I read somewhere the other day (in an old SSC post?) that communes work better when they require some significant personal sacrifice, but only if they're religious. It doesn't work for secular communes for some reason.
Maybe EA accidentally tapped into whatever makes religious communes tick, by really heavily leaning into the personal sacrifice part and believably presenting it as a moral obligation that's not discharged even by leaving the community.
And then all the misconduct is just the regular old thing you get in religious communities.
