Marcus-
I can pick nits on this until the chimps come home (using Glen's
metaphor of communication/discussion as a grooming exercise).
My point is that a commons can arise and be maintained through good old
fashioned enlightened self interest, even within the matrix of a complex
and often fascist bureaucratic (this is me describing Berkeley City
Government) system.
I know quite well that most people don't want to engage at that level
"anymore". It is possible that nobody ever really did, that everyone
throughout history and across sociopolitical classes around the world
has been hankering for there to be a system of specialization, backed up
by strong government to implement it and enforce it when necessary.
When I described "abuse or fade out", you are absolutely correct that
norms were being applied (by me in describing it and I believe by the
participants in choosing how to behave across a wide range of varying
conditions). No police (or lynch mobs) were involved in rousting
people from the park when it might otherwise have been "abusive" for
them to remain... it seemed to "just work".
This would never have happened if the city didn't have a program that
supported it in the first place. It *was* city funds, specifically for
this purpose that brought in the huge yellow machines for a week to rip
out the pavement, pour curbs and sidewalks and dump a hundred tons of
soil and maybe even lay the sod. But it wasn't the Berkeley City
council deciding that this particular parking lot would be better off
being a park... how could they know that, really? They knew it when a
critical mass (5%, 10%?) of the locals to that neighborhood decided to
apply to their program for doing precisely this kind of project. And
then they
Being a rainbow farting unicorn oftentimes, I may just not have noticed
the little red dot dancing on the homeless guys eyelids from the sniper
with a laser sight on the 4th floor of the apartment building whose
assigned task was to give the smelly bastards an unequivocal "wakey
wakey" call if they weren't out by sunrise... or the mound of bulbs
under which the bodies of those who did not snap to the program were
buried, literally "pushing up the daisies".
I have more examples of situations where the commons never get started
or are destroyed in a frenzy of greed and/or neglect than I have a
coherent whole emerging out of "enlightened self interest". And I have
beaucoup examples of total fuckaroos from the top down.
I'm with you on the Railrunner, but the Aamodt water
litigation/case/system in the "valley" is perhaps the perfect complement.
The population density and other qualities of the combined sets of
valleys (Tesuque, Nambe, Pojoaque) have brought things to the point
where a centralized water system would be an efficient and possibly
necessary alternative to 10,000 individual wells of varying age, quality
and safety. Such a system is almost impossible to imagine arising
*without* a strong centralized government (huge amounts of federal
funding are being tapped, SF County and 4 Pueblo govt's are involved in
the planning and the permission generating).
The same geopolitical region lost it's main/best/almost-only broadband
(Motorola Canopy system run by the San I Pueblo) this year. A huge
federally funded and state/pueblo/country managed project to run fiber
backbone (RediNet) through the general area was just coming to fruit
about the same time. I tried to organize a cooperative to handle the
"first mile" because the likes of Comcast, Centurylink, and Cell
Providers have only been able (or willing?) to gather up the low hanging
fruit, leaving the rest to fall to the ground and rot. I'd guess that
half the people living in the area have no access to high speed
networking... period. The topography and maybe more to the point, the
right-of-way situation among the pueblos, and an odd mix of
sociocultural aesthetics has made a fairly simple technical problem
unsolvable sociopolitically as far as I can tell. Among other things I
got to mix it up with a few folks who *have* and *do* manage Cooperative
broadband and even telecomm systems... and was reminded how we are not
really very good at "cooperative ventures"...
The demise of the Santa Fe Complex, and at least half of my own
projects/collaborations is also a testimony to this. Before "escaping
from the Institution" I think I believed the percentage to be closer to
5% or 10% at best... it was probably just my inner Murky Dismal
talking. Now I keep myself moving forward on a diet of Rainbow Colored
Unicorn farts... I get better mileage entreprenuerially from them than
the other kind.
- Rainbow Bright
Glen writes:
I use it myself in choosing to donate money, rather than labor to the
community garden.
At some cost premium, and perhaps quality penalty, I pay money at this
place called a grocery store.
On 1/14/14, 12:34 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
The rest of the "commons" *was* managed by taxes... this was a tiny
oasis within it. It had a quality that could not be bought with
taxes or any other mode. Too bad if you have never experienced
something like that.
When people care about something, especially when they are skilled,
cooperative people that have time and motivation it shows. It's
better. On the other hand, there's the possibility that contributors
(generically speaking, not just the case you describe) just see a
`community' project as better because they have investment in it, or
because that is the context in which they see or make friends.
It is obviously the sensible thing to do, and because makes many
more big things possible. I want professionals to do the job. I
don't want to be sneered at when I accidentally sit on a `community'
swing or picnic table or whatever because I don't show up for the
weekend love-in. (I'm not going to show up.)
If you read what I wrote you might recognize that roughly half the
population in the neighborhood did *not* show up for the love in. The
homeless who slept there and hung out mid-day did not show up... or
the teens.. and nobody ran any of them off, nor sneered at them.
They were all relatively welcome, and they did their part by NOT
abusing the situation... fading out when it was time to fade perhaps?
Abuse the situation? Fade out? Norms are being asserted here. But
provincialism is not my main objection. My main objection is to the
possibility of cutting professional maintenance and city planning
assuming volunteers will step in. In the interest of some implied
merit of `investing in my neighborhood', which defined in some way
that I'm not getting to define, and I mostly don't care about. My
true neighborhood consists of that which is in my working memory, over
time. That may or may not include other objects or activities in my
geographic proximity. Some geographically-local infrastructure is
necessary to support those other dimensions, but otherwise is
incidental. So I expect to pay taxes to support that platform, like I
would anywhere. If the platform is falling apart (in some objective
way, not that the color of varnish on the play equipment isn't
beautiful enough), spend more on it and raise taxes to pay for it.
Then I do what I'm relatively good at, and the the landscaping
people, etc. do what they are good at.
Landscaping people aren't good at investing themselves in their own
neighborhood. They are good at (if you are lucky) doing what they
are paid to do better than those who pay them.
I would say that's fine, provided they enjoy their work. (See
adjacent remark.)
Marcus
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