Traiders:UnityVille

This small town in rural Utah is a prototype Hive State community. All of the essential business of the community is organized through cooperative businesses owned and operated by the workers. Farms and houses are privately owned but usually mortgaged by the UnityVille Credit Union. This system is often referred to as the United Order after similar systems used to build communities in the 19th Century.

The Town

The center of UnityVille is the StakeHouse which serves as a chapel, commons, school, sports arena, and marketplace. The UnityVille StakeHouse Family Research Center is a computer lab connected to The Dalles network, AlohaNet and other electronic communication networks. The StakeHouse's parking lot (built before the collapse of the global economy was complete) has been replaced by the Fabratory, a corrogated sheet metal building filled with equipment for fabricating almost any kind of gadget or performing almost any kind of chemical or biological analysis an engineer, farmer or doctor could need.

Also near the center of town is the Bishop's Storehouse coop store, the Endowment House where the Church holds private weddings and initiation ceremonies, and the Al Fresco Buffet, a popular family restaurant and the only business in UnityVille which sells alcohol. This is mainly because most people in UnityVille don't drink. Prohibitions on the sale of alcohol in this region are significantly less strict after the collapse of the global economy.

Around this business, social and industrial core is a residential area resembling a pre-collapse suburb. Every citizen of UnityVille owns a home in this area even if they work on a farm some distance from town. The roads in and out of UnityVille have been dynamited and barricaded, since they are no longer maintained by the state or federal government and serve only to encourage attacks by road gangs.

Culture and Business

There is some trade in material goods by planes and lighter-than-air vehicles, but UnityVille meets most of it's needs from local agriculture and tribute from nearby dependent farms. UnityVille is actively involved in materials reseach and exports a small amount of high quality textile products and mechanical components. The town is widely known for it's trademark white shirts and bicycle parts.

About 70% of the population are native English speakers, and most of the others speak Spanish as their first language. Both languages are taught in UnityVille's schools and almost everyone living in the town can speak either language if necessary. While the majority of UnityVille's residents are Church members, many are Roman Catholic and a few belong to other religions or none at all. Unlike the religious tolerance of Christian America, Hive State culture also respects the right of people to not worship any god at all. A Buddhist monastery in the mountains near UnityVille recieves some support from the charity of UnityVille residents, although none of the residents are Buddhists themselves. Most of the monks are English speaking Americans of predominately European extraction.

The Church hierarchy in UnityVille consists primarily of a local executive called the stake president, several bishops who preside over areas of the town called wards, their various counsellors, clerks and commitees. In contrast to older Church traditions, many bishops today are women, and some women in the community practise polyandry, where a woman will be simultaneously married to more than one man, usually to reduce the number of descendents dividing up inherited property. (Polygyny - where a man has more than one wife - is still not sanctioned by the Church, and is not considered compatible with the operation of Hive State communities.)

UnityVille is the first Hive State community to apply for membership in the IACC. UnityVille hopes that IACC will be able to provide them with credit and favorable trading terms to help build up their local industries. However, the IACC has some concerns about the influence of the Church over the local coops and whether the UnityVille workers understand the democratic principles of cooperation.

Security

UnityVille's relative isolation is the town's best defense and biggest weakness. The last war that any significant part of the population saw was the occupation of Iraq at the beginning of the 21st century, so they are largely unfamiliar with 4th generation warfare. Aside from a few hunters most citizens of UnityVille don't even own a firearm and couldn't hit the broadside of a barn if their life depended on it. Fortunately this hasn't been necessary. Yet.