Timothy Wilken
Recently, the electrical power crisis in California has drawn national and world attention to a shortage of crude oil and natural gas. These fossil fuels are currently the primary source of the cheap energy that powers our modern Industrial Civilization. If we are running out of crude oil and natural gas as some of the best scientists and engineers in the Energy field are telling us, we have big problems. As our human population has tripled in the last 100 years, the Earth’s finite fossil fuel resources have been significantly reduced and are becoming ever more difficult and expensive to find. As they say, “The handwriting is on the wall.”
Community offers powerful benefits to those humans who understand they are an INTERdependent form of life. Most of us in modern society believe we are independent. Our short supply of cheap fossil fuel energy has given us the “wealth” to make this belief seem valid. However, there is a price to pay in that we must spend much of our lives earning our livings. Modern culture tells me I don’t need community, I just need a job.
INTERdependence
Synergy means working together. The goal of synergic union is to accomplish a larger or more difficult task by working together than can be accomplished by working separately. If we humans are going to work together, we must have powerful and easy to use tools for communication, consensus and exchange. This is what I think is the real promise of the two way web. Napster showed us that millions of individuals could have their lives enriched by simply sharing music. I would suggest that there are many other things we might share that could be just as enriching.
Today, most humans solve their problems as individuals or at best as nuclear families. They meet their individual needs with individual actions. Our belief in our independence is so strong, it is almost beyond challenge.
Stop reading …
Please take a moment to examine the contents of your pockets or purse. …
Can you find any item there, that you obtained without the help of someone else? Look around you. What do you see? Did you make the clothes you wear? Did you grow the food you eat or the tools you use. Look around your home or workplace. Can you find anything that you made. Do you know the names of those who did make all these things? Do you ever know upon whom you depend. Can you find anything in your environment that was obtained without the help of someone else?
I am not talking about ownership here. I will grant that you own your possessions. But would you have them if they had not been for sale. I would argue that nearly everything modern humans possess was obtained with the help of others.
As my associate Arthur Noll asks his students when making this point, “Lets start with your naked body. Can you manage to clothe and feed and shelter this body, with no hands touching any article except your own hands?” …
As I examine my own world I discover that I depend on others to grow and produce my food. I depend on others to design and build my home. I depend on others to generate my electricity. I depend on others to supply my water. I depend on others to deliver my mail. I depend on others to educate my children. I depend on others to entertain my family. I depend on others to manufacture my automobile. I depend on others to refine the gasoline for my car. I depend on others to care for my family when we are sick. I depend on others to protect us from crime and war. I depend on others to …. I depend on others. I depend.
Our human INTERdependence is made less visible by our present economic exchange system. I go to work and help my employer. He depends on me. At the end of the month he pays me for my help. I depend on him. I can then take some of the money from my paycheck to pay my house rent. While I depend on my landlord for the roof over my head, he depends on me to pay the rent promptly. Sometimes I depend on others and sometimes others depend on me. When we buy and sell in the economic marketplace we are really exchanging help. When I help others they owe me. When others help me I owe them. Money is just the present accounting mechanism we use to settle up.
If you understand that humans are an INTERdependent form of life, then they must have help to meet their needs. If this is true then we would expect to see exchange economies established to facilitate the exchange of help .
Three Ways of Getting Help
Our human history reveals only three possible exchange economies:
1) Adversary Help—We can force others to help us.
This is help obtained with coercion—force or fraud. Those providing the help are losing. When you force others to help you, they do the least they possibly can. Because the helper is hurt, adversary help is low quality help.
(1+1)<2
Slavery, indentured service, tenant farming, and child labor are examples of adversary help. The criminal makes you help him, when he steals your money. The government makes you help it, when it forces you to pay taxes. You are forced to help others anytime you are given an ultimatum. Adversary relationships are hurting and negative experiences. The helper experiences a loss. He is less after helping you than before. When you force others to help you, they do the least they possibly can.
2) Neutral Help—We can purchase help through the fair market place.
This is help purchased from others. This is the way most of us living in the free world get help today. We hire it or we buy it in the market place. When I go to McDonald’s, I pay them five dollars to feed me. The meal McDonalds offers is worth five dollars. Actually a little less since McDonalds is entitled to make a profit. My five dollars is worth five dollars. We exchange equal amounts. This is a neutral exchange. The focus in the neutral market place is on a fair price. Because the helper is ignored, neutral help is average quality help.
(1+1)=2
Macy’s, Sears, Mervyn’s, Penny’s, Costco, K-Mart, Circuit City, etc., etc.—malls, stores, markets, shops, and restaurants—are all examples of neutral help. The yellow pages in the telephone book are lists of places where you can purchase help. The open market of free enterprise generates a zone of neutrality which markedly reduces adversary relations. Neutral systems gain a marked production advantage over adversary systems. They are significantly more productive. However, this is primarily because they are not adversary. Neutral relationships are marked by indifference with fair effectiveness and only average productivity. Neutrality is that place where I work just hard enough to avoid getting fired, and, my employer pays me just enough to keep me from quitting.
