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Donating forks to the dining hall

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Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#91

Post by TeMPOraL »

eternauta3k wrote: post #76
kqr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Similarly, if staplers and scissors always disappear from office cabinets, it's often because people know they disappear so they hold onto them to have them available. It's a self-reinforcing system. But if one buys a bunch of them, people start trusting that they will be available, and will hoard less!

I thought the solution to the tragedy of the commons was institutions: we need a 1000-year old socially-enforced tradition of shunning hoarders and assigning dishwasher duty. Your solution sounds easier, though.

In a closed system, you could grow the commons until there's no scarcity anymore, and thus no tragedy either. This stops working once some "entrepreneur" figures your commons is their arbitrage opportunity, and opens the system to the outside world.

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#92

Post by jstanley »

eternauta3k wrote: post #78
yareal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called mutual aid, and is one of the fundamental underpinnings to anarchist theory. People will help each other, generally, if doing so is not too much of a burden on themselves. Systematizing that behavior into genuine community support for one another would (hypothetically) lead to outcomes of increased wellbeing for all. In your example, the person who left out the chairs isn't worried about being paid bac…

Couldn't we do slightly better with communication though? Instead of altruistically clearing the dishwasher in the office every time, we can have a rotating dishwasher duty. Is this opposed to anarchism? What about not having an explicit dishwasher duty, but just a socially-enforced expectation to contribute?

When it's a duty that others have imposed on you, it becomes a form of oppression rather than free action. Instead of feeling good about helping everyone, you feel bad about being bossed around by everyone.

The "socially-enforced expectation" is the same. You know whether you're doing something altruistically for the common good, or whether you're doing it because if you don't others will try to shame you.

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#93

Post by yurishimo »

eternauta3k wrote: post #77
ggm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your idea is good. Marking them in a non-intrusive (to function) way would serve to make it clear this is communal property. But, in essence we don't care, and I also think its not always wonton theft, I know I've shed spoons into the waste bin being uncareful.

I'm not judging, but how exactly does that happen? Does the spoon fall into the trash while you're discarding something and you don't want to pick it up? Or do you throw out a container and miss that it had a spoon inside?

I've definitely been tempted to throw away a nasty container that might have gotten forgotten in the car or at the back of the fridge and someone left cutlery inside.

The really nice stuff is only brought out at Christmas. As long as there are enough forks/spoons/etc for 8 people in the drawer for day to day use, then I don't care that much.

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#94

Post by cenamus »

wjnc wrote: post #59
jhbadger wrote: post #3

Reminds of of the replacement of "threeks" at the UW-Madison campus in the 1980s. At the time, it was common for satirical parties to win student elections and do odd things like cover the campus with plastic flamingos. One of the satirical parties was upset that the UW-Madison cafeteria didn't have true forks (with four tines) but only "threeks" (forks with three tines). So they decided to work with friends at North…

Don’t tell me “fork” and “four” are related. Did my homework: “Old English forca, force (denoting a farm implement), based on Latin furca ‘pitchfork, forked stick’; reinforced in Middle English by Anglo-Norman French furke (also from Latin furca ).” Four in Latin is quattuor. Scared me there.

However, Latin quattuor and english four are related through the PIE word kʷetwóres, as basically all words for 4 in indoeuropean languages are

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#95

Post by mikequinlan »

rob74 wrote: post #71
dexwiz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many doors have a toggle on the face plate below or above the latch that changes auto lock behavior. But auto lock is good for security. I once had a friend move out of a place in part because he would often get locked out. I showed him how to change this at his move out party.

> auto lock is good for security Exactly... in the company where I work, propping open the door (maybe not so much the door to the building, but certainly the doors to our office) would be a sure way to get you into pretty serious trouble. Also, opening the door with your own access card for other people (although I occasionally do that for people I know).

>Exactly... in the company where I work, propping open the door (maybe not so much the door to the building, but certainly the doors to our office) would be a sure way to get you into pretty serious trouble.

