing clauses in any other document except the community contract between owners, which is the ultimate authority. | §6: charter takes precedence over community bylaws; owner authority preserved (§4.3). Equivalent in effect. |
| New owners | Any owner who buys into a FH property must agree to this document before becoming an owner. | §6: any owner who acquires ownership accepts this charter as a condition of participation. Equivalent. |
Key divergence: The explicit 15-day no-contact clause (objections must be declared within 15 days by acquainted individuals, or the proposal passes) was a novel ratification mechanism not present in the adopted protocol. The adopted version instead relies on the general consensus process.
Change Type
- Permanent rule change
- Time-bounded experiment
Rationale (as intended by the draft)
To establish a single federation-wide sovereignty doctrine agreed upon by all ~40 Fruit Haven owners, replacing the patchwork of property-level documents with one ratified instrument covering vision, cross-community access, property independence, banishment procedure, and ratification. The draft acknowledged the difficulty of passing any document with a large and geographically dispersed ownership group.
Why Not Passed
- Art. I (Vision) was entirely unresolved. Six competing options were listed; no text was agreed. The author explicitly noted it was not ready for a consensus vote. Without a vision clause, the document was incomplete.
- Dietary identity split. Approximately 15–20% of owners no longer identified with the term “vegan,” while 80–85% felt strongly about it. No language could be found that satisfied both groups within the same document.
- Scope and scale. Requiring unanimity-minus-one among 40+ geographically dispersed owners for a constitutional document is a high bar. The draft acknowledged this implicitly by listing “Balkanisation” as a theoretical outcome.
- The formal complaint section was incomplete. The heading “FORMAL COMPLAINT AND MEDIATION PROCESS” appears at the end of the document with no body text — the section was never written.
Transition and Migration Plan
N/A — never adopted. The clauses of this draft that reached sufficient agreement were absorbed into the adopted Federation Protocol (v1.1.0) in amended form. The banishment procedure detail (Art. IV) remains a gap in the current layer artifacts and is a candidate for a future proposal to layers/4-conflict/02-accountability-protocol.
Rollback Plan
N/A
Effective Date
N/A — never adopted
Review Date
N/A
Decision Record
- Vote outcome: Never formally put to a vote
- Vote date: N/A
- Mechanism: Would have required consensus + unanimity-minus-one among all FH owners + 15-day no-contact clause (per Art. V)
- Snapshot link: Source document: FH_Community_Sovereignty_Doctrine v3.pdf
- Signatories / vote count: None — document was flagged by its author as not yet ready to propose