STEWARDSHIP · MODEL / DIRECTION
Generosity is easy to admire. Dependability is harder.
Help make generosity dependable while leaving the people receiving it free.
One path Dunbarrios is exploring is voluntary redistribution inside a bounded community. A financially capable person or household bears a disproportionate share of the economic cost while joining the same human-scale structure as everyone else.
Model and direction · Not an implemented financial productSTEWARDSHIP MODEL
Conceptual placeholder for a bounded-community stewardship model; no financial interface or participant data is shown.
THE PROPOSAL
Support a community you actually stand inside.
A financially capable individual or household may help sustain a community of no more than roughly 150 people. The steward is a member of that community, not an owner standing outside it.
The model is not “rich person to recipients.” Its stronger form is a high-capacity participant helping sustain shared infrastructure for a constituency in which they also participate.
01
High-capacity participant
Contributes more of the economic surplus while remaining a member.
02
Shared infrastructure
Support strengthens the bounded community's practical capacity.
03
Constituency
Members participate, disagree, contribute, and remain free.
CONTRIBUTION AND GOVERNANCE
Paying more should not mean governing more.
Financial support can increase what a community is able to carry. It should not create a separate claim over the people inside it.
- Support does not buy ideological conformity.
- It does not buy permanent authority.
- It does not make criticism illegitimate.
- It does not create ownership of the group.
The people receiving support must remain able to disagree, participate in governance, and be heard.
Separate contribution from discretionary control.
STEWARDSHIP IS NOT OWNERSHIP
A role can carry responsibility without creating a ruling class.
Some stewards may take rotating responsibilities. Others may fund the shared structure and remain relatively quiet.
Either way, authority attached to a role comes from the same bounded governance structure that applies to other members. Money does not create a separate source of permanent authority.
WHY HUMAN SCALE MATTERS
Money can scale. Attention cannot.
Software can be replicated cheaply. Human recognition, trust, attention, and shared judgment cannot.
The boundary near 150 is not magical precision or a claim of scientific certainty. It is a practical ceiling intended to keep people recognizable, governance legible, and a group small enough to recompose when circumstances change.
Human scale is a design constraint, not a promise that every group below a number will work.
VOICE, MOBILITY, AND REDUNDANCY
A system should survive disagreement and departure.
VOICE
Disagree while remaining inside.
People need meaningful ways to question decisions and participate while remaining members of the Dunbarrio.
MOBILITY
Keep access to the wider network.
If voice fails or a local arrangement stops working, members should eventually have viable ways to move into adjacent circles or Dunbarrios rather than lose the whole network.
REDUNDANCY
Reorganize when support changes.
At sufficient network scale, one steward's departure should force reorganization rather than threaten everyone's continued participation.
Voice protects people inside. Mobility protects them if voice fails. Redundancy protects the system if a steward exits.
Mobility and redundancy at network scale · Longer-term architectural goalsRESILIENCE
The threshold is not “enough wealthy people.”
Success is not defined by a raw count of stewards.
The meaningful long-term threshold is closer to this: an ordinary member can reasonably expect that losing one steward, one circle, or one Dunbarrio does not mean losing the broader network.
DESIGN QUESTIONS · NOT MEMBER SCORES
These are internal architectural questions. They are not numeric judgments about participants and do not describe shipped functionality.
CROSS-SUBSIDIZED INFRASTRUCTURE
The subsidy should become less important than the institution it supports.
People should primarily experience membership in a functioning community, not an identity as someone else's dependent.
Different people can contribute different kinds and amounts of surplus while membership remains membership.
- Money
- Caregiving
- Labor
- Expertise
- Coordination
- Attention
- Institutional memory
- Connections
These contributions are not assumed to be economically equivalent, automatically measured, or interchangeable.
FEDERATION AND LOCAL RESILIENCE
Small units can connect without becoming one giant center.
Circles can federate. Neighboring Dunbarrios could eventually exchange support, knowledge, and capacity without moving every decision into one central institution.
Small units are easier to recompose than giant centralized systems. Useful practices can travel while authority remains bounded close to the people affected.
ECONOMICS OF THE SOFTWARE
The software still has to sustain itself.
Fees for additional circles are intended to help sustain software and operations.
Direction only · No pricing or financial mechanics presentedTHE EXPERIMENT
Nobody has to accept the argument in advance.
Dunbarrios is an attempt to renew the social contract through commitments people can actually practice together.
Adoption is the referendum.
The test is whether participants become more secure and more able to act for themselves.
STEWARDSHIP INTEREST
Interested in the stewardship experiment?
Stewardship is still a developing model. We are interested in hearing from financially capable individuals or households who find the constraints as interesting as the generosity.
- Comfortable supporting people who may disagree strongly with you.
- Interested in durable support rather than personal recognition.
- Willing to stand inside the same governance structure.
- Interested in helping test a model rather than purchasing authority.
The linked preview does not collect submissions or financial information.
Stewardship interest status