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Notes -
(pulling numbers roughly out my ass here) Private gated apartment rent: 48k Private school for 2 kids: 32k Private insurance: 12k (double the 6k average to get Premium) Pleasant social and work environments: basically just remove hazard pay incentives. Call that a 18k hardship bonus that is off the table. Private security: most of the need is obviated if the above are all satisfied, but call it a 6k annual fee split across however large your little community is.
Just on the face of it thats 120k worth of 'good stuff' you're paying to have if you don't have it already, and thats the minimum state you are envisioning here. We can postulate that the average positive externality per household in a functioning society might be worth this much and could theoretically be achieved with greater economies of scale, but lets table that thought experiment for another time.
The end state is the 'what is your job on the commune' ideal made manifest. Most disgruntled cynics, sorry realists, here look askance at this utopia because of accurate concerns regarding the likelihood of such a utopia being targeted for 'diversification' by larger powers that be. The reality though is that the disgruntlement and skepticism is an outgrowth of current degrading circumstances rather than hostility to this nice idea to begin with.
We all want our bag of escape money so that we can hide in Belize or Vermont when things hit the fan, and are just coasting through the enshittification of our local environs, getting as much out of it as we can while eyeing the escape hatch. It is a very cynical approach, and it saddens me that civic engagement is such a thankless exercise.
Unfortunately, in equity-focused societies oversensitive to disparate impact, I do not see any recourse. The only real solution is to hide ones utopia lest a horde of foreign and domestic migrants descend to enshittify it thoroughly. Best to be like a mumbai mansion: filthy on the outside but paradise within.
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