Or, 3) Synergic Help—We can attract help by helping others.
This help attracted by helping others. When other individuals understand that by helping you, they will in turn be helped, they will automatically help you. When others understand that when you win, they will win, they will support and celebrate your success. This is the power of the win-win relationship. Show those who can help you, how they will win by doing so. Show them how they will be helped by helping you. Because the helper is helped, synergic help is high quality help.
(1+1)>>2
I was helped for helping him. Synergy is a new concept to humanity. Examples of synergic help in today’s world are much less common. We do find them in family businesses and within some partnerships and small business groups. Synergic relationships more often exist in start up businesses, where the originators work together sharing in the risks and the rewards equally. Another recent example is the “Open Source Software Projects” as used to create Linux. This is well described by Eric Steven Raymond in his seminal paper The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Raymond goes on to describe the “open source community” as a “gift” culture in his article Homesteading. What Raymond calls a “gift” culture, I call a synergic help exchange.
If you wish to attract synergic help you must insure that when individuals invest their help with yours, they are also helped. Then they will automatically reinvest with you. When others understand that when you win, they win, they will support and celebrate your success.
Synergic reorganization doesn’t eliminate exchange. It just changes the rules. Both parties have to win. No freedom is lost. We will actually have more freedom. Now lets take a quick look how things are done in our present world.
Bird’s Eye View
Let us imagine an aerial view of our community on an average evening at 10:00pm. Looking down we notice that within one square mile there are several small convenience stores open from seven to eleven. These small stores are all competing with each other as well as with larger supermarkets now staying open 24 hours in order to compete with them. At this hour of night there are only a few available customers to be divided up among all these providers.
Each store is paying one or more clerks to staff the store, plus the costs for lighting and heating each store. From our view above our community, it is obvious that most of the clerks could be sent home and most of the stores closed and still allow every customer seeking products and services at that hour to get what they needed. This would also produce enormous savings for this group of providers. To all stay open, the providers must pass the costs of doing business on to their customers, so this means that the prices in all of these stores is higher to subsidize this inefficiency.
Why is this happening? In today’s world we mostly ignore each other. After all, we are all independent. Each individual is supposed to look out for himself. So there is little communication between provider and consumer. The providers are keeping the stores open in hopes that someone will need something. If they were communicating with their customers, they would know when to be open and when they could close. They could then operate much more efficiently.
Now imagine that this same inefficient process is going on with many different kinds of products in every community in our nation and you start to sense the enormous amount of wasted time and energy. Let’s return for a moment to our bird’s eye view of our community. Only this time let us imagine a time lapse video camera above our neighborhood. Imagine a family of four, two adults and two older teenagers in local college, having four automobiles. If we focus the video camera on the garage and parking area next to their home we would discover that there are times when there are no cars at home. This means that the family has four cars in use. Sometimes there is one car parked, so three cars are in use. Sometimes there are two cars parked, so two cars are in use. Sometimes there are three cars parked so only one car is in use. And sometimes we will find all four cars parked, so on these occasions this family has no cars in use.
Now careful analysis of our time lapse photography will reveal that this family is, on average, making use of only only 1.8 cars. This means that on average 2.2 cars are parked and not in use. Yet this family is making payments on four cars, paying insurance and taxes on four cars, and experiencing depreciation on the value of four cars whether the cars are in use or not. And, this is without considering the expense of operating the cars. Since most modern humans solve all their problems as individuals, they have chosen the most expensive solution possible.
Now if we move our time lapse camera higher, we discovery that this same phenomenon is occurring at every home in the neighborhood. If we examine all the homes within just a few blocks we discover that there are always cars in the neighborhood that are not in use. Now, as we continue to watch from above, we see that often times the members of this neighborhood are going to the same place. They all go to the same supermarket. They all rent from the same video store. They use the same post office and drug store. As we watch we discover that often one individual will make the same trip to the same place maybe only a few minutes earlier or later than a neighbor. Again, we see that solving our problems individually means that we have chosen the most expensive option. We are doing this because in our neutral culture we don’t even know our neighbors let alone what their transportation needs are.
Now, if we move our aerial time lapse camera high enough to see the entire community, we can now see the parking lots at stores, supermarkets, shopping centers, places of work and schools. And again at any one time most of the cars are parked.
We also discover that one individual living at the north edge of the community is driving to the south edge of the community to his work in a retail store, while another individual is passes him going in the opposite direction, this individual lives on the south edge of the community and is driving to work on the north edge of the community to a similar job. Of course neither individual knows the other, or even how similar and paradoxical their situation is.
We could also analyze these same neighborhoods and discover that each garage contains a lawn mower and numerous tools that are only being used once every two weeks and all of these tools are expensive and require maintenance. I would imagine that in the neighborhood I live in, that on any given moment, ninety five percent of the tools in our garages are not in use.
