Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Elitist lifestyle or public good?

[Mary Scholl (KilduffScholl]

King Collins:  Your upbraiding of Rob Sandelin for stating that
universal home ownership is impossible in the foreseeable future seems
ill-taken to me.

In my view, the amount of talent and upbringing and luck and desire a
person has will make that person more or less successful, both by that
person's own definition and by the definition of the people around
h/her.  Giving people things, whether wealthy people or poor people,
cannot change that.

By the way, my personal position is that my wife and I are hoping we
will qualify financially to be able to buy into Liberty Village
cohousing in Libertytown, MD.

Compassion and ethics are no substitute for the reality (not
realpolitik, but reality) that there is deep within us a desire to make
life better for ourselves, and that that desire is stronger in some of
us than in others.

Is not the ability of humans to make progress in all the ways that we
have done so a matter of people dedicating themselves to personal
improvement for themselves and those close to them?  To the extent that
we have tried in this century to create an economy or political system
based on another model, haven't we created chaos and dysfunction?

At the end of your message, you compare cohousing to a whimper in an
endless nightmare if it is true that ethicality will not someday replace
practicality, if cohousing has no other aspiration or destiny than to be
available to those who can afford it.

It is unfair to this society that we have, flawed as it is, to describe
it as a nightmare.  I submit that when it comes to endless nightmares,
the politico-economic systems set up in the name of creating universal
healthcare and housing have made our present system, flawed as it is,
seem like paradise.  

I believe the weight of the evidence from humakind's experience with
taking from each according to h/her abilities, and giving to each
according to h/his needs is that it seems to lead invariably to
disaster.  That those put in charge of distribution invariably keep the
most and the best for themselves and those close to themselves.  That
those whose job it is to distribute wealth according to ethical
considerations rather than considerations of greed invariably steer
their society into bankruptcy.  That most of those talented people whose
hard work will benefit society will not work hard for ethical reasons.

Take Cuba for example.  Although it is true that the U.S.'s boycott of
Cuba is unconscionable, it is also true that Cuba is free to trade with
practically every other nation on earth.  While Cuba's government is
arguably the most ethical one on earth, Cuba's economy is among the most
impoverished, and her people among the most miserable.  I submit that
they would turn Castro out by an overwhelming vote, were he to allow
one.  They would take what we have, flawed as it is, in a heartbeat.

Greed is the source of the greatest evil in the world, but is also the
source of much that is good.  Any scheme for reforming the world which
does not take this truth into account is, in my view, doomed.

We need to reorder our priorities.  We need to do what's right.  Our
defense budget is controlled by congressional representatives who are
not interested in defense as much as in bringing home the bacon.  Our
political representatives are once again the best money can buy, and
that is intolerable.  But to hope that money once spent on defense
should be redistributed toward buying housing to give away to everyone
is to steer a course into the ground.


Paul Kilduff
Baltimore
paulkilduff [at] webtv.net