2016-?? - original notes in a google doc from 2016

2016-?? - original notes in a google doc from 2016

This material is gradually being integrated elsewhere. Most of the info is now in the library

Misc

  • Etzioni

Communes

  • Yaacov Oved - Two Hundred Years of American Communes
    • No digital only paper. Rufus has a copy and has read it.
  • Utopias and Utopians: An Historical Dictionary of Attempts to Make the World
    • Google books and Amazon but no download
  • Modern American Communes: A Dictionary Robert P. Sutton - 2005
  • John Curl, *For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America*
    • RP has a copy

Housing Cooperatives and Mutuals

Kibbutz

Abramitzky on Kibbutz - most of this downloadable from https://people.stanford.edu/ranabr/research(https://people.stanford.edu/ranabr/research)

Good overview http://eml.berkeley.edu//~saez/course/Abramitzky_book_presentation.pdf

  • "Lessons from the Kibbutz on the Equality-Incentives Trade-Off," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25:1, 185-208, Winter 2011 2.

  • "On the (lack of) Stability of Communes: An Economic Perspective," in Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion (edited by Rachel McCleary), Oxford University Press, Chapter 9, 169-189, 2011 3.

  • "The Effect of Redistribution on Migration: Evidence from the Israeli kibbutz," Journal of Public Economics, 93, 498-511, 2009 4.

  • "The Limits of Equality: Insights from the Israeli Kibbutz," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123:3, 1111-1159, August 2008 5.

  • "The Limits of Equality: An Economic Analysis of the Israeli Kibbutz," Journal of Economic History, 67(2), 495-499, 2007 6.

  • "How Responsive is Investment in Schooling to Changes in Redistribution Policies and in Returns?" with Victor Lavy [current draft: April 2012]

One nice excerpt from JEH article (summary of his dissertation):

If insurance is valuable and the sharing-rule can be adjusted to mitigate brain-

drain, then why is not the entire world a Kibbutz? And, why are all Kibbutzim relatively small? One answer is that social ties between members are important in mitigating the moral hazard problem and facilitating insurance. Interestingly, membership size does not affect a Kibbutz's likelihood to shift away from equal-sharing. At a first glance, this finding may suggest that the shirking problem is not a driving force in Kibbutzim's commitment to equal-sharing; otherwise, larger Kibbutzim, where monitoring is more difficult, would be more likely to shift away from equal-sharing. However, all Kibbutzim have fewer than 1,200 members, so they may be equally effective in monitoring and in mitigating the shirking problem. The lack of privacy that is a by-product of the monitoring may explain why not everyone wishes to live in a Kibbutz.

"Bossless" Organizations - self -management

Ideas

  • Netflix: "Highly aligned - loosely coupled"

  • Spotify

  • Common feature of the more high-tech is high / very competitive compensation

    • Netflix: we pay at the top of the range, we lose anyone who isn't a star performer

    • Valve: our compensation is very competitive

  • CLOU = Colleague Letter of Understanding

    • Every year, each Morning Star employee negotiates a Colleague Letter of Understanding (CLOU) with the associates who are most affected by his or her work. A CLOU (pronounced "clue") is, in essence, an operating plan for fulfilling one's mission. An employee may talk to 10 or more colleagues during the negotiations, with each discussion lasting 20 to 60 minutes. A CLOU can cover as many as 30 activity areas and spells out all the relevant performance metrics. All together, CLOUs delineate roughly 3,000 formal relationships among Morning Star's full-time employees.

Readings

Reinventing Organizations list

Buurtzorg

http://www.strategy-business.com/article/00344

Buurtzorg, a large Dutch nursing care provider, is a good example of an organization running with Teal management structures and practices. Since the 19th century, every neighborhood in the Netherlands has had a local nurse who makes home visits to care for the sick and the elderly. These nurses operated largely autonomously until the early 1990s. Then, to maximize efficiency and reduce costs, the government created incentives for care-giving agencies to merge into larger enterprises.

The new agencies, most of which were private companies, gravitated toward an Orange paradigm. Seeking to minimize downtime and allocate staff flexibly, they set up centralized call centers; instead of calling their nurse personally, clients now had to dial the center. Planners were hired to devise daily visiting schedules that minimized travel times. The agencies instituted time standards: 10 minutes for intravenous injections, 15 minutes for bathing, and 2.5 minutes for changing a compression stocking. Barcode stickers, placed on patients' front doors, tracked the nurses' progress so central managers could analyze their efficiency. As these organizations consolidated, they added more layers of management, all with the intention of increasing efficiencies and squeezing out costs.

The outcome has been distressing to patients and nurses alike. Clients, who are often elderly, have to cope with new faces in their home at every visit. They must repeat their medical histories to hurried nurses who have no time allotted for listening. The nurses, for their part, find these working conditions degrading. They know they should spend more time trying to understand the changing conditions of their patients, but they simply can't. The whole system is prone to errors, conflicts, and complaints.

