I'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 =)
If you are in North America, you should try getting in touch with the Federation of Egalitarian Communities [0]. It’s a very tight-knit network of exclusively income-sharing, democratic, secular modern communities which includes East Wind (the subject of the article) and Twin Oaks (the earliest FEC community, from which many other communities have sprung).
The FEC has frequent meetings, practices labor exchange between their communities, and generally will enthusiastically help you understand historical approaches to income-sharing, and help you build systems and structures of your own.
Be aware they will generally recommend that you try living in an existing income-sharing community for a year to get a handle on community dynamics and systems before you go off and found your own new community. New communities have a habit of falling apart because of either poor systems, or founder-syndrome where the founder wants to be egalitarian, but is so invested in their dream that they alienate their allies by refusing to let go and trust other people.
Also, people who want to join income-sharing communities tend to range from very- to extremely-anti-authoritarian. This can be hard for founders, who are trying to get stuff done and think they can keep doing things they way they did when they got started.
So founding is hard, you really need good systems, good co-founding community members, and the ability to detach and trust-but-verify the energetic but unproven new members that will inevitably make or break your community.
Doctorow tackled this in "Walkaway," a novel that takes the commune concept all the way to the end - what if the only form of community organization on the planet was the commune?
They often used Wikis and other distributed messaging platforms to trade tips. It was really fascinating to read.
I’m all for this and am actively working towards it! I’m a robotics engineer and I want to live in a partially automated commune with some like minded people. I think there are real mental, economic, and ecological benefits to living this way.
There are many other people interested in this. One enthusiastic online community I’ve found is this one:
https://tkcooptech.tumblr.com/
They have a discord I can invite you to if you email me (see profile).
Finally see my discussion site on building automated societies at http://reboot.love
I believe the reboot concepts (more developed in my head than in my writing) can extend to whole cities and beyond. I think smaller communes could popularize the ideas and free up some people to be more politically active. The small communes would be a vanguard but the goal is to reach everyone, not just rich techies who want to unplug.
I’m working on a similar project. We acquired our first land in Panama (http://Majagual.org)
We also are planning an alt-school system in which instead of going to college, you and 100 other students boot up a cooperative eco-village that you own outright. You’ve got food, shelter and community handled with no loans and then you can focus on other projects, research, etc.
Imagine running this coop with automation and robotics. You could free up more time while increasing the lifestyle of the members.
And of course, I already co-own a $50MM cooperative grocery store with about 16,000 others in NYC (FoodCoop.com)
Depending on your budget you can get a helicopter ride for a few hundred dollars or you can hop on a fishing taxi from Chepo for $20. You can hire a full boat for 10 people and gear for $200 RT and that is about a 3-4 hour adventure through the gulf.
For many of us the remote nature of it is a feature, no EMF (some of our crew is really into not being in range of cell or WiFi), plus the adventure to get there is a filter of sorts.
We bring water with us but yes, with 100” a year we are planning to set up rain water collection as well as exploring the possibility of a well in the lush jungle lowlands. There are some water fall areas as well.
While Panama City is about 50km away, we are just 5km from Chiman which is a fishing village with a police station, medical outpost, church, food, etc.
There is also a road being put in between Chiman and the Pan American Highway which will allow for one to drive down and then take a 10min boat ride.
Right now the aesthetic is very much a burning man camp, with people bringing in what is needed and leaving no trace - however we will begin to create some light shared infrastructure.
We also have a small shared ownership stake in a tiny home in Kalu Yala which is an eco village on the mainland.
Come visit sometime!
PS, we don’t plan to export food, our primary export will be culture and transformation — meaning we have companies and individuals who come for coaching / leadership training / etc and for the festival.
We’d very much like to find something! If we do we could partner with the local university to create a study area.
This island was formerly called Isla Del Tesoro and it’s sister was Isla Del Piratas. Literally Treasure Island and Pirate Island.
During the 1500-1600s they were a base for pirates to attack Spanish Treasure ships.
One of my friends parents bought about 100 acres in Belize in the 80s for about $30k. They built a small farm and resort. 5 years ago they discovered a massive Mayan City complete with pyramids and all — it was a secret city that was used as a meeting place for all the leaders. Currently they have an archeological dig - very exciting!
If you're serious I suggest you look into the israeli kibbutz movement. It has 100 years experience across 300 communes. Total turnover of all kibbutz businesses is currently about $10bn.
