wrote in message
...
On Nov 30, 10:20 pm, "Adam Corolla"
wrote:

Realistically, there's no need for anyone in one of these societies to
know
a trade in order for them to survive. If you have ten people all working
for minimum wage and sharing living expenses, you can have a pretty
decent
standard of living and build up a savings to boot. As the society gains
wealth and increases its standard of living, more people with skills will
be
attracted to living there, which will improve efficiency to an even
greater
degree. However, there are *SO FEW* people who actually want to give up
ownership of personal property, these communities will stay very small.
I
think this is at least in part the other issue that The Farm faced--which
makes sense as their population has increased since they switched to a
more
capitalistic system.

You need to go back and read more on " The Farm ' website. As I read
it, they had something like 1200 people there at one point before they
switched.

Dan


No, I read that. After they switched, their membership went up to four
thousand. Also, The Farm is a different sort of case--its main purpose is
not, and never was, to set up a society based on the principles that Marx
was talking about. A lot of people who *didn't* want to live that way at
all joined up anyway because they were so attracted to the main objectives
of The Farm, which haven't changed, and are primarily environmental in
nature. In addition, The Farm suffered from poor leadership. When I
visited Twin Oaks in 1985, they had around 70 members and had just finished
building an enormous redwood deck for outdoor parties and were in the
process of building several other structures at a combined cost of several
million dollars, none of which was borrowed. I got the feeling that these
expenditures were a relative drop in the bucket.

Twin Oaks had pioneered the manufacture of several products made from
polypropylene rope and were making lots of money off their sales. Their
partner commune, East Wind, made the same products and also had a factory
which produced nut, seed and legume butters such as sesame butter, almond
butter, cashew butter and of course peanut butter. It was entirely owned
and operated by the commune.

Twin Oaks required 49 hours of work per week from its members and East Wind
48. That might seem like a lot, but there's virtually no commute time, and
cooking/dishwashing counted toward the total. Because breakfast, lunch and
dinner were provided, you never had to spend time cooking for yourself if
you didn't want to; making the 48 and 49 hour requirements seem even less
daunting. Finally, you could choose what work you did for the most part
(though everyone had to take turns with the jobs nobody wanted, like washing
dishes) and your hours, so much of the time it didn't even seem like work.

I was a visitor at Twin Oaks for three weeks and I think I was at East Wind
for three weeks also. The level of organization, efficiency and freedom in
these communities amazed me and still amazes me. I'd join one of them, but
I like owning my own stuff too much. :-)