Small Scale Utopia

[Elder Iptuous]

If it's a co-op type deal, you're still paying your taxes, just collectively.
And you have to have some income for that even if you aren't buying anything from anybody outside the co-op.  So the co-op has to have some revenue.  I don't see anarchy holding up well there, unless it's really small (i.e. a single household)  There's going to have to be some method of decision making.  Somebody will be calling the shots.  Unless that's you, you're the 'employee' of that guy, 'the boss'.  So then you've decided that you want to work for a corporation that pays for your living quarters? (or own one that pays for your employee's living quarters)
I guess that's what LMNO just said, but I guess what I'm saying is, if you just don't want to be 'under' somebody else, then you want to be self sufficient, self employed, etc.  that doesn't take a commune to do.

[BabylonHoruv]

If it's a co-op type deal, you're still paying your taxes, just collectively.
And you have to have some income for that even if you aren't buying anything from anybody outside the co-op.  So the co-op has to have some revenue.  I don't see anarchy holding up well there, unless it's really small (i.e. a single household)  There's going to have to be some method of decision making.  Somebody will be calling the shots.  Unless that's you, you're the 'employee' of that guy, 'the boss'.  So then you've decided that you want to work for a corporation that pays for your living quarters? (or own one that pays for your employee's living quarters)
I guess that's what LMNO just said, but I guess what I'm saying is, if you just don't want to be 'under' somebody else, then you want to be self sufficient, self employed, etc.  that doesn't take a commune to do.

There have been a lot of communes on a scale a bit larger than a single household (10 - 25 people) run on a consensus model.  That does mean that meetings take for fucking ever, but that is worth it to some people.  They can also be run on a direct democracy model, which is more common, and leads to quicker meetings, and still doesn't involve anyone being the owner.

Also, even if there is a boss (often called the guru) that is different than working for a corporation of any kind, it is working for a small (usually very small) business that takes care of your living quarters and is extensively involved in your life.  Not the model I would choose, but I'd still prefer it to working for a large corporation, whether they were providing me housing or not.  It is much more like being a part of a family at that point.

[Vaudeville Vigilante]

Vaud, you realize that Twin Orange isn't actually up and running yet, right?

Yes, it's been in the works for a little over five years now.  I wasn't sure how up and running they've gotten things now, but I know a couple people from Athens involved with the project.  They have successfully acquired a large amount of land, a good deal of money, contribution from a large collection of fairly successful artists and musicians, obtained and restored one house, and built several others.  They used to have pictures of the couple of houses they've built, which were beautiful, magnificently constructed entirely out of environmentally safe materials.  I'm not sure why they've taken that section down, but the project is continually developing.  They have stored water wells, and last I heard they were working on installing solar powered generators.  I think it's a very large step beyond your traditional 1960s hippie commune.  As I said before, if it is to be successful, pulling something off like this takes a lot of dedication, planning, and organizing.  And Luck.

[Elder Iptuous]

yeah, if you have to read Robert's Rules of Order to come to decisions, then you're still gonna feel like you're in beauracracy land.
assuming that there are shared resources, I'd say that 10-25 people is a grey area between a household and a community... my intuition says that it would be unstable.  Are there any that have been persistent that you know of?
If it's an ephemeral thing that couldn't survive the original members phasing out and new ones phasing in without collapsing or radically changing, then it would simply be more of a living arrangement than a society.

[BabylonHoruv]

yeah, if you have to read Robert's Rules of Order to come to decisions, then you're still gonna feel like you're in beauracracy land.
assuming that there are shared resources, I'd say that 10-25 people is a grey area between a household and a community... my intuition says that it would be unstable.  Are there any that have been persistent that you know of?
If it's an ephemeral thing that couldn't survive the original members phasing out and new ones phasing in without collapsing or radically changing, then it would simply be more of a living arrangement than a society.

Yeah, the one I was raised on.  It was going for I think about 10 years before my parents moved on.  It's still going and that was 25 years ago.

I am sure there are others, that is just the one I have personal experience with.  It certainly changed over time, but it is still the same entity it always was.

[Elder Iptuous]

excellent!
i think this thread would benefit from a small description of the community and your experience growing up in it...

