Hippie Communes

[Bible_Belt]

Last summer I met a girl whose best friend had joined a hippie commune. She was telling me about it:
http://eastwind.org/index.php

The commune has a farm and business selling their own brand of foods. Everyone works a 35-hour week and gets paid $150 a month, in addition to their room and board. All members vote equally in making decisions for the community.

I'm not exactly rushing out the door to join them just yet, but starting one's own commune seems like it could be a sweet deal. I could enforce my own strict standards of taking a shower a few times a week.

I see a lot of hippies trying to be farmer's market vendors and small farmers. What surprises me about them is that they all really seem to embrace the basic tenets of capitalism. They want to make a product, compete in the marketplace, and make profits. The Communism of the 20th century would never have embraced any of those ideas. I know it was before my time, but I think a radical hippie of the late 60s would have told you that money was evil. The most radical hippie today would say that big corporations are evil, but at the same time have a side business selling hemp jewelry out of the trunk of his car. Political communism is so dead as an idea that even the hippies have become capitalists.

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

The thing about "capitalism" is that you simply can't escape it, even if you are a hard core communist. So long as there are different people with different skills, and different needs, there's going to be some kind of market, and some kind of pricing structure.

Even during the height of the Soviet Union, they had to refer to outside "capitalist" systems as a reference for their "communist" pricing.

I've watched a few documentaries on Netflix about the 60's type "communes" and they invariably HAD to get some kind of money from somewhere to survive, OR generate some kind of income.

Even BONO had to face the cold hard facts of the free market when he tried to create clothing made from 3rd world labor.

No matter how you slice it, and whatever "name" you give to any system, you'll always be confronted with the basic fundamentals of economics (the "dismal" science)

1) Resources Are Scarce

2) Wants are Unlimited

 

[Stagger Lee]

Well Communist China is capitalist and US corporations like doing business there. I was thinking recently that modern corporations aren't too unlike communist or at least capitalism, socialism and communism isn't all that mutually exclusive and dissimilar anymore. Corporations want to have global reach like communists. They have strong influence in politics and government, with their special interest groups, lobbyist and bought politicians. They accept and even go further than government mandate to enforce multiculturalism, 'diversity', and politically correct. Corporations seem pretty communist like to me-all the power and money is retained by the leaders and everyone else faces barriers and restrictions.

 

[zekko]

I've heard of that place, I also know a girl who was thinking about joining it. I can see the appeal of living a very simple, basic existence. But still, $150 a month, yikes. Does that mean they all get government assistance?

 

[Bible_Belt]

I don't know, good question. I think the $150 a month must be everyone's weed budget. The girl said they were really strict about making sure that no one was growing pot; they didn't want the government to take their land.

This page is pretty funny:
http://eastwind.org/comptoil.php

There's nothing sexier than a woman pulling a wagon of poop buckets.

Damn hippies don't even know the right way to build a composting toilet. If they dug it into the side of a hill, they wouldn't have to haul around buckets of sh!t. All the composting would take place in one spot. Then after a couple of years, black dirt - "humanure" - starts coming out the bottom.