Boarding houses used to be quite close to this, and I would love for the EA / Rationality community to have more of those. But also they fell out of favor for a reason (mostly legal, I think, but perhaps also increased wealth and housing stock). In particular, it seems like the person being more of the house manager (who selects guests as they desire / ultimately owns the house) than the house keeper (who is dependent on the goodwill of their fellow tenants) makes the system more sustainable / polishes some of the rough edges.
Homemakers are still around, though, and my sense is when there’s a group house that has something of this flavor, it’s because there’s a house affordable on one or two programmer salaries that is large enough for ~8 people, and so there’s a space for spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend whose primary contribution is ‘being part of the family’ and ‘making the space nice.’ There it seems important that they’re part of the family instead of a Hufflepuff recruited from the hinterlands primarily to act as a servant.
[Note that it’s particularly weird to have a master-servant relationship coincide with a ‘community building’ role; if everyone likes Alice’s parties thrown at The House, and Alice is friends with everyone at The House, it’s a little weird for The House to fire Alice for not keeping the place as tidy as they like, because presumably that damages the friendships and the broader community fabric (since, say, Alice might not be a fan of The House anymore).]
Boarding houses used to be quite close to this, and I would love for the EA / Rationality community to have more of those. But also they fell out of favor for a reason (mostly legal, I think, but perhaps also increased wealth and housing stock). In particular, it seems like the person being more of the house manager (who selects guests as they desire / ultimately owns the house) than the house keeper (who is dependent on the goodwill of their fellow tenants) makes the system more sustainable / polishes some of the rough edges.
Homemakers are still around, though, and my sense is when there’s a group house that has something of this flavor, it’s because there’s a house affordable on one or two programmer salaries that is large enough for ~8 people, and so there’s a space for spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend whose primary contribution is ‘being part of the family’ and ‘making the space nice.’ There it seems important that they’re part of the family instead of a Hufflepuff recruited from the hinterlands primarily to act as a servant.
[Note that it’s particularly weird to have a master-servant relationship coincide with a ‘community building’ role; if everyone likes Alice’s parties thrown at The House, and Alice is friends with everyone at The House, it’s a little weird for The House to fire Alice for not keeping the place as tidy as they like, because presumably that damages the friendships and the broader community fabric (since, say, Alice might not be a fan of The House anymore).]