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> What that strongly suggests is communes are just incompatible with human nature. I really don't understand how this conclusion follows from your premises. Ev

> What that strongly suggests is communes are just incompatible with human nature. I really don't understand how this conclusion follows from your premises. Even assuming that you're right and that all US communes failed, what does this have to do with human nature? By the same token you could say that people tried to be gay in Nazi Germany, but they all died, therefore it's against human nature to be gay (maybe my example is a bit strong, but hopefully you get the point).

WalterBright 6y ago
> tried to be gay and getting murdered is not remotely like losing interest in commune life and leaving.
- leto_ii 6y ago
  It seems I didn't get my point across, so here's an explicit statement: The fact that certain human institutions or behaviors face strong opposition in certain contexts doesn't say much about human nature. w.r.t. your example, this would mean that the failure of communes in the US doesn't say much about the failure/success of communes in other places/times. Nor does it say much about human nature in general.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Why wouldn't a diverse society that allows people to freely join and leave communes, and those communes are not successful, say a lot about human nature?
    - leto_ii 6y ago
      Setting the US aside for a bit, how do you explain the success of the kibbutzim movement [1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        Simple. The Israeli government gives them money to make up for their failure to be self-sustaining. Money they tax from the capitalists.
nickpp 6y ago
> incompatible with human nature A commune will inevitably fail if its members are allowed to leave at will. Because individual productivity of people varies, in time the most productive members will grow dissatisfied with the way the rewards are distributed and quit, the commune remaining stuck with the moochers. It is human nature, just like in another great example, the Tragedy of Commons.
- TFYS 6y ago
  Why are the most productive members dissatisfied with the distribution of rewards, though? Is some kind of an ideal distribution part of human nature, or is it maybe learned from the environment you grow up in? If a more equal distribution was the norm in our culture, they might not get dissatisfied.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    People have tried to indoctrinate children with equal distribution. It doesn't work. It doesn't work no matter what the person believes. A simple gedanken experiment will illustrate. You and Bob are stranded on an island. You and Bob agree to form a commune, and share equally in all the food gathered. Bob figures, why work, when TFYS is working hard and will split what he gathers with Bob. Is TFYS going to be dissatisfied that he does all the work and Bob does nothing?
- leto_ii 6y ago
  You have not provided any proof, merely a hypothesis. > It is human nature, just like in another great example, the Tragedy of Commons. As far as I know the commons worked quite well for many centuries, until enclosure that is. Just a brief look at [1] yields: > A commons failure theory, now called tragedy of the commons, originated in the 18th century.In 1833 William Forster Lloyd introduced the concept [...] > However, his argument has been widely criticized, since he is accused of having mistaken the commons, that is, resources held and managed in common by a community, with open access, that is, resources that are open to everyone but where it is difficult to restrict access or to establish rules. In the case of the commons, the community manages and sets the rules of access and use of the resource held in common: the fact of having a commons, then, does not mean that anyone is free to use the resource as they like. Studies by Ostrom and others have shown that managing a resource as a commons often has positive outcomes and avoids the so-called tragedy of the commons, a fact that Hardin overlooked. [...] > While the original work on the tragedy of the commons concept suggested that all commons were doomed to failure, they remain important in the modern world. Work by later economists has found many examples of successful commons, and Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel prize for analysing situations where they operate successfully. For example, Ostrom found that grazing commons in the Swiss Alps have been run successfully for many hundreds of years by the farmers there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons#Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons#Tragedy_of_the_commons

WalterBright 6y ago

> tried to be gay and getting murdered is not remotely like losing interest in commune life and leaving.

leto_ii 6y ago
It seems I didn't get my point across, so here's an explicit statement: The fact that certain human institutions or behaviors face strong opposition in certain contexts doesn't say much about human nature. w.r.t. your example, this would mean that the failure of communes in the US doesn't say much about the failure/success of communes in other places/times. Nor does it say much about human nature in general.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Why wouldn't a diverse society that allows people to freely join and leave communes, and those communes are not successful, say a lot about human nature?
  - leto_ii 6y ago
    Setting the US aside for a bit, how do you explain the success of the kibbutzim movement [1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      Simple. The Israeli government gives them money to make up for their failure to be self-sustaining. Money they tax from the capitalists.

nickpp 6y ago

> incompatible with human nature A commune will inevitably fail if its members are allowed to leave at will. Because individual productivity of people varies, in time the most productive members will grow dissatisfied with the way the rewards are distributed and quit, the commune remaining stuck with the moochers. It is human nature, just like in another great example, the Tragedy of Commons.

TFYS 6y ago
Why are the most productive members dissatisfied with the distribution of rewards, though? Is some kind of an ideal distribution part of human nature, or is it maybe learned from the environment you grow up in? If a more equal distribution was the norm in our culture, they might not get dissatisfied.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  People have tried to indoctrinate children with equal distribution. It doesn't work. It doesn't work no matter what the person believes. A simple gedanken experiment will illustrate. You and Bob are stranded on an island. You and Bob agree to form a commune, and share equally in all the food gathered. Bob figures, why work, when TFYS is working hard and will split what he gathers with Bob. Is TFYS going to be dissatisfied that he does all the work and Bob does nothing?
leto_ii 6y ago
You have not provided any proof, merely a hypothesis. > It is human nature, just like in another great example, the Tragedy of Commons. As far as I know the commons worked quite well for many centuries, until enclosure that is. Just a brief look at [1] yields: > A commons failure theory, now called tragedy of the commons, originated in the 18th century.In 1833 William Forster Lloyd introduced the concept [...] > However, his argument has been widely criticized, since he is accused of having mistaken the commons, that is, resources held and managed in common by a community, with open access, that is, resources that are open to everyone but where it is difficult to restrict access or to establish rules. In the case of the commons, the community manages and sets the rules of access and use of the resource held in common: the fact of having a commons, then, does not mean that anyone is free to use the resource as they like. Studies by Ostrom and others have shown that managing a resource as a commons often has positive outcomes and avoids the so-called tragedy of the commons, a fact that Hardin overlooked. [...] > While the original work on the tragedy of the commons concept suggested that all commons were doomed to failure, they remain important in the modern world. Work by later economists has found many examples of successful commons, and Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel prize for analysing situations where they operate successfully. For example, Ostrom found that grazing commons in the Swiss Alps have been run successfully for many hundreds of years by the farmers there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons#Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons#Tragedy_of_the_commons