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The Economics of a Commune in the Ozarks
- Mizza 8y agoHN seems to like "full economic transparency" posts, so here's another take - the full economic transparency of a functioning live/work commune in the Ozarks. (Full disclosure: a friend's brother is the author of the post, but he doesn't know it's being posted here!)
- LyndsySimon 8y agoThis is really cool. My own ideology is likely incompatible with this sort of living, but I fully support it! I live about 90 minutes SW of East Wind. This truly is one of the most beautiful areas of the country, and a great place to live a rural life.
- ntock 8y ago$630k a year in profit selling nut butter?
- mikekij 8y agoI was blown away by this! At $5 a jar, that’s 10,500 units a year. Or roughly 350 a day. They must have a distribution deal with Whole Foods.
- jonah 8y agoTwo large natural food distributors, UNFI[0] and KeHE[1], carry their products[2] and so they're found in many natural food stores and co-ops around the country. [0] https://www.unfi.com/ https://www.unfi.com/ [1] https://www.kehe.com/brands/ https://www.kehe.com/brands/ [2] https://eastwindnutbutters.com/buy.php https://eastwindnutbutters.com/buy.php
- Mizza 8y agoI was surprised by this as well, they have more information here: https://www.eastwindblog.co/?page_id=409 https://www.eastwindblog.co/?page_id=409 Looks like small-batch-industrial, and their customers are other businesses who make organic health food products containing peanut butter. Apparently they also make sandals: https://www.eastwindblog.co/?page_id=411 https://www.eastwindblog.co/?page_id=411
- oh_sigh 8y agoPeople like nut butters, you know? Justin's Peanut Butter got bought for a quarter billion
- zdw 8y agoA pre-modern large extended family living together that had 3 or 4 generations, with 2-4 older adults, 4-8 younger adults, and however many children would likely have a similar division of labor and economics, albeit without the labor saving advances made in the last few hundred years.
- claydavisss 8y agoA nice read. Somehow I had a misconception that commune-dwellers might not be too invested in quantifying much at all. I'm glad they can make this work for about a hundred or so folks. I wonder what the natural limit for this sort of arrangement is.
- LyndsySimon 8y ago> I wonder what the natural limit for this sort of arrangement is. For communal arrangements like this, I think the generally accepted value is around 200. See "Dunbar's Number": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
- sdenton4 8y agoOr 75,000? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
- jnmandal 8y agoThere is no "generally accepted value" here. Its contentious to say there is a natural limit at all. Dunbar's number also has nothing to do with this type of society. The American Amish community (150k population) is basically an anti-modern religious group which is run on a communal model. Many members of that society live all their lives without meeting each other. As another commenter mentioned, Mondragon in Spain has close to 75k members in its cooperative.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoThe Amish are split up into smaller communities and establish new settlements when density gets too high. The Wikipedia page itself mentions that the Anabaptist Hutterites limit themselves to 150 person groups.
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- opportune 8y agoOnly gripe is that their medical care surely can't be that good relying on natural "medicine". Though of course, they all qualify for medicaid
- throwaway76543 8y agoYes, with a per capita expenditure of $700 it's safe to say they aren't covering any serious illness. "Our costs are low because we have a healthy lifestyle" -- more like the costs are low because no one has any serious illness like cancer.
- jaggederest 8y agoIf you read their FAQ, they essentially cover up to $5k annually in expenses, and expenses beyond that debit from a larger community-organization catastrophic fund maintained for such purposes.
- dahdum 8y agoThey don't reveal the real per capita expenditure for members, they took their total costs and divided by the estimated population (73), of which only a portion receive any benefit.
- Latteland 8y agoI'm sure an active lifestyle leads to less money spent on medical care, but the much larger reason would be the expected youth of their members. All the photos were of apparently younger healthy people. When they start getting older, medical issues will show up and the cost of medical care would skyrocket. Now it's pretty clear to me that in the us we should provide medical care as a basic human right for all citizens. Their annual cost of $686.82 per person is probably less than my monthly cost for a small family.
