Communal property discussion

[Grant Lamontagne]

Yesterday a friend on Facebook posted a video about how bad it is that we all accumulate "stuff" and how much better the world would be if people didn't have their own things, but instead got things from a library (free of course) when they needed something.  I am very much against this for a variety of reasons, and when I attempted to make comments, it was apparently very upsetting to people who started to label me as a crazy prepper, and an elitist.

My issues with communal goods are:

1- Time consuming.  I don't want to lose an hour collecting a tool to do a job, then another hour returning it when I am done.  I rarely have enough time to finish projects as it is, and losing two hours out of my project time is unacceptable.

2- Communal/Rental equipment is often abused, either purposely or by people who don't know any better, and is often in poor repair.  I can guarantee that my tools are in better shape than the ones you rent from any of the major services.

3- I don't want to have to rely on others.  Rental agencies and libraries close, and other people also need these items, and so they may not be available when I need them.  Someone pointed out that you only need a roasting pan a couple of times a year, but that is also the time that everyone else requires a roasting pan, ie, Christmas and Thanksgiving.

While I do have the occasional prepper tendency, in reality I am not a serious survivalist type.  It does however give me a certain pleasure to know that, in the event of a major event or natural disaster (and the area they live in had two of them in one year not long ago), my dogs will fare better than their children will. 

All I could think of are the following situations:

"Sorry Timmy, you will have to die of dehydration because the line for water is really long."

"Timmy, can you watch this grease fire for me?  Daddy has to run to the library for an extinguisher."

One of these people also went so far as to suggest that if a bad situation happened, he would come and take what he wanted from me.  I didn't respond, but the reality is that I would welcome them to come and try to take things from me- I could use a few hundred extra pounds of dog food.... 

Def

[dks]

stay off facebook

I am sure that if you suggested sharing their wives or cars or food or houses they may get your point.

Most of the people telling others to share do not themselves share......

[gregozedobe]

I'm with Def - I know what I have, where it is and that it is looked after and ready to go when I need it.

A past neighbour wanted to start a share arrangement for stuff like garden tools - as far as I could tell this arrangement consisted of her borrowing someone else's tools, using and abusing them, and expecting others to maintain them, but not returning them when she was finished with the current task.  Well, that's how it seemed to work for another neighbour who did lend her lawnmower (and regretted it fairly quickly).

I did have one friend who had permission to borrow tools if I wasn't around ( I knew I could trust him to use them correctly and look after them).  He has since moved interstate, so now there are zero people who can borrow my tools.  If I am feeling generous I might use my tool to do something for someone else, depending on the circumstances.  Many of my tools can be quite dangerous if not used correctly (power saws, chainsaws, even an axe can do a lot of damage).

From what I've seen anything that has public or semi-public usage access is prone to damage and poor maintenance - people often don't look after stuff that they aren't 100% responsible for.  As an example I am an agility instructor at my dog club, and we constantly have problems caused by people being careless and/or excessively rough with our equipment, and this is where only a small number of people have access.

[Grant Lamontagne]

There was an episode of Top Gear where Jeremy insisted the fastest car was a rented one, which just proves this theory.

Def

[dks]

I have found many rented nissan micras at the end of some pretty rough 4wd style roads

[AimlessWanderer]

I ran a boatyard for over a decade.
 
Communal property sharing doesn't work.

[Etherealicer]

Shared property makes sense for expensive / large stuff you don't need much.

E.g my dad (musician and teacher) bought a rather expensive Bench saw / Mill / Channel Drill kind of machine because he likes to work wood in his free time. At the time the machine was over 15k CHF. Anyway, he bought it together with a couple of friends who then would come by and use it. Each of them built something for their children's bedroom (my dad built me and my brother a pretty nice bedroom, we had high rooms so he built an upper floor for the bed).
Needless to say, none of them got 15k worth of work done, but each got more than their share. Of course they could have each bought cheaper machines, but work with cheaper machines is not the same. It would also have required more space. Also that expensive machine still works like on day one and it is now 30 years old.

So, yes to shared property for certain items. But certainly not to stuff like your power-drill or screwdriver set.

[Tomcat_81]

If it belongs to everybody, people will feel it belongs to noone.
And in the worst (and, sadly, most widespread case,) no one will care.

