Functions of a Tribe

    At its best, a tribe is a small nation. It maintains itself in all the mundane aspects of life, takes care of its own welfare issues, polices and defends itself, and generally manages and governs itself. There are certain necessary functions that will enable the tribe to accomplish these goals.

Individual Initiatives

The first function that a tribe needs is leadership. Individual initiatives will lead to formation, maintenance, and prosperity and progress.

One of the first initiatives that most leaders should address is establishing a profitable business. Traditional employment in the form of the master-servant relationship cannot make a tribe free and independent. A family whose means of support can disappear with two words from one man (“You’re fired!”), cannot be all that it is meant to be. Survival will be the highest priority.

In order to start a family business, the leader should first determine his or her strengths and then match those strengths with a marketable skillset that can be developed. Once the leader has learned enough skills to provide value at a rate higher than the local minimum wage, the leader is ready to study the steps of starting a business and plunge in. While operating the business at startup, the leader continues to develop the requisite skillset, as well as learning more business skills. The business income should snowball as these skills are developed.

As the leader develops the skills of income generation, all members of the tribe should be hired to help in the business. Children can perform many menial tasks, subject to local labor laws. Extended family members can be hired for jobs appropriate to each person’s abilities. Career development is emphasized more than short-term profits. Always improving and optimizing each member’s productivity and skill will ensure that the entire tribe enjoys a continuously up-spiraling standard of living.

In traditional agrarian societies, large families are a blessing because the means of subsistence is labor-intensive. Many hands make light work. Education isn’t required because the chores are relatively simple. In modern urbanite societies, families limit the number of children they have because the common means of support require advanced education and the children have nothing to contribute. The parents in the nuclear family go to work and bring home their paychecks, which they then divide on behalf of the whole family. The traditional family business provides an equalizing principle. Children can become assets instead of liabilities.

On the same line, another initiative is education. Knowledge is power, and information is the currency of the 21^st century. Every member of the tribe should optimize learning skills, get a full general education, and build a library of useful knowledge to help them in their stations and goal pursuits. An entrepreneurial mindset should be fostered in every member, from the youngest to the oldest, so that everyone maximizes the value they create for themselves and others. Again, these things will ensure the highest standard of living for all members.

Along with the ability to earn income, the leader must learn frugal skills to prioritize expenditures and eliminate waste. Only purchase items which maximize Return On Investment. In the worst case, a tribe may be highly productive and one or more members may squander the tribe’s substance through selfish and extravagant purchases, or even gambling. The ability to manage wealth is a pre-requisite to enjoying wealth. If one person cannot manage wealth, every member loses.

Leaders should learn personal self-defense and security measures in order to prevent harm to themselves and their groups. This may include physical defense, the use of legal weapons for self-protection, and the ability to read people and situations in order to avoid conflict. It can also include learning basic legal skills to defend against lawsuits.

The leader must be responsible for the primary health of the tribe. This involves learning first aid and home medicine. It also involves group fitness and exercise, nutrition and food management. It also involves making decisions when it is necessary to call in additional support from professional physicians and other health care professionals.

Insurance

It is common in some modern Western societies for large families to be stereotyped as impoverished, requiring public assistance to survive. This will not be the case if the tribe is large enough and self-sufficient enough to provide its own welfare insurance. The income-producing initiatives above will accomplish most of this, but there are some elements of tribal insurance that require special attention.

Elders are among the most valuable members of a family or tribe. At the end of their lives, they should be maintained in a social and economic environment where they can thrive and contribute optimally. They should want to pass through life’s last stages with their families. They should have every opportunity to pass on their wisdom and experience, and also to pass on the story of the tribe to the newer members. Their care should not be hired out to strangers, and they should not become wards of the state. They are the tribe’s senior leaders.

Health care is one of the single biggest expenses of many families. Every member of the tribe should learn basic first aid and home medicine. Additionally, each tribe should have its own competent general physician. As the tribe grows, there can be more medical specialization. The tribe should also have wellness programs including exercise and nutrition to minimize the need for expensive health-restoring measures.

Employment insurance requires human resources leadership to provide jobs for all who need them. It includes the seven-year internship programs described in Exodus. Biblically, it also involves the institution of gleaning. Members of the tribe who have no personal means of support should be allowed to glean from the abundant blessings of the more affluent. Gleaning includes more than just grain in the field corners. It includes gleaning housing accommodations (abandoned or unused houses or buildings). It includes gleaning manufactured products (seconds or factory scratches). It also involves gleaning services (value-subtracted so as not to impoverish the donors). In these ways the poorest members of the tribe can get their basic needs met while at the same time working to improve their situations.

Force

A tribe must be able to police itself and defend itself. Every member should learn defense techniques. Diplomats and ambassadors can be trained to interface with other tribes without confrontation. The tribal hierarchy consists of captains of tens, captains of fifties, captains of hundreds, and captains of thousands. This hierarchy is elected or appointed to lead the members in defense, policing activities, and security. It also determines judicial matters within the tribe. Ideally, a tribe’s legal and justice system should be based on principles of minimalism. The Bible gives laws for tribes, but too many additional rules and regulations stifle freedoms. With no freedom, the members may as well be other people’s servants.

Management

The last thing a tribe needs for independence and freedom is self-government or management. This implies responsibility. The leadership must gather macro-economic, industrial, and environmental data, among other things, and determine policies that will protect the interests of the tribe without hurting other tribes or the environment.

Management also includes providing for the culture and socialization of the members. Small family clusters should fellowship together frequently, and groups of higher leaders should socialize together to build a network of loyalty within the tribe. This is necessary in order for the tribe to act as a unit in defense, industry, and welfare activities.

Conclusion

The foregoing is a simple overview of the functions that a tribe should be able to fulfill in order to be effective. They are really the same functions that any large group must satisfy. Later articles will cover the above points in greater detail.