The Council of Fifty

Each NewVistas community governs itself and stays legally and financially independent, however many communities there are. Some questions, however, are larger than any one community, such as a regional gas field, a trunk pipeline, or the farmland and grazing that several communities draw on. The Council of Fifty is how communities work on these questions together, as equals, without creating a government above them.

How it forms

Even before there are fifty communities, related presidents from different communities can meet in intercommunity conventions to compare conditions, publish what they learn, and work on shared questions. These conventions create no headquarters and operate nothing.

Once fifty communities exist in one coordinated region, they form the Council of Fifty. There is one Council of Fifty for each such region, and its name counts communities rather than councils. A region of this size holds about 4.6 million participants. The council forms from the communities themselves, and it is the first step in the wider growth of NewVistas. Only after a Council of Fifty exists in a region can that region receive an area presidency.

Who takes part

The Council of Fifty has no members of its own. Each community sends all twenty-four of its bureau councils of twelve, which are made up of each bureau’s Operating presidency together with the Trustee and Regulatory presidencies that sit over it. Because the Trustee and Regulatory presidencies each serve on several bureau councils, these councils come to 192 people from each community: 96 Operating presidents, 48 trustees, and 48 regulators. Fifty communities therefore bring 9,600 presidents to each conference.

These presidents attend in the offices they already hold in their own communities. Attending gives them no new title and no authority over any other community, and they remain bound by their own community’s Constitution throughout. As with every office in NewVistas, the service is unpaid.

What it works on

The Council of Fifty coordinates matters that cross community boundaries:

• Shared practice. Materials continuity, utility learning, transport corridors, export discipline, standards, specialization, and best practice.
• Gas and carbon return. The location of drill sites for gas and for carbon return, and the routes of the trunk pipelines that serve them. Each community still owns its own well sites, equipment, and section of trunk line, each leased to a Business Enterprise that runs it. Carbon taken from the ground as gas is returned to the ground it came from, and every site and line is held to the rule that no methane escapes (see Carbon Return).
• The hinterland. Grazing, mining, and dry and wet grain come from hinterland shared among the region’s communities. This is divided by a published formula based on the region’s measured carrying capacity and the number of communities it serves, never by negotiation among the communities already there, which could shut a newcomer out. A new community takes its share on the day it is founded.

The constitution sets out what the Council of Fifty is and may never do, and the sequence every matter passes through. It does not say how projects are prepared, worked, owned, or followed to completion. The sections from here to “Governing a project to completion” describe a working arrangement for those questions, consistent with the constitution, which each community adopts through its own bodies.

A framework that works all year

The Council of Fifty is not a meeting that happens once a quarter. It is the framework within which fifty communities work together all year: preparing large projects before a conference, deciding at the conference what to propose, and following approved projects until they are complete. It works only through the communities themselves. It has no office, no staff, no money, and no power to bind anyone, and it never stands above a community.

Work done under the Council of Fifty’s auspices, wherever and whenever it takes place, follows five rules:

• A record. Minutes are kept, and published once a matter is filed or decided.
• The competition protocol. No discussion of prices and no dividing of markets.
• Nothing binding. Every commitment is made by a community’s own bodies at home.
• No money and no office. Whoever convenes or attends a session pays his or her own costs, and no one is reimbursed.
• One shared register. Every proposal, preparatory session, commitment, withdrawal, and review finding is entered in a register in the operating system, open to every community.

How a project reaches the Council of Fifty

Stand in your place

A project begins with one president, Operating, trustee, or regulatory, and only within the duty of his or her own office and bureau. The constitution asks every president to learn his duty, and act in the office in which he is appointed, and a president never proposes anything outside that office (§5.1, §5.9).

Three stages of study at home

• The president prepares a detailed report before taking the project anywhere, which may take a year or two.
• The presidency of four confirms that the project lies within its duty and office, asks whether the community can already settle it through authority it holds, and develops it into a well-prepared plan.
• The council of twelve approves it by seven of twelve, and develops it further into a full plan: the environmental effects, the cost, how the work would be contracted, how long it would take, how it would pay for itself, and how it divides into parts, by default one for each community.

The support of the whole community

A project goes to the Council of Fifty only because it affects other communities. Before filing, the bureau council must have the support of its own community’s other bureaus that would be involved, and it should never propose a project its community is not prepared to take its own part in.

Filing

Matters may be filed until the end of week 12, and the originating council may withdraw a matter at any time before the conference. The agenda is published to every delegation before the conference opens, and nothing can be added at the conference itself.

Testing the plan beforehand

For a large project, the originating bureau council may first meet the same bureau councils in other communities, in preparatory sessions held under the Council of Fifty’s auspices, to test the design and the division into parts before filing. The sessions are private while they take place, but minuted, and the minutes are published once the matter is filed.

The conference

The conference runs from Tuesday to Thursday of week 1, with Monday for travel and Friday kept free. It opens and closes with a plenary in the host community’s stadium, presided over by the host’s presidency, its presidents taking turns. Between the plenaries, each project is worked by one subcommittee of twelve, while the other delegates meet in bureau exchanges to compare conditions and comment on the drafts. The full timetable is set out in the working note. Every delegate pays his or her own costs, including travel, food, and lodging at the host community, and no one is reimbursed.

The closing plenary publishes each plan its subcommittee has approved, with the trustee and regulatory findings. It binds no community.

The subcommittee

Each project is worked by one subcommittee of twelve, made up of three full presidencies of the same bureau: the presenting presidency, and one full presidency of each of the other two kinds, drawn at random from two different communities among the other forty-nine. If a trustee presidency presents a project, for instance, one Operating presidency and one regulatory presidency are drawn. Every presidency holds one president from each Segment, so every subcommittee has three partnered men, three partnered women, three single men, and three single women. The subcommittee decides by seven of twelve. How it is drawn and how it works are set out in The Subcommittees of the Council of Fifty.

