Power, Money, and Values.
From: Robert Arjet (robertarjet.net)
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 10:58:07 -0600 (MDT)

Preamble:

I think this would be a much more effective discussion if [one] didn't personally attack the writer's ideas/thoughts/feelings.

Indeed. I think all parties to the discussion could heed this advice. I've been a little dismayed to see the tone of this discussion get more personal and mean-spirited than is usually seen on Cohousing-L. A little more respect and benefit-of-the-doubt and a little less rancor would go a long way.

That being said:

I've been sitting out and waiting for my thoughts to coalesce on this thread before posting. I think I've had two useful insights, which is about all I can manage on a good day, so I thought it might be time to share them.

First Insight

The first insight is that one thing that hasn't been point out very explicitly so far is that money gives people power. Not that there aren't other types of power, but the whole purpose of money is to distill power down to a portable, readily exchangeable form. All things being equal, if Bobo has $357,000 and Mimi has $1.32, Bobo has more power.

Which means that Bobo gets things that Mimi doesn't. That may be good, bad or indifferent (see below), but there it is. As a result, if Bobo funds items out of order, what he is doing is using his disproportionate power to get the things he wants.

Now, it's true that these are things that the whole community wants--the question was originally whether a policy should be made to "accept gifts but only to fund the items in the VE priority order."

So, if Bobo and Bubba and Babs all decide to donate to the community so that we can get the wine cellar before the playscape, Mimi and Mott and Mabel are likely to notice that Bobo and Bubba and Babs are using their disproportionate power to get things in an order that pleases them, but is not the order in which the community ranked them. And then if Bobo and Bubba and Babs further donate so that the community can get the wide screen TV, the boat dock, and the putting green before the dog run, the apiary, and the fire pit, Mimi, Mott and Mabel are going to notice that the people with more money are consistently getting the things that they want most, while the people with less money are still waiting for the things that they want most, even though--and here's the crux, IMHO--even though the community's consensus process determined that the playscape, the dog run, the apiary and the fire pit were more important to the community than the wine cellar, the wide screen TV, the boat dock, and the putting green.

This is exactly the same problem that we saw in one of the last openly hostile threads on Cohousing-L, which was about affordability. What I thought then applies now, I think. If Babs makes $300,000 a year, she can *choose* to live in a $60,000 shack, a $500,000 mansion, or anything in between. It is up to her. If she doesn't like the lack of amenities at the affordable community, she can live at the non-affordable community. If Mott, however, makes $28,000, she has no such choice. It's the shack for her. Money is a form of power, and power means you have choices that other people don't. Now, how that affects community life is the subject of my second insight...

Second Insight:

It's about values, people.

How differences in income should be handled runs into all sorts of values about fairness, equity, power, community, friendship, equality, responsibility, etc. etc. That's one of the great challenges of cohousing that we all signed up for when we got aboard this crazy train. As I understand it, cohousing requires fewer shared values than a coop, commune or cult, but more than your average condo or subdivision. So, like it or not, we do have to find some way to live closely with people whose values do not mesh 100%. Like it or not, our money does get intermingled. Heck, just the commonhouse requires that. So we have to figure out a way of handling it. Just as there is no right or wrong way to parent, to recycle, or to handle pets, there is no right or wrong way to deal with the fact that some people have more money/power than others.

Here's the great thing, though--each community gets to decide for themselves. The original post didn't ask "what's the demonstrably right way to handle this?" It asked for input so that an individual community could make its own decision. One of the best things about this list is that we don't all have to live together. Different communities develop different values. Some allow only organic food at the common meals. Some go to great lengths to ensure affordability, some insist on sustainable building practices. We can say "well, this is how we do it in my community, and it works for us," and leave it at that.

On a homeschooling list that I read, we have everything from Texas Fundamentalists to Wiccans and back again. The guideline for discussing religion is that you can discuss how your religion (or lack thereof) impacts your homeschooling, but you may *not* discuss how someone else's religion impacts their homeschooling. Perhaps we might keep that in mind. More discussion along the lines of "these are my/our values and these are the decisions we've made and this is how it works," and less of "your decisions are bad because your values are wrong and it won't work for you."

my two cents,

Robert Arjet
Central Austin Cohousing



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