[Vaudeville Vigilante]

Did anyone look at the plans Orange Twin has up?  These are pretty remarkable:
http://www.orangetwin.com/plans.html

[BabylonHoruv]

I was raised in an intentional community known as the old MacCaulley farm.  I moved there at 6 years old.   At that point a fairly sizable group of the original members had moved off to relocate to a different commune, which was part of a cult.  The Sonyasan cult specifically, an Indian thing (dot, not feather)  The commune had started out with everyone in the same house but when my family moved in everyone had their own houses, in various degrees of completion,  The one we moved into had half dirt floor, no indoor plumbing whatsoever, although we did have a sink on the front porch, a wood stove, and an electrical system based on car batteries.  The sonyasons moved off the farm in waves, with my family being one of the first newer families to move in.  The Farm is pretty big, about a five minute walk from the public road to my house, and about the same size in width.  Mostly wooded, although there was both a front pasture (where my father kept our cow later on) and the back pasture (where we lived, along with another family, a single person in her own house, and a house that was unnoccupied, those sonyasons never sold their share)  The land is owned in common although people own their own houses.  There are also several buildings owned in common, one, called the farmhouse, has the washing machines, dryers, bathtub, shower, and for a while was the only building with grid electricity or a telephone.  There are also 2 barns, a bunkhouse (used mostly for musical practicing) a machine shop, and a small building called "the store" because it was used for a while to distribute bulk goods bought in common, it later became just a place to hold a few refrigerators and freezers.  There is also an orchard, which is mostly apple trees, along with some other fruit, and "the bluff" a rocky area with moss.  There are 13 households on the farm, however during my time there 3 of them were unnoccupied.

I moved away before I was a full adult (granted at 19) so I did not take part in farm meetings where the community business was discussed.  However I know that most decisions were made by a super majority of voting adults (2/3) but that for a share to be sold to anyone the new person had to be approved by a unanimous decision.  I also know that farm meetings were held weekly, and tended to be viewed as a chore by pretty much everyone, but I think that is how it works running any organization.  The adults did have outside jobs, although many worked only part time.  My father was probably the most agriculturally oriented member, with the possible exception of my (now)stepmother.  Other members had garden pots but my fathers was big enough for us to get most of our food from it.  We also had chickens and a milk cow who was kept in the first barn.  My father gave some of the milk to the other farm members for the privilege of monopolizing the barn and also sold milk to people in the larger community.  We also had a pig at one point (not repeated because butchering them is a hassle) and my father raised cows for resale.  Our nearest neighbor grew garlic which she resold and also made herbal tinctures.

The experience for me as a child was a lot like the way I have heard having a large extended family described.  I had more freedom to wander than most children, but that came with the fact that I really couldn't get away with anything.  There was always an adult fairly nearby, and I was accountable to all of them, not as much so as I was to my parents, but I still had to listen to them.  There were monthly work parties to maintain the community buildings and areas and also  lot of holidays were celebrated together.  The farm is on a small island, which has a pretty tight knit community in general, and it is definitely integrated into that.  

As far as I am aware none of the children of members ended up in the houses of their parents.  There have not been any new farm members in about a decade, which means the population is mostly older, although some are still in their 30's  and 40's.  

[Elder Iptuous]

Thanks for sharing that BH!  pretty interesting.
In the vein of this thread, do you know how property taxes were handled?  Did people operate fairly autonomously with regards to the law within the community (in spirit or practice...  I mean was there a sense of 'separateness' that extended to how legal authority was viewed in any way?)

[BabylonHoruv]

Thanks for sharing that BH!  pretty interesting.
In the vein of this thread, do you know how property taxes were handled?  Did people operate fairly autonomously with regards to the law within the community (in spirit or practice...  I mean was there a sense of 'separateness' that extended to how legal authority was viewed in any way?)

I believe that each person was responsible for their own property taxes, which were assessed on houses rather than on land in Washington State (I may be wrong about that, but that was my impression) As far as the law goes there were bylaws for the farm which were decided in meetings and could be changed although I believe that took a bigger majority than simpler decisions.  I know that the bylaws of the farm tended to disregard the laws of the outside world, as, for instance, farm members were allowed to grow a certain amount of marijuana, but not more than that.  Policing on the island tends to be fairly laid back in any case, and nobody ever got busted for it.  I think my father may have dealt weed when I was young as i remember him bringing garbage bags full of it to friends who lived off island. he called it a gift, but it was an awful lot.  I never saw any cash being exchanged though.

