this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2025
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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?

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[–] fort_burp@feddit.nl 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think you're starting out on a really great idea! You can go much bigger than that! How could you inject, for example, production into your idea? How about mutual aid (non-monetary)?

Have you read any books on the matter? Here's an excerpt from Slow Down by Kohei Saito:

A major strength of co-ops is that workers can work as they wish. Co-ops aim to advance a “social and solidarity economy” (SSE) that restores the regional community through workplace training and management practices. Through labor, workers can make investments weighted toward the long-term prosperity of the region. This amounts to nothing less than the democratization of the economy by making the realm of production itself into a form of commons. This might sound like a far-fetched dream to some. But it doesn’t have to be. Workers’ cooperatives of this sort are spreading all over the world. Spain’s famous Mondragon Corporation is a federation of workers’ cooperatives with a long history, boasting more than 74,000 members. In Japan, too, there have been workers’ co-ops in sectors like nursing, childcare, forest management, agriculture, waste disposal, and so on for close to forty years. Their collective reach amounts to more than 15,000 people. Even in the capitalist stronghold of the United States, workers’ co-ops have developed in remarkable ways. Notably, the Evergreen Cooperatives in Ohio, Cooperation Buffalo in New York, and Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi are examples of citizen movements to revitalize communities by addressing problems related to housing, green energy, food, waste disposal, and so on. Based on the successful model of Mondragon Corporation in the Basque Region of Spain, these co-ops aim to build a network of democratic institutions to empower workers.

Democracy at Work by Richard Wolff is another good one.

Oh yea, and check this out too. From Humanizing the Economy by John Restakis:

In January 1997, Seikatsu Club, in cooperation with producers, inspected every consumer item in the market and adopted its own labeling system, which excluded genetically modified (GM) food, feed and additives.

...

Farmers contracted for a specified amount of produce based on pre-orders by co-op members. Produce was then delivered to co-op distribution centers where delivery trucks brought the pre-ordered products to the neighborhoods. Local Han would then coordinate the neighborhood distribution. The system was efficient, cheap to operate and subject to careful supervision by co-op members. It cut out the middleman, ending profiteering; it allowed farmers to plan and produce for a confirmed buyer, thereby avoiding the waste and risk associated with mass production for uncertain markets; direct distribution from farm to household eliminated the need for stores, warehousing and expensive packaging, thus cutting capital and overhead costs; and the system facilitated direct communication and collaboration between consumers and producers on how to improve the system and the products. Soon, with the support of producers, Seikatsu Club had established a milk company and its own production of miso according to strict quality controls. It now owns nine companies that produce products for its members. Over the last 30 years, this partnership with producers has brought 3,000 consumer goods to the market in accordance with Seikatsu specifications. Sixty percent of these are food items. And in contrast to supermarkets that stock up to 300,000 items, Seikatsu Club offers only one brand of each product it sells. This brand is usually superior to the rest, and the practice reduces unnecessary competition between brands and eliminates advertising costs that are passed on to the consumer.

Keep going, we are millions!

[–] TerranFenrir@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Heyy thank you for the response and the words of affirmation :)

You can go much bigger than that! How could you inject, for example, production into your idea? How about mutual aid (non-monetary)?

That is definitely something that I'm hoping for. However, I want to make this as modular as possible, in that the project doesn't become too big to interest anyone. As I have 0 experience dealing with stuff like this, I would like to start super small and low risk to see what it feels like and if it even works haha.

Have you read any books on the matter?

Nope.

Here’s an excerpt from Slow Down by Kohei Saito

I see that you like making direct quotations from books quite a lot through your comment history. Thank you for the excerpts you provided here :). They're kinda inspiring.

Keep going, we are millions!

I mean it doesn't feel like we are. I tried looking up irl leftist groups that do stuff like this here in Calgary, but it doesn't seem like anything remotely close to this exists. There is one non income sharing intentional community, but it's not accepting any new members. Are you in Calgary? Do you have any such groups/connections that could be used to build solidarity?