permaculture

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

Communal property-bus stops, trash all over, many nabors join hands
clean up, plant stuff, city puts benches, roofs, the fact is even though
it is loosely termed communal property, or city property it is filthy
day after day no matter how many times we clean it up, so many people
have been involved and finally some just had to let go, this is an
example of even though it belongs to me , I will not think that I am a
part of the net that keeps it clean.

And the major issue I think is sewage, I can't say it's a separate
issue, having found some human excrement at one bus stop

But anyway-communal living and sewage, that, I think is the deal
breaker, you will have some who just do not take care of this carefully
and consistently. I had a nabor like this in another city once for
years, I never knew for the longest time till I had to go in her back
yard helping her look for her child who had not come home after dark
My sister had a nabor uphill like this, I got sick when I came to visit
We in the US did not start out as children taking care of our own body
wastes, nor our pets, nor our livestock. That is the major issue I
think, in communal or shall I say cooperative living.
The issue of the cups could be "taking care of what I borrowed" vs
taking care of what is mine. Or the more direct, "I better take care of
this. Everybody can see that I am supposed to because it has my name on
it"
Or "well at least I know it only has my germs, I will stick with this
cup"

Trudie 
512-471-8044


-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Steve Read
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 2:26 AM
To: permaculture
Subject: [permaculture] Trends in America

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...