If it is a fire door then it can also be a fire code violation.

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#96

Post by actionfromafar »

dexwiz wrote: post #60
marssaxman wrote: post #47

I love this spirit. In the office where I work, the main door locks whenever it closes, so the first person to arrive each morning props the door open for everyone else. Well, a new tenant moved in to one of the other units, and they started taking our doorstop. Morning after morning we had to go find it and retrieve it, for weeks! One day it occurred to me that I didn't have to complain to management, or get mainten…

Many doors have a toggle on the face plate below or above the latch that changes auto lock behavior. But auto lock is good for security. I once had a friend move out of a place in part because he would often get locked out. I showed him how to change this at his move out party.

How thoughtful of you.

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#97

Post by cjs_ac »

My first teaching job was at an old, prestigious boys' boarding school in Australia. (When I say old, it was old for Australia.) Every boy, whether a boarder or day-boy, and every staff member received a hot lunch in the dining halls each day. There were two dining halls: most of the boys at in the less ornate one, but the oldest boys and the staff ate in the more formal dining hall. Portraits of all the previous headmasters gazed down on us as we ate, except for the headmaster who had been sacked after less than a year for having affairs with a few too many boys' mothers.

I was teaching a topic on ecology, which required taking the class out into the school grounds to count the number and diversity of species in an ecosystem. The school grounds were extensive; there were about two dozen playing fields, a small farm for teaching Agriculture (which is an actual, examined subject in some Australian secondary schools), and a lot of bushland.

In search of a suitable spot for the lesson, I headed off down one of the paths through the bush that went to the various boarding houses, and soon found a peculiar tree. It had few branches, and few leaves, but an enormous trunk: it was old and close to death. What made it peculiar, however, was the hundreds of knives sticking out of it - clearly pilfered from the dining halls and thrown by bored schoolboys.

When I returned to the science department, I told my colleagues what I had discovered. One of them was an old boy of the school, and another lived in one of the boarding houses, and yet none of them had any idea about the knife tree.

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#98

Post by roydivision »

teekert wrote: post #87
roydivision wrote: post #86

"But I had to make sure that my altruism would be commemorated." That's not how altruism works.

It's tongue in cheek, it's fun, it's a nice experiment, everybody wins. I don't like it how people suggest altruism should always amount to zero (or even negative!) benefit to the person doing all the giving of value. It's not how altruism should work. Are you only a true altruist if you go to help some poor kids in some poor country and hate every second of it? If so, I'm against altruism, it's something for sociopa…

Definition of altruism - "Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness."

To be clear - I'm not at all against doing good things for others and getting recognition for it, there's nothing wrong with that. But that's not altruism.

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#99

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jstanley wrote: post #92
eternauta3k wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't we do slightly better with communication though? Instead of altruistically clearing the dishwasher in the office every time, we can have a rotating dishwasher duty. Is this opposed to anarchism? What about not having an explicit dishwasher duty, but just a socially-enforced expectation to contribute?

When it's a duty that others have imposed on you, it becomes a form of oppression rather than free action. Instead of feeling good about helping everyone, you feel bad about being bossed around by everyone. The "socially-enforced expectation" is the same. You know whether you're doing something altruistically for the common good, or whether you're doing it because if you don't others will try to shame you.

Moreover, with a culture of altruism, there is no principal-agent problem. You want to help others, so you do.

As soon as you introduce coercion, the type of people motivated by power are attracted to the power to coerce and corruption takes root.

Re: Donating forks to the dining hall

#100

Post by aembleton »

cjs_ac wrote: post #97

My first teaching job was at an old, prestigious boys' boarding school in Australia. (When I say old , it was old for Australia.) Every boy, whether a boarder or day-boy, and every staff member received a hot lunch in the dining halls each day. There were two dining halls: most of the boys at in the less ornate one, but the oldest boys and the staff ate in the more formal dining hall. Portraits of all the previous he…

I like your writing
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