Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Cohousing-L digest, Vol 1 #242 - 10 msgs

[Ruddick, T.R. (RUDDICK]

Picking on Molly again :-)

-----Original Message-----
"how
does the community deal with things that directly benefit some but not
other members of the community?"  


Similarly, I didn't want to start a discussion of public support for
education. I could have easily given another example, which I
thought of later, of how people when driving are usually happy to
let other drivers in line, but when someone butts in line in a way
that makes other drivers feel they are overstepping some invisible
line, you get road rage. Same idea.

---------------------------

My first thought was that you drive in an area similar to Cincinnati, where
drivers often create hazards by being TOO willing to stop to let others have
the right of way.  Certainly you're not in Boston, where a turn signal is
interpreted as a sign of weak moral character.  Or South Carolina, where a
turn signal indicates an immediate turn or lane change regardless of the
presence of other traffic.

But seriously...

Not same idea at all.  Failing to support the public good through fair taxes
for education (or child care) is a fault, but the negative consequences of
it are long-term and hard to assess.

On the other hand, bullying your way into a line of bumper-to-bumper traffic
is immediately hazardous and the negative consequences are immediate and
mostly easy to assess.

In the same way, child care in cohousing relates more closely to public
education.  And so the first analogy was the closer of the two.

Perhaps I'm quibbling in part with the unstated assumption that all human
beings are trapped in sameness.  Some people allow themselves to resent
taxation and the concept of public good; others have different values.  If
you and I have different values here then I want to clarify and understand
the differences, as well as explore the assumptions behind them.

In other words, I (and evidently many others here) are more than happy to be
required to make payments toward the common good, and as individuals we've
reached that conclusion for many different reasons.  When you insist "people
are willing to do things voluntarily that they resent being required to do"
you are not speaking for all of us, and I'd prefer not to be part of the
false generalization.

BTW--wasn't it President Bush the first whose campaign promises included (in
addition to "no new taxes") a system of government support for day care?
It's not just a cohousing question!
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