- peteretep 8y agoThey're been running since the mid-70s; wonder what they do with the old people
- King-Aaron 8y agoThey probably send them off to watch some lovely videos and hear some lovely music in a little room, before being turned into crackers.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoThe cynic in me says that they rejoin normal society. You don't see many old counter-culturals.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoWhen I have my occasional frustrations with tech or the world, this is exactly the sort of place I'd love to escape to! Though I'm probably getting a bit old for dropping out. :)
- toomanybeersies 8y agoWWOOFing [1] is something that you can do for a few weeks or months, in a multitude of different countries. You basically work on an organic farm in exchange for free board and food. It can be difficult if you have a career and obligations (mortgages, loans, etc.) to just drop out for a few months of unpaid work, especially since employers generally aren't huge fans of their staff disappearing for 3 months. Some employers are open to letting their staff take a sabbatical though, so it never hurts to ask if you're actually serious about it. [1] https://wwoofinternational.org/ https://wwoofinternational.org/
- wonderwonder 8y agoYou could always join and keep a remote tech job. If you contribute ~30% of your post tax salary to the commune you are putting in more than the average member and get to enjoy the benefits while maintaining your resume and work history should you ever wish to leave. Seems like a win win for everyone.
- mercutio2 8y agoKeeping a remote tech job is a thrilling prospect for income-sharing communities, because it can easily cover 20% or more of the whole community’s budget. But you can’t join an income-sharing community and “contribute 30% of your post tax salary”. That’s not how it works. It’s an income sharing community. Your income goes to the community, full stop. Occasionally communities avert their eyes and don’t pay too much attention to passive income from investments, letting that income compound without requiring it be contributed to the community. But even that tends to be a source of much tension. Income-sharing is intense. It’s a major commitment (while you’re there; you’re always free to leave).
- socialist_coder 8y agoI feel like this commune is probably a bit of an outlier due to the large success of their nut butter business. I hope I'm wrong, but I am extremely doubtful that other communes have similar economics. Without the profit from their nut butter, what would it look like? Or does maintaining a nice commune basically require you to figure out some kind of profitable business? In that case, maybe it is fairly common because the ones that don't, don't last?
- ada1981 8y agoWe run a $50MM / year cooperative grocery business in the heart of Brooklyn, NY we each work 3 hrs a month. 16,000 members. Been running since the 60s and offers the cheapest and freshest food in NYC. FoodCoop.com
- gph 8y agoThat's not really anything like a commune. It's basically a grocery store you work at for discounts. I don't doubt it quite beneficial and nice, but really doesn't answer anything about the OPs question.
- ada1981 8y agoPark Slope Food Coop is a pretty involved organization and run democratically with a pretty intense culture.. but yes I agree that a commune is a couple orders of magnitude beyond PSFC. There are similarities however and much to be learned. We even have a cash and labor fund to help others start cooperatives.
- boonewheeler 8y agoYou hit the nail on the head. As mercutio2 has been pointing out, there are basically three communities like East Wind in America, and together they form the backbone of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, the FEC. Out of the thousands that started in the 60's and 70's, these survived because they all had and have successful businesses. Furthermore, I'd venture to say that most successful intentional communities run a business. The ones that don't probably rely on outside donations or government assistance.
- socialist_coder 8y agoI've been thinking about some way to have a communal setup like this but on a much smaller scale, and with some of the group working remotely at tech industry programming salaries. So you'd have 2-3 people working remotely in tech, bringing in 100k USD each (low estimate for full time, or maybe they don't want to work full time). Another 4-6 people working in the commune and handling the cooking, maintenance, working the farm/garden, child care, etc. And since it's a commune, the money earned by the remote workers is put into a common pool and used to buy all the food, medical insurance, health care, clothes, etc. The farm would probably provide all the meat and a lot of the vegetables, but you'd still need to buy a lot of other foods. And hopefully, eventually the commune would figure out a successful business and the remote developers could eventually quit and work on the commune as well, if they wanted =) Thoughts?
- taneq 8y agoSounds nice if you can do it and are happy living that lifestyle while carrying a bunch of others financially (and I don't mean to rule it out, I might consider such a thing.) > And hopefully, eventually the commune would figure out a successful business and the remote developers could eventually quit and work on the commune as well, if they wanted =) Who would work at the business? Would the commune eventually turn into an investment bank?
- socialist_coder 8y agoThe business would be worked by whoever was interested in it. You'd have to be splitting the hours between the farm/cooking/childcare and working on the business. I think with 4-6 other members, there would be enough time for both. I am thinking a business that produces something tangible, something along the lines of the nut butter factory. Ideally, it would make use of some part of your commune or the local community. But I suppose an investment bank would work if that was what your other members were interested in =) Heck, maybe the other people want to do tech stuff too and collectively you launch a site or app or something. But with only 4-6 people I think the kind of business really depends on the interests and abilities of the group. > while carrying a bunch of others financially You can think of it like that but I don't think that's really a true sentiment. Think of what you, the tech worker, are getting out of the arrangement: * you get to live on a working farm * organic home cooked meals partially made from your own home grown ingredients * all your meat & eggs are self raised and high quality * your kids are raised on your property by your extended family, and you have babysitters whenever you need it * your SO (who is one of the 4-6 others), who can't find a good job living in the country, becomes more than just a "stay at home parent" and can do fulfilling and interesting things on the farm commune As a solo person, or couple, can you get this by working full time and then paying for it? Sure, you can live in the country, and you can buy all your food from farmers markets, and you can pay for babysitters and childcare, and you might be able to get a similar result, but it just seems more fun if you can do it with some of your close family & friends who have similar ideals.
