[fragmede]

They haven't all failed. I hear about REI quite a lot. Rainbow Grocery is quite popular in SF. I hear good things about Organic Valley. Equal Exchange is in Massachusetts. It's popular to bank at a credit union instead of a bank.

The NCBA maintains a list of several thousand collective/coop businesses.

https://ncbaclusa.coop/

[WalterBright]

I was using collective in the sense of being a commune. Sorry about not being clear.

[fragmede]

Communes haven't all failed. There are a number of them that continue to exist to this day. That the rest of us haven't been forced into living in one of them doesn't mean they don't exist. Portland has a bunch of co-living co-housing communities that are thriving.

[20after4]

https://www.eastwind.org/ is just a few miles from me. It's quite successful, they even operate a business that grosses ~$2M/year and they provide their members with health insurance. I'm not keen on giving up my possessions to join the collective but I can think of a lot of worse ways to live.

Most definitely not a failure.

[WalterBright]

East Wind has high turnover:

https://rootstalk.grinnell.edu/past-issues/volume-vii-issue-...

https://www.linkedin.com/company/east-wind-community

I couldn't find out how high that was, but I've seen another "successful" commune with an average stay of 2 years. It takes people an average of 2 years to discover they don't particularly care for communes.

[hef19898]

Two years sounds about right in 2024, doesn't it?