Buurtzorg's purpose is not to give shots and change bandages efficiently but to help elderly patients live a rich and autonomous life.

Buurtzorg (the name means neighborhood care in Dutch) was founded in 2006 by Jos de Blok, who had experienced these problems firsthand, as a nurse for 10 years and then as a manager. His new organization is extraordinarily successful, having grown from four to 9,000 nurses in its first eight years and achieving outstanding levels of care. He set up the company as a self-managing enterprise. Nurses work in teams of 10 to 12, each team serving around 50 patients in a small, well-defined neighborhood.

Buurtzorg has a distinctive outlook on the nature of care. Its purpose is not to give shots and change bandages as efficiently as they can, but to help its patients live, as much as possible, a rich and autonomous life. Nurses regularly sit down for coffee with their patients. They help them structure their own support networks and reach out to families and neighbors. Patients see the same one or two nurses all the time, and often form deep bonds of trust and intimacy with them.

Clients and nurses love Buurtzorg. Only eight years after its founding, its market share has reached 60 percent. Financially, the results are stellar, too. One 2009 study found that Buurtzorg requires, on average, only 40 percent of the care hours needed by a more conventional approach, because patients become self-sufficient much faster. Emergency hospital admissions have been cut by a third, and the average hospital stay of a Buurtzorg patient is shorter. It's estimated that the Dutch social security system would save $2 billion per year if the entire home-care industry adopted Buurtzorg's operations model.

Self-Management and Its Misconceptions

Buurtzorg's 9,000 employees operate entirely with self-managing practices. Local teams of 10 to 12 nurses decide which patients to serve, how to allocate tasks, where to rent offices, how to integrate with the local communities, which doctors and pharmacies to work with, and how to collaborate with nearby hospitals. They monitor their own performance and take corrective action if productivity drops. Teams don't have team leaders; management tasks are spread across the members, all of whom are nurses.

One common misconception about self-management is that everyone is equal and decisions are made by consensus, which requires endless meetings. The truth is very different. Self-management requires a whole set of interlocking structures and practices, so that decision rights and power flow to any individual who has the expertise, interest, or willingness to step in to oversee a situation. Fluid, natural hierarchies replace the fixed power hierarchies of the pyramid. This requires explicit training. At Buurtzorg, all new team members take a course called Solution-Driven Methods of Interaction, learning sophisticated listening and communication skills, techniques for running meetings and making decisions, and methods of coaching one another and providing perspective.

You might assume that all this is managed through staff functions — the source of capability and power in many Orange and Green organizations. But Buurtzorg's 9,000 nurses are supported by fewer than 50 staff people. The nurses do their own recruiting and purchasing, contracting for specialized medical or legal expertise when needed. They align with the larger organization not through rules and procedures, but through the collaboration methods they learned. A powerful internal social network allows them to draw on guidance and medical expertise from fellow nurses in other parts of the country, many of whom they've never met.

2017-07-14 (and maybe before)

Narratives go like this …

Stronger version:

  • We all bought the american dream
  • But money didn't work
  • We need people
  • Let's get back to community

Economic argument

  • Rising rents in cities
  • More people having children later
  • [More nomads - digital tech, cost of travel, millenial tastes …]
  • => demand for coliving
    • Economically …
    • …

NTS

Pure house …

Now almost familiar weird mix of techno-hippiedom …

What bizarre is the juxtaposition of silicon valley dreams of riches, growth jargon, utopian call to arms, spiritual

What's good and what's my concern:

  • Good: touch on a lot of good points and ideas I share e.g. things not working, that community is important etc
  • Superficial: on each level the understanding comes across as a bit superficial

    • Jargon-y - i'm doubtful they have really taken on the

    • Humility

    • Realism about techno-solutionism

      • Big payday dreams (all those refs to billion dollar megacorps)

    • Over-paly of novelty e.g. https://medium.com/@purehouse/sharing-is-caring-but-for-who-51cda27d4119

      Welcome to co-living, a new way of living in the technological age. Driven by a craving for connection paired with a desire for more flexible lifestyles and unsustainable housing costs, this nascent housing sector promises instant community, access over ownership and an all-inclusive lifestyle. But can it deliver?

      I don't think this that new …

https://medium.com/@purehouse/powered-by-pure-house-cabfcbea52b9

Numbers don’t matter, except when they help tell a story. Apple’s valuation of 710billionislargerthanallbut19countriesGDP.AirBnBwasfoundedin2008andiscurrentlyvaluedat710 billion is larger than all but 19 countries GDP. AirBnB was founded in 2008 and is currently valued at 25 billion. Uber was founded in 2009 with a 62billionvaluation.WeWorkwasfoundedin2010witha62 billion valuation. WeWork was founded in 2010 with a 16 billion dollar valuation.

The point here is that value is being created at astronomical levels in a very short time. While most of this value still flows up to shareholders based on actual or projected revenue, what’s different is that more value is being shared with other stakeholders. It’s important to understand the common elements driving this value creation, as these learnings have the potential to drive exponentially more value to all stakeholders.

