I'll go ahead and throw myself in the same bucket as Aqizzar and play along at least a bit, though I likely wouldn't join unless it happened to be near where I live now.
Some kind of organization is required. There will be disagreements, misunderstandings, new people, whatever, and having things spelled out in some way to handle all of those is crucial to the survival of the commune. A "We'll all be hippies" attitude sounds great, but it tends to fall apart after a while.
I'm not sure where this seeming obsession over cutting costs as low as possible is, either. Geeks of most stripes tends to be fairly employable, and if you've got 32 incomes making an average salary for a computer-oriented fresh college graduate (doing some generalizing and back-of-the-envelope work) you're looking at a combined after-tax income of over a million dollars per year. Areas with higher costs of living will pay their geeks more, and if one of your geeks is a finance/accounting geek you'll be paying less in taxes. Figures like $200,000 for the living space just aren't that much.
Basing some rough numbers off my living expenses in college, you're looking at ~$40/week/person for food (which includes curry), ~$15/week/person for utilities, and maybe $10/person/week for maintenance expenses. This is, of course, assuming some modest economies of scale, particularly around the food. That comes out to just over a hundred thousand dollars a year for the 32 people, which means that fully half of the commune could be unemployed (and thus, cooking/cleaning/etc. for the commune) and you'd still be coming out ahead in your first year.
I like the idea of "stock" in the commune, since it makes joining and leaving the commune easy. I'd think that the way to handle rent would be to actually charge a bit more than was required to run the commune, and use the surplus to build up investments to help support the commune (either in difficult times or through interest etc.). Eventually, you might even be able to have an "endowment" that would make the commune fully self-sustaining. Paying rent through labor/chores would obviously be an option, since not everyone will need/want/be able to hold conventional employment all the time.
I'd think that the way to go would indeed be to convert an old hotel, apartment building, or something of that nature (assuming you could get away with it zoning-wise). Worst case you incorporate and run it as a "hotel", which would probably be workable, though then you'd be subject to health inspections and such. Hotels already have the private/semi-private rooms and bathrooms, most of the plumbing done, available open areas, etc. which makes the required remodeling less expensive.
Overall, I'd say that it seems like it has a good chance of working, especially if it's well-organized at the beginning. The trick, as always, is finding thirty-odd "roommates" that you can live in close proximity to without eventually having some tensions boil over.
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Topic: Geek Commune (Read 22368 times)