Presiding without hierarchy

The host’s presidency presides over the plenaries, and the presenting presidency over its project’s subcommittee. In every case the presidents take turns, one presiding while another keeps the notes. Presiding is a turn of duty and never a position: it carries no authority beyond the session, gives no one a say over another community, and carries over to nothing.

After the conference

Every other community decides for itself

During weeks 2 to 12, the same bureau’s council in each of the other communities takes up the published plan and decides, by seven of twelve, whether its community will take on its own part. That vote is the community’s own adoption, made through its own body, and each council first secures the support of its community’s other bureaus that would be involved. A community that declines remains in good standing, and its part is offered to communities that have adopted the plan, or the project is built in phases.

The Council of Fifty confirms, but never binds

At the next conference, the full Council of Fifty votes, by a majority of communities, on whether to carry the project forward as a Council of Fifty project: entered on its register and followed by its review panel. That vote decides only what the Council of Fifty itself does. It commits no community to anything, because each community has already made its own decision at home.

How commitments become firm

No community can be forced, but commitments become firmer at each step, so that a project rests on more than goodwill:

The strongest protection is the arithmetic: a community takes on its part only after its own Bureaus 19, 20, and 21 have found that part complete, wanted, and viable, so it has every reason to keep its word. Every adoption, withdrawal, and confirmation is recorded in the shared register.

From proposal to project

Each community owns its own part

The constitution allows no cooperatives, and a community has no budget: it holds title to everything, but it has no right to spend money. A Council of Fifty project is therefore never owned in common. Each community that adopts it owns its own part, by default one fiftieth of the road, mine, drill sites, pipeline, grazing land, farmland, or wilderness area, and takes responsibility for its title, building, financing, and operation. Communities that own no part neither build, run, nor pay for it; their people simply use it and pay its fees.

How each part pays for itself

Within each owning community, the bureau responsible for the domain, such as Bureau 24 for transportation, governs the project but spends nothing. Title is held by one of the title bureaus, usually Bureau 2 for land and works. Bureau 2 finances its part with a bank loan, and the bank will lend only once an operating business has agreed to lease the asset and shown that its fees will meet the payments. A consolidator builds the part on construction financing, and at the closing event, once it is built, tested, and earning the revenue its plan requires, the long-term financing closes and the operator takes custody (§4.15). The finished asset must be worth more than its cost, and its income must cover the loan and leave a profit.

Shared works as private property

A freeway, pipeline, or other shared work is owned by a community and held in the custody of businesses, so it is not public, and its operators may set rules. The public has a right of passage along it, as an easement, without needing approval, but must keep its operating rules, such as no litter and limits on speed and weight. Leaving it to enter a community is another matter: a visitor may enter only after being vetted, with a paid pass and arrangements for a guest suite, and with someone’s approval.

Governing a project to completion

Each owning community governs its own part through its bureau council until the closing event: the Operating presidency sees that it is built as designed by capable contractors, the trustees keep title and finances sound, and the regulators check standards, law, and compliance.

The rest of the region keeps watch through a review panel. A project’s subcommittee does not simply dissolve when the conference ends: its twelve seats meet again at each conference until the closing event, review every part’s progress against the approved plan, and publish their findings. The panel cannot instruct any owner or spend anything. But where it finds cause for concern, the owning council must publish a response by the next conference, saying what it is doing or why it disagrees. Because the seat is drawn and not the person, the panel keeps its members as presidents come and go. Details are in The Subcommittees of the Council of Fifty.

The independence of each community

The constitution is explicit that the Council of Fifty is not a form of sovereignty. It owns no community, operates no asset, centralizes no production, appoints no Enterprise Owner, overrides no local office, controls no bureau standard, and holds no fund. Its officers never set a price, and it cannot impose an amendment on any community.

This means that nothing agreed at a conference takes effect in a community by itself. A shared standard, a recommended practice, or the hinterland formula only applies in a community once that community adopts it through its own bodies, and in the case of the formula, through its own amendment process. A community that declines remains in good standing. Comparison is never the same as adoption.

The work of each community’s presidencies and councils is unchanged by the Council of Fifty. Bureau standards are still set by each community’s own bureau presidencies, decisions are still made by its own presidencies of four and councils of twelve, and amendments still pass only by its own presidents and adult participants. Where the council recommends a project, it is carried out by a Business Enterprise, and each community keeps title to its own share.

The council also follows a published competition protocol, so that it cannot be used to fix markets. It allows no price coordination, no allocation of bids, no limits on output, and no dividing up of customers or territory. Benchmarks are shared only after a delay and in aggregate, and certified vendors re-bid on a published cycle.

Its place among the other NewVistas bodies

NewVistas itself licenses buildings and the operating system. Toward communities and Council of Fifty regions it licenses and coordinates only, and it holds no seat in any Council of Fifty. Once a Council of Fifty has formed, the NewVistas presidency may set in place the region’s first area presidency, which helps new communities get started. Neither NewVistas nor an area presidency stands above a community, and neither can impose an amendment on one.

Growth follows a fixed order: communities come first, then the Council of Fifty, and only then an area presidency, because coordination has outgrown what conventions can carry. None of these bodies is created in anticipation of communities that do not yet exist.

For an illustration of how this works in practice, read The Bridger Well, an imagined account of fifty communities sharing a gas field and returning its carbon.

Constitution, §12.9, with §9.10, §12.10, §12.15–12.17 and §13.7.