My biggest concern about communal ownership (ignoring tragedy of the commons) is that such an arrangement is simply undesirable for most people. There is something fundamentally unappealing about buying into a communal arrangement, and I can see why - I can easily think of a few past roommates to whom I'm very glad I was not financially bound in a long-term arrangement.

For example, TICs are declining in numbers in SF, not increasing. If communal ownership were a viable option, we should see the number of TICs increasing.

Yes, there are certainly a lot of unsolved problems in communal ownership. I'm optimistic that solutions are out there.

>If communal ownership were a viable option, we should see the number of TICs increasing.

I don't understand how that follows. All that indicates is that some particular operating structures (the specific TICs in place in SF) are not viable on one specific market (SF) in one particular moment in history.

I was just suggesting that in theory communal ownership could solve the problem. How to actually get that to work, in practice, is a problem that entrepreneurs have been working on for decades, and it will take many decades more.

Didn't Stalin try this?