It works fairly well in a commune. Not so well on higher scales.
It always works the same way no matter the situation. The weakest link benefits to the detriment of the strongest.
Even in Isreal, where socialism was popular, the kibbutzim have declined precipitously, although there is a recent resurgence. People forget the lessons that communes don’t work.
“It works fairly well in a commune. Not so well on higher scales.”
I think there is a world of wisdom in that line! Back in the late sixties I worked in the industrial engineering department at a manufacturing plant. The plant offered workers the opportunity to earn additional income by increasing their production rate. This was not done on an individual basis but on a group basis, everyone in a department received “incentive” pay when the group AS A WHOLE reached a production rate in excess of one hundred percent of standard. It was quite obvious that it worked well in small departments with only five or fewer workers because if one did not want to exert himself the others would make his life miserable. On the other hand larger departments with twenty or thirty workers usually ran below ninety percent of standard because therre were always some who wanted to goof off and it only took a couple of slackers to hold the average down. I would say that about six is the maximum number of workers in a department that result in consistent production above the one hundred percent of standard level. Amazingly the management never seemed to grasp what the problem was. They actually brought in a high paid consultant to take studies and crunch numbers for two weeks and his comment to me at the end was, “These people wouldn’t know what work was if it came up and bit them in the ass.” Exactly what I and others had told management but they had to spend a ton of money to hear it from an “expert” before they would believe it.