Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Economy, Sharing, and Community Size

[R Philip Dowds (rpdowds]

No disagreement … but we were talking about affordability.  Sharing is how you 
convert time and effort into a cash savings.  If you have plenty of money, then 
a time investment may not be essential or appealing.

The issue of optimum community size has come up elsewhere; lots of anecdotal 
input, not much resolution.  I think we’d easily agree that five units is too 
small and fifty units is too big … but in between … ???

Thanks,
R Philip Dowds
175 Harvey Street, Unit 5
Cambridge, MA 02140

land:     617.354.6094
mobile: 617.460.4549
email:   rpdowds [at] comcast.net <mailto:rpdowds [at] comcast.net>

> On Sep 6, 2015, at 10:10 AM, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> But the point is that it is very hard to govern a system of sharing with that 
> many people. It’s too many to educate and keep track of on an informal basis. 
> And I think most of us would like to live informally. Systems yes, but they 
> need to maintain themselves without much oversight. That gets burdensome and 
> people start buying their own stuff because it is less work and more 
> dependable.