- riffraff 8y agoThis is an interesting read, but I question one bit: afaik the color of egg yolks is dependent on what hens eat, but there is no direct "eat well -> darker" link. Trivially, you can buy "extra yellow" eggs for the same price of standard eggs. Anecdotally, my father kept free roaming chickens, with extra feed, and he always said maize is what makes eggs yellow (though we say "red" in Italian), compared to a "mixed seeds & beans" feed. Maybe someone knows better.
- dbcurtis 8y agoIt is my understanding that a dark yellow yolk is from the hen grazing on insects and thus getting insect protein instead of pure grain. But I am not a poultry expert. I know a lot more about cattle and hogs. Some of their numbers seemed odd to me. The dairy seems about right — for a standard 305 day lactation 8,000 lbs would be a decent cow, and 10,000 very good. So 35,000 lbs for 4-ish is pretty good and indicates a good feeding plan. The beef and hog finish weights, though, just seem strange. I suspect those are really bad guesses and not actual weights.
- misja111 8y agoThe extra yellow egg yolks are from hens that got food with high carotene content. Also Marigolds are frequently mixed in with the food.
- Loughla 8y agoWe feed cracked corn in the winter - a cheap, high heat food for the birds, and it definitely makes their yolks more yellow. So I'm with you. It's not better living, but just diet.
- socialist_coder 8y agoI wonder what their member churn is like. What's the avg time someone stays?
- dingdingdang 8y agoWould be interested in member churn data too! It's a big quality of life factor when your life is intimately tied to your working environment - something often forgotten when in comes to advocacy of community living.
- Fellshard 8y agoIt's a key note here that the listed economic inputs and outputs neglect to major external dependencies: 1. Externally developed, researched, and applied healthcare. 2. Externally generated and supplied electricity, through what I presume is externally-supplied infrastructure. They're not fully bootstrapping off of merely what they have present, though I won't fault them for it by any means. It's just something to keep in mind.
- Arn_Thor 8y agoI don't see your point. They pay for healthcare and electricity just like any other consumer. They produce and sell to the market, and spend some of the proceeds on health care and electricity. This post illuminates what economic and life style benefits their communal living provides. There's no claim that they would live better totally unconnected from civilization.
- humanrebar 8y agoPresumably they are paying below average tax rates for all definitions of average.
- ttonkytonk 8y agoWhat does that mean?
- humanrebar 8y agoIf everyone grew their own food in communes, the tax base wouldn't be there for Medicaid, highways, etc.
- Arn_Thor 8y agoAs the US healthcare system works, most certainly not. Fortunately there are plenty of alternative models around the world where health care is much more affordable for society
- CalRobert 8y agoIf you're curious, you can see a map of somewhat similar communities here: https://ecovillage.org/projects/map/ https://ecovillage.org/projects/map/ I dislike the term ecovillage as it sounds a bit woo, but the general idea is the same. Contemplated moving to one a few months ago but they were having trouble with planning permission and reed bed wastewater systems.
- KaiserPro 8y agoAs someone who is british, I do find the "commune" thing fascinating. There was a movement in the late 1880s for "settlements" where those of a religious persuasion would raise money to open up a one stop community house (health, food, education etc etc) However that has almost died out. (There are still missions in south london, but they are run for and by the African diaspora, rather than "the poor") To see something similar to those settlements alive today is wonderful. I would be very interested to see what the social dynamic is there, how conflict and big decisions are handled. There a few documentaries on "extreme" communes, but I suspect they are outliers, which is why the TV people were interested in them
- RickJWagner 8y agoSomehow, it makes me happy to read that people live this way.
- ilamont 8y agoHighly recommend the documentary, "Commune," about a still-functioning commune in northern California. https://film.avclub.com/commune-1798202149 https://film.avclub.com/commune-1798202149
- fallingfrog 8y agoIt's interesting to me that if you look at all the surviving communes in the U.S., they all have in common that they have a cottage industry- East Wind has peanut butter, Twin Oaks has tofu and hammocks, Acorn has a mail order heirloom seeds business. It seems like that's what was missing from all those failed communes from the 60's and 70's - you do have to have some kind of interaction with the outside economy, and something valuable to trade, even if it isn't the majority of the economic work the commune does. It's great that they're making this work!