Generally the local police let the farm handle farm business as far as things that happened there, I don't recall them ever being called in to settle a dispute except in one case when the EMT's were called because I had a bit more LSD than I could handle (I was a teenager at the time) and by their procedure the police had to come out.  Once they got there though they didn't interact with me and stayed out of the way and no criminal charges of any sort were brought.  It is possible they would have responded the same way to a non farm kid having a bad drug experience as well though. 

[Requia ☣]

Any place I move to has to have a flushing toilet, and decent Internet, the hippie style commune isn't for me.

As for organization, yes you need people who interface with the outside.  Personally I don't mind that, what I want isn't even to avoid the corporate world as much as security and the option to not be part of it every now and then without actually being unemployed.

Managers are not really a bad thing either.  Done right management makes you more efficient, even if only by making sure that you don't have 10 people working on one job that only needs 5 while another job gets neglected.  What's needed is a recognition that managers aren't special.    In the 'real' world the managers have somehow convinced us that they should get huge paychecks, and have their asses kissed, and have a right to fuck you over if you don't give them those things, even though they're just other employees of the company.

[The Wizard]

I read How to Start your own Country, and it gave me the same idea. A larger number of smaller nations seems like a nice idea, though given most countries' desire to expand, it would be difficult to maintain.

[Doktor Howl]

Imagine living a community of 40-100 people, perhaps on a farm in Montana somewhere where land is really cheap. Would those wacky idealistic government options work?

Too many people.  Peoples' behaviors change in multiples of 8.  Below 8 people, with the right people, you can work as a team with nobody in charge.

At 8 people, everyone starts looking for an alpha.

At 16 people, the dynamic changes completely, and dominance politics becomes a fact of life.

At 32 people, you may as well have not bothered.  Factionalism becomes the order of the day.

Not sure WHY this is, but it's a fact of life that's taught in management training at many corporations, and seems to work. 

[Kai]

Imagine living a community of 40-100 people, perhaps on a farm in Montana somewhere where land is really cheap. Would those wacky idealistic government options work?

Too many people.  Peoples' behaviors change in multiples of 8.  Below 8 people, with the right people, you can work as a team with nobody in charge.

At 8 people, everyone starts looking for an alpha.

At 16 people, the dynamic changes completely, and dominance politics becomes a fact of life.

At 32 people, you may as well have not bothered.  Factionalism becomes the order of the day.

Not sure WHY this is, but it's a fact of life that's taught in management training at many corporations, and seems to work. 

Less coordination between parts. It's like, when you take a set of points set equidistant apart in a circle around an object, and keep adding points (still equidistant apart), the diameter of the circle must get bigger. If the central point of the circle is a project, idea, corporation, etc, then not only are individuals less connected to each other but to the central mission of the group. Someone needs to lead or be a go-between to strengthen the connections.

[Doktor Howl]

Imagine living a community of 40-100 people, perhaps on a farm in Montana somewhere where land is really cheap. Would those wacky idealistic government options work?

Too many people.  Peoples' behaviors change in multiples of 8.  Below 8 people, with the right people, you can work as a team with nobody in charge.

At 8 people, everyone starts looking for an alpha.

At 16 people, the dynamic changes completely, and dominance politics becomes a fact of life.

At 32 people, you may as well have not bothered.  Factionalism becomes the order of the day.

Not sure WHY this is, but it's a fact of life that's taught in management training at many corporations, and seems to work. 

Less coordination between parts. It's like, when you take a set of points set equidistant apart in a circle around an object, and keep adding points (still equidistant apart), the diameter of the circle must get bigger. If the central point of the circle is a project, idea, corporation, etc, then not only are individuals less connected to each other but to the central mission of the group. Someone needs to lead or be a go-between to strengthen the connections.

Heh.  I figured it had more to do with monkey politics, but your solution sounds better.

I need to try to find the studies that the management gurus did on this.