Co-Operative Neighborhood Garages
Imagine purchasing a membership in a modern community garage within easy walking distance of your home. This garage could have a variety of automobiles that would be available for your use anytime day or night. The garage would be clean, well lighted, and safe. It would be staffed 24 hours a day, the automobiles would always be clean, serviced and full of gas. Using either computer or telephone you could reserve a car for your own personal use. The garage could easily have many different types of vehicles available to serve your particular needs. You could reserve a station wagon, sports car, utility vehicle, or limousine. The garage could also run shuttle services to those destinations that were commonly and frequently requested.
The number of automobiles needed to meet the needs of the members co-Operatively would be much fewer than the number needed for the same members individually. Total costs would be much reduced and the secondary advantages would be tremendous. On those occasions when all the cars happened to be in use, transportation needs could be supplemented by taxies or rental cars arranged by the garage.
What would the cost of such a service be. Well first, realize that “attached garage” now a part of almost every home could be eliminated or turned into additional living space. Your cost of membership would be reflective of you use of automobiles. I would expect most families would experience major savings. Those very heavy needs for an automobile would find the costs to approach the same costs as owning their own automobile. Now there is no reason the Co-Operative Garage should just offer automobiles. It could also provide garden tractors, lawn mowers, and tools of all kinds. The extent and value of co-Operative action is limited only by your imagination.
Co-Operative Videotape Rentals
Currently, the providers of videotape rentals operates much as do all small stores in our communities. They select those available tapes which they feel will be popular and then make them available for rental. They keep their stores open long hours for the convenience of his customers, which travel on a regular basis to pick-up and drop-off tapes. This of course, results in lots of travel time and expense for the consumer, and when the consumer fails to find time to view the tape before the rental period expires, they are charged significant late fees. Statistics show that one third of Blockbuster’s revenues come from these late fees.
Now imagine this alternative scenario: Instead of going to the video store you connect to the store via a web page on the internet. The available video tapes are listed with images from the movies, a list of actors, and even reviews. You select the tapes you want to rent. And they are delivered to your home. You have a locked delivery box outside your home in which you can retrieve new tapes when you order, and return for pick up when you are finished.
Co-Operative Consumption means that in addition to this scale of convenience, the provider and consumer now have a synergic and intelligent relationship. Using the same internet web page technology, the provider would query their customers as to which of the new releases of tapes they would be interested in renting. These choices could again be provided to the customer along with images from the videos, lists of actors, and reviews. You could select one of three choices: Yes, Maybe or No.
This information would allow the provider to order an appropriate number of new tapes to fill the expected needs of their customers. This is what is meant by an intelligent relationship with the provider. The implications of this alternative are great in reducing the cost of rentals, increasing the likelihood that those tapes you are interested in are available, and with all the loss in time and inconvenience, let alone cost of picking up and dropping off tapes eliminated. If this becomes the primary mechanism of videotape rental, the provider can close the retail Video Store in the high rent district and operate out of a low cost warehouse with delivery vans reducing the costs even more. Now imagine, how this same process could be be applied to many other products or groups of products.
Co-Operative grocery shopping
Recently a new company has created a prototype for what I am recommending. Peapod is an online virtual grocery store now available on the internet. In the San Francisco Bay Area there is a recent competitor called WebVan. Now these new internet grocery stores are a step in the right direction, but they are only going part of the way. They are just a typical business seeking to make money, but they have stumbled in the right direction.
Individual Actions are Expensive
Our current reality requires that we meet our needs as individuals. This guarantees that we will pay the highest prices for the products and services we need, and with the greatest waste of time and energy. In any average week, if we total the time and expense involved in making multiple trips to the grocery store, pharmacy, hardware store, nursery, dry cleaners, video shop, post office, etc. etc. etc…, remembering to include the cost of individual transportation with each of us acquiring, maintaining, insuring, and operating our own cars, it would be hard to imagine a system that could be more expensive and inconvenient than our present reality.
Co-Operative Consumption
Society’s first response to our current Fossil Fuel Energy Crisis has been to seek more gas and oil. I think this is the wrong direction in which to seek a solution. We humans don’t need more gas and oil. We need less gas and oil. In order to maintain our quality of life with less gas and oil, we need to use the power of community and synergically reorganize ourselves to meet of our common needs with much greater efficiency and economy.
There is nothing very difficult about community. In fact, human survival for the first 99.99% of our history required community. Only in last 100 years have we been rich enough (fossil fuel energy) for modern humans to individually survive without community. And, in that 100 years (three generations)we have forgot about the power of community. Some of our best energy scientists warn that we will soon be out of cheap energy. As earning our livings becomes much more difficult, we may discover we again need the Power of Community.
With the advent of the internet and the development of new tools of communication, consensus and exchange, we now have the opportunity to regain community. All we have to do is change our minds.