When you enter in a company building you find a lot of people seating in front of the computer all the day long. Some of them maybe had to travel a long time just to get there and seat in front of a computer.
How much money can be saved if instead on seating in front of a computer in the office people could be able to seat in front of the computer at home and do the same work?

Huge savings for the company
The first evident thing that jumps into mind is that if everyone who works on a computer from the office could do the same from home the office space and relative costs could be reduced considerably. Offices tend to be in prime locations where the cost for real estate is very high. What could be the saving for the company to reduce the necessary space to half or to one third, or even removing the need for an office completely?
It is not just the cost for the real estate, it is also the day to day running cost: heating or air conditioning, power, telephone, water, cleaning.
Workers could even use their own computers to work from home, reducing again the cost for the company.

Great advantages for the workers
No need to wake up hours before to get to the office in the rush hour traffic. Wake up in the morning, get a coffee, seat in front of the computer and you are at work.
You can even be in a different town or a different country.
No need to dress in a special way to get to the office. No need to bring your lunch with you or get the lunch from a restaurant or  a company canteen.

Great advantages for the environment
Well, just imagine if we could cut to half or one third the morning and afternoon rush hour traffic. Just imagine if we did not need to heat, air condition and illuminate large office spaces.

How to make it work
For the company it will be necessary to have a good software able to manage all the needs of work, communication, security and supervision and of course a good server and internet connection.
Nothing of the above really complicated of really expensive compared with other company costs.

At RebelBay we can study, develop and maintain a good teleworking software that can be easily adapter to the different companies needs. Small and medium sized companies should be able to use this software directly from our servers. The cost for the company should be minimal and the advantages huge.
Larger companies should be able to use and freely modify the software and use it in their own servers.

At RebelBay we can also create tools to facilitate companies to implement teleworking and to facilitate the creation of new companies and structures based on teleworking.

There are two facets for 'work'. On one hand we need to work to 'feed' ourselves and our families, in the other hand we need to work to give a contribution to our society as a whole.
As work is a necessity everyone should be able to work. It is a right but it is also a duty.
When we are young and we prepare ourselves to enter life, we actually prepare ourselves to work.
Work is one of the most important parts of our lives, it is with us for most part of our adult life.
As work is one of the most important parts of our lives, we must be able to manage it the best possible way.
We really need to put a lot of attention on the work we do because a very big part of our life will be dedicated to it.

The ideal job
What are the characteristics that makes a job a good job, an ideal job?

1) We should be able to like the job we do. If we like the job we do will will put on it all our energies and do it the best possible way. If we don't like our job it will make our life miserable, and a miserable life is not worth living.

2) The job we do should be able to give us “economic independence”. Economic independence is to be able to buy whatever we need when we need it. If we need to struggle to get to the end of the month the job we are doing is not a good job. If we make much more money than what we need our job is not a good job.

3) The job we do should be useful for the society as a whole. This is an important point because many jobs are parasitic in nature, taking from the society much more than they give.

4) The job we do should give us enough time to rest and dedicate ourselves to other things. We must have other interests outside the work we do, and we must have the time to dedicate to those interests, in terms of free time every day and a good number of free days in a week, a month, a year.
The ideal time to work would be 6 hours a day for 4 days a week, eleven month a year. This will give us enough time to dedicate to other interests.

5) The place of work should not be far from the place where we live. The ideal thing would be to live and work in the same place.
We are in the age of computers and Internet, and it should be easy enough to decentralize the work and do it from home.

For all our worries about ecology, carbon dioxide emissions, overpopulation and possible scarcity of food, the world is definitely not going to end.
Humans are yet not good enough to bring about a complete destruction of our planet, but they are quite good enough to bring about the destruction of themselves.
It is then possible that in not so many years, the planet will go on without us, maybe with other forms of life that do not bring a systematic destruction of the planet resources.

Even if we don't manage to bring upon us a complete destruction of all human beings just to fulfil the needs of our myopic greed, it is very much possible that in a few years there will be much less humans and that they will be living in very uncomfortable conditions.

There is no need to list here all the problems one by one, but let's make just a short list of the risks we are taking:

1) The environment will be severely damaged, temperatures will change dramatically, and we will live in a very uncomfortable world.

2) Our numbers will increase so much that the space and resources available for each of us (the famous cake) will be reduced drastically. Our life will be very uncomfortable.
This of course is true only if the problem at point one will not have taken care of reducing drastically the world population.
Better not to count on a large scale war or epidemic to reduce “naturally” the world population. The population estimate at this moment is close to the seven billion mark. It would take 90 wars as large as World War II to bring us back to the same number of people we had at the end of WW2. (it is an easy calculation: 7,000 million people now, 2,500 million people at the end of WW2, estimate causalities of WW2 are 50 million people).