- rossdavidh 8y agoIt occurs to me that the "you need to do some physical labor" part of that might be an effective parasite-repellent. All cooperative endeavors need some method of handling the occasional parasite, because otherwise they will tend to accumulate. If they have to do physical labor, they would, I'm guessing, tend to move on quickly.
- dwiel 8y agoThe Farm in Tennessee as far as I know is a counter example. They definitely interact with the outside economy and have some specialties, but there isn't a centralized business they all contribute towards. Another counter example (though not from the 70s) is Dancing Rabbit. It is 25 years old and doesn't have a centralized business, though people there often do cited difficulty finding work as a problem, and a leading reason to not stick around. Also Earthhaven in NC has no central business and is 23 years old.
- mercutio2 8y agoUsually, in the communities movement, “commune” is a term-of-art for “an income-sharing community”. So, your list doesn’t really reference surviving secular communes. The Farm stopped being an income-sharing commune many decades ago. Now it’s more like a co-housing community, with private ownership or control of most things. Dancing Rabbit’s founding income sharing group disbanded many years ago, but it’s core mission wasn’t about being income sharing, and the community continued just fine without having an income-sharing subcommunity. Earthhaven was never income-sharing, to the best of my knowledge. So I don’t think any of these are really counter-examples; a business that new members can plug into (and a mechanism to exclude free-loaders, which The Farm didn’t really have) are both really important for a long-term successful income-sharing commune.
- _lol 8y agoIn a hypothetical scenario where one of the members has a debilitating chronic illness that requires considerable expense, what would then happen?
- rejoice 8y agoThere's not a lot of information available online about PEACH (Preservation of Equity Accessible for Community Health), but it's a system by which East Wind and other communities pay in for all their members $15/month, and they can access reimbursement for expensive health care events. There's a $5,000 deductible, after which PEACH covers the actual costs of an illness/injury/incident. In the process of setting up PEACH (back in the 80s?), member communities (I think five at the time) paid in a lump sum to start it up. There's a system where a community can pull out their equity if necessary, although the last community to pull out (after their state expanded Medicaid) simply donated it to the general mission of the fund. There's a protection built into PEACH for long-term illness. It covers 90% automatically during the first year (although the formal decision-making body can make this 100%, or even lower the deductible, if that seems necessary). This percentage decreases during the following years, dropping to 0% being automatically covered after 7 years. This is meant to incentivize communities to be internally self-sufficient -- PEACH is meant to protect communities from failing due to unexpected health care costs. The decision-making body (one representative from each community) can easily make any decisions at their whim that doesn't involve spending more than their annual operating budget. We do sometimes spend more than our annual budget because sometimes accidents come in threes or more. PEACH pays for helicopter evacuations, heart attacks, cancer, strokes, bad forestry accidents, complicated childbirth, etc. The capital in PEACH is also lent to member communities in emergencies (e.g., after a major structure fire) and sometimes for investing in community land if it's deemed to be a safe investment.
- vorpalhex 8y agoA few things I notice: + Nobody making food is wearing gloves or hair nets (aside from the one guy making cheese). That's probably not a requirement, but given the amount of food being made and how bad even minor contamination would be, that surprises me. + Any large food operation is going to require a lot of sanitation/cleanliness. They also mention they don't use "anything not natural". I wonder if that extends to bleach and commercial cleaners. + $150 for a discretionary fund to cover cellphone and a car is nothing. That won't cover a single car breakdown. + I wonder how well they will handle a serious medical cost. One person with an autoimmune disease will easily wipe out their cash on hand - as will a chainsaw accident. It's an interesting thing to follow, but I'm happy to be merely an observer.
- mercutio2 8y agoEast Wind members share a pool of community cars, they don’t have to cover expenses like car repairs out of pocket. East Wind’s food businesses, particularly nut butters, are of course inspected and licensed by the health department. Most of the photos you’re seeing are of food production for community consumption. FEC communities have a self-insurance fund to cover catastrophic health costs, and seek state subsidies when available, which they often are for low-income people who live on communes. But you’re right that chronic illnesses that need continuous expensive medical care can be a strain on community finances. The community agrees to cover those expenses.
- ceejayoz 8y ago> The community agrees to cover those expenses. I think a lot of people don't really grasp what that commitment really means. My twins were born three months early, and each cost about a million dollars in NICU services - and they had minimal complications. My family alone would've cost this commune 40 years worth of their current medical care spending just for the first year.