A lot of people have had the idea you have, starting a modern commune... a spectrum from Leo Tolstoy to charles manson. Very few were sustainable in the long term, or scalable. The Kibbutz movement was a rare example that was. Most are semi-privatized these days. A handful are still "traditional" (extreme) with no private property and children raised by the community instead of living with their parents.
I am sorry if this is not really the point of your post, but I am reminded of watching the movie "Meine keine Familie". https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2917962/
As mich as i know there is no English version but it is a movie about someone growing up in a commune in Austria in the 70ies. It is a very interesting and sad movie. The "founding father" of this commune spent time in prison because of child molestation and harassment. His mother still thought that he "had a good childhood and time" in the commune without knowing his father. As much as I know from the movie he wasn't molested - but he experienced growing up there as a very strict and unfree experience (I am not sure if this is totally correct, but my memories are shady, I've watched it many years ago)
Sounds 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?
The 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.
> As a solo person, or couple, can you get this by working full time and then paying for it?
Most of this I can get, assuming I'm the one pulling down the 1st world software dev salary.
Obviously, those on the commune who only have basic skills of food prep, farming, child care, etc. wouldn't be able to afford some of this.
So if I'm already able to make this high salary working remotely, I might as well just live in a very low COL country and outsource all this work for a fraction it would cost in the US / EU, instead of subsidizing the low-earners.
A very low COL country is not without it's own risks and problems.
* It could be political unstable.
* You might have to pay for 24/7 armed security due to local crime and bad police.
* Locals will constantly be trying to rip you off.
* You will have to learn the local language or be at a huge disadvantage.
* Buying property is going to be tricky and you could get screwed.
* Buying stuff is more difficult because you are in a foreign country. No more amazon.com or any of the cool tech stuff you see on HN (most of that stuff is US/EU only)
* Your family & friends are back in the US. You are very very isolated unless you really want to build a whole new life in the new country.
I have experienced some of these challenges myself, living in Germany and not speaking the language. It's not easy. You might not realize how different it is from the US until you try to do more than just be a tourist. Like, you think you understand the govt and what paperwork you need to do, but it will be completely different in this other country, and all the documentation and forms are in a foreign language. Good luck figuring this out unless you have a trusted local to help you.
So it's not a total slam dunk, there are a lot of trade offs here. That isn't to say it isn't a good option for some people, especially if they know the language. I know a family doing this kind of thing in Indonesia and they are living a great life just by monetizing their youtube videos.
I think for me, it would be a better option if you had some kind of tie to the new country. Maybe a SO that was from there, some extended family, some close friends, just something.
Sounds a bit like a traditional family. One man making a fair bit of money. One woman handling domestic work, including producing some food and buying the rest. When you have kids they help as they get older. All the money is pooled. Eventually the man retires.
Twin Oaks already does this - they grow most of their own food, have a few external businesses, and I'm pretty sure a few of their members have external jobs (at least one of which is a programmer, if I remember). They practice "income sharing," so all money goes into a common pool and is spent on the needs of the community.
I read their articles on income sharing, but it doesn't mention if the income sharing is truly 100% communist, or if there is some kind of specific $ amount you need to contribute, and then everything on top of that is yours (or you could choose to work less hours). Do you know any specifics?
Income sharing is 100% for income from labor at Twin Oaks.
Passive income is a grey area, some people lend their assets to the community to avoid earning passive income, but I don't think that's ever been enforced.
I've come across some tech organizations that facilitate this kind of collective. I don't know how effective it is, but there do seem to be many at least small collectives signed into it.
This idea has been out there for a while. A small number of highly paid tech people providing the financial backbone of a larger community. And in a way, Dancing Rabbit started this way. But for as good an idea as it sounds, it turns out quite difficult to pull off. Even if the tech folks are living in the community it basically does not work for a small number of people to be disproportionately carrying the financial burden of the collective.
That level of commitment is historically impossible to maintain except for religious groups and very difficult for them. Communist groups and other similarly ideologically committed groups sometimes manage it for a while but perpetuating it across generations has thus far proved impossible. Look at the Israeli kibbutzim for an example.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
This answer is unsatisfying, but: There are lots of different solutions to this problem, and they work for different people more or less well, but there is no (and in my opinion never will be) a single system that does this thing.
From that document:
> "Twin Oaks’ labor system requires everybody to plan and record personal labor. This can be a trial, but the organization, accounting, equality, liberty, and flexibility that Twin Oakers enjoy depend substantially upon this minor clerical chore."
