This summer, I did something rather unusual. I elected to work at Curtis S. Read Scout Reservation, nestled in the Stevens Valley in the Adirondack State Park. Now, this is no ordinary camp. The nearest town was a few miles away, and the nearest hospital almost a half an hour away. Besides that, there is the small fact that everyone, and I mean everyone, sleeps in a tent. Given, they have wooden platforms underneath, but it's just canvas for walls and a roof. This enabled two things. One, cheap housing for the staff, and two, nothing is private. The eating arrangements weren't much better. For a staff of around thirty, there was one refridgerator, one stove, and one set of cookware. And the pay? Barely enough for a night on the town per paycheck.
So, why am I telling you all this? Because it is in this setting that I have found the most stable form of communism. The food in the fridge is free to anyone who's hungry, but if you eat too much, people get peeved. If you want a soda and someone has them, you're welcome to them provided that you leave the last one for the owner. If you want to borrow something, anything, you have but to ask and it will surely be loaned to you. For example, the computer that I am now typing on was loaned out many times during the duration of the summer, no questions asked.
"So, theft is rampant?" I hear you cry. No. Theft is the smallest problem on one's mind. I have left my wallet out in the middle of staff city for days on end, and when I picked it up, not a cent was missisng. I kept all my valuables, my paychecks, my cash, in an unlocked box, and everyone knew where it was, but nobody stole so much as a dime.
So, how did this come to be? Well, in my humble opinion, the entire communist ideal works on the following principles:
1. Everyone has to know each other and live in close proximity to one another. Most thefts are made by unrelated people who've never seen the people they're stealing from. I'm not saying that the people even have to be amiable, they just have to know each other.
2. Everyone has to work and be paid within a reasonable range. For example, starting pay for an entire summer (on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 8 weeks a summer) is $800. That's almost 60 cents an hour. Comparatively, the most highly paid man on staff was only paid between $2500 and $3000, which is still a third of minimum wage. No one can honestly make decent money at camp, so we're all pretty much even in the money distribution, because no matter how hard you try, the first paycheck will be spent by the time the second one arrives, so you have no money any way you look at it.
3. YOU MUST BE CUT OFF FROM ALL CIVILIZATION. Constant reminders of the class system will only work to erect higher walls between people. Big example: There's always the one guy you absolutely detest at camp, right? Well, the staff had two. A.M. and M.F. The only reason we put up with them is because there was no one else. No cable TV, no gigantic groups of friends, just the staff. And this is the big point, because without this principle, the entire system collapses.
So, whether it's just my own personal opinion or someone else actually believes this, this is my form of cummunism, and it has been proven to work. Just ask the staff of Curtis S. Read scout reservation down at camp Waubeeka. So, I dub this, Waubeekan communism
