Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohousing and Sociocracy

[Brian Bartholomew (bb]

> http://www.sociocracy.info/consensus.html

>      In the business community, the constrictions of "the individual
>      bowing to the interests of the whole" and "unanimous" were not
>      a workable basis on which to make decisions in a large,
>      competitive workplace of highly diverse workers. Any large
>      organization would have difficulty making decisions using this
>      definition.

If people can be talked into a system that acts like a tax and spend
legislature, the system will degrade into politics as usual.  Yuck.

Imagine a Thoreau-like character, who objects to the imposition of
Sociocracy itself, and who will then object to every proposal in order
to lay naked the majority vote/minority oppressing aspect of this
system.  It is easy to satisfy this objection: banish the majority
vote.  If a situation of no objections cannot be reached, then the
minority is NOT overruled and the proposed action is not taken.

If you *really* don't have majority vote, people gravitate towards
arrangements that require the fewest decisions by large groups.  A
nice result is fine-grained flexibility and adaptability.  Can't find
an objection-free way to fix the common sewer system?  Fine.  Maybe
there's a second sewer system.  Maybe there are ten sewer systems.
Maybe some people cart their sewage to a processing plant elsewhere
(like porta-potties).  What you don't have is anyone saying 'thou must
use the one common sewer system no matter how badly it is broken'.
People minimizing their costs will tend to continuously simplify to
the least resource-intensive collection of systems that still work
reasonably well.  It is self-managing, and there will be far more
brainpower applied to working the feedback loops than where there is
only one feedback loop, the Sociocratic legislative body.

                                                        Brian