Principles based on communal property strongly rely on the manners/behaviour of, well, everyone.
Let's focus on park benches. How many of these have you found in an appalling shape, burnt, broken, dirty...?
It takes a lot of time to set up such a bench, and only one complete idiot to destroy it.

I was deeply shocked how well things like "communal property" can work in a civilized surrounding which sets standards for individual behavior.
 In the, let's call it mildly civilized, central European society I live in, you can already find enough smurfheads to ruin it for all.

Communal property = wonderful idea for societies with ideal individuals
Communal property = works quite well if closely guarded and administered
Communal property = doomed if none of the above conditions apply.

Tomcat, who believes in privately owned and operated equipment.

P.S: Attached is a picture of a Japanese communal toilet, located at one of the most crowded train stations in Tokyo, without any guard or personnel. I visited that very toilet twice, once last year and once this year, both times with a lot of people queueing. Twice it was absolutely spotless, with no personnel around. I asked myself what this toilet would look like here in Munich, but sadly, I know the answer.

[firiki]

...
I am sure that if you suggested sharing their wives or cars or food or houses they may get your point.
...

What if their wives agree, though?!   

It's a long discussion, for now I'll have to say that for communal property to work, responsible people are an absawlute requirement.

[Grant Lamontagne]

I have found many rented nissan micras at the end of some pretty rough 4wd style roads

My bad, I was trying to prove a theory....

Def

[jzmtl]

To see if it works or not, just look at your local tool library. We have one here, I think, only looked at their website and the few decent tools are never available. If I needed a miter saw to cut a precise 90° angle it only takes a minute, but if we had communal tools only, it would take weeks.

This is not even going into the condition of such tools.

The only way for this to work is supply > demand, but if that was the case then how it is different from not having communal property to begin with.

[Grathr]

I guess it could work to an extent in a strict society with a strong moral culture.
That eliminates most of the world, here included.
I just came from the local movie theater in the county community hall. Its a real nice thing for the community, offering cheap cinema and low snack prices for everyone. Its a great way to keep the community theathre running as well, since its also a theatre stage and a big lecture room. 
But kids today seem to have no manners. When I left there was popcorn, and trash all over the place. They hadnt even bothered to take their own trash to the thrash bins at the exit!
I guess my point is, that if people cant even take their own thrash to the bin 15 paces from their seat, they wont bother taking care of anything they borrowed from a communal supply. They probably would not even bother returning it.

[magentus]

Under the right circumstances it can work really well.

I lived with 11 fellow communards in a large house where we shared all sorts of resources - there was 1 washing machine, a shared kitchen and garden, shared tools and cars, and everybody kept good care of all of them - there was no abdication of responsibility, in fact everyone was very careful to keep our shared stuff cleaned and well maintained that most of us ended up learning new skills in order to use and maintain it all properly.

Another benefit to resource sharing was that we could afford to buy very good quality stuff, and that added to the incentive to look after it.

Most Western societies nowadays are fragmented to promote individuality and discourage sharing, if we all have to buy our own stuff there's a lot more money to be made. Add to that the disposability of most consumables (computers that you can't upgrade, cars you can't work on yourself, built in obsolescence) and it's no wonder people don't look after their belongings - it's an anathema to the capitalist ideal.

Get a bunch of people that know and care about looking after their shared equipment and resources and why wouldn't you want to do it?

[AimlessWanderer]

Under the right circumstances it can work really well.

Get a bunch of people that know and care about looking after their shared equipment and resources and why wouldn't you want to do it?

At the boatyard, things would usually start out very well, but the disagreements would start often as an extension of personality differences rather than a disagreement over the property itself. Two people disagreeing over how the two-stroke should be mixed for the strimmer, two folks arguing that certain stuff isn't used enough or is used too much by certain people, two groups of people disagreeing which way round the tractor should be parked, or whose turn it is to charge the battery or change the filter. If something breaks, it's never wear and tear, but someone using it wrong.

Person A moans that Person B hasn't got the boiler working as promised. B blames C because he's waiting for the external plumbing feed to be replaced, C blames D for not getting the parts, and D blames A for not giving him the cash to get it. A gives D the cash, who gives the parts to C who fixes the plumbing and B connects the boiler, only to discover the gas has run out. Enter persons E, F and G in the ensuing blame game.

