One of the biggest problems this community will face is the way to structure property taxes. I'm not sure what kind of status we will have to have in order to be able to controll them, but I'm willing to go great distances to make this idea work.

Taxes are what are holding the small towns and rural areas back. They work real hard to make what they do and they are penalized every step of the way. I want to have help writing a tax structure that factors in:

If the person/household is good or dammaging to the ecology, and to what degree.
If the person/household is good or dammaging to the community, and to what degree.
How much of their earnings, percentage wise, not dollar amount wise, go toward bettering their surroundings and other peoples situations.
How much of their earnings, again percentage wise, goes toward research into more ecological sollutions to present problems.
Amount of land that is used for community service and how much is used for personal gain

These aren't all of the things I would like to see factored in, but for right now, they are the ones that are most important. I want a sliding scale structure, not a step-wise one, or at the very least, not such a steep stepwise one. Perhaps each of the factors could be stepwise but the overall effect would appear to be a sliding scale. As for good or dammaging to the ecology and community, things to look for are what would happen if they continued what they were doing over 100 years, would it better the situation, or is it so draining that the ecology and community would buckle under their actions? For example, a house generating 70-100% of their power through solar cells, windmills, or other renuable resources, would be a benefit to the ecology. Where as a house that relys heavily on outside sources which use nonrenuable resources would be dammaging. Community service would be harder to explain, but if the household owns a buisness that primarily raises food crops and works on using compost, recycling their and other's garbage through other methods of use (disasembling old tools and creating new ones or works of art), then they would rate high on the scale of good (provided their prices aren't prohibitive for lower income familys). An individual could rate high on the scale by volunteering to teach the children or sit in with a teacher, be willing to work for goods and services instead of the paper fixation we have called money.

I'm getting ahead of myself, these are ideas I want to ensure happen in the community. It's sad, but it seems that the only way to insure honesty is to impose laws. I don't want to make people be nice, but I want to make it real expensive to only look out for number one.

If you have any information or ideas on this tax structure, I would love to hear them. I will make lists of ideas and information available, without names unless you specificaly ask to be recognised. In the end however, your name will be on the list of contributors to this community.