Great to know that someone took the time to engage me. Conversation is what it’s all about. Thank you for posting this incredible detailed comment, which of course I will proudly post on my blog, despite the fact that is lambasting me. (A little bit of lambasting does a body good 
.
Just to make a point of clarification. I did not say that I’m all for socialism and you are not socialist enough. I’m not all for socailist, and the bit about the markets economy was there to make the slight point that there is something weird about living in a particular way, if that way is relient on a system that is understood as inferior.
Of course I may be wrong, and you may not think that global market capatalism is anything to scoff at, and in that case I stand corrected. I was wrong.
And by the way, I did include for that possiblity in my post when I spoke about the liberal democratic right to create communities. If you fall in that catagory that is a different story, however, I wonder how many kibbutzniks believe that they are living the “ideal.” P.S.
I really do work from 8-5 every other day, and from 6-3 the other days. And of course on friday in the dining room instead of half day we all work from 6 till when we finish setting up which took untill 4:40-5:00 the last two weeks.
Also, paying a Thai working wages that are desirable only in light of the fact that the alternative is unemployment amounts to exploiting the poverty of the Thai workers by paying them wages that only the poorest would accept. People deserve to be paid a living wage whether or not they are poor and desperate enough to accept less – and have to leave their wives and children for these meager wages.