Did you figure out how to set up these legal structures? I’m trying to do the same thing in the US and would love some guidance on the process.

yes, I know that course, and I studied it. Still, that leaves a number of questions open for me which perhaps could be answered by taking a look at the XAF/XCD trust documents…

You have to use them as a legal frame work to set up in your location at this point in legal history.

the problem I have is quite a specific one: If you want to systematically get people out of economic dependency, i.e. reduce their Need To Earn (“NTE”), and you are actually starting to make a significant impact on society in doing so, you are, basically (and, quite inevitably), destroying somebody else’s customer base. Therefore, you can pretty much expect to come under attack. And you then should be able to deal with such attacks.

I know that Bill Mollison set up extremely cunning legal structures, and he did it in a way so that one, in principle, should be able to just take this as a template and set up many businesses that receive protection from the same mechanisms he used (e.g. for “Phoenix Seeds”), and which seem to have passed the acid test. From what I’ve learned so far, I get the impresion that setting up such structures (an unregistered association whose members qualify as directors for two companies that do nothing but to act as trustees for two trusts, a charity and an unit discretionary trust) is not really overly difficult, and Bill must have spend quite a lot of time explaining how they work on the PDCs he gave in the 80s (maybe he still does, don’t know). I’d love to learn how to do that – but so far, no one could teach me the details.

Don’t get me wrong – It’s all right and fine to run a number of “conventional” businesses that make a lot of sense environmentally, economically, and socially, and I also get income in such a way. But making a serious impact on people’s need to earn by helping them to reduce their dependency on questionable economic structures can become quite a different ball game.

I’m all fine with numbers and legalese. People around me claim that I seem to have a special gift to handle absurdly complex problems. So, naturally, it would perhaps make more sense for me than for many others to learn how to do that. After all, there should be some people who know how to do it, right? The problem is just: I have not yet found anyone who could teach me the details…

As with all other material in the PDC, I have never attended any specialist training in the social structures. I built my skills and experience by starting from the things I knew something about, my comfort zone, and then got my hands dirty. Bill has always said that we cannot do any worse than as already been done. As long as we are honest about our abilities and ethical in our decision making processes we can’t really go wrong. Mistakes made under these conditions are rarely disasters and often the best learning situations.

Since taking my PDC I have set up and run a sole proprietorship, now a corporation and now a non-profit entity. I have never borrowed money from the bank and have funded all these processes by valuing my skills and experience appropriately and offering services to the community. I am not all that good with numbers. I find legalese just as difficult as the next person and I am happiest behind a shovel.

Just give something a try ask advice when you need it an take a conservative approach.
My first responsibility has always been and will always be my personal and family economics. When generate surplus, knowledge, money, resources, food we then return back into the community.

Priority of Investment:
1.) Things that produce a yield
2.) things that save you energy
3.) Things that cost energy

take care
Jesse

I “sort-of get the idea” what Bill is talking about here:

http://permaculture.org.au/2010/01/20/bill-mollisons-1981-permaculture-lecture-notes-new-edition

in particular in chapter 13, http://nmag.soton.ac.uk/mollison/html/13-community.html

However, right now, I could not do anything like that on my own. But I would like to know how. Having access to some documents that may serve as templates would be very helpful. Does anyone
offer such a specialized course? (If it were internet-based, the better.)