The New Atlantis Rules - an explanation.

The rules developed over many years and the last printed version was published in June 1996, and is 22 pages long. the full text is reproduced within this system.

These you will find are the rules of a new virtual country, rather than a club. We have been severely restricted by being based in the UK, where those who run red tape and the authorities fear generally what they do not understand, and have not been helpful to our objectives.

Clearly in the longer term we need to move our administration to a more friendly place, where other views are allowed more freely. 

The first major blow after the publication of the rules was a letter from the UK authorities threatening to prosecute us if we launched the Bargain and Barter club, and introduced favors. The reason given was not the potential loss in tax revenue, but that we would be encouraging people under 18 to become involved in credit transactions. There are of course many small barter clubs in the UK and apparently they don't present the same threat.

The British legal system being slow, unpredictable and expensive, did not make it sensible to proceed.

For similar reasons we have not promoted the New Atlantis University of Life outside the club network as we were tipped off that the authorities might have a go at us for operating an unapproved university, and although we were unable to find any legislation we would be offending we decided to avoid conflict.

A branch structure based on cells and communities was introduced at the beginning of 1997 to bring a lot of the administration back to nearer members and at the same time subscriptions for citizens was eliminated but not for clubs. The president then decreed that cells and communities should have more control over some levels of honors and local structures.