
The Economics of a Commune in the Ozarks - Mizza
https://www.eastwindblog.co/?p=1245
======
socialist_coder
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 =)

Thoughts?

~~~
ada1981
I’m working on a similar project. We acquired our first land in Panama
([http://Majagual.org](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)

~~~
stickfigure
This is... interesting.

How do people get out there? Floatplane? Panama City looks like the nearest
harbor and that's a _long_ boat trip.

What do you do for fresh water? Collect rainwater?

~~~
ada1981
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.

------
Mizza
HN 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
This 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.

------
fallingfrog
It'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!

~~~
dwiel
The 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
Usually, 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.

~~~
dwiel
Thanks for the clarification, i missed that distinction at first.

------
Latteland
I'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
They're been running since the mid-70s; wonder what they do with the old
people

~~~
King-Aaron
They probably send them off to watch some lovely videos and hear some lovely
music in a little room, before being turned into crackers.

~~~
kome
Is that supposed to be funny?

~~~
katzenjam
It's a reference to the film 'Soylent Green'.

~~~
kome
ok, sorry, I missed it.

------
socialist_coder
I 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
We 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
That'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
Park 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.

------
riffraff
This 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.

~~~
misja111
The extra yellow egg yolks are from hens that got food with high carotene
content. Also Marigolds are frequently mixed in with the food.

------
Fellshard
It'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
I 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.

~~~
jlawson
The point is that it doesn't scale.

This community can only exist because it's a tiny minority surrounded by a
much larger, depersonalized, "dirty" society which handles all the big
problems for them. Problems including: National defense, international
relations, technological research and infrastructure, advanced education,
manufacture/import/transport of all kinds of exotic goods and medicines, law
enforcement, care of the elderly.

It's easy to say it's a better way to live, until you realize that it can only
exist because it's held up by all the people paying the costs of the "worse"
way.

As a thought experiment: Think of how much different our larger society could
be if there was some sort of alien galactic society that handled those kinds
of problems for us.

~~~
psergeant
Dude, it’s a profitable farm. The only main difference is how they allocate
ownership and organise labour. Your criticism applies equally to all farms.

~~~
jlawson
Not really profitable. It's largely a tax dodge actually. They avoid using
money to artificially underreport their production and consumption. If they
paid tax on the real values, would they still be profitable? Maybe, maybe not,
but it would be a tougher situation.

My criticism is that it doesn't scale and they're freeloaders. And you can bet
if enough people started dodging taxes like this, the IRS would be on the
case. But it's small scale so they get away with it.

I don't think they're doing something morally wrong, to be clear. Just that it
can't scale.

Other farms pay tax fully, and my criticism doesn't apply.

~~~
maxander
“Eating food you grew yourself” is a tax dodge? What about making your own
improvements to your house? Cooking your own food? Doing your own laundry? You
_could_ pay for any number of services, with the associated tax. So you’re
about as much of a tax dodge as these folks. But that’s a radical expansion of
the notion of taxable economic activity. The IRS trying to get that notion
accepted as law would be practically unthinkable.

There was a time, for that matter, where most of the U.S. economy was
agrarian. The world still worked. There were fewer government services, to be
sure- but if most people are members of semi-self-sufficient communities,
fewer services would be needed.

~~~
jlawson
Growing food yourself is one thing. But that's not what we're talking about.

Eating food grown and prepared by other people in a community of 70+ people,
in exchange for your labor in other areas, and paying no tax on any of it....
tax dodge.

How many people does it have to be, in your opinion, before it's a tax dodge?

~~~
neekburm
I've given this one a lot of thought. Ordinarily, you're supposed to pay tax
on the fair market value of goods and services received in return for your
labor in barter transactions.

However, East Wind is incorporated as a 501(d) organization, which is what
monasteries use. For more info on 501(d) orgs:
[https://www.irs.gov/irm/part7/irm_07-025-023](https://www.irs.gov/irm/part7/irm_07-025-023)

I can't find anything specific, but I think that since they share their income
and produce as a collective, they're only liable for taxes on their share of
the income that the collective produces. Monks don't have to pay taxes on the
value they get from the monastery vegetable garden.

Tax avoidance is a time-honored American tradition. This is one way to do so.
It sounds like they've done their legal homework if they've managed to survive
30 years without IRS trouble.

------
vorpalhex
A 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.

~~~
elhudy
> 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.

Do you wear gloves and a hair net when you cook your own food? I've been
cooking my own food daily for over 10 years now, and I have yet to experience
even a minor contamination. I don't see how bumping the amount of cooked food
to feed ~70 people would change this.

~~~
vorpalhex
The chance of salmonella in a dozen eggs is quite low. The chance of it in
300+ eggs is quite a bit more - even with impeccable personal cleanliness.
Likewise, if I got a bit of salmonella in something I made, it would affect me
and my wife - which would be unfortunate but, that's it.

