Sometimes when we are pushed to ground zero we have no option but rebuild from the scratch. But it does always have to be that way. Crashing buildings can cause loss of lives while crashing economy can cause loss of livelihood. Both are no good. 

Healthy individuals make healthy families. Healthy families make healthy communities.

The biblical model adopts a bottom-up way of building communities rather than the top-down government-based programs and models. God called and set apart the Jewish people and gave them the laws. Their communities were built to be self-sustainable with no lack of provisions and serving each other in every nation they lived. Until 300 A.D, the early church that came of out of the Jewish community model adopted a communal economy approach as the Jewish people. Later when Emperor Constantine became a Christian, the Christian communities transitioned to a papal and hierarchy structure coming from a Roman tradition. Fast forwarding 1700 years, today there are numerous Christian churches that are both traditional and non-traditional.

However, today the prevalent churches have increasingly adopted a corporate model similar to how corporations are run, except with the non-profit status. The organic healthy growth of the first few centuries the church had amidst persecution eroded gradually to a power and money based structure. Since the first century church we have been jumping from papacy to hierarchy to corporate structure of organizational structures and hardly considered the basic structure and features of the community model.

 A similar reevaluation of the current economic models

Since the 2008 financial crisis, there are been several initiatives from capitalism to libertarian to socialist schools to revamp the economic failures and put checks and balances in place. Most such initiatives have been addressing economy from a macro level. We talk about lean companies but is there such thing as a lean economy? If there is such a thing can it address some of the cyclical economic downturns and crashes that keep visiting us? Can a lean economic system address the fundamental issues rather than the economic or banking cycles? If there is such a thing as lean economic system it can always be tried not on a national scale but in a smaller community of some commonality. How can we address the production, logistics and exchange for goods and services of local communities? Such a system can help develop a rural community, advanced community and even serve communities during times of disaster or economic crises. 

Family and Community

People within a family or household generally do not buy and sell goods from one other rather share and serve one another. The same economic structure can be translated to a larger community within smaller units of geographic regions for communities that can function with elements of family dynamics but with an extended economic activities. Such communities can be self-sustainable and share economic value. Trading of goods and services are exchanged within people living in close proximity than remotely. Thus when quality transactions take place increasingly between the community members the local communities thrive and become self-sustainable.

A healthy community is not a place for just trade but also an environment for growth and nurturing where the needs of weak members are met holistically. The spiritual, physical and emotional needs can be met locally through deeper understanding of self-sustainable communities that existed during the first few centuries of the first Christian church. They are better than governments programs that are essentially nothing but quick fixes not addressing the dynamics of a healthy local economy in a community setting.

A community can be defined as an extension of a family economic structure that is united to economically thrive together. It does not have to be a local church. It can be an interest group or people from the same town or city that wish to transact and develop the demand and supply of goods and services locally. The SMBEx system is designed for communities which is about 10,000 people(say an average school district size in the U.S which is about 3,500). Geographically they can be within a land area equivalent from 3.5 square miles to 6 square kilometers.

Making money versus making an economy

• In the traditional economic thinking that most are familiar with, making money is through bringing in value through a private or social enterprise or serving through government facilities.
• The two common routes is bringing value as employees to a company or creating new value as entrepreneurs.
• Any undertaking to create value takes different types of resources.
• The currency of the existing monetary system, say dollar in the case of the US, is the common medium to attract resources whether raw materials or labor.
• Money also has a transactional unit that has the capacity to aggregate and diversify resources as needed. Money is the widely accepted means to grow value.

The legal entities involved in value creation in an economy can be in three broad categories.

• A corporation or business entity is setup to translate the value creation into profit-making.
• A non-profit or charity is when an entity’s sole purpose is to bring service without an intention of profit.
• A governmental or regulatory entity creates value by executing, legislating or regulating a system of group of people or community.

Most of the value creation happens within the common framework of for-profit, non-profit and government agencies. There are accounting standards developed to monitor money flow in each of these different categories.

SMBEx system is beyond a money making mechanism within a private or social sector. It is a model to grow a local economy within an larger economy. It is a distributed network of community members in a local community transacting with each other. It leverages the resources within a community by its community members to be self-sustainable and self-sufficient. It streamlines the economic flow of goods and services by sourcing, aggregating and distributing through communities locally and remotely.