Thread by @leashless

My soul, if I have one, is that when I was homeless (a few times) I realized that true, real poverty is *us* and not *them*.

And I have not shaken that insight. In fact I've built my life on it.

I keep trying to drive the poverty alleviation machinery at an Elon Musk type scale

resiliencemaps.org is the design language for fixing poverty.

files.howtolivewiki.com/TIDES_PACKET/T… is sort of what that picture looks like bulked out a bit

files.howtolivewiki.com/the_physical_a… gets into the details

shareable.net/the-unplugged/ applies it to poverty in America, and climate change

files.howtolivewiki.com/MOTHER_OF_HYDR… is another scifi story which applies the model to climate refugees.

What does it actually take to keep people happy? How can we do it at minimum ecological cost? What would those lives be like, and would we be happy living them if they were our lives?

I did all of this with the feeling that I could be a climate refugee, that I could wind up living in the systems I had designed - either in this lifetime or in another.

And this, I think, is where I differ so sharply in my perspective from the United Nations etc.

I'm am *them*.

I've assembled a pretty comprehensive set of tools and systems that would let teams of smart people successfully provision the goods and services for tens - then hundreds - of millions of people.

It's mostly well-established tech: stainless steel, solar. Some R&D: new hexayurts.

But the point was not to lay out a solution. The point was to establish *a science of keeping people alive* and show that we could be methodical and structural in our humanitarian analysis, if we were brave enough.

Figure out why people are dying. How much will it cost to help?

And just while we're here lowtechmagazine.com/2008/12/tile-s… read this

*I* am them.

roll on grammar checkers