Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Consensus (was Affordability?)

[Brian Bartholomew (bb]

I think the arguments justifying consensus have problems due to the
presence of voting.  Eliminating all voting would solve them.


----- Voting poisons the consensus goodness

Consent is declared good, while majority vote is declared bad.
However, in cases when consensus reaches a deadlock, it resorts to
majority vote.  These cases may be infrequent, but they are really
important to all concerned.  Thus consensus is a decisionmaking
process that makes the unimportant decisions by consent (good) and the
important decisions by majority vote (bad).  A decisionmaking process
that makes the important decisions by a bad method is bad.  However,
it's talked about as being good.  This isn't consistent.


----- Is voting the elephant in the consensus room?

It is said that consensus processes only work in groups that have a
common aim, but that coho groups have common enough aims that the
failure rate is small and tolerable.  However, messages that say in
effect, 'don't depend on a van unless you can maintain majority vote
political control of it', suggest to me that important differences in
aims are not rare, and consensus is substantially a majority vote system.

Becky Weaver <beckyweaver [at] swbell.net> writes:

> *if* a project aspect such as a van is *not* considered an
> important, financial-survival type item, it might get relegated by
> the community to interior-decoration-type status.

What if a van is only a financial-survival type item for the few
lowest income group members.  The group does not have a common aim in
this area.  Where does the moral authority to default on a consensus
promise made to this minority come from?


----- We've elected you to jump in the volcano

> If the van is a core personal value for only a few members, and the
> community has to make a hard decision, the van might have to go for
> the financial well-being of the community as a whole. Not because
> nobody cares or is untrustworthy; but because the community is
> struggling to find a solution that will cause the least harm overall.

This is utilitarianism: Sacrifice the van-dependent to save the
project for the rest.  It's not a principle I would consent to in a
decision-making process.  Not only do I not want to treat other people
this way, but at any time I could become the next sacrifice!


                                                        Brian