Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cooperative Idealogy

[Kay Argyle (argyle]

> Once you decide that a group is something different than
> the individuals in it, you are on very thin ice."

Speaking of ice, periodically another small mummy, a child sacrifice, turns
up on some Andean mountain peak.  Was the sacrifice in the child's best
interest?  I think even the priests pouring corn liquor into the kid before
they bopped her on the head would agree it wasn't.  But it was "for the good
of the group" (hereafter FtGotG).  The Christian concept "He died for our
sins" is the same idea.

Who defines the good is very, very important.  In (typically small) groups
with power sharing, all members have a say in defining the good, and group
costs and benefits are evenly distributed.  With hierarchical or other
uneven power structures, typical of larger groups, a subgroup defines the
good, often to their own advantage, and each member's cost/benefit ratio
tends to be a function of their power (although sometimes reversed, as
above -- the children appear to have been upper-class).

Despite this, members stay in the group because (1) the group generates
enough excess benefits (safety, for instance) that even an unequal share is
better than what is obtainable individually, and/or (2) the power subgroup
arranges matter so that, however meager the disempowered members' share is,
they can't do better elsewhere.

For instance, in capitalism laborers don't receive wages equal to what their
labor is actually worth, that is, what it earns the company.  The difference
between their wages plus material costs and the company earnings allows the
company to pay its shareholders and management, whose respective functions
are to provide operating capital and to keep the company productive and
maintain a market for the company's products/services.

There's nothing wrong with this if the gap is small -- workers can
specialize, they get job security, and the company functioning together
earns enough more than the workers could earn by themselves that, even after
management and shareholders are paid off, the workers get at least what they
would have earned singly.  It truly is  FtGotG, whether the group is defined
as a distinct entity or as its individuals.

If workers don't have power, management and shareholders get to depress
wages and pocket a larger percentage of the income.

As a few less short-sighted companies realize, however, empowered workers
typically are able/willing to adjust what they as individuals give up for
the company, to the company's benefit, so management and shareholders come
out ahead with a smaller percentage of a bigger total income. [And workers
who have enough money buy more, thus keeping everybody's factory wheels
turning briskly, but that's a different discussion.]

If enough companies in the economy "hold down costs" (somehow this is never
the cost of management or capital), though, all companies are under pressure
to do likewise in order to compete. Wages go down even as productivity
increases, share prices go up when workers are laid off, and as a hobby the
CEO buys himself a pro sports team to whose games his workers can't afford
tickets.  When government gets too cozy with business, you get sweatshops,
union-busting and turn-of-the-century robber barons (Carnegie then, Enron
now).

FtGotG thus can become a means of oppression or even predation.  Con
artists, cult leaders, and sexual predators get their victim to think of
them as part of the same group, then get the victim to act FtGotG -- to
invest, to panhandle for money so the Holy One can afford gold faucets in
his new mansion, or to get in the car.

In a child-centered community, parents get extra benefits.  If the
nonparents feel taken advantage of, you've got conflict.

Last year one of the efforts to solve our perennial landscaping problems was
a proposal to disband the landscape committee and assign everyone in the
community to a team in charge of an area.  (As more than one person pointed
out, this was replacing one committee with six, with no guarantee they would
do any better.)

So far so good, although I get tired of hearing the landscape committee
dissed.  Where I objected -- passionately -- was the provision that there
would be no sponsored areas, meaning that individuals who had been planting
an area to their own taste, at their own expense and labor, had to fit into
a team now, maybe in a totally different area, and the team in the erstwhile
sponsored area could decide to rip out their lovingly planted staghorn sumac
and put in petunias.  The teamwork award hanging on the wall behind me to
the contrary, I am not a teamworker.

One person in particular strongly felt that individuals shouldn't have
control over common areas.  He had no objection to what I or others had
planted, it was the principle of the thing.  I couldn't see why his
principles found nothing wrong with the lack of provision for group
oversight of the teams' decisions -- teams were to be trusted, individuals
weren't.  I found that offensive too.

My feeling was that, if FtGotG had been an adequate motivator, we wouldn't
still have mud, wood chips, and weeds rooting in the weed barrier.  With few
exceptions, the landscaped areas had been done by someone putting in what
_they_ wanted (in some cases for their kids), who either did the work
themselves or found a few others who shared the interest -- the north
meadow, the fruit trees, the play structure, the veggy garden, the flower
beds by the common house and along the driveways.  If you made self-interest
a Bad Thing, you've just killed the only motivation that was actually
producing something. Things that aren't done FtGotG can _be_ FtGotG
nonetheless; my silver garden would do more to get our bond back than the
weeds it replaced.

The smart thing is to set things up to make it in members' self-interest to
act FtGotG.  In a group with on-going relationships between members,
self-interest includes being thought well of, making somebody you love
happy, having others willing to deal with you, or other aspects of good
relationships, as well as traditional self-interests like money.  In large
groups, members are often strangers, but the need to keep a good reputation
can still motivate FtGotG actions -- there have been some interesting
game-theory studies on how people's behavior is affected by knowing their
history of cooperating or cheating will be made available to a new
partner/opponent in subsequent games.

Kay
argyle @ mines.utah.edu
*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*

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