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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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It's mainly individualism that makes them unable to imagine a less wasteful world i think. Even without capitalism many individualist westerners struggle to imagine a more communal society. It's just so foreign to them.
For example something simple like clothing. It's common in the US for people to own tons of clothes they barely ever wear. Then they need space to store all those clothes, and usually dont bother to repair them, or take care of them properly so they don't last as long. If instead you had communal areas. Where there were tons of clothes curated and taken care of by professional cleaners and weavers. People could go to them, and pick some stuff out. Keep maybe 7-10 outifts at home, and just switch stuff out with the communal clothing pool when needed. The clothes would last longer, and you'd have a larger functional pool of options if you wanted to try something new, and overall the community would use way less fabric to maintain their outfits.
But a lot of westerners look at something like that and think "ew i have to share clothes with other people?" and entirely ignore the upsides.
Same with things like every home having its own full kitchen vs just having communal kitchens with maybe a hot plate, microwave, and rice cooker at home for snacking. And having meals like breakfast/lunch/dinner made for the whole community and eaten together in a communal eating area. It's not even just resources that are done better with this. Like imagine how easy it would be to have a nutritionally balanced diet if you had community meal planning. And the effects on community health that would have. And how much it would help people with disablilites who stuggle to make meals for themselves. Or even how it could help elderly people who have retired stay connected to their communities, and even give them something to do if they want to come help out with meals. Most grandmas i know would thrive in a place like that. Getting to have meals with everyone, and show off the recipes they learned over the years would enrich their lives a ton.
This stuff isn't like a new idea either. It's how many towns and villages functioned for centuries. It works. It just doesn't maximize profits.
I'd partly like such a place. I'd totally despise the social part of it though, as I despise people and having to deal with them.
But as with clothes, yes. I'm a "westerner" with more money than I could ever spend, yet only own like 3 or 4 outfits. And all were used. I don't like fancy brand shit. And I do care for my stuff. So there are exception s ๐
Honestly i think a big reason a lot of people don't like social interaction these days is because of how isolating the culture is. Like if everyone's got no practice socializing its not gonna be pleasant to have a bunch of socially awkward and maladjusted people trying to spend time together.
I think if you had a society like this, and gave it maybe a few months to a year people would relearn their social skills, build relationships, and generally be a lot happier spending time with others.
Also to be clear as to your stuff i don't think it's a bad thing to have your own personal property and things that are just yours. It's just a lot of the time we kinda just are forced to have stuff we only use every now and then. Like take a lawn mower for example. There is no need for everyone to have their own when we could all just share one. Unless for some reason you just really wanted one i guess lol.
I'd envision it more like an optional thing. Like sure you can get your own entire wardrobe if you want to i guess, but if you don't really care to then you just use the community clothing and don't have to waste your money on stuff you don't even really want to buy. Same with any communal resource. It's there if you want/need it, but it's always an option to just ignore it too.
The rampant mental illness in the USA really does make this a negative feedback loop. I'd say a quarter of the roommates I've had over the years had some serious mental issues. I've had a knife pulled on me, a friend of mine was murdered by his roommate.
After you have a few bad experiences like that the goal becomes to get a small family together and isolate as soon as possible. Any commune here is basically assumed to be a religious cult because nothing else makes sense.
I have thought of getting some people together to do a Juche style commune where we just go hard on self reliance and try to be entirely left alone, but idk how I'd ever find the people or money to make it happen. Would be cool af tho. Just do like transitionary phases where you slowly become more and more self reliant until basically the only thing you'd need money for is property taxes, and random luxury items. It wouldn't be Juche exactly, but inspired by it for sure.