Tune in after the break for the saga of who's got the diesel pump keys, why the chainsaw blade is blunt again, and whose dog has been crapping in the car park.......

[jzmtl]

Under the right circumstances it can work really well.

I lived with 11 fellow communards in a large house where we shared all sorts of resources - there was 1 washing machine, a shared kitchen and garden, shared tools and cars, and everybody kept good care of all of them - there was no abdication of responsibility, in fact everyone was very careful to keep our shared stuff cleaned and well maintained that most of us ended up learning new skills in order to use and maintain it all properly.

Probably works better in a small group, as it get bigger the "somebody else" mentality takes over.

[jerseydevil]

Damn Communists......

[Grant Lamontagne]

And this is exactly the issue- we can't even agree on whether or not this could even work. 

Tom's political comment aside, what I think it shows, and history will back me up on this, is that a society or equals never really seems to function all that well.  You need to have leaders, you need to have rules, you need to enforce those rules and no matter how well everything works out, you will still have dissenting amongst the people that disagree with the leaders, enforcers and rule makers.  It's simply the way the human animal is programmed.

Def

[Sea Monster]

I am sure that if you suggested sharing their wives or cars or food or houses they may get your point.

Ride sharing, couch surfing, and, other, uhh, sharing type activities are fairly common.




*ahem* anyway - yes, tool libraries.

Sounds like something someone who can't afford their own tools would say

It has merit to a point - Less production of tools means less waste (but also less money for the manufacturers - so who will make the tools, once you only need to make 1 per hundred, or thousand users?)

Many of us have tools that we might only use a few times a year (say, speSmurfpillst vehicle servicing equipment, or the chainsaw we dust off for fire season),


Many may live in apartments, or move frequently, so long term storage of bulkier tools is a problem.


If such a thing were to exist, I would run it more like a Gym membership than a Library - You pay a subscription fee for the privilege of access, and perhaps that covers a certain range of "basic" tools.

Then either a Security Deposit, or a small Additional fee (or both - one for maintenance and upkeep, and one to make it in your best interests to bring it back in good condition) for power tools or more speSmurfpillst items.


Essentially, it's just a Hire place, but with a slightly different model - We'll have buckwheat shots for all members, and the staff will be friendly girls and non threatening hipster boys so everyone can enjoy tool-usership without the high-vis, sunburnt riff raff of the trade hire stores.


There are "men's sheds" (Don't blame me, I didn't name the damn things) where you can go to use tools (often including fancier stuff like lathes) for projects and the - I suspect they all have a "no takey-homey" policy though.



So, as romantic as this sounds, and I can see the thought process that goes into the argument, the flaws, in our current culture of "drive it like a rental", or not easily overcome.

[AimlessWanderer]

And this is exactly the issue- we can't even agree on whether or not this could even work. 

Tom's political comment aside, what I think it shows, and history will back me up on this, is that a society or equals never really seems to function all that well.  You need to have leaders, you need to have rules, you need to enforce those rules and no matter how well everything works out, you will still have dissenting amongst the people that disagree with the leaders, enforcers and rule makers.  It's simply the way the human animal is programmed.

Def

A small body of people always forms exactly that - a body. By which I mean that it will have a head and it will have an arsehole. Remove either one, and another will take it's place - either that or the body will fail to function as a cohesive entity. I've never quite figured out why it needs an arsehole, but there's always at least one willing volunteer to take up the role......

[gregozedobe]

A small body of people always forms exactly that - a body. By which I mean that it will have a head and it will have an arsehole. Remove either one, and another will take it's place - either that or the body will fail to function as a cohesive entity. I've never quite figured out why it needs an arsehole, but there's always at least one willing volunteer to take up the role......

And sometimes there seem to be several fighting over who takes the lead in that particular role .....   

[ColoSwiss]

A big fan of book libraries, particularly if I'm probably only going to read it once. More than that and I'll buy it. Time's typically not an issue, and neither is condition (did have one recently that was falling apart and missing pages).

For most other things it's a case of "neither a borrower nor a lender be".

