Ownership of land is power.

I, Ludwig Leòdhas Otter, own Rubha Phoil. My name is on the deeds and therefore I currently have all the power. I decide who gets to live here, who visits, what we grow, what we do with the Rock and so on.

But this is not a real community

No matter how hard I try to be different to other communities, so long as I remain the owner, we always will end up with a flavour of landlordism.
The Rubha Phoil community needs to be truly different.
For many years I have studied how other communities do power sharing (or not as it may be).
None that I visit seem to have found the solution that I am looking for. As long as ownership and the power that goes alongside that plays a significant role, it never seems to be fully successful. Even when people own their own little bit of land, there is a problem: the more successful the community becomes, the more valuable that bit of land becomes in money terms.
This creates an incentive to sell up to the highest bidder and before you know it the community ends up with privileged owners only.
Who, sorry to say, often do not have the skills or the time or the energy needed to work the land.

So what am I proposing?

The only way forward I can see is to take ownership completely out of the picture and at the same time transfer the decision-making power to the people who have the most vested interest in the Rock being successful: the people who live on Rubha Phoil, those who haver invested in it or have a business on it.

How to dissolve ownership and pass it to the community?

It has taken me a while to figure out but..
we have a plan

Power: We have created a social enterprise that will control the decision-making power in the community and on the Rock: it’s called Rubha Phoil regenerative community CIC. Through this CIC, all residents,major business owners and investors can become a director and have a vote of decision-making power.

Ownership: The solution is to lock up ownership in a ‘legal vault’ and throw away the key so it can never be sold again.

How do we intend to do that?

We are going to split ownership in 200, 000 parts. We will create a treasury that issues a real asset-backed currency: 200,000 Rubha Rocks. That currency functions much like company shares. If you buy a Rubha Rock (RR) you buy a share of the ownership of Rubha Phoil.
This is not a digital currency that is affected by market influences. It is a real currency, more real even than the £, as it is backed by the actual property value of Rubha Phoil.

At the moment the property value is estimated to be around £1,500,000. As we build more homes and infrastructure and businesses, deepen the soil, grow crops, increase biodiversity and well-being on Rubha Phoil that value will rise.

You’ll own a part of Rubha Phoil AND have a voice.

Owning RR’s gives you power of decision-making. Trading RR’s by buying and selling goods and services on our Virtual Village, measured by our algorithm in the background, gives you even more power.

After all when you earn and spend RR’s you are creating wealth and wellbeing and that needs to be encouraged and rewarded by amplifying your voice. Decision-making power needs to remain in the hands of people who have a vested interest in its success- the people who live on and work the land or have a successful business on it.

This system is designed to operate like an ecosystem. Ecosystems are, after all, the most efficient systems there are. It is a diverse network of mutually-beneficial relationships that are able to adapt well to change. Our system too is designed to create a positive feedback loop which can only result in the value of the RR going up and up!

We all benefit!

We have our design for our spiral of abundance that I have been talking about so much!

We’re not quite there yet though.

In the previous campaigns that we ran on this platform, you can see that I didn’t pay for the property like other people buy property. I bought Rubha Phoil with crowdloans. I borrowed lots of small amounts of money from lots of supporters, friends and family. I have also had to borrow more money to pay for upgrading the infrastructure and cover other ongoing costs.

Before I can give away ownership to the community, I need to pay these loans back.

All we need is the last £50,000

In total, I owe £200,000 but I only need to raise the last £50,000 because the other lenders are happy to transfer their loans into Rubha Rocks. They have realised that their investment will rise in value and want to take advantage of that. After all, Rubha Phoil is worth much more than £200,000. Informal valuations from professionals have pointed towards 7-figure sums!
So,
The last step is to raise £50,000. Then I can create a Trust to own the property and the Trust is then in a position to create a treasury to turn Rubha Rocks into a real currency.

We will then give the next 150,000RR to the other lenders and all the debt is cleared.

Then we can unpeg the RR’s from the £ and the real value of the RR becomes apparent!

From then on, the ownership of Rubha Phoil and the power over Rubha Phoil belongs to you!

If you own and use Rubha Rocks that is!

So don’t hesitate and invest now.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page or use the sidebar for smaller amounts.

For larger amounts above £100, please join the Virtual Village first and buy your Rubha Rocks there. We will then add an extra 3% to your account.

