Cohousing-L Mailing List: politics: The Market System

[Scott Cowley (SCOWLEY]

Dear Mac Thompson,

Gee, you act as if there could be no other economic approaches possible. 
Does that mean that you have proclaimed the arrival of the end of class 
struggle ?
   I think you should take a look at your assertion that... 
           "the current market system delivers"...
 in a little broader way.
   What it delivers is a resource pump which strips the world of natural 
resources and human
community and pumps profits to the already-rich (like you and me).  The ideal 
product for your
market system is a brightly-colored plastic bag 1/4 full of polluted air.
   What it does not deliver is accountability to the larger community or 
environment, both of which
have become factors in economic decisions only relatively recently, and mainly 
in response
to the "educational" sacrifices of the lives of many MILLIONS of human beings 
(who are also like
you and me).
    "Shoot, just sitting here at your desk" does not give you the right to 
"order truckloads of goods
delivered to your home tomorrow", because those goods cost all of us... "in 
terms of relationship,
spirituality, and other things of much greater substance."..........
Such as: murderous Wars of conquest based on corporate greed;  or corporate 
cruelty, waste,
corruption and crime in the daily existence of working and exploited peoples.
    And surely you've heard of the current wanton destruction of the 
environment ?

    Your next remark:  Show me a better system.
    My reply:   Show me a worse one.  Your system is worldwide.
Not just "America".
    It is time we moved on.  It is also time that people stop apologizing for, 
indeed defending,
a "market" system which they only half see.
    Michael Eisener's paycheck for 1993 was large enough to pay for all the 
health care insurance
for ALL of his employees, and still give him 2 million dollars to eat with! 
Fuck Disney. They
are not going to develop a city organized into cooperative, egalitarian and 
diverse communities
(and without a hefty little return on investment) any more than they did with 
Epcot, which
totally devastated Walt's original vision for it.
   Now, about corporate production of cohousing:
   Northern Europe now has 500-600 cohousing communities.  If you had read the 
CoHousing
Company's book, you would have seen that many of them were funded by community r
evolving loan
funds, as well as the residents themselves.  Also, there is a pool of 
experienced professionals who have
developed the skills to design, fund, and build such unique institutions. It is 
this community-based,
community-accountable structure which needs to and is being built here.  I 
think 26 North American
communities in four years is a pretty good record.

- What follows is another reaction to your message from a friend of mine:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    "The person who wrote that message is an incredibly narrow-minded
and self-centered, selfish person.  Things are going wonderful for ME 
isn't the world wonderful!!  Yes, the market "works" (with many problems, 
some of which you mentioned) for those and ONLY those who are IN "the 
Market".

Although there is technically no problem of producing enough food right now, 
hundreds
of millions of people in this world have NO money, so they are not "in the 
market" and they get no food from the market. Millions of people in the 
U.S. are not in the housing market because they do not have the necessary 
funds; you probably know better than I do what percentage of people are 
able to buy homes these days -- and as the standard-of-living is being 
steadily driven down by the capitalists, the percentage of people who are 
in the housing market is shrinking -- i.e. have they ever noticed that 
there is a fairly recent, growing phenomena called homelessness?
   Co-housing can become part of the market-via-profit-maximizing corp-
orations at a cost that will REDUCE the size of the market, the number of 
people who could participate -- or people like you can use volunteer time, 
cooperative resources, etc. to make co-housing available to as many 
people as possible at the lowest possible cost.  Obviously for this jerk 
who has plenty of resources, the first alternative is completely satisfactory.
  This faith in the capitalist market is really touching -- haven't they ever
heard of "planned obsolence", haven't they ever noticed that the way capitalist 
corporations maximize profits is by steadily LOWERING the quality of 
goods and steadily RAISING the prices over time.  Does the average 
consumer with any experience and any sense really think that they get a 
better product for their money this year than they did ten, twenty or 
thirty years ago?
        If I were in your shoes, as far as I understand the situation,
I would just  draw the line between those who want to make co-housing a 
non-profit, lowest
possible cost alternative available to working people and those who could not 
care less as long as they
are able to get what they want.