[derekmac]

I like to have my own tools.  I know what condition they are in, and they are there when I need them.  Generally, if I don't have a tool, and I need to use one, I'll buy one.  For automotive work, it's generally cheaper for me to buy something, then have to take it to a shop to have the work done.

[Grant Lamontagne]

A big fan of book libraries, particularly if I'm probably only going to read it once. More than that and I'll buy it. Time's typically not an issue, and neither is condition (did have one recently that was falling apart and missing pages).

For most other things it's a case of "neither a borrower nor a lender be".

Absolutely.

One of the examples I used on FB was Katrina.  Folks were not prepared to look after themselves, and we're counting on help from others,  and where did that get them?  Stranded on rooftops for days.

While I probably wouldn't buy a house on a floodplain I am pretty certain that if I did I'd probably also have a boat, just in case.

I'm not against help from others, I just don't feel like you can or should count on it.  Do for yourself, and if someone else comes along, so much the better.

Def

[Etherealicer]

Maybe public restrooms are a good comparison / indicator.

If you travel the world, or just your country you will find a difference on how clean restrooms are. Personally, I think if you can keep your public restrooms clean, then you probably could also handle communal property. That is also an argument which is easily understood.

There are of course more than one reason for clean public restrooms.
1) Cleaning
The same thing you can do with any public property, have someone to clean it / look after it.

2) Clean after yourself
In some cultures people clean (better) after themselves. If that is the case then you will have less problems with public property as the mentality is more "bring it back, the way you received it"

Of course the easiest way to deal with it would be a professional rental service. That is quite common here and you can rent anything from big power-drills to an excavator.

[Steinar]

I think the problem is pretty complicated and multi-faceted, as we can see from all the different points of view. I think Etherealicer is on to something important with restrooms. In addition to culture I think two other factors are quite important.

First, is the communal property our property, or is it “the property of an external entity (e.g. the rental agency), and I simply have access to it”? If people view it as their thing, I think they will take care of it, if it's something they simply have access to... not so much. (Ask not what your country can do for you, but what...?) In the Scandinavian countries we have a very strong tradition of public access to the wilderness, even though the land may be privately owned. For that to work, we need social mechanisms where it is viewed is unacceptable to e.g. throw away trash in the forest. These structures are now threatened simply because some locals are starting to not respect basic civilized behavior, and tourists are told everybody are free to use the wilderness (and then quite a few bad eggs then think it is OK to behave badly, because there surely are people paid to clean up after them).

The second part is personal accountability. Consider Tomcat_81's picture of the public restroom. What I think is at play here is a stronger mechanism than the Japanese ability to not piss on the walls (which on a global scale seems to be a pretty rare talent ). Imagine you're in a culture where the default assumption is a communal restroom is not a pigsty. Second, you're in a line for the restroom. A guy comes out, and you enter, and you see it looks what most unattended restrooms in the West looks like... Your basic assumption would be the previous guy was the one unable to behave like a civilized human being. Now, everyone knows this, so when you leave, you want to leave the restroom at least as OK as it was when you entered, otherwise you will be judged by your peers. In a culture with real social pressure to conform, this would be a powerful force.

I think both of the factors I list above is part of why it is often easier to get a closed pool of paying participants to work than simple communal sharing. The latter is rife for abuse if there are actors with bad faith.

The guys in the initial discussion referred to by Grant sounds like people who wants a free ride. “Wow, it would be nice to have access to a lot of tools,” which are basically the people you don't want to enter into a communal agreement with. From the example of people pooling money to get a nice tool they can share, to communal libraries, which both work, to the examples of social friction in the boatyard and the state of rental cars, where communal agreements break down, I think it is interesting to see what factors we must introduce to make communal agreements work smoothly. I think personal accountability combined with a strong social agreement of goals (and means) is needed in most cases.

[Sea Monster]

The rental car analogy is imperfect -

When I borrow a mates car, (depending on the circumstances) I will generally get it washed, and return it full of fuel, (or at least topped up - If I pick it up empty and it's got dual 80L fuel tanks, he's out of luck    )


when I rent a car - I drive it like I'm paying for it.
Maybe that's why rental cars are so expensive to start with, but none the less, I'm paying for the service, plus their overheads and whatever they're profit margin is - That's my "commitment".