If a commercial kitchen making food for 73 people gets an egg contaminated
with salmonella and then spreads that to all the other dishes it's making...
well, that's quite a different problem.

I also know that I wash my hands, and I sanitize every cooking surface in my
kitchen daily (or more often). A kitchen with 6+ full time cooks and 70 some
people helping themselves to snacks is liable to much more tracked in dirt,
unwashed hands, and badly washed dishes.

One of the things I do is infuse alcohols, often in bulk for gifts. When I do
this, my sanitation protocol actually changes - I pre-sanitize every vessel
using bleach, and I often times do wear gloves if I'm touching anything
directly.

Consider this: If you had a small cut on your hand, would you wear gloves
before making yourself lunch? What if it was a stranger with a cough making
your lunch, would you want them to wear gloves?

~~~
elhudy
>The chance of salmonella in a dozen eggs is quite low. The chance of it in
300+ eggs is quite a bit more - even with impeccable personal cleanliness.
Likewise, if I got a bit of salmonella in something I made, it would affect me
and my wife - which would be unfortunate but, that's it.

Eggs are the only food that fits this narrative, and they are only (very
rarely) dangerous if eaten raw. I would be more concerned about eating eggs
from a holiday inn breakfast buffet.

>I also know that I wash my hands, and I sanitize every cooking surface in my
kitchen daily (or more often).

I've never sanitized my cooking surface. I was taught to use vinegar as a
cleaner and have never had issues (it's not a disinfectant). I haven't even
had a cold in three years.

>One of the things I do is infuse alcohols, often in bulk for gifts. When I do
this, my sanitation protocol actually changes - I pre-sanitize every vessel
using bleach, and I often times do wear gloves if I'm touching anything
directly.

A few of the things I do are brew beer, wine, kombucha, ferment vegetables,
etc. I, too, used to use sanitize all of my bottles and containers. I then
read The Art of Fermentation and realized that everything I was doing was
moot. Lactic acid bacteria and yeasts do an excellent job of preservation,
provided you give them a nurturing environment to thrive in.

>Consider this: If you had a small cut on your hand, would you wear gloves
before making yourself lunch? What if it was a stranger with a cough making
your lunch, would you want them to wear gloves?

The commune deserves more credit. People who abandon everything to live in a
commune take personal interest in caring for one another. You're more likely
to pick up something from a stranger with a cough at a restaurant, who didn't
call in sick because they're still late on last month's phone bill, than
someone at a commune - who could just ask another member to fill in. Keep in
mind _this is how society was_ for a long time.

~~~
vorpalhex
Eggs, chicken, pork, even flour can be contaminated - Chipotle (a popular US
fast-ish food chain) had woes upon woes until they finally gave it and started
pasteurizing their flour. Dairy and meat are more susceptible of course, but
even dry ingredients can come with contamination problems.

Vinegar is a decent cleaner. I use it quite a bit myself, but it's not the
best choice to clean up after raw meats and some other more aggressive
bacteria. You may have a good immune system, and not run into any problems -
good for you, I'm glad - but that is not going to be the case for any large
group of people.

> Lactic acid bacteria and yeasts do an excellent job of preservation

Preservation is not sanitation. Yeast will feed off of many things and grow,
but it won't typically attack germs or viruses. Those germs will however
gladly feed off of the same food you're giving the yeast. This is why
aggressively sanitizing any fermenting vessel is so important - you're
creating the ideal environments for bacteria to grow and you want to make sure
it's only your selected bacteria that are growing.

> Keep in mind this is how society was for a long time.

That is a myth and falsehood. The work week for the average person going back
thousands of years was 60+ hours. There was no vacation or sick leave. Sure,
if you had a small cottage industry you might be able to ask a family member
to do extra work for a day so you can rest, but for most of history children
were pressed into labor at ages 8 - 10.

> People who abandon everything to live in a commune take personal interest in
> caring for one another

