I was talking recently with a british men that 10+ years ago was part of an intentional community. That community functioned for four years when it failed.

They were several couples one dealing with gardening, onef with building, and the others were not specialised. The gardner fell in love with the women from one of the couples and together decided to leave the community. The wife of the gardner and the men from the other couple were discounted and in conjunction with the fact that no one left was good at gardening they decided to discontinue the project.

You can say that the new couple betray the confidence of the intentional community but intimate relations are a private matter and not a community matter. They failed because they chose their income stream to be agricultural products when that disappeared the community was unable to find something else “to put food on the table”. The second reason is that they put too much power in someone’s hand. Since the agricultural men was the only one specialized in the income stream they chose he was the one that was able to “make it” to chose how much everyone earned.

So What can we learn from this?
Private matters are not community matters. They can be addressed if that harms the community (let’s say some uses bad language or they are violent toward their partner or kids) but you either accept or ask the people to deal with the situation either by resolving it or by moving.
Have more than one income stream. If one fails the other can compensate. The people specialised may be sick for a while, they may chose to leave or there can be no market for your product.
Have a governance structure but a hierarchy. Concentrated power always corrupts and that can lead to abuse or imbalance if the one with the power is no longer available. Give people agency but don’t create situations that can corrupt them.

Cover photo by Alexas Fotos from Pexels.