Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Work or Pay Systems

[Racheli Gai (racheli]

Well, I profoundly disagree with the glowing assessment of capitalism 
provided by Tim, but
my intention isn't to get into an argument over the nature of 
capitalism, and whether
it's good or evil.  I just wish to point out that at least one chunk of 
the disagreement,
and especially the HEAT surrounding the debate regarding work and pay 
has to do with the
different values/ideologies held by different people.  I think that 
often issues
become heated when there are deep competing sets of beliefs...  This is 
also
what makes it hard (and sometimes impossible) to get them resolved.

Racheli.

On Jul 31, 2008, at 12:32 PM, Tim Mensch wrote:

> There are problems with the current implementation of capitalism in the
> US, but the fact is that capitalism is what enabled the creation of 99%
> of the wealth (and probably several more nines after that) on the 
> planet
> today (see The Origin of Wealth, Beinhocker). Without it, you wouldn't
> have the privilege of being able to live comfortably while criticizing
> capitalism on a home computer, on the Internet--which also wouldn't
> exist in its current form. Corruption--and pathological greed--is
> focusing that wealth far too much to be healthy, but the existence of
> that wealth is a direct result of capitalism.
>
> It may not be perfect, but every other system that's been tried has
> failed. Read The Soul of Capitalism by William Greider for ideas on how
> to help improve capitalism. A point I made in the previous email--that 
> I
> could be donating expert time instead of cleaning toilets--is an 
> example
> of how cohousing would actually prevent that skill from being applied 
> in
> a way that would improve the world, and instead waste that expert time
> and energy working on a task that you could pay $15/hour to quickly
> dispatch. And in the latter case, you're helping someone who likely
> needs the work, so how is this a bad thing, exactly?