Active Projects
Water Management Las Vegas/S. NV
Nowhere are the issues with our archaic and inefficient government system more clear than in the struggle about Colorado River water and water usage in Las Vegas. Nothing is more vital to each of us. Local and state government have become ever more draconian: deciding what we will do with our own land and our own money, and now with water to a degree that they can simply shut down your home's water if they decide to. This is unacceptable. Water is a common good, like air, like land. Not only is it immoral to make profit off of claiming or selling it, (or to divert it to private people who, for example, run farms for alfalfa in AZ to sell to Saudis or to grow water-intensive non-native monoculture crops in California to sell back to us at huge profits), but misusing it as it has been can actually lead to the end of Las Vegas. This connects to the core ideas about land ownership and government that are going to remain massive challenges to this entire issue until we're willing to look at the basic questions involved. For more context, see the other projects and articles on this site about composting, local farming, and land ownership.
F1 Crisis
F1 is actually harming Las Vegas directly with its showpiece: * Wasting millions of commuting hours for LV residents * Turning off convention planners and tourists with construction that lasts from Sep-Dec on the strip. Killing tourist income and actually endangering the long-term viability of Las Vegas, if trends continue. * Shutting down the actual LV strip for multiple days to turn it into a party for the rich, instead of a shared event for all who visit and live in Vegas (as most of Vegas was for decades) * Handing our actual cash and tax breaks to a giant public company (instead of CHARGING it to use Las Vegas streets-paid for by the people of Las Vegas and visitors) The whole management of F1 shows what is broken and backward in the city. If F1 can't be fixed to serve the city, it will be a harbinger of many other decisions being made at the people at the top that will harm our city over time.
Re-greening Las Vegas
From the time of the first settlers up until the mid-2000s, people in Las Vegas had been trying to build an oasis in the desert. Using the water resources and what they knew, they were trying to create more green life and livability in Las Vegas. However... in the past five years, due to NGOs, tax-free foundations funded by billionaires, United Nations initiatives, and confusing, contradictory and frankly hypocritical practices, Las Vegas has been losing green at an alarming rate. Not just grass, but trees as well. This is not just making Las Vegas less beautiful, it's also jeopardizing Las Vegas' ability to viably continue. The secret to an abundant Las Vegas is not less green, but more green. Re-greening initiatives all over the world proved that deserts can be reclaimed and made green with improvements to local rainfall, cooling, and agricultural production. From cutting down the sacred trees in front of Bellagio to make way for F1, to paying citizens to remove their grass, there has been a war on life in Las Vegas, starting with the most vulnerable form of life: plant life. Meanwhile, the water from the Colorado River is used by: * private corporations to grow alfalfa in desert Arizona to sell to Saudi Arabia in some sort of strange arrangement * private corporate farmers to grow crops in the California desert that are then sold for extreme profit that otherwise could not grow there And, Las Vegas has a very tiny allotment of Colorado water which it doesn't even use completely. If we want Vegas to last, we need to think differently about green spaces, water, waste, and our own food production. We are looking for people who want to roll back the process of desertifying Vegas to make it blossom once again. Join the site and use the contact form if you'd like to get involved. Related: - Composting Vegas - Las Vegas community farming - Las Vegas water usage
Money in Las Vegas
Las Vegas has always been a cash town. Casino chips were another alternative form of currency, largely outside the purview of governments. We know the government doesn't care about stopping drugs because they don't actually stop banks or punish banks who actively support and profit from the drug trade. Now we know that they're involved in child sexual abuse and worse. There have been many attempts to create an honest financial system that have all been crushed. One of the most notable: e-gold.com, crushed in the 00's. If we continue using the money created by evil, we will associate it with ourselves. We must find other solutions. Join this group if you want to be part of the solution.
ID and Reputation Management
For a long time now, Who you are is decided by the government. Whether you can be trusted is decided by the credit agencies, with background checks of criminal Justice Records. But the truth is that most of us don't know if we can trust our neighbors or the homeless guy who's asking for money. Or anyone. (The people at the very top of the food chain are literally using us for food, it seems. At least energetically.) So how do we know whether to trust each other? We have started a project: id.healvegas.org Voluntary Decentralized Identification and Reputation Management for all of us. Feel free to join if you're interested.
Las Vegas Compost (?!?)
Should Las Vegas be composting all of its food waste to create new farmland? If it did so, how much new rich soil could we create per year? I asked AI and the results were astonishing. This contributes to local food production as well.
Las Vegas Food Self-Sufficiency
Las Vegas should add farms and encourage local food production. Why? * Both for the health and quality of food to people living in and visiting Las Vegas * To reduce intake of poisons, pesticides, chemicals, herbicides, and other additives and preservatives in the food that's sold by mega corporations * To reduce dependence on the food-industrial complex (including foreign/Chinese-owned meat and other food companies) for food security. * Local farms could also help solve unemployment issues
Land Management and Stewardship Overhaul
Land is often misused in Las Vegas as a financial vehicle instead of a common tool to make life better for everyone. When land becomes a lever of speculation and wealth creation from nothing, based upon the improvements paid for by all, this represents a fundamental injustice which cannot exist in a truly happy or prosperous society. If we want Las Vegas to be prosperous and free, we are going to need to reconsider our structures and incentives about our attitude to land and it's improvements.
Local Casino Ownership
Casinos are owned by... public companies, and run from the coasts. The money is siphoned out. and the debt is left with the bankrupted shell corporations. Now, not even the land is owned by the casinos themselves. Greed is killing Vegas tourism. Can we create ownership by those who actually work in the casinos? I believe we can. There are precedents for this.
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