Then again, I can't think of any example of collectivism working. Except maybe in religious groups.
I live in a Kibbutz, population over 1000 people, which mine specifically is highly secular. it is completely democratic, as in, we vote for the "secretary" (leader) every term or two, and then we vote for each major resolution separately, leaving the smaller issues to an elected committee. our living standards are above average. we get free housing, free high quality education (our high school is constantly at the top 10 list in the country), free higher education for the bachelor degree (our SAT scores are on average at the top 5% of the country) which everyone can go study without questions asked, and we get free masters education per permission from the Kibbutz, which basically means we need to apply for and if everything is ok with you, you'll get the funds for it. we have practically free food served in a large dining room which serves a decent quality and we got a grocery store with subsidized prices for those who wish to dine at home, we got cheap transportation, as in, there's a pool of cars and whenever someone wants to go out or drive outside he just orders a car from a website/app, go pick the car from a large parking slot and brings it back when he's done. we pay per kilometer driven, but it's cheaper than owning a car. our electricity is subsidized to the point where there are months i am getting paid for it. our water bills are subsidized to a point where i never actually paid for it directly.
There are many pros living in such a community, especially for kids growing up and with better managing a lot of the expenses people usually waste money on are mitigated (For example, a kindergarten in Israel costs a fortune, but here it's free without large expenses for the Kibbutz because the teachers are all from the Kibbutz, the facility is owned by the Kibbutz and there isn't a drive for profit), a lot of stuff can be cheaper when considering economies of scale like building 20 houses versus buying one, 500 strong driving population purchasing 100 cars vs 1 car each from a car company, or buying food and a lot of other stuff in bulk rather than per family etc. all in all, if we'd take a thousand people from outside the collective and compare their costs for maintaining the exact same living standards as a thousand people in the collective, the collective will have to spend far less to achieve that.
It sounds like a dream comes true, but there are problems with it, as with many socialist communities where people starts taking advantage of the system. we are in the process of transitioning more toward a capitalistic system (well, less communistic, we'd still keep a balance between wages) because a too large percentage is no longer covering their expenses because they never had the drive to excel at their work or move up, which in my opinion, is an inevitable by product of collectivism. our major income source is the wages the members who work outside the Kibbutz give to the Kibbutz and a few factories/large businesses, which basically means they are all paying for those who work at the kibbutz, who often have shorter work days, shorter work weeks and less demanding jobs. the problem is that the ratio between the "feeders" and "leechers" became such that the overall average is gradually declining, or, not improving fast enough for people who otherwise could have afforded a better living quality. it is extremely hard to see a guy who works half the time you do, at a job paying a third of what you bring in still gets to move to a much larger apartment than you simply because he is a year or so older than you. it is also frustrating seeing co-workers from outside the collective who earn less than you, managing to have higher living standards because they don't have to finance others.
So, to summarize, while it sounds as if i disagree with your statement, i only half disagree with it. i think collectivism could only work in highly ideological groups. in most free thinking groups (as in, not those who have their ideology imposed on them through fear or ignorance), after the 3th-5th generation the ideology degrades to a point where people start taking advantage of the system and the collectivism starts to crumbles, so there needs to be a really strong drive for it to work for more than a century. religious groups often manage to do that simply through barricading themselves from outside influences. it also helps when the collective members all starts poor and the living conditions are so bad that every person have a personal drive to improve it.
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Topic: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: T+0 (Read 1419628 times)