Cohousing-L Mailing List: cost shifting (business ...)

[Kay Argyle (argyle]

> What must be emphasized here is that the workers are part of the resources
> and energy. it is very bad business to harm your workers. "Sustainable"
> was a business concept long before it was an ecological concept. A
> business that can't be sustained is of no value.   > Sharon

This is true if no cost shifting goes on -- which isn't true.  Despite
occupational health and safety regulations, living wage laws, fair labor
laws, workers comp, medical benefits, and more recently pollution
regulations and energy taxes, a lot of people still get very rich from
unsustainable businesses, leaving a mess behind them.

In an open system, resources (healthy workers, old-growth forest, investors)
can be brought in from outside, and wastes (workers with brown lung;
clearcut, gullied hillsides; bankrupt retirees) pushed out.  The system
itself (the company) stays healthy, nevermind what it does to its
surroundings.  System boundaries typically have a time dimension.  If the
time frame is short, the organization is likely to make choices that benefit
the present at the expense of the future.

In a closed system, negative feedback loops encourage sustainability.  What
goes around comes around.  You exhaust the system resources, you wallow in
your own filth.  Your ability to shift costs is limited.  So you become
thrifty, clean, and responsible.

So what does this have to do with cohousing?

A developer can save by not installing sound dampening between joined units,
but residents pay in frayed nerves and lost sleep.  Say that the developer
and the future residents are the same people.  Both costs are internal -- so
cohousing duplexes get sound-proofed.

Say that you have a difficult member -- possibly someone who has *become*
difficult because of unfortunate group process.  If you have a waiting list,
you've got an open system.  You can "encourage" them out and bring someone
new in -- and you don't need to do anything about the problem that
embittered them.

Say that your members have various time horizons for how long they expect to
live in the community.  Some see themselves growing old there decades from
now, others see it as a place to live while the kids are small.  This
difference in time horizons can lead to frustration all around, if members
don't understand why they're talking past each other -- what type of tree
should we plant, one that grows fast but turns into a problem in thirty
years (profiting soon, but shifting a cost to the next generation), or one
that grows sturdily and may live for centuries but won't be big enough to
provide shade for years (an investment with a distant payoff -- profit
shifting, if you will)?

Kay
Wasatch Commons
Salt Lake City, Utah
argyle [at] mines.utah.edu
*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*

_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l