- iandanforth 8y agoOut of curiosity were those the billed costs or the amount paid by the insurer?
- GGScrubs 8y agoDey racist
- golergka 8y agoA wonderful example of what libertarianism and whole small-government conservatism movement is about, and what government communism and socialism is the opposite of. This is a community of people that freely chose to live this way, ready to sustain themselves and to implement any economical or political structure inside of their community. I doubt that anything like that would be possible in heavily regulated european socialistic countries. Truly beautiful what people are able to create on their own.
- milquetoastaf 8y agoEurope is filled with communes. There's a huge one right in Copenhagen. Brussels also has plenty of squats and coops run in a similar fashion.
- mkstowegnv 8y agoAs someone who has spent time at East Wind and Acorn and taken the three week visitor program at Twin Oaks, I hardly know where to begin in disabusing you of the idea that these communities are libertarian. Very few members would self identify as such, and most abhor Hayak style libertarian prescriptions for society as a whole. Members have many motivations for joining but among the most common is wanting to equally share the fruits of their labor - to partially escape the exploitation of their fellow humans that unfettered unregulated capitalism inevitably produces, and which the US social safety net and graduated income taxes in particular only ameliorates inadequately. Twin Oaks publishes an Intentional Communities Directory [1] which has many listings for Europe (which may have more of an available land disadvantage). Twin Oaks has thrived since 1967 [2] and has a very large body of rules and procedures which is one of the ways they free themselves of problem individuals (other communities rely more on shunning which can be quite effective). Generally members are happy, exmembers are glad they lived there, and children are extremely well cared for. As to why there are few (but >0) second generation and lifelong members and as to how the communities coexist with the outside world - as many of them say about their relationship status "it's complicated". 1 https://www.ic.org/directory/ https://www.ic.org/directory/ 2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Oaks_Community,_Virginia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Oaks_Community,_Virgini...
- moreoutput 8y agoReminds me of the book "The Eden Express" -- one bad medical situation can ruin a commune.
- driverdan 8y agoAre there any successful communes like this that are rational and science based? East Wind's focus on the naturalistic fallacy makes it quite unappealing.
- 0x8BADF00D 8y agoI’m also a bit wary of communes in general. The line between a commune and a cult is basically non-existent. For an example of this, I’d highly recommend the Netflix documentary “Wild Wild Country”, which explores a commune gone wrong.
- boonewheeler 8y ago"The line between a commune and a cult is basically non-existent." I'd say this is a stretch. Communes can come in all shapes and sizes. Cults are generally centered around a charismatic leader and lack transparency. FEC communities have no central leader, hold land and property in common, and are income sharing.
- 0x8BADF00D 8y agoIt’s their right to do so b/c of freedom of assembly. But personally, I believe strongly in private property rights. To each his own I suppose.
- paxus 8y agoActually, the distinction between a cult and a commune is quite well established. Cults have these characteristics: 1) It has a living charismatic leader 2) You give them all your money 3) You are kept away from your old friends and family 4) You can’t leave when you might like Communes (at least the FEC communes) do none of these things. For more insight into this see https://funologist.org/2015/06/19/you-are-a-cult-right/ https://funologist.org/2015/06/19/you-are-a-cult-right/
- dv_dt 8y agoIt's a outside the full focus of a commune, but along the continuum, cooperatives are somewhat related. One example of a very successful cooperative is the Mondragon corporation. Revenue in the billions of euros. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
- cascom 8y agoThe math here doesn't seem to make much sense to me (ignoring your own labor costs and imputed rent), but i suppose it makes sense on a super simple cash basis. The back of the envelope math would seem to imply that it costs $17k/person ($6.4k cash + $10.6k Labor (27hrs/week * 7.85/hr * 50 weeks)) PLUS Imputed Rent for their 1,200 acre property (and all the associated infrastructure which could easily be another few thousand dollars a person)
- hiei 8y agoThose living in Portland can check out: http://www.kailashecovillage.org/ http://www.kailashecovillage.org/ in SE Portland (near Reed College). I lived there a few years ago, definitely not the biggest and greatest, but if you want a taste of it I'd check it out and get in touch.
- coopr 8y agoI very much enjoyed living part of my childhood at Findhorn in Scotland, an intentional community with some aspects of a "commune" or collective - https://www.ecovillagefindhorn.com/ https://www.ecovillagefindhorn.com/ and https://www.findhorn.org/faq/ https://www.findhorn.org/faq/