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Not to say I disagree with you, but is the level of commitment different from the commune in the original post? I feel like its pretty similar, and that commune

Not to say I disagree with you, but is the level of commitment different from the commune in the original post? I feel like its pretty similar, and that commune has been able to thrive.

barry-cotter 8y ago
If you want the commune to function as a commune, from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs, yes it is. People change and their life circumstances change. They have children and they are much more motivated to provide for theirs than to provide for those of their commune mates. Some people are much more productive than others and with the best will in the world, not always available, they get tired of putting in more than an equal share and getting out an equal one. You don’t get celibate quasi-monastic communities outside religious ones and those are the only examples I’m aware of that perpetuate themselves across generations in a strict communal fashion. Even with multigenerational religious communities they don’t generally share a large portion of property communally. The Hutterites, Amish and similar groups function as communities with strong norms, a great deal of community self help and group decision making but most property is held at the household level. And they generally fission somewhere between 50 and 100 families when coordination problems and group communication gets unwieldy. If the commune does ninetieth percentile well they’ll keep drama and internal feuding to a minimum, with no one “stealing” anyone else’s spouse and it’ll eventually turn into a co-op with most people holding a lot of individual property.
mercutio2 8y ago
The most long-term successful secular income-sharing communities have been the ones that: A) Chose to be large. Small groups can have a harder time weathering a single bad experience, and have trouble maintaining social dynamism for varied age cohorts B) Had strong enough systems to exclude free loaders. Everyone’s approach to this differs, but it’s a pre-condition to giving everyone a sense of common ownership and avoiding resentment C) Found a meaningful business into which new members could be trained relatively easily and that people don’t hate. Programming is unfortunately not a skill that’s easy to teach to sizable fractions of people joining communes, and lots of the people who are attracted to communes want to spend less time on a computer, not more
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  Can you give some examples please?
  - mercutio2 8y ago
    Sure! The communities I'm familiar with are all part of the FEC [0]. There may be other successful longstanding secular communes, but I'm not familiar with others that are still around. - Twin Oaks: Founded in 1967, tofu and hammocks, large [1] - Sandhill: Founded in 1974, sorghum, tiny [2] - East Wind: Founded in 1974, nut butters, large [3] - Acorn: Founded in 1993, heirloom seeds, medium [4] Of these, they've all got longstanding businesses which new people can easily plug into. Sandhill is the only exception to the "needs to be pretty big" idea, they had the same small group of very longstanding members for decades and then had turnover recently. Hopefully the new group will make it through, but it's never certain with small groups. Sandhill also has had Dancing Rabbit next door for the last 20 years, which is large enough to provide a lot of social support that other small communities haven't had. A similar dynamic happened with Acorn as it was getting off the ground down the road from Twin Oaks. [0] http://www.thefec.org/ http://www.thefec.org/ [1] https://www.twinoaks.org/ https://www.twinoaks.org/ [2] https://sandhillfarm.org/ https://sandhillfarm.org/ [3] https://www.eastwindblog.co/ https://www.eastwindblog.co/ [4] http://www.acorncommunity.org/ http://www.acorncommunity.org/
    - socialist_coder 8y ago
      You are a wealth of information on this topic! I'd like to talk about one of the things you said earlier: > Had strong enough systems to exclude free loaders It does seem like one of the challenges of any "pure" commune would be feelings of contempt for people that you don't feel like are pulling their own weight. Care to talk more about that aspect? What are the systems that you've seen to prevent that? I feel like you'll never stop some people from "free loading", like if someone is just lazy and does the bare minimum and the quality of the their work is always pretty low, but otherwise they are a great person and a lot of fun to be around - how do you handle that type of situation? Is it more about creating systems that measure their output and make sure its enough? Or creating systems that prevent other people from feeling contempt towards that person?

Not to say I disagree with you, but is the level of commitment different from the commune in the original post? I feel like its pretty similar, and that commune has been able to thrive.

barry-cotter 8y ago

If you want the commune to function as a commune, from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs, yes it is. People change and their life circumstances change. They have children and they are much more motivated to provide for theirs than to provide for those of their commune mates. Some people are much more productive than others and with the best will in the world, not always available, they get tired of putting in more than an equal share and getting out an equal one. You don’t get celibate quasi-monastic communities outside religious ones and those are the only examples I’m aware of that perpetuate themselves across generations in a strict communal fashion. Even with multigenerational religious communities they don’t generally share a large portion of property communally. The Hutterites, Amish and similar groups function as communities with strong norms, a great deal of community self help and group decision making but most property is held at the household level. And they generally fission somewhere between 50 and 100 families when coordination problems and group communication gets unwieldy. If the commune does ninetieth percentile well they’ll keep drama and internal feuding to a minimum, with no one “stealing” anyone else’s spouse and it’ll eventually turn into a co-op with most people holding a lot of individual property.

mercutio2 8y ago

The most long-term successful secular income-sharing communities have been the ones that: A) Chose to be large. Small groups can have a harder time weathering a single bad experience, and have trouble maintaining social dynamism for varied age cohorts B) Had strong enough systems to exclude free loaders. Everyone’s approach to this differs, but it’s a pre-condition to giving everyone a sense of common ownership and avoiding resentment C) Found a meaningful business into which new members could be trained relatively easily and that people don’t hate. Programming is unfortunately not a skill that’s easy to teach to sizable fractions of people joining communes, and lots of the people who are attracted to communes want to spend less time on a computer, not more

barry-cotter 8y ago
Can you give some examples please?
- mercutio2 8y ago
  Sure! The communities I'm familiar with are all part of the FEC [0]. There may be other successful longstanding secular communes, but I'm not familiar with others that are still around. - Twin Oaks: Founded in 1967, tofu and hammocks, large [1] - Sandhill: Founded in 1974, sorghum, tiny [2] - East Wind: Founded in 1974, nut butters, large [3] - Acorn: Founded in 1993, heirloom seeds, medium [4] Of these, they've all got longstanding businesses which new people can easily plug into. Sandhill is the only exception to the "needs to be pretty big" idea, they had the same small group of very longstanding members for decades and then had turnover recently. Hopefully the new group will make it through, but it's never certain with small groups. Sandhill also has had Dancing Rabbit next door for the last 20 years, which is large enough to provide a lot of social support that other small communities haven't had. A similar dynamic happened with Acorn as it was getting off the ground down the road from Twin Oaks. [0] http://www.thefec.org/ http://www.thefec.org/ [1] https://www.twinoaks.org/ https://www.twinoaks.org/ [2] https://sandhillfarm.org/ https://sandhillfarm.org/ [3] https://www.eastwindblog.co/ https://www.eastwindblog.co/ [4] http://www.acorncommunity.org/ http://www.acorncommunity.org/
  - socialist_coder 8y ago
    You are a wealth of information on this topic! I'd like to talk about one of the things you said earlier: > Had strong enough systems to exclude free loaders It does seem like one of the challenges of any "pure" commune would be feelings of contempt for people that you don't feel like are pulling their own weight. Care to talk more about that aspect? What are the systems that you've seen to prevent that? I feel like you'll never stop some people from "free loading", like if someone is just lazy and does the bare minimum and the quality of the their work is always pretty low, but otherwise they are a great person and a lot of fun to be around - how do you handle that type of situation? Is it more about creating systems that measure their output and make sure its enough? Or creating systems that prevent other people from feeling contempt towards that person?