3) The planet capacity to produce food is reducing in the moment the population increases and it is getting richer. The richer becomes the population the more food it consumes. Result not enough food for everyone and larger and larger segments of the population will end up without food.

As most of our governments are too greedy and too controlled by special interest groups, we can not count on them to fix the problems. If it is up to them in our old age, and our children and grandchildren, will find ourselves in an world too hot and uncomfortable for our air conditioners and where we will not even be able to call for a pizza delivery.

If our governments can not help us who can help us? No one can help us. We have to help ourselves.
If we try to do it on a single person basis the result we can get is minimal.
If we organize ourselves into communities and cooperatives than the impact of our efforts can be noticeable and really make a difference.

Brand name products are one of the plagues of our times.
Buying brand name products means dissipating resource we can hardly afford.
The people promoting brand name products successfully lead us to believe that a product associated with a brand is better than the generic version of the same product. The problem is that most of the times it just isn't true, or the added value is greatly exaggerated and this basically means we are swindled into buying something for a price much higher of its real value.
“Modern value-creation branding-and-advertising campaigns are highly successful at inducing consumers to pay, for example, 50 dollars for a T-shirt that cost a mere 50 cents to make, or 5 dollars for a box of breakfast cereal that contains a few cents' worth of wheat.“ (Wikipedia)

The moment we understand that brand name products are a plague and should be avoided well, “as the plague” the quality of our life dramatically increases.
If we buy for 5 dollars a “generic” T-shirt instead of buying a brand name one for 50 dollars, we save 45 dollars that we can better use buying something else.
Chances are that we will always find a generic T-shirt for 5 dollars of exactly the same quality (if not better quality) than the 50 dollars brand name T-shirt.
A common supermarket experience is that two absolutely identical products, even produced in the same factory are packed in two different ways, branded and generic, with a huge difference in price.

Being aware of brand swindling can save us in one year a very large amount of money.
Almost everything we buy is branded, and almost everything we buy can be found in a generic version of more or less the same quality.
If we save just a little for every item we buy, in the end of the year we can save enough money for something we can really enjoy, a holiday per example.
What is better? To spend more money in a brand name product or to spend a nice relaxing day on the beach?
To spend more money in a brand name product or to spend one more evening out having fun?

Step by step
1) Realize that for every brand name product there is another one nearby of more or less the same quality available for a much better price.
2) Realize that almost everything is branded. If you are a traveller you will know that the same brands of almost every product are for sale on the for corners of the globe under the same name or a slightly similar name. This means that a bunch of multinational companies are getting a share of our money almost every time we buy something.
3) Start to think to alternative things you can buy and enjoy with the savings. Give a target to your savings: at the end of the month per example, put the money you have saved into a holiday found.
4) Start buying in a informed way. Start trying out generic products, then go back buying brand name products only if the difference in quality makes it worth the additional cost. Always remember that every Euro or dollar you save can be better used in your holiday found.
Don't be afraid to spend a bit more time in doing your shopping, do it very carefully: your holidays depend on it!

The flock follows the rules. No need to understand them. They are there and must be followed. As far as we have food to eat and we are entertained, we are happy to be part of the flock. We can follow a direction, we don't need to think. We just follow the lead.

Every so many thousands of sheep there is a shepherd. The shepherd leads.

Anyone wanting to become a shepherd will have to enter some of the leading shepherd institutions: politics, religion, schools, corporations.

The flock is there for the benefit of the shepherd. To get the maximum from the flock the shepherd must take good care of the flock. The well-being of the flock is only linked to the benefit the shepherd can get from it.

When a large families go to the supermarket they buy things in “family packs” to save some money on essential goods.

As we promote larger and larger nuclear families (people living together under the same roof) the occasions to buy “family packs” and save on essential goods will become larger.
A larger nuclear family with more adults working and getting a salary will be able to arrive more easily to the end of the month paying the rent and all the bills.
A larger nuclear family with more adults working and getting a salary will have, in short, more economic power.

If we put together more than a nuclear family to live under the same roof or in close proximity, we will have a community with a even greater economic power.
They could stay in a larger house with better facilities (maybe a swimming pool, why not?), they can buy essential stuff in even larger family packs and they can share services (laundry, housekeeping, baby sitting etc.) that would be too expensive or impractical for a single family.

The larger the community the larger is the economic power, the higher is the quality of life for all the members of the community.

Now we are talking only of economic power, but in a community the grounds for mutual support are many, and a good community can create the basis for a really good quality of life for all its members.

If more than one community join together to create a cooperative of communities, then the economic power becomes greater and greater.

How do you start creating a community?
Going out on the street and asking people if they are interested in joining a community can be impractical, and here is where the internet and RebelBay can be really useful.

In your profile on RebelBay you can write that you are interested in creating or joining a community and the first step is taken.
Other Rebels visiting your profile will know and maybe contact you and before you know you are at the second step, then at the third and so on.

