How residents of English village where there is no crime, debt or homelessness get by with no pay cheques
Nestled within East Sussex is a village of a few hundred people where there's no debt, homelessness and pretty much no crime whatsoever.
It's called Darvell and the village is a community of people called 'Bruderhof', a group of radical Christians who believe in community living.
This means that pretty much everything is shared and if someone needs something, it's provided for, though members live modestly so they don't require much in the way of goods.
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According to their site, the Bruderhof community 'provides each of us with necessities such as food, clothing, and housing, so there’s no need for money on a day-to-day basis'.
If someone does need some money, to take a trip for instance, then they'll be given it and expected to give back what they didn't spend when they get home.
While members do work to provide for the community 'no one who lives on a Bruderhof is paid for their work: no wages, paychecks, stipends, or allowances'.
Even certain members who might live away from the community in a city could have a job but 'all wages are donated to the church community'.
In this way, the Bruderhof believe everyone is 'on the same footing'.
The communities do make money through various business ventures, but all the earnings go to the church and are used to pay for something called 'community of goods'.
According to the Bruderhof's website, across their villages 'no one member, or any one Bruderhof location, is richer or poorer than any other'.
As for this 'community of goods', that's something they've set up which pays for the needs of each community and its members.
"Community of goods, also known as the common purse, simply means we share everything together," they said of the way they do things.
"None of us owns any property in our name, and none of us receives a paycheck, stipend, or allowance. Everything belongs to the collective membership."
As such, members don't own the houses they live in, the clothes they wear or the shoes they walk around in, they don't have money or build savings as that all goes into the public pot to be spent on providing essential goods.
They added: "This idea is not ours; this is how the first Christians lived, as described in Acts 2."
If a community ever has more money than it needs then they'll spend the surplus on 'our own outreach projects or to support other charitable missions'.
Joe Harker