In other words, the Twin Oaks system is pretty exacting. You live at Twin Oaks. On Thursday (or whenever), you turn in a labor sheet saying what you intend to do the following week. Let's say you don't have a lot of responsibilities, so you're just saying that you want to help cook dinner on Tuesday afternoon and garden with your friend Shannon on Wednesday morning, but you don't really have other plans. This sheet goes to the labor assigner, who then schedules you for 42 hours of labor for the week and sends it back to you. Then you are responsible for doing what's on the sheet for that week.
If you don't do it, there's a series of consequences, meetings, and if you can't reach some agreed fair contributions, eventually your membership would be revoked.
The East Wind system is less regulated -- you don't need to schedule your activities a week and a half in advance, you can just decide what you want to do when you want to do it. However, you are responsible for writing it down, and working at least 35 hours/week. If you don't, consequences, meetings, eventual removal from the community.
Not all communities have labor accounting or labor sheets, and these systems do not work for everyone, but it seems virtually unavoidable in larger communities where peoples' contributions can become invisible. It's true whether they're slacking way off or if they're working themselves into burnout.
In communities without labor accounting, it's easier in one sense -- you don't have to remember to write shit down and keep track of what time it is, which is nice. It's also most common in communities that are small enough that virtually everyone conferences together daily around the breakfast/lunch/dinner table, and so it's informally easy to distribute responsibilities (e.g., "I've been really busy splitting and hauling firewood all day, but I noticed that the hose spigot in the garden is leaking again. Does anyone have time today to go look at it and figure out what to do?")
As a community gets larger, it becomes harder to see who's overloaded and take that off of them, and it becomes harder for them to distribute work to others. You'd think it would be easier (there's more people!) but in my experience, as a community gets larger, responsibility gets diffused. Somebody Else's Problem Fields pop up on all kinds of projects that people have any reason to believe someone else is going to handle without them having to do anything.
However... this doesn't seem totally true. Kommune Niederkaufugen in Germany, for example, has no required labor system but has 70 members. Each member is part of two different groups: a labor area, and a living group. My poorly-informed opinion is that this system works for them because members get support and create organizational structure within those smaller groups.
& there are always freeloaders. They can lie on their labor sheets, they can take half their time in breaks, they can take credit for others' work, whatever, any system has a method where people can be disingenuous about their labor contribution. There's also different levels at which people are capable of contributing, both as physical ability and psychological motivation and willingness. Members of communities with collectivized labor need to recognize that sometimes they will be the ones who are capable of "doing more", and sometimes they will not "pull their own weight."
Your example conflates a couple different factors:
> "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?"
... make your minimum work requirement is something that everyone feels comfortable with actually being a minimum work requirement, reducing the feeling of nervousness and being judged by an unknown standard on behalf of everyone in the community
... allow the workers in an area to set their own standards and for them to give feedback and enforce them among each other, and to ultimately remove people from their work area if they can't improve output based on feedback
... recognize the value of labor contributions outside of business and domestic labor, such as cultivating a social setting that people enjoy living in, casual mediation that reduces tensions between people and groups, and encouraging healthy behavioral outlets for members of the community
for that last bit, I want to point out that you don't need to keep track of those hours in number -- it would be kind of hard -- but simply recognize that if you increase the number of hours that people need to spend working in the business and the kitchen, then you are reducing the number of hours that they have available to do the work that, honestly, is really why you want to live in community with a bunch of people, and that's why you set your minimum labor quota the way that you do.
I noticed that almost all the photos in the article feature meat or meat production. Seems a little odd to me, but I guess even many hippies are raging carnivores in America.
It seems like everyone in the community does a lot of manual labor, and it's really hard to get a ton of calories from a vegan diet especially when you need to feed 73 people.
Dairy and meat are calorie and nutrient dense. There are some fruits/vegetables/nuts that are as well of course, but it sounds like they mostly sell their nut butters.
The best nut butter is when they switch production from almond butter to cashew butter, there's like 50lbs of nut butter that comes out that is (::gasp!::) mixed in unknown amounts, so it can't be sold with accurate packaging. Hot tip, almond/cashew butter is amazingly delicious regardless of what proportions you mix it in.
There were tons of happy vegans at East Wind last time I was there.
For common meals, East Wind wasn’t quite as on top of the wide variety of dietary preferences people express as Twin Oaks was last time I checked, but vegans are most definitely welcome.
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?