Please note that you will also need to create a membership on our Virtual Village. We will give you a discount code so that you can become a member for just £1.You can also buy your Rubha Rocks on the Virtual Village, where we offer interesting deals.

Please note that currently Rubha Rocks are not yet a currency. Legally they are credit obligations. They will become a real asset-backed currency once we have been successful in our campaign.
You can see the full terms and conditions of the Rubha Rocks here.

What is the risk?

You will be able to sell your Rubha Rocks to anyone on the Virtual Village or in the community for any price, in any currency.
The worst case scenario is that if the Rubha Phoil project fails and we have to sell Rubha Phoil to someone in £’s for £1,500,000 or more, we will have plenty of money to refund you. Please be assured that we fail to see any scenario in which the value of Rubha Phoil drops below £200,000 since that is the value of the existing house on Rubha Phoil alone. And, Rubha Phoil has so many more assets than that.

Become an honorary member of Rubha Phoil’s Virtual village!

If you contribute £100 to this crowdfund, we will make you a very special member of our Virtual Village!
– We will celebrate your contribution by giving you a special icon behind your name!
– If you want to, we will list you or your business as a sponsor on this web page.
– You will have 5% off all purchases in our shop on our virtual Village for 2 years! (only for everything Rubha Phoil sells. This includes holidays. It does not include the items other shops sell on the Virtual Marketplace)
– Free access to the Nature Connection Group
– A free 1 hour permaculture consultation with Otter (Ludwig)

Become a business sponsor!*

You will get all the perks of an honorary member, plus!
– If you want to, we will host you and your logo on our Rubha Phoil website as a sponsor!
– We offer an option to give you a shop in our Virtual Village and thus give you access to sell your good and services to our visitors!

*We will only accept sponsorship from businesses that fit into the Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share ethics. Aka, are you part of the solution, you are welcome!

Other ways you can support us:

We are proud to be able to offer our own educational and inspiring permaculture principle products, created with the help of many volunteers and with the artwork of Suzanne Birch.

• 12 uniquely designed permaculture principle postcards

   
  Here is one of the cards: Rubha Phoil Postcard of permaculture principle 4: Apply self-regulation & accept feedback. Each of the 12 cards is just as beautiful as the other.
  Includes free worldwide postage costs.

• 12 permaculture principle birthday calendars

   
  This is the front page of the Rubha Phoil permaculture principles Calender. Each month shows a new principle with a little explanation about the principle.
  Includes free worldwide postage costs.

• Buy a heart stone

  This rock is one billion years old! Much older than life on our planet. It is recycled rock from the oldest rock on the planet: Lewisian Gneiss. It was first formed 3 billion years old and then mangled and remelted under intense pressure and heat deep under the earth’s crust for a very long time into the rock it is now. It has been shaped by massive geological forces, ice ages and waves for thousands of years into the perfect shape it is now. It once was part of the Rock Rubha Phoil. It has been carefully selected for it’s beauty by us on our beach here at Rubha Phoil.

  Really proud to be able to offer this stone to you. It is painted by Rosie Balyuzi, an amazing artist who lives in Findhorn Village. Rosie is also the person who inspired the heart stone initially.
  

  Art by Rosie Balyuzi

  This ancient rock is useful in the same way as the heart stones described on this page: Heart 2 Heart communication.

• Can you give us a loan?

  If you have a little bit of money that is not doing much at the moment and you would like to allow us to use it for one year to create resilience and community, please do get in touch.
  You can contact us here: www.rubhaphoil.org/contact.
  We offer
  – A choice of interest between 0-7% p/a
  – An officially, registered contract that guarantees repayment as best as lawfully possible, written by solicitors. The contract will be registered officially by the Registry Of Scotland, to avoid any possible dispute.
  – My (Ludwig Appeltans’) personal guarantee that you will get your money back. I have lots of good friends who are happy to testify that I am true to my word. The land would be collateral to guarantee your repayment. The land is not used as collateral in any other transactions.
  It is good to know that the total value of the loans is not more than 10% of the property value and that we can sell one of our house plots to repay the loans, should that be needed.
  – We are raising £10,000 more than we need to enable us to organise emergency repayments, should you need your money back in a hurry.
  – We can keep your loan anonymous or credit you, your organisation or company as you wish.
  If you want to talk about additional conditions, let’s have a chat.