[mkstowegnv]

As someone who has spent time at East Wind and Acorn and taken the three week visitor program at Twin Oaks, I hardly know where to begin in disabusing you of the idea that these communities are libertarian. Very few members would self identify as such, and most abhor Hayak style libertarian prescriptions for society as a whole. Members have many motivations for joining but among the most common is wanting to equally share the fruits of their labor - to partially escape the exploitation of their fellow humans that unfettered unregulated capitalism inevitably produces, and which the US social safety net and graduated income taxes in particular only ameliorates inadequately. Twin Oaks publishes an Intentional Communities Directory [1] which has many listings for Europe (which may have more of an available land disadvantage). Twin Oaks has thrived since 1967 [2] and has a very large body of rules and procedures which is one of the ways they free themselves of problem individuals (other communities rely more on shunning which can be quite effective). Generally members are happy, exmembers are glad they lived there, and children are extremely well cared for. As to why there are few (but >0) second generation and lifelong members and as to how the communities coexist with the outside world - as many of them say about their relationship status "it's complicated".

1 https://www.ic.org/directory/ 2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Oaks_Community,_Virgini...

[golergka]

Your comment is exactly what I assumed and it doesn't contradict my comment in any way. Yes, these people possibly don't identify as libertarians, but their community is the exact reason why they actually should.

Libertarianism is about building a community that you like, in any possible way, without having to agree with anyone else about what is "exploitation" and all that ideological stuff. Libertarianism's goals is exactly aligned with what "hippie communists" (stereotype that I use here in good faith, to omit boring argument about strict ideological definitions) want, as long as they don't try to force their views on other people.

[mkstowegnv]

There is every likely and unlikely combination of political beliefs to be found in every population including commune members. But I will go out on a limb and try to speak for that population. Relatively few see the communal life as a viable prescription for society as a whole, and most believe that all political and economic systems involve painful tradeoffs. On the other hand most look with horror at purist libertarians rejecting as much enforced sharing in general society as possible. This philosophy is irreconcilable with the view of many, inside and outside of communes who strongly believe that having many kinds of sharing - enforced by a government - is necessary for any civilization worth living in, and eternal vigilance against all slippery slopes presented by governments and corporations is unavoidable (and is not simply avoided by letting free markets run amuck). Many of us are thoroughly familiar with your arguments and adamantly reject them as dangerous, simplistic and in effect evil thinking that we will resist with everything we have.

[golergka]

And yet, these arguments remain theoretical talk - while existence of these communities, where all sharing is implemented without government or threat of violence, only serves to confirm libertarianism.

[WalterBright]

Nothing at all about libertarianism prevents people from equally sharing the fruits of their labor. Libertarianism is about not forcing people to share.

Note that the commune leaves unresolved what to do about "problem individuals" in the larger sense. They just force them out. But if all of society was a commune, what then?

[Semiapies]

In the context of a larger liberal society, where they generally can't use coercion to enforce their rules, they have to make rules people will want to go along with. Change that, and you have every government in history we've seen try to run a collective economy. Not communes, but collective farms and dissenting kulaks getting shipped off to the hinterlands, or city residents being marched out to the farms.

(I'm aware than anarchists claim it's totally possible to democratically run a collective economy and have it work at least as well as a liberal capitalist society. The first has never happened, much less the second.)

The decoupling of the force of law from economic and social arrangements as much as possible is the libertarian argument, here. Having this sort of arrangement at the government level gives you oppression and starvation, while having it at the voluntary level gets you happy, self-selected communes where people brag about growing their own food.

(Having grown up in the country, the idea of growing and cooking one's own food and thus not having to pay retail is less mind-bogglingly amazing for me than it might be for other HN posters.)