In the case with my mate's car - He's doing me a favour, so my "commitment" is to look after it, not ride the clutch,  and return it in such a state as he may be willing to lend it to me again.

[firiki]

I agree that the rental analogy is imperferct.

I am pretty annoyed by people mistreating public property. They fail to realise they are mistreating my property as well as their own. We've all paid for said property, including the 10-year-olds that spit their chewing gum on the pavement (through VAT on that chewing gum). 

Some pretty good points made so far. I think that it is important to determine whether people's well being depends on communal property or not. In the case of the boatyard 50ft mentions I should think it doesn't; and I agree what's causing friction there is, probably, more of a personality thing than incompetence to work together. The people Grant mentions sound a bit naive to say the least and TBH, the way they are pictured, I wouldn't want to work with them.

This brings me to my next point: personality... I can understand and forgive/ignore bad manners or stupidity but when more than two people are concerned (them and myself) I tend to be more austere. The halfwits breaking bottles on the ground where my kid toddles or the immature people who can't be bothered to pick up their trash from the beach ('cause they're too busy taking selfies and posting them on social media) are two good examples of condemnable, egotistic behaviour.

I absolutely despise entitled people and the same goes for thugs. Both are idiots. Here, I think it is worth noting that the English word "idiot" comes from the Greek word idiotis that means a private person. For the Greeks, the person who ιδιώτευε (didn't care to partake in public affairs) was... an idiot.

[magentus]

Under the right circumstances it can work really well.

I lived with 11 fellow communards in a large house where we shared all sorts of resources - there was 1 washing machine, a shared kitchen and garden, shared tools and cars, and everybody kept good care of all of them - there was no abdication of responsibility, in fact everyone was very careful to keep our shared stuff cleaned and well maintained that most of us ended up learning new skills in order to use and maintain it all properly.

Probably works better in a small group, as it get bigger the "somebody else" mentality takes over.

I agree - they say 12 is the optimum number in a group before it starts becoming too unwieldy.

Having had a few years experience of communal living I can state catagorically it does work, but it is hard work. There's no room for ego's - leave that at the door and it's a very rewarding way to live. It certainly gave me an enormous respect for what we can accomplish by working together and sharing some life experiences.

Sorry JD - I'll put my commie book away again

[Gerhard Gerber]

I liberally used backspace........

Funny how this question only serves to remind me of the worst human traits.

My vote is NO.

[pfrsantos]

Yesterday a friend on Facebook posted a video about how bad it is that we all accumulate "stuff" and how much better the world would be if people didn't have their own things, but instead got things from a library (free of course) when they needed something.  I am very much against this for a variety of reasons, and when I attempted to make comments, it was apparently very upsetting to people who started to label me as a crazy prepper, and an elitist.

My issues with communal goods are:

1- Time consuming.  I don't want to lose an hour collecting a tool to do a job, then another hour returning it when I am done.  I rarely have enough time to finish projects as it is, and losing two hours out of my project time is unacceptable.

2- Communal/Rental equipment is often abused, either purposely or by people who don't know any better, and is often in poor repair.  I can guarantee that my tools are in better shape than the ones you rent from any of the major services.

3- I don't want to have to rely on others.  Rental agencies and libraries close, and other people also need these items, and so they may not be available when I need them.  Someone pointed out that you only need a roasting pan a couple of times a year, but that is also the time that everyone else requires a roasting pan, ie, Christmas and Thanksgiving.

While I do have the occasional prepper tendency, in reality I am not a serious survivalist type.  It does however give me a certain pleasure to know that, in the event of a major event or natural disaster (and the area they live in had two of them in one year not long ago), my dogs will fare better than their children will. 

All I could think of are the following situations:

"Sorry Timmy, you will have to die of dehydration because the line for water is really long."

"Timmy, can you watch this grease fire for me?  Daddy has to run to the library for an extinguisher."

One of these people also went so far as to suggest that if a bad situation happened, he would come and take what he wanted from me.  I didn't respond, but the reality is that I would welcome them to come and try to take things from me- I could use a few hundred extra pounds of dog food.... 

Def

After reading all the posts, there's only one thing to say...

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Major Event!