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  • From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Trends in America
  • Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:45:35 -0700

A story I may have told before: On opening day of a PDC, the venue was kind enough to put out mugs, each with a participant's name on it. They asked that each person be responsible for rinsing and putting away their own mug. The system worked beautifully; the classroom stayed free of scattered mugs; each was back in the rack at the end of the day. Then, come our mid-class day off, the mugs were put through an industrial sterilizer and the labels were removed. They went back to the classroom unlabeled. Within a few days, mugs were everywhere--under chairs, on shelves, left outside, many full of molding tea leaves, and another couple of dozen mugs had been commandeered from elsewhere since no one could find a clean mug and it was easier to grab another from the stash. Soon almost every mug the place had was in our classroom, dirty and haphazardly stuck anywhere.

I was pretty surprised, since the participants seemed like decent folks. The lesson I took home was twofold: private ownership is one way to encourage responsibility toward resources, and, a culture that is used to private ownership is liable to behave irresponsibly toward resources held in common.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com



Nancy Frank wrote:
Steve -

I think it will be awhile before we get as far as we've come and return to common land.

Nancy





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