Like startups, most intentional communities fail. Why?
Intentional communities, by and large, fail to recognize the many darwinian iterations of evolution modern societies have gone through over the years, where successful social organizations have overwhelmed their less-adapted brethren.Simply put: the current way of organizing society is a pretty good plan for organizing a very, very complicated social mechanism full of smart, self-interested actors towards the common good.  Is it fucked up still in many respects?  Absolutely.  Do you have a better idea?  Highly unlikely.  We've been working on this whole "getting along" thing for millennia, and we've tried pretty much every idea possible at one point or another.There's a modern conceit that we're somehow smarter or better than previous generations, and that's very misguided.  We're much better informed, certainly.  The conventional wisdom, the collective mental schema regarding what's a good idea and what's not, that's improved dramatically.  Not because you thought about it, but because a bunch of faulty social assumptions have gotten weeded out over the years.  But people are pretty much the same as they've ever been.