permaculture

["Steve Read" <steveread@free.fr>]

Hello, Toby Hemenway,

Interesting approach  to extrapolte from one PDC and its mug praxis to 
principles and strategies of land tenure; It reminds me too of the 
platitudinous arguments that Thatcher & Co. put forward to justify selling 
off the council owned housing, frankly I rarely saw a run down council house 
except on estates that had been designanted as 'problem' estates by the local 
council and were then therefore following some strange logic of their own 
refilled with more 'problem' families. And then of course council blocks that 
fell into disrepair and misuse becaus ethey were simply so badly designed.

Your argument also belies the fact that for prbably millenia humane societies 
 have enabled land tenure strategies that allowed sustainable, durable use of 
commonly held assets. Th
e fatuous book 'Tragedy of the commons' has been massively instrumental in 
creating a mythology around this subject. Your argument also imo seems to 
betray a certian myopia, looking out the window do I see a world where 
privately owned resources are not destructively exploited, a world where 
privately property is tended and nurtured for subsequent generations? Or do I 
see a world where the traditional class layers have gone to be replaced by 
one big squandering propertied class in the rich countries and those that are 
becoming fatter? For myself I only have to go to the municipal dump to see 
where private property ends up, even when still in good condition.  

I imagine that you personally however are tending well your private patch of 
Earth, your private Eden. 

And of course there's Renting property out, what  a great way to increase my 
income, living off the sweat and labour of others, keeping the world split 
into have's and have nots and of course expecting the people who are renting 
the property to look after it as if it were their own, well how is it they 
can do that in rented accomodation and yet wouldn't be able to do it in 
commonly held accomodation?

I would however agree with you Toby that there is some education to be done, 
its not difficult, one simply transports the emotional content that one has 
for 'mine' to 'ours'. I frankly fail to see that if we can't do this and that 
as designers we are not promoting this how we are to move along towards 
sustainable interconnected communities.

Buy the land and free it into a safe common legal entity, then help people 
develop the capacity to nurture it, and in this I am speaking too and perhaps 
in particular of the urban areas. This definately seems to be the philosophy 
developing here in France.


Steve R





======= At 2008-10-30, 04:45:47 you wrote: =======

>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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= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
                        

Best regards.                            
Steve Read
steveread@free.fr
2008-10-30