Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Giving or Taking

[Diane R. Margolis (diane]

We are non-parents, most of whose property taxes goes to pay for the
local public school system. While I believe that having an educated
populace is a benefit to the whole society, parents or not, it still
irks me to have to pay ever-increasing taxes for other people's kids
to go to school. People who have 4 or 6 or 8 kids expect everyone
else, including non-parents and parents of smaller families, to pay
for their kids' education for 13 years. In fact, I pay a
disproportionate share of school taxes, since I have no kids and can
afford a large house on a lot of land
----- Original Message -----
From: "Molly Williams" <mmw [at] waveinter.com>
To: <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: [C-L]_Giving or Taking
__________

Let's see, Molly.  They have more children, but you have more land and you
think they should pay more for education.  Then I guess you should pay more
for the defense of your larger land holdings.  And, being wealthier, I guess
you travel more and should pay  for the construction and maintenance of
roads.
And how about protection
of the banking system that keeps your money well regulated?   Oh, and what
about all the trade agreements that protect your wealth?  Or your right to
buy a disproportionate share of the earth's resources? How about the state
and federal parks?  Do you ever visit them.  I don't know about your
neighbors in Maine, but poor urban kids hardly ever get to them.
    Seems to me that we pay taxes because we wish to live in a certain kind
of society, one where there is freedom -- of expression and to own land, for
sure, but also
the freedoms from -- want and fear, for starters.  I'd think you'd want to
have those neighbor kids educated (as a right, not a gift) because you would
want them to share in the values and opportunities that have given you that
large house on a lot of land.  Seems to me also that you might also wish to
have a floor below which no American child can fall, one adequate to prepare
each child to lead a healthy life with hopes of enjoying the benefits of
Democracy.  I think you might wish this because it will be the only way to
preserve your "right" to that large house on a lot of land.  You may think
you "earned" it, but your "right" to possess in relative peace is based on
the general agreement that land may be bought and sold -- an absurd,
unthoughr of idea for most of the time humans inhabited this earth.

Frankly, I think the children's right to an education is a higher order
right than yours to land because your right to land depends on their being
taught about the way markets, and other forms of distribution, work.  It's
those other forms of distribution and production of goods and services that
we don't think about very often because they don't get much press.  I've
been thinking about them for a long time and I think a better understanding
of how they work and how we use them in our lives might save us a lot of
confusion.
    Here's a brief summary of the market and other forms of distribution
  MARKET EXCHANGE:  sometimes called "free
enterprise" and often the only economic system we think we use, but one that
accounts for a small proportion of the goods and services we exchange.  Its
rights include exclusive rights to land and other things we can buy, but
never at any price to the Brooklyn bridge, or love, or anything else the
song writer had in mind when writing "the best things in life are free."
Actually they are very expensive, it's just that you can't buy them.
RECRIPROCITY AND GIFT EXCHANGE:  This includes many forms of exchange of
goods and services, itis based on particular human relationships.  Some
are equal, as the relationship and exchanges among friends.  Most are
hierarchical such as the relationships within families.  Then it is fairly
specific about the goods and services people occupying certain statuses are
expected to perform.  For example, parents care for children and children
obey parents (or at least that's the way it's supposed to work).  The reason
this won't work instead of taxes is that it
depends on hierarchy and knowing who belongs in which predefined station.
We are all equal as citizens but in reciprocity we give and get different
things according to out station-- the lord gives
protection the serf gives fealty and work; everyone knows his/her place.
 This was and still is the chief means by which all societies
exchange of goods and services.  It is an excellent way of socially
organizing the differences among us -- old/young; strong/weak; healthy/sick,
etc.  But it didn't work as a complete system when we introduced market
exchange because, in addition to its hierarchical nature (markets require
level playing fields) its obligations precluded market involvement. It's a
complex system with myriad variations.  People,
besides me, have written books on this. I'll stop here.
POOLING: This is where citizenship and taxes come in.  Unlike charity (a
form of reciprocity) givers and receivers are faceless, unidenitfied.  Taxes
are
like rain falling into a pond.  The pond is our way of life, our freedoms,
our parks, our Brooklyn Bridge, our roads, our schools, our safe water
supply, our defense system, etc.  Its
probably as old as Reciprocity, but its modern form (the nation) was
invented so that the free enterprise system could work.  Eventally we will
learn that world-wide markets require world-wide pooling of some things.
Care for the ecology of the planet is one example.
      (For a much longer version see "The Fabric of Self" Yale U. Press
1998)

Defense of our mixed economy, our system of life depends primarily on
non-market economies. We enjoy (or enjoyed) peace and security, not
primarily because
we pay for a big military system, but because most of the rest of the world
agrees that we should.  Safety depends on consensus about basic rights.  If
September 11th does not teach us that much, I fear the world will become a
playground for terrorists.  The Taliban wish us to revert to a hierarchical
gift exchange system -- that's what their repression of women is all about.
The wish that people with large families return gratitude for their
children's education is a form of the gift exchange system.  We can, and
will argue about which goods and services should be exchanged according to
each of these systems, that's what elections are all about.  I think,
though, that it would help to be aware of these systems and know which works
best for what good or service.

Cohousing is an amazing experiment in mixing these many economic forms in a
new way.  As a sociologist, I watch with amazement and delight, as we create
this new social structure with our discussions, our consensus, our
disagreements, and our trials of different ways of doing things.  We are a
wonderfully inventive species.

If this sounds too much like a lecture, forgive me.  Oh, and about child
care: After one meeting at which we did not achieve consensus, we all
thought long and hard and decided a few meetings later that, because we
wanted children in our community, we would all pay equally for child care.

Diane at Cambridge Cohousing.

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