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

[Molly Williams (mmw]

Not to belabour this, but what connects these examples, in my mind,
is the sometimes perceived sense of /entitlement/ of the receivers
of the benefit. I have nothing more to say about public education,
since it's only accidentally and tangentially the issue I was
commenting on the in first place!

Oh, and I do live in a place where people routinely stop and let
other people into a line of traffic. Is it because people stop to
let people in that people don't force their way in, or it because
people don't force their way in that people stop and let them in?
Probably both. But how does the whole happy cycle get started?
That's what interests me. And has applications for societies
everywhere.

~ Molly (in Maine)


"Ruddick, T.R." wrote:
> 
> 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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