✅ Micro-Utopia Growth Rule (Base Level)

Starting size: ~150 people
Maximum size before split: ~280 people
Action at 280: The village peacefully buds into two autonomous micro-utopias.

✅ Why 150 People? (“The Dunbar Foundation”)

The framework borrows from Dunbar’s cognitive limit:

• At ~150 people,
  individuals can still know everyone else personally.

• Trust, reputation, conflict resolution, and shared identity remain natural and effortless.

• Formal governance is unnecessary; norms govern behavior.

This is the ideal starting size for a stable micro-utopia.

✅ Why Split at ~280 People?

The framework sets 280 as the pre-split threshold for two reasons:

1. Beyond ~250–300, informal social cohesion breaks down

• Tribal-size anthropological data

• Cohousing and eco-village research

• Historical monastic and communal precedent

At 280 people:

• Clusters start forming

• Reputation systems weaken

• Norm enforcement must become formal → which the model wants to avoid

2. Splitting is easier before stress appears

Papageorgiou’s framework emphasizes preventative decentralization:

• Communities split while everything is still functional

• Leadership roles rotate smoothly

• Volunteers form the “seed group” for the new micro-utopia

• No factionalism because the split is pre-planned, normalized, and celebrated

✅ What Happens After a Split?

After reaching 280 people:

• The federation organizes a peaceful, celebratory partition

• Parent and child communities remain equal and autonomous

• Shared customs and networks remain intact

• Cultural divergence is welcomed but never forced

• Each new micro-utopia returns to ~150–160 people and grows again naturally

This creates organic, fractal expansion:

1 → 2 → 4 → 8 → 16 → …
Each genetically connected but socially independent.

📚 How This Feeds Into Federations

Once you have many micro-utopias, they form a federation.

A federation:

• CANNOT exceed 25,000 people

• MUST split into two federations when nearing that size

• Uses the same peaceful-division logic as villages → but scaled up

This keeps every layer human-scale and prevents governance complexity from evolving into government.

⚡ Summary