permaculture

["Trudie Redding" <tredding@mail.utexas.edu>]

Good analogy, I will keep it in mind.

Trudie 
512-471-8044
Fax 512-471-5532


-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Toby
Hemenway
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 10:46 PM
To: permaculture
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Trends in America

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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