Real life AS commune signup thread--check 1st post regularly

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W007! 10 people!


Anyway... now we post what we want to do as jobs. I'll post mine in the first post, and everyone who is interested in helping/being part of this in any way will post theirs in this thread too, or PM them to me, and I'll add them next to your name on the list.

I posit that a possible notion would be purchasing a tract of wildlands in a fairly hands-off state such as Oregon. There's a lot of unused land in central/eastern Oregon that could probably be purchased cheaply.

I actually know a guy that's selling a HUGE house on a lot of land for 3.2 mil, it's near a lake and fertile hunting grounds, so food and water would be fairly covered, and it's not too far from civilization so if emergencies came up help could be gotten. It has electricity and crappy internet, and is fairly "green" as these things go - he built it himself so he made sure everything was as efficient as possible.


I suspect some people find hunting and killing and cleaning the results distasteful, but not all of us!





One possible hitch I forsee is pet lovers vs. people with animal allergies. I am among the former, but I have a lot of family that will more or less explode into a pile of dust if they get near a cat.

Javid, that problem exists in ANY community. But when the allergic people are inside, the pets can be outside, and vice versa.


And I added your suggestions to the first page, because they are very plausible.

I've been interested in intentional communities for quite a while myself... and I certainly wouldn't mind living in one with mostly AS people, although I think it'd be nice to not totally exclude related NT's -- family members, i.e. if one of us has an NT spouse or significant other or even for that matter just a regular NT person who's interested in communes and would like the experience of living with us. I'm not diagnosed myself, I have an apt. with MHMR on Tuesday.

With regard to getting things done and not placing restrictions on where people work, I agree in principal that people should be allowed to work where they want. Most of the existing communes follow one of two models, the one model being that everyone owns their own land, has their own job, etc. and contributions to the commune are all financial and separated, so nobody's actually "living together" (i.e. big communal house). The other model is where the community is more ... well... communal with shared living spaces and I've liked the idea of growing food locally for a long time. I believe that's done at Zendick which is a good success story to look at.

I have a problem with each model the way they've been established in most of the existing communes.

With the separate finances model my issue is finances. Those communes by and large don't allow people to trade any kind of work for board because "buy in" of your own home is part of the model of the community, so if you can't afford to be a home owner, you're SOL. If (and this is a big if) having an official diagnosis helps me get the state of TX out of my colon long enough for them to realize that I've never been a $40k income earner and helps me figure out how to increase my overall income in the long term, then I might have a personal solution to that problem.

With the communal-finances model, the issue is primarily... communal finances... because most communes which establish themselves with this model create cottage industries on the commune in order to pay their bills (property taxes, etc.) and 90% of the funds go back into the commune, so although most anyone can go live there, you're generally prohibited from working outside the commune (this is my problem with Zendick) and what you get for yourself out of all your work ends up being something like $75/mo and you really don't have any say in the matter as long as you stay... Which would be fine by me if I had a huge savings account with enough interest to pay my child support. Otherwise it's illegal for me to do that for one and for two, even without child support that would mean if and when I decided I wanted to go somewhere else and pursue a different life, the maximum amount i could save toward making that change would be $75/mo, which means once there it would become much more difficult for me to change my mind.

In my reading one thing I've found is that all new communes go through a disenchantment. They're established, people start working on things and then after a while there's a "shakedown" in which a certain number of people leave. If too many people decide their experience with the commune wasn't what they'd hoped and leave, then the commune vanishes (failed). If there remain enough people to continue to support the commune and bring more people in, then it's after that "shakedown" that you have a real community. Some communes go through several shakedown type events.

I don't have any problem with the shakedown conceptually -- although I don't like to think that I might find myself trapped in the commune in the communal finances model, and it's even worse for me if the commune itself doesn't survive the shakedown. I'd really like to see a 3rd alternative model that finds a way to get past the limitations of these 2 dominant models.

Re: country -- that's another issue for me. Unless (again, big if) I'm able to get the state of TX out of my colon, I'm not allowed to leave the country. They won't give me a passport as long as I owe child support -- and given the current status, unless my life changes suddenly and dramatically, I'll owe child support until my grandchildren's grandchildren are dead and buried.

Forgot to mention -- I've seen some folks who live in communes mention in other intentional communities forums having tried to develop means of entry for people with less money and those attempts having failed for various reasons (iirc they usually say the folks who didn't have the money end up changing their minds about the commune several months later when they realize how much work is involved)... I can't say those are the only communities that have tried, although I can say that I've seen a pretty good number of people lamenting the lack of entry into communes for people with limited income. I don't have any answers here, so... I'm only passing along what I've heard.

We can't plan everything. We just have to deal with issues as they come up, or we'll spend our whole lives planning. If anyone's poor, they can eat the food that is grown and sleep on the floor. If they want to work, they can own their own land and that... if they can't work, they can collect disability from the government.

I'm not really comfortable getting involved on any level if the community isn't being planned out and drafted ahead of time. I think it's dangerous to rush into something this big without going over all of the issues as a community and drafting goals, structure, bylaws, contract etc. But I wish everyone who does get involved the best of luck.

Ive always been really bad at organising and planning things.. So dont think Ill be of much help in this moment of time. I will do what I can if I must though, certainly.

