>>7321I can imagine drugs and alcohol in communities being a major problem. I've seen it myself, Twin Oaks specifically has fairly well put together people for the most part, they're really good at letting in people who are constructive for the community and making it a safe place for families (last I visited there were 4 families with children there.)
Anyways, that really sucks that this sort of thing isn't as common in France, I would have thought that less individualist countries would have more intentional communities if anything.
>>7383They interact with the market through the cooperatively owned and operated businesses on site, (seed exchange, hammock factory, tofu factory, farm, furniture and woodworking workshop, etc) but internal to the community, yah, it is very communistic. Their catchphrase is, "Not Utopia Yet." Clothes, medical care, a monthly stipend, food, comfortable shelter and empathetic people are all really valuable things to have guaranteed even when the more consumer pleasures of our general society are less present there. And I really want to emphasize, there's no culty shit, they don't ask for any of your money and are officially secular though members are welcome to practice their respective religions.
The reason I'm not there right now is because I visited as a teenager and was too young to be settling down in a place like that and because I (perhaps foolishly) have tried to engage with the status quo instead and have been utterly failing at it for nearly 7 years now. Community college was awful, I can't manage to motivate myself to work a "real" job, I've just been sat in my room now for years. Maybe if I'm still like this at 30 I'll actually go back. I'd miss my mom though, she's probably the only reason I've stayed this long.
Here's some pics of one of my favorite rooms (a reading room with wifi) in one of the buildings there and a view from one of the bathroom windows. When you've grown up in moldy run down rentals your whole life the rooms in these images are luxurious. I have more pics if uboanons are interested, the buildings get nicer the more recently built they are there. The ones from the 70s are pretty small with small ceilings and some of the newer ones have modern 15ft ceilings in the hallways and big common rooms.