Collectivism is good because you have a tightly integrated communities that take care of each-other. Outsiders often see those parts and think it looks pretty great. But what they are missing are downsides of collectivism. All real-world collectivist groups have strict rules about acceptable behaviors, lifestyles, clothing, etc. Members who deviate from these rules are punished in various ways to pressure them to change: public shaming, expulsion, etc.
And I don't think this is an accident. How would a community where members are expect to directly support each-other work if a member could just do whatever they wanted? Suppose you and I create a commune and a few months in I decide to just drink beer and play video games all day. Are you going to happily keep working and supporting me?
I think the trend of modern people toward individualism is mostly the result of revealed preferences. People, for better or worse, want to make their own choices about their lives.
I've had bad group members in multiple class projects. Bad roommates in college that take food and don't pay their rent. I've seen people break shared resources and lie when called out. I've had dinner guests order more expensive menu items when they know the bill is getting split.
It has influenced my opinions on collectivism substantially.
If you have voluntary association, you will have both the "poor" and the "billionnaire". People whom nobody wants to associate with, and it has severe negative consequences for their living conditions. AND people who refuse to associate with others to some degree, but do so well for themselves they are the envy of others.
Voluntary collectivist living exists and is no problem and requires no change at all to our current system.
The whole point of the collectivism being advocated here is to avoid both groups. And, of course, only forced marriages will ever do that.
It's a bit of a trap, though, isn't it? To steer one's one ship, you need a ship. Ship's expensive. So, the general approach is to finance one's self-agency with debt... which makes one beholden to an entity that trades personal concern for your circumstances (for better or worse) to cold-but-concrete, "Can you pay me back?".
I genuinely don't know what the answer is. Maybe it's not even a single solution, but instead an ebb and flow of the collectivist/individualist tide as social, personal, economic, civilizational circumstances demand.
This is all just treating the abstraction as if it is the problem itself. People have houses when those houses are built. Built using debt. Built Amish-style, collectivist style.
To use your metaphor: you first need a ship. AFTER that we can discuss steering.
The problem in Soviet housing (and today in China housing) is that the entire population sabotages society, and builds very bad quality housing, and not nearly enough of it. Collective living can't compensate for that. In fact it doesn't matter what you use to compensate for the sabotage by society, because that just delays the breaking point by a bit, but the sabotage goes further and further until the sum total of all compensations you utilize aren't enough anymore to even keep people alive. That can take decades, but if Stalin couldn't stop the sabotaging going further and further by killing hundreds of millions, exactly what measure are you hoping will stop it? (not implying communal living is exactly the same as communism, but it is one example)
When collective housing means a floor of a tall building for each generation, with mostly independent rooms and perhaps a single collective living room on the ground floor, it is quite comfortable and you have the advantages and none of the costs.
When collective housing means 3 generations living on <50m2 apartments where the warm water supply is mostly a theoretical thing (Soviet, China living), frankly, even having the entire apartment to yourself wouldn't make it particularly comfortable ...
I'm not sure what this comment has to do with my previous one. It sounds like you have a bone to pick. However, I don't disagree with what may be a generous read of your point, which I gather is that right-sizing collectivist aspects to the general human capacity to maintain effective community, vis a vis population size, is the most effective way to house a ton of people without leading to dystopian social alienation on a wide scale (and all the horrors that come with it).
Re: built using debt: I also think there needs to be a social appetite for quashing greed in the process of delivering a vital social need. This is where the Security Council Compadres (including US) all fail.
I think it also reveals that those pressure methods for collectives have weakened over time - and that this can also be a big part of the "EU/US political divide" - a country where everyone is already "collectively well-behaved" will have few issues with the "beer and video games" type people; a country where that's much weaker will have fallen back to "work or starve" as a final collectivism push. If you apply policies from the first country to the second you can get vastly different results.
It's kind of funny that someone from a country like the US where the opinions which were mainstream 20 years ago are now hate crimes can say something like:
>I think the trend of modern people toward individualism is mostly the result of revealed preferences. People, for better or worse, want to make their own choices about their lives.
And I don't think this is an accident. How would a community where members are expect to directly support each-other work if a member could just do whatever they wanted? Suppose you and I create a commune and a few months in I decide to just drink beer and play video games all day. Are you going to happily keep working and supporting me?
I think the trend of modern people toward individualism is mostly the result of revealed preferences. People, for better or worse, want to make their own choices about their lives.