How can we help in the process of community building?
For one thing we can create some tools to help people interested in creating or joining a community or anyway interested in doing “something”, to contact each other and communicate.

Then we pass at the second point: helping in the creation of the rules for starting and managing communities.
In a perfect world we would not need any rules to live together in perfect harmony, but we are not living in a perfect world so, if we want to have a community that really works we need to create good ground rules to be followed by all members of the community.
Every community should have different rules according to the needs and interests of its members.
We can create a special board in RebelBay to suggest and discuss possible ground rules, and then problems incurred in community life and suggest solutions on how to solve them.

The third very important thing we can do is to create tools for the management of “family packs”.
Even if difficult to implement, the basic concept is relatively easy:
1) Bring together people who need to buy the same stuff
2) Contact the suppliers or even better the producers, eliminating as much as possible the middle men.
3) Create a system of direct distribution of the goods from the producer/supplier to the communities or families (the clients)

We can also create tools to organize and manage services by the communities and for the communities.

In the process of implementing the last two points (purchase and distribution of goods to the communities and creation and management of services for the communities) it is very much possible that new jobs can be created for some members of the communities, creating a full economic circle.

Our social changes should start from the basic block of society: the family.
In the present social system there are two main basic functions for a family: the first one is procreation, the production of children, the second one is orientation: to help the children produced by the family to enter the social system in the best way.

The first of these functions is obsolete: we don't really need to produce a large number of children any more. We actually need to reduce the number of children who are born with the general target to reach a sustainable number of people living in our world.
The actual growth rate of one billion people every ten or so years is definitely not sustainable.

The second of these functions, orientation, is failing miserably in a very large number of cases.
Parents are too busy trying to support the family economically (and for other reasons as well) to give to the children a proper orientation. Children are often abandoned to their own devices and left in front of a television set or a computer delegating the television and the computer to give the necessary orientation. As the television is not offering a reliable view of the society (among its other failings), the children are not given the right orientation and grow up to become failed adults.

The reversed role
Once the children are grown up they start taking care of their own parents in their old age.
This is almost not happening any more as the society as a whole takes economically care of persons in advanced age (or at least it should).

How can we change and make more practical the family structure?
The first thing to do is to shift the focus of the family from its primary functions of procreation and orientation to a primary function of mutual support.
The main reason why people should get together to form a family and live together is to support each other. This also include the function of orientation for the children born in the family.
The procreative function should be reduced to the minimum.

How to reach this goal

1) Families should become larger.
What is now a nuclear family with two parents and many children should become a nuclear family with many adults and fewer children.

2) Desexualization of family life
At the moment what brings families together is the sexual need for reproduction. If we remove the need for reproduction, we can have families where the sexual activity is only recreational or absent altogether (in the sense that recreational sex can be sought outside the family).
Sex has never been a very good glue to keep families together in the first place. Families based primarily on sexual attraction fail very fast.
The primary glue of the family is not sex, it is love. Love is the “deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person” (wikipedia).
Once we remove sex from love, there is no reason why any number of people could care for each other, live together under the same roof and give each other support.

3) Renounce of the principle of consanguinity.
This means the understanding that the children we rise need not be our own children.
The importance of blood ties between the family and the children should be reduced or eliminated altogether.
If we have a large number of adults as members of the same family, children born from two adult members can be cared for by all adult members of the family, with great advantage to the children that instead of having two parents, will have many of them giving them affection and guidance.


The importance of sex in family life
When families fail is for one of two main reasons: the family has big economic problems and there is no agreement on how to solve them, or the family has big sexual problems and there is no agreement on how to solve them.

Sexual activities are so deeply rooted into family life that it is almost unthinkable to have a nuclear family without sexual activity.
The most important issue we have to face if we want to start a new style family is this: how we integrate sex in our family life?
Let's put it this way: sex is one of the many possible activities family members can do together.
Family members can have their meals together. Family members can go to watch movies together, can play game together, can have a barbecue every Saturday evening together.
The number of things family members can do together is almost unlimited. Sex is one of these activities.
If we agree that sex is a recreational activity there is no reason why family members should not have sex together, but there is also no reason why family members should.

At the beginning of our family life we can get pleasure in going to the movies every Friday evening. After a while we grow bored with it and we don't feel to do it any more. We can still do it now and then, but not every Friday evening as before. We can also decide to go to the movies together with some friends instead of only with family members. We can go to the movies with friends only, or we can go to the movies with some friends and some family members.
If we don't go to the movies with our family every Friday evening is this because we don't love our family any more? No, it is not.
If we go to the movies with some friends instead than going with our family is that because we love our family less? No it is not.

In the present system sexual activities are one of the main reason of strain within a family. When we are tired of sex with our family members we can not just decide to have sex with someone else.
If we do we have to start with a life of lies which brings down the love within the family and ultimately the family itself.

