Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Formal Consensus vs Sociocracy

[Ann Zabaldo (zabaldo]

David -- would you list the six alternatives you try before voting?

Thanks!

Best --

Ann Zabaldo
Takoma Village Cohousing
Washington, DC


On Apr 7, 2007, at 2:29 PM, David Heimann wrote:

> Hello,
>
>         It's true that in consensus (and probably sociocratic) voting it's
> possible for an objection to be overidden by a majority vote.   
> However, at
> least in JP Cohousing, the hurdle to do so is set very high.
> Specifically:
>
>         o Our bylaws have six alternatives to be tried before majority
> voting can be taken.
>
>         o We need to have a majority of those in attendance allow the
> majority voting.
>
>         o The majority needed for approval on a majority vote is 75% of
> the households present and voting.
>
>         o Both in our bylaws and in our tacit (unwritten) holdings, a
> majority vote is something to be invoked rarely.  If we did it more  
> than
> rarely (in the last year we did it once), we would quickly be  
> holding a
> salon, general meeting, or retreat to discuss what would regard as  
> a major
> problem.
>
>
>         So while yes, a blocker can be overidden in a consensus setting,
> in our consensus setting it's very difficult to do so.
>
> Regards,
> David Heimann
> Jamaica Plain Cohousing
>
>
>
> > Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:09:44 -0400
> > From: Brian Bartholomew <bb [at] stat.ufl.edu>
> > Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Formal Consensus vs Sociocracy
> > To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org, sociocracy [at] yahoogroups.com
> > Message-ID: <20070402210944.F331C5F8A9 [at] clam.stat.ufl.edu>
> >
> > Eileen Mccourt <emccourt [at] charter.net> writes:
> >
> > > What seems askew in Brian's analysis though is the assumption that
> > > giving the community the right to evaluate a block is equivalent to
> > > majority rule.
> >
> > I'm trying to compare consensus and majority rule like a games
> > theorist would: who exercises power over who, under what conditions?
> > Majority rule is able to do all that analysis/synthesis stuff just as
> > well as consensus is.  Similarly, consensus overrides consent using
> > majority voting just fine, only the words it uses for it are "not all
> > individual desires can be accommodated", and "we voted that your  
> > block
> > was not principled".  Consensus has a period of legislative debate,
> > and then it takes a vote.  If consensus debate tends to be more
> > productive than majority rule debate, credit for that should go to  
> > the
> > values of the people participating, not to the consensus process.   
> > All
> > the pork that Congress passes shows that majority rule has more
> > productive debate than it gets credit for.
> >
> > I'm not just picking on one variant of consensus.  As far as I can
> > tell, *every* process that contains a vote is roughly equivalent, and
> > the differences are mostly determined by how big the majority must  
> > be.
> > Thus, I believe the modern forms of proportional representation  
> > voting
> > are more respectful of consent than consensus is.  However, not  
> > voting
> > at all is the most respectful of any of them.
> >
> > -----
> >
> > > I think (maybe naively) if an individual desire really does appeal
> > > to the broader community, or if a good rationale can be made as to
> > > why one person should have the freedom to do a certain thing, it
> > > will ultimately get through the process to everyone's satisfaction.
> > > It's just that most people don't want to go through that level of
> > > discussion - more's the pity.
> >
> > People have inhabited locations that flood for all of human history.
> > Approaches to deal with flooding include: build it on stilts,  
> > build it
> > on a boat, build it light so you can move it, build it from stone so
> > it survives, build a levy or a dam, build it cheap so you can afford
> > to rebuild it, sell the risk to an insurance company, or socialise  
> > the
> > risk.  Discussing this problem for 15,000 years has not resulted in a
> > single best approach.  It's unlikely that discussing this problem in
> > consensus meetings for *the entire rest of your lifetime* will result
> > in discovering a single best approach.  Yet, decisionmaking bodies  
> > are
> > still determined to mandate one approach and ban the rest.
> >
> > In the absence of a known best answer, people's free choices are to
> > bet on different strategies to address the same problem.  This is
> > great, because monoculture is a disaster in the long term.  What  
> > is it
> > with the urge to stamp out variety?  The sky won't fall if you have a
> > house on stilts next to a grounded houseboat next to a shack next  
> > to a
> > concrete dome.  If a disaster blows through, maybe it won't destroy
> > all of them, and your intact neighbors can shelter you.
> >
> >                                                         Brian
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