Then they should practice good sanitation and cleanliness. I'm not saying they
shouldn't live in a commune, or that they're bad people - I'm saying they are
not correctly practicing what we've learned in 10,000+ years of handling food
stuffs for a community. If you care for your friend/neighbor/fellow commune-
peer, then take a moment to wear gloves and a hair net so you don't get them
sick.

~~~
elhudy
>Vinegar is a decent cleaner. I use it quite a bit myself, but it's not the
best choice to clean up after raw meats and some other more aggressive
bacteria. You may have a good immune system, and not run into any problems -
good for you, I'm glad - but that is not going to be the case for any large
group of people.

Well, anything raw meats touch goes into the dishwasher. I didn't mean to
construe the idea that I am re-using surfaces for raw meats.

>Preservation is not sanitation. Yeast will feed off of many things and grow,
but it won't typically attack germs or viruses. Those germs will however
gladly feed off of the same food you're giving the yeast. This is why
aggressively sanitizing any fermenting vessel is so important - you're
creating the ideal environments for bacteria to grow and you want to make sure
it's only your selected bacteria that are growing.

Yeast don't preserve by attacking germs or viruses, they preserve by creating
alcohol - just as LAB preserve by killing germs and viruses via ph. But yes,
sanitation and preservation are different - I didn't mean to conflate them.

You don't necessarily need to bleach things to sanitize them. When we wash our
hands with warm, soapy water, we aren't _killing_ bacteria, we are reducing
the viscosity of our hand oils and wiping them off. The same can be said for
most cooking materials/areas.

> vorpalhex 2 hours ago | parent | on: The Economics of a Commune in the
> Ozarks

Eggs, chicken, pork, even flour can be contaminated - Chipotle (a popular US
fast-ish food chain) had woes upon woes until they finally gave it and started
pasteurizing their flour. Dairy and meat are more susceptible of course, but
even dry ingredients can come with contamination problems. Vinegar is a decent
cleaner. I use it quite a bit myself, but it's not the best choice to clean up
after raw meats and some other more aggressive bacteria. You may have a good
immune system, and not run into any problems - good for you, I'm glad - but
that is not going to be the case for any large group of people.

> Lactic acid bacteria and yeasts do an excellent job of preservation

Preservation is not sanitation. Yeast will feed off of many things and grow,
but it won't typically attack germs or viruses. Those germs will however
gladly feed off of the same food you're giving the yeast. This is why
aggressively sanitizing any fermenting vessel is so important - you're
creating the ideal environments for bacteria to grow and you want to make sure
it's only your selected bacteria that are growing.

> Keep in mind this is how society was for a long time.

That is a myth and falsehood. The work week for the average person going back
thousands of years was 60+ hours. There was no vacation or sick leave. Sure,
if you had a small cottage industry you might be able to ask a family member
to do extra work for a day so you can rest, but for most of history children
were pressed into labor at ages 8 - 10.

That's fair, I shouldn't have claimed such a broad statement. It depends which
society/time-period we're looking at.

------
NeedMoreTea
When 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. :)

~~~
wonderwonder
You 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
Keeping 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).

------
driverdan
Are 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
I’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
"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.

~~~
paxus
Actually, 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/)

------
zdw
A 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.

------
ilamont
Highly recommend the documentary, "Commune," about a still-functioning commune
in northern California.

[https://film.avclub.com/commune-1798202149](https://film.avclub.com/commune-1798202149)

------
claydavisss
A 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
> 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)

~~~
jnmandal
There 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
The 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.

------
RickJWagner
Somehow, it makes me happy to read that people live this way.

------
opportune
Only 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
Yes, 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
If 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.

------
ntock
$630k a year in profit selling nut butter?

~~~
mikekij
I 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
Two 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)

------
KaiserPro
As 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

------
cascom
The 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)

------
coopr
I 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/)

------
CalRobert
If 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.

------
hiei
Those 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.

------
socialist_coder
I wonder what their member churn is like. What's the avg time someone stays?

~~~
dingdingdang
Would 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.

------
_lol
In a hypothetical scenario where one of the members has a debilitating chronic
illness that requires considerable expense, what would then happen?

~~~
rejoice
There'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.

------
moreoutput
Reminds me of the book "The Eden Express" \-- one bad medical situation can
ruin a commune.

------
golergka
A 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.

~~~
mkstowegnv
As 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,_Virgini...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Oaks_Community,_Virginia)

~~~
golergka
Your comment is exactly what I assumed and it doesn't contradict my comment in
any way. Yes, these people possibly don't identify as libertarians, but their
community is the exact reason why they actually should.

Libertarianism is about building a community that you like, in any possible
way, without having to agree with anyone else about what is "exploitation" and
all that ideological stuff. Libertarianism's goals is exactly aligned with
what "hippie communists" (stereotype that I use here in good faith, to omit
boring argument about strict ideological definitions) want, as long as they
don't try to force their views on other people.

~~~
mkstowegnv
There is every likely and unlikely combination of political beliefs to be
found in every population including commune members. But I will go out on a
limb and try to speak for that population. Relatively few see the communal
life as a viable prescription for society as a whole, and most believe that
all political and economic systems involve painful tradeoffs. On the other
hand most look with horror at purist libertarians rejecting as much enforced
sharing in general society as possible. This philosophy is irreconcilable with
the view of many, inside and outside of communes who strongly believe that
having many kinds of sharing - enforced by a government - is necessary for any
civilization worth living in, and eternal vigilance against all slippery
slopes presented by governments and corporations is unavoidable (and is not
simply avoided by letting free markets run amuck). Many of us are thoroughly
familiar with your arguments and adamantly reject them as dangerous,
simplistic and in effect evil thinking that we will resist with everything we
have.

~~~
golergka
And yet, these arguments remain theoretical talk - while existence of these
communities, where all sharing is implemented without government or threat of
violence, only serves to confirm libertarianism.

