Cohousing-L Mailing List: individual sponsorship

[shardon5 (shardon5]

Hi, I don't think that Liz said that Kay's post "proved" her (Liz's) point.  
Instead she said that it convinced her that she was right since they were bad 
examples.  Although I believe in "gifting", I also felt that Kay's examples 
were not helpful to her point.  I also felt that Sue's anecdotal examples of 
non hard-working people was not entirely on point and I strongly believe that 
attempting to discuss this issue in terms of "fairness" is a bad idea.  That is 
because "fairness", like "beauty" is in the mind of the beholder sharing the 
same part of the mind wherein lives religeon.  It is a useful part of the mind 
but not one that leads to definitive decisions.  Instead I would prefer to 
discuss it in terms of who benefits from the various alternatives and by how 
much.  So if one alternative (eg, whenever someone wants something they just 
buy it and put it where anyone could use it) is determined to benefit everyone 
(if!!)then it gets adopted unless another alternative is det
 ermined to benefit almost everyone a lot more and the few non-benefitees don't 
mind.  Of course making these determinations is not easy either, but I believe 
that it is easier than deciding what is "fair", and thus ultimately it is 
fairer (just kidding).    
    In Kay's response to my previous message she said that it would be OK for 
someone to donate the cost of a consensed upon purchase to a community if the 
item was at the top of a prioritized list.  Essentially this both validates 
part of what Sue has been advocating and is also a form of a sliding scale 
system.  Sue apparently doesn't mind contributing more than others to her 
community as long as she has the freedom to pick and choose when it happens.  
Or at least she accepts that amount of unfairness if the benefits from it are 
high enough.  As for the unsettled question of what happens when the item to be 
gifted is not at the top of a prioritized consensed list, I personally feel 
that that is still OK, although Liz has given me some reasons to consider it 
further.  
Don Arkin, Sonora Cohousing


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