Malachi, I agree with you, of course there are SOME things that we have to talk about, but only necessary stuff, like you said.


Username88, that's totally okay; just don't think you have to drop out or anything! WE NEED YOU. Everyone has something to contribute!

Ana,

could you be more clear about what is necessary to discuss and what is not?

Sorry for not reading the whole thread before posting...

Central Oregon is probably not a bad idea. The western seaboard as a whole is pretty liberal (imo good thing, and generally more amenable to communes) and Oregon is apt to be less expensive than Washington or California.

Communes really don't happen quickly -- no matter how quickly you'd like them to happen... So the whole "planning forever" thing is ... well... part of the deal. If you want to start a commune (as opposed to joining an existing commune), planning things "forever" is inevitable

The big problem with undeveloped land is that its... undeveloped... It's cheap because there's nothing on it, but the reason developed land is expensive is because developing the land is expensive. Anyone who's spent any time in the real estate business will generally tell you to avoid undeveloped land if you're looking to turn a profit because the way to make profits is to buy developed land, make a few repairs on the building(s) and sell it. (Flipping.) and the like. Undeveloped land is generally regarded as a losing proposition in real estate. Though given that we're wanting to live on the land ourselves and not interested in profiting on its sale, that's okay, you just have to be aware that starting a commune on undeveloped land is going to be expensive (and probably require more planning).

One thing that might speed up the process however is to narrow the focus from the original goal of an island or a large plot of land and focus on starting small. There are a number of communal living environments based around a much smaller concept of "home" like a "geek house" or just a shared living space which is like an apartment building run by a co-op. We could look into small apartment type buildings (say 6-10 unit multi-family dwellings), set up the corporation and its trust to handle the money, raise the funds both between us and from charitable donations, purchase the building and then we'd each pay our share of the upkeep of the building, which would be considerably less than "rent" in a similar building owned by a landlord, since we'd own it and the only expenses would be repairs, property tax and any renovations we wanted to make. This would also (in theory) keep us in a plumbing, electric, internet area, which I'm apt to think is a fairly high priority for most of us even though I myself look forward to one day working in a communal garden. We could of course continue with the intent of eventually purchasing a larger space, while the smaller building gives us an opportunity to get together more quickly.

Anyway -- I'm all for it if we can find a way to make it work.

Well, we need to know where, how much it will cost, how we'll all get out there, how we'll manage/store the finances, how we'll raise the finances, how we go about contacting the owners of the land and buying it, what people's individual living needs are, the needs we all have (water, etc.), who has what skills, who has books on what (plumbing, etc), and consequently, what kind of people (electricians, etc) we'll have to hire from outside if there aren't any in our group. And who's got medical training, who's got what supplies, who has what transportation... why don't we all list our assets and skills and what they want to do? I listed mine.

I spent the better part of the last decade as a ColdFusion programmer. It's not practical in terms of maintaining a commune, but it's a potential source of income and if I can get my bills down, get the state off my back and am reasonably secure in my living/eating status, then I'd have no problems giving even a large portion of any money I earn back into the household. Aside from programming I'm also an illustrator. And I'm pretty sure I can learn most any kind of handy-manning that might be needed around the house.

p.s. Ana54 - it'd be really cool if you could change the colors of the red & orange text in the first post to a darker shade (or another color) - I'm not sure how many of the other folks on this list will agree (I know a lot of us may have unusual connection to senses at times) -- the reason I ask is for much the same reason I saw someone on WP mention not using rapidly flashing avatars - those particular color combinations (blue background + bright red/orange foreground) cause eye-strain for the average person and make them difficult to read (which is why you'll find those color combinations in professional web-designers' lists of things not to do on your site) -- granted I get past that by selecting the text, which changes its color, I'm just sayin'

The things that I'm not really seeing being discussed much are the basic infrastucture and the methods by which decisions are made. How is this all organized? What's the skeleton that holds it together? It's good to have ideals and things to reach for. If there's a second point you can start moving toward it. But if you've got weak bones then before you get there you're likely to collapse. The same is true if the feet and arms, the head, the eyes etc aren't all coordinated. Then you end up tripping and stumbling or wandering in a different direction. Those are really my primary concerns, the much less interesting stuff, the foundation that at least imo needs to get worked on before you can construct a building above it.

My apologies to anyone who has difficulty with analogies.

Well, I LOVE driving, especially if its gonna be for something like this. So if people need a ride Ill be happy to give them one. That alone will take a lot of time but I think its worth the effort and money, just because I think it will be a fun thing to do! And I know Ill be able to do it cause I have a GPS system in my car TheMachine1 can take care of the where and how much it will cost. Im not really good with speaking all the time but if I get the guts Ill probably be able to talk to a bank to get an account going to manage/store our funds. We can then all get jobs that will fit us to raise the funds. I dont have many "skills" but I have a rediculous collection of medical/other useful books in my room right now so if we need to look something up we should be set. I really have any supplies either.. But hopefully everything I can offer will be of some use.

Aw, dang. I PMed about 20 or 30 people when they were online today, and only about 2 checked this thread out and decided to join, one told me off for spamming his inbox and basically said no, and the rest just ignored my PMs, or didn't realize they'd gotten them, or didn't have time to check them.



I made some changes to the first post, anyway.