I've always been interested in the concept of intentional communities and communes. However, the scope of things to go wrong there seems waaaaay to much. For example, they seem to be concentrated in operating a singular business in rural areas with almost full income sharing and so on. Plus, they kinda don't exist in Alberta. I have a full time job (minimum wage, but a full time job nonetheless) that I don't want to leave just to "try something out". I believe there might be a few folks here in the same boat as me.
At the same time, I've been looking for leftist in person communities to socialize with here in Calgary, but they kinda seem non-existent too.
So here's a little proposition. What if we have a super low stakes "commune"? What we do is, we organize a little community which has a fund. Contributions to the fund by each member are decided as a percentage of their income. Say 1% to start with. We don't have to live under the same roof. We don't have to work at the same employer. All that we do is this: contribute an x% of our paycheck to this fund. Every week, we meet and democratically decide where and how we spend the fund.
We could spend it on something like grocery credits (each member receives 100 dollars on groceries), x amount for a phone plan and so on. What are the advantages of doing this?
Here's how I envision a hypothetical commune like this to work:
- Members share a percentage of their paycheck. The size of the fund is dependent upon the income level of every member. This way, every member is incentivized to help other members increase their own respective incomes, as that translates to larger funds.
- Collective bargaining power is always good. We could buy stuff in wholesale much more easily. We could negotiate with service providers to get better deals, thus saving all of us money.
- Weekly meetings mean a nice little socialization thing.
Anyway, you probably have quite a few/many questions that I might or might not have answers to yet. You probably think this is a terrible idea. Or maybe you find this interesting.
Here's what I'm hoping to happen. We meet at central library or somewhere and discuss trying out a very short term, low stakes economic experiment. We decide that we contribute a very small percentage (say 2%) of our income for one month to a little fund. We then create a budget for the month on how to allocate that fund.
I'm interested to observe how this would actually work in person. Would there be total gridlock? How would legislation for this work? How would the spending priorities for the fund look like?
If we find out that it actually seems to be beneficial, we could go ahead with bigger and bigger percentages. If not, it could still be a fun little experiment that would last for a month!
What do you think? Anyone interested in trying something like this out?
Ok so churches collect 10% of members income. It's a biblical concept called tithe. In some churches it's a recommendation but in others it's monitored.
The majority of the money is spent constructing and maintaining the churches facilities, salaries for staff, and the regular services for members.
Far beyond sunday morning, churches hold gatherings for social groups every day of the year.
If by "charity" you mean "using church money to help those in need", there's very, very little of that in most churches.
The control structure will vary between churches but basically yes, representatives are elected who form a board. For a church I audited for several years the board members were called elders and the board was called the eldership. Yes, they were all male, pale and stale.
I'm sure sometimes some form of direct democracy is used but generally there aren't many contentious decisions.
Oh wow, I didn't know about tithe. What do church events look like though? Aside from the cultey "worship sky man" and all that, what does the socialisation look like? Is the community "close knit" or whatever?
There's probably less "worship sky man" than you might think, or maybe it's different to what you'd expect, never having experienced it.
Some churches have very little "woo". There's no miracles or weird stuff. Other churches have all the woo. Like faith healing and talking in tongues and whatever.
A sunday service is usually 30 minutes of singing and housekeeping type notices and whatever, then a 30 minute talk from someone.
Other social things are kind of special interest meetings. So a church might have several friday evening groups for kids, then teenagers, then 18 to early 20s. These are usually activities like bowling, or fishing, or parlour games, or whatever fun activity the leader can dream up.
There's also bible study groups, music groups or bands, community outreach groups like catering for elderly people or young families, there's one here with a community garden.
I went to church with my parents until I was about 18. When I stopped I said it was an ideological thing (as in I no longer believed in fairy tales). That remains true but I think the reason I stopped going was because I just didn't fit in socially. I just wasn't equipped for that type of social community with no drugs or alcohol or special interest to lubricate the wheels.