Yes, oxymoron I know. But like many of you, I am stuck in :amerikkka:

So if you could pick anywhere to live in the States, where would it be? And why? Ideally where far left ideology is the norm.

  • duderium [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I wish we could all start a commune somewhere that wouldn’t fail within three years (since almost every commune does).

      • duderium [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Millennials have virtually no political power, while car companies wield enormous political power. That probably has something to do with it.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Car companies couldn’t stop some failing town from turning main street into a walkable downtown with parking on the outskirts.

            Boomers could, and do. Millenials are a huge disadvantage financially and politically. You buy political influence in this country and there is no anti-car movement big enough and organized enough to afford it, anywhere.

              • Frank [he/him, he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Yeah. It sucks. But it's the truth. Right now there's are no political orgs that can realistically challenge boomer money and their death grip on politics. Car free cities are not happening in the near term. The best you can get is places like Minneapolis or Raleigh that have a lot of bike infrastructure.

              • StolenStalin [comrade/them,they/them]
                ·
                3 years ago

                They aren't saying it's impossible. They are saying the conditions do not YET exist. There is not YET a large enough anti-car movement.

                  • StolenStalin [comrade/them,they/them]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    You know how many rich fucks in NYC want to have their driver ferry them around? Like yeah I agree there is probably a base big enough for a movement if it was organized. I haven't done it myselfbecause I have no people skills, crippling social anxiety, and no longer live In a large city(or do I? Fuck off feds) the vast majority of the country is ONLY accessible by car. And losers in cities still see it as a status symbol. There have been a few towns here and there that manage to ban cars from like a specific street or whatever. I'd look at how those were successful and start there. Do it one street at a time till using a car in the city is so hellishly useless no one does it.

      • CrimsonDynamo [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        So many people think living on a commune is all laying in a hammock, walking goats on a leash and casual gardening.

        Nope. It's constant hard work, starvation diets, everyone's fucking everyone and there's always cliques. Someone will be that guy who thinks they do all the work and everyone is lazy, and will try to "papa Smurf" the whole thing.

        There are very few examples of communes that actually stand the test of time, and it's probably because there is a de facto heirarchy keeping the whole thing moving.

          • Ideology [she/her]
            ·
            3 years ago

            You could testrun by having them stay over for a bit. There is the old saying: "Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."

            It might even turn her off to the idea if it's sure to fail.

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I cannot overstate how many people end up financially ruined because they decided to live on a commune and things exploded a month or a year or five years later, leaving them with nothing and no way to leave.

          • CrimsonDynamo [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            As I'm sure most people who are reading this know, it's hard to stay friends with someone after living with them. That's been mostly true for me, with a very few exceptions.

            Now, imagine taking that concept and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and buying property with them..

            A lot of communes will let you visit and get a taste of the life. If she ever really pushes for it beyond just romanticizing it, maybe take her to one and scare her straight so to speak

            • Alaskaball [comrade/them]A
              ·
              3 years ago

              Now, imagine taking that concept and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and buying property with them…

              The Villages out in Florida, but instead of hogs and libs shouting at each other in the community center its tankies and anarkies shouting at each other in the commune center

            • summerbl1nd [none/use name]
              ·
              3 years ago

              man, i only ever lived with friends and had pretty positive experiences

              does this make me a doormat or something

              • CrimsonDynamo [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Hard to say. Maybe you got lucky. Even when it seems good, you can look back on it and realize it was toxic.

                I lived with my best friend once and we had the best time we could, but looking back, we were just stuck in a feedback loop of negativity and drinking beer to escape our problems.

                Hopefully, you were one of the lucky ones. I only have a couple of people that I look back mostly fondly on when it comes to roommates

      • CIYe [comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Why not meet them? To be honest pretty much all my friends are liberals, it is the nature of living in this country. Now, I'm not saying live with them, but really politics should not be the number one reason to reject friends given they are a baseline level of not shitty. If you're restricting yourself to MLs you're gonna have a bad time lol.

        Tbh I would take vaushite socialist friends, at least we could agree on some things

      • duderium [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        This is probably true but maybe you could at least get to know them a little before judging them like this?

      • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Most people can't go straight from an individualist mode of living to a communal mode of living. There are a lot of skills and habits and shared wisdom that need to be built for that; a lot has been written about this by FIC organizers.

        There are many dimensions and degrees of communization. I would encourage picking a limited degree of this (anything from sharing food stamps to sharing a car or two amongst a group) and see how it goes.

      • duderium [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        At some point we just have to admit that anything we do is going to be infiltrated by feds. We joke about this site being infiltrated but I've seen posts here that were 100% fed entrapment shit. Hopefully at some point the movement becomes so strong that even they won't be able to handle it. They are, after all, prison guards, which makes them fundamentally less strategic than their prisoners.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Nah, there's no need to infiltrate communes. Once you're stuck on a commune you're socially isolated, financially obligated, and have no time or energy to agitate anywhere else. For the feds its the safest place you can be aside from dead.

    • medium_adult_son [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Would a co-living situation work? Multiple families living in a city pooling resources to raise their families and purchase houses?

      I thought I read an article about communal living in Oakland once, but all I could find from a quick search were new for-profit co-living startups or real estate companies turning apartments into dorms and profiting from it.

      • Ideology [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        This is my ideal situation. Have some nice roommates in a regular house, but somehow manage to get a bunch of houses with a shared alley so you can have a :grillman: :grill: with your commie neighbors.

        Utopian communes are and have always been a racket ever since the first ones in frontier Ohio/Indiana.

        • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Have some nice roommates in a regular house, but somehow manage to get a bunch of houses with a shared alley so you can have a :grillman: :grill: with your commie neighbors.

          I'm working towards "this but more than just a grill"; there are already the vague beginnings of this in my location and much more progress made in another couple locations in the network.

          It's quite possible to pay a mortgage on a house outright on 5 years of saving from a full-time job here.

          cc @duderium, @medium_adult_son

    • Dangitbobby [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Here's what happened when real-life socialists went and formed a community together. They got land, they farmed it, they had no cops, they smoked dope, they advertised they'd deliver your baby for free to avoid abortion. It's a fascinating read and I hope it gets spread around more.

      https://pastebin.com/F0WGGewg