Why Do I Exit a Commune Once I Reach a Certain Age? Was the Money I Donated Before Wasted?

Many mutual-aid communes set an age range within which the right applies, and once you pass that range the right is lost. Why is it set up this way?

1. To keep each person's cost-sharing within the commune under control and ensure sustainable operation. Take death as an example: everyone dies. If age were not limited, it would amount to everyone eventually receiving, so the commune's burden would necessarily grow heavier and heavier, and in the end people could not bear it, undermining sustainability. (Why can some insurance cover a lifetime? A lifetime means higher premiums; mutual aid could also cover a lifetime, but that would mean several-fold increases in cost.)

2. It is the very meaning of mutual aid. The point of mutual aid is not to ensure that everyone receives aid, but that the unfortunate receive aid. And what counts as misfortune? The death of a 90-year-old is not misfortune; the death of a 30-year-old is. Mutual aid is meant to help the unfortunate, especially in the most important age ranges.

If I no longer enjoy a commune's rights after a certain age, was the money I donated before wasted?

1. The money you donated went into the hands of other recipients, helped people, and accumulated good deeds.

2. It bought a possibility of receiving aid — a possibility that, though invisible and intangible, is very valuable and was not donated for nothing.

After your service expires you may simply ignore it, or withdraw on your own. Deductions from May 2018 onward will no longer include cost-sharing from members whose service has expired.

Quite a few people use this to claim that the Commune is a fraud that has swindled a great deal of money. This is nonsense. Whether the Commune is a fraud can be checked in the following ways: first, whether the recipients are real; second, whether the funds actually reach the recipients.

Are the recipients real? The Commune operates strict vetting, public disclosure and a visiting-team system, making fraud very difficult.

Do the funds reach the recipients? The Commune publishes the bank transfer records and screenshots of recipients' signatures on receipt.

On all this information the Commune insists on transparent disclosure; for details, see the disclosure section.