If we start to think about sex as purely recreational then having sex outside the family is no different than going to the movies with friends.

Step by step
The point is not to decide that it is necessary to have sex outside our nuclear family. The point is to give less relevance to sexual activities.
We can decide to have sex only with members of our family, we can decide not to have sex at all with members of our family.
We can decide to have sex with members of our family and others as well.
The important thing is that we manage our sexual activities in a clear and non conflictual way, to talk about our wishes and needs in an open way (what about going to the movies next Saturday?), to be flexible and open to change when the need arises.

A final important point
Families are not forever. When our life span was very short, we had the need to keep the family together to guarantee the fulfilling of the family aims of procreation and orientation.
Now our life span is considerably larger and our needs are different.
If we start a family at twenty and we have a child then, the need for procreation and orientation can easily end when we are in our early forties and we still have many years in front of us.
At that point the reasons to stay in the same family can cease altogether. We can possibly start a new family and fulfil it aims of procreation and orientation when we are in our early sixties and still with many years in front of us.
As procreation and orientation are not any more the primary focus of the family, we need more flexibility to keep the family together.
To be on the same family for our whole life can be an excellent thing and give us a sense of fulfilment and continuity.
The important thing is to keep an open mind, always.

The problem is: we have a cake. How shell we divide it?
In the communist system we cut the cake in equal slices with the result that the slices are too small to feed everyone.
In the capitalist system the strongest you are the bigger is the slice you get. The result is someone getting real big slices, someone getting medium slices, someone getting small slices but big enough to feed, and a lot of people getting nothing at all.

It looks like whatever we do we will never manage to get things right, so what we can do?

There are three parts essential to the solution of the cake problem.
1)Get a larger cake so that everyone can get a large enough slice.
2)Reduce the number of people eating the cake
3)Get someone to cut the cake who is fair and independent.

If we look at it closely, the larger part of our world problems go down to these three points.

The cake is not large enough: we don't have enough resources for everyone and the few resources we have are not used in the proper way.

We have to many people to eat the cake: we have a severe problem of overpopulation with the number of people in the world growing at a rate of a billion every 10 or so years. We don't often hear of this problem but it is real and it is probably the single largest problem we have.

The one cutting the cake is hopeless: governments are greedy and corrupt and even if we had a large enough cake and a proportionate number of people to share it, we would still have problems because those in charge to cut and distribute the cake can be easily bribed and corrupt.
Even worst case if everyone is allowed to cut the slice they want without any regulation: the law of the jungle will prevail.

This leads to the mother (or father) of all the  problems: human beings tend to be selfish and greedy.
If we can not structure the society to control and make good use of this innate selfishness and greed of the human beings, we will never be able to solve any of the three problems above and none of the myriad of other problems that generates from them.
It is self evident that our society is not structured in a way to control and make good use of the  innate selfishness and greed of the human beings.

At this point we need an act of faith.
Can we believe that humans are able to self regulate in a way to overcome greed and selfishness and to build a better society?
It is very hard to think we can but as the only alternative is arming ourselves with guns and machetes and jump into the jungle to get the largest possible slice of cake, we must believe or at least we must hope that we can, and we also make our part to make this happen.
This web site is for the people who are ready to give it a try.

This will be one of RebelBay main projects: create tools to facilitate the formation of communities and cooperatives among Rebels.
Unity makes strength, and communities and cooperatives can be the centre point of  Rebel strength.
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A Rebel Community is constituted by  RebelBay members living under the same roof or in close proximity with the scope of helping and supporting each other and to improve everyone quality of life.

A Rebel Cooperative is a free association of RebelBay members  not living under the same roof or in close proximity, but with the same scope of helping and supporting each other and to improve everyone quality of life.

Communities and cooperatives start as an objective economic necessity, but they can be much more if the helping and supporting among members is not only economic.

On RebelBay we will create a full Rebel Constitution which will regulate the life of our community.
The Rebel Constitution will include provisions for a free representative system, a  government and a judiciary for RebelBay.
It will be a “citizens constitution” as it will be created and discussed “open source” with all RebelBay members.

As RebelBay has no territory and can not be considered a country in the full sense of the term, the main reason to create a Constitution is to discuss and try to solve problems with the Constitutions of existing countries and ways to prevent them, and create guidelines for the solutions of such problems.
A typical example of constitutional problem is the abuse of the electoral and democratic system perpetrated by corporations and multimillionaires who can manipulate elections and then abuse the system once elected.

Following the introduction of the Rebel Constitution, we will follow creating Laws covering every aspect of the Rebel Life.
Discussion of the Laws will be again “Open Source” with the participation of all RebelBay members.
The approval of the laws will be delegated to the representative institutions of RebelBay as provided by the Rebel Constitution.