I can see some of the sense but we are starting to move into bullshit bingo …

" … that more value is being shared with other stakeholders. It’s important to understand the common elements driving this value creation, as these learnings have the potential to drive exponentially more value to all stakeholders.

e.g. "exponentially more value to stakeholders".

Then we get a chiliastic call to arms with the classic sense of inevitability:

As user feedback loops shorten, full-transparency is inevitable, demanding authenticity. A new breed of organization that maximizes long-term value for all stakeholders in an authentic manner is being called forth. By balancing stakeholder value with shareholder value in a transparent manner, an increasing intensity of attention and resource will shift into these organization’s favor.

Then we suddenly get some interesting insight though with a weird hippie twist at the end:

Human suffering is skyrocketing. Everywhere we look, people are glued to devices; craving connection while simultaneously sedating it. In a world of ever increasing change and instability, seeking validation externally will not work. Our consumption patterns must shift. Our future demands that we look inward; that we become fully embodied beings that source our meaning and value from within. At a minimum, this is the only way to find peace and harmony. Humanity’s future depends on this. The climate science tells us so.

I only see one way out, which is in. For when we experience life from an embodied state, we recognize we are a vessel to channel experiences through us. As we learn to release and let go of attachment, our capacity to feel more increases exponentially. The feeling is euphoria and our potential becomes infinite.

Then we go off the deep end - but with a good point in there and a nice wrap-up:

To release is to become present; the ultimate experience being death. The feeling is euphoric, which is why we constantly seek to simulate these experiences. Race cars, roller coasters, extreme sports, MDMA, the orgasm and even chocolate; they all give us a quick hit. And those praying in mosques, synagogues and churches are after the same feeling. We crave connection; to feel our bodies and to be completely in the moment, awake and aware. But how do we get there?

While there is no instruction manual, I believe vulnerability is the essential component. While there are many methods to invoke this quality, I believe we can design experiences and environments that promote a culture of vulnerability. And when this is done within a nurturing community, the collective release is Earth shattering; in the best way of course.

2017-07-08

With dylan

  • Plum village aspirant program:
    • ~15 join pre-aspirant (already selected): 3m+
    • ~10 join aspirant program (1y) (5 leave: realize not for them etc)
    • ~9 join monastic 1s year (1-2 leave from aspirant)
    • Relatively high retention rate going forward
  • Fredom from vs freedom to
    • we overvalue freedom to vs freedom from.
    • communities involve giving up some freedom to to have more freedom from e.g. giving up playing my music whenever i want or eating whenever I want in order to have freedom from loneliness
  • Community is asymmetric
    • Hard to join / create
    • Fast to leave / disintegrate
    • => you need to have (some) cost to leaving - o/w at the first bump people leave (relates to short-termism vs long-termism.
  • Community and self-transformation are linked
    • Community => self-transformation (provides support, collective behaviours - the share meal, the meditation)
    • Self-transformation => community (deal with interpersonal difficulties, transform habits, deal with short-termism vs long-termism - know what i really want and able to pursue it through the bumps)
      • Self-transformation => open-mindedness to be with other people
  • Why community
    • Family, home
    • Mind of love, awakening (PV)
    • Services -> nourishes -> joy

      • Touched, challenged

Overhead conversation in PV

  • Guy 1: I'd like to start a community
  • Guy 2: Did you say a community, that's great.
  • But at their best there, and practice is untested.

Need to commit so that you stick through the hard times.

  • It is asymmetric. Hard to join, easy to leave.

SCQA #1

  • S: there is a way: mindfulness works, there is a way to reduce suffering, requires long-term practice and community support
  • C: People are unaware of their suffering (own psychology) and even if they are, they don't believe it can change, and community is "tough" (for us individualists)
    • People are often blind to their suffering and sceptical of a solution and …
    • mindful solution is challenging in that it requres restraint (overcoming the id/manas) and sustained practise … [where payoffs are longer-term]
    • and a community (that would support practise and our restraint) is also hard as it involves similar challenges (freedom to vs freedom from, short-term vs long-term)

SCQA #2

  • S: Lots of people come to Plum Village and want to form mindful lay living communities
    • many want to form a coliving community
  • C: Few realize their dream because:
    • Struggle over the proper degree of personal autonomy vs community cohesiveness (freedom to vs freedom from). E.g. who will be in charge, freedom to choose food, time, money
    • Lack of alignment on values (lack of clearly agreed shared culture)
      • Lay community of long-term practitioners. Found a farm where landlord would let them have it for 0 rent => money, group, and practice. However, one of the members slept with a neighbour's wife (a farmer). He was supplying them with organic food. A lof of unhappiness. Wife left, farmer depressed. Several of community unhappy with the guy who had done this. But he did not leave. Ultimately other community members left and community ended. [No clear agreement on these issues at the start]
    • Money / Business model: buying / renting space requires significant capital - it also requires people to have a sustainable livelihood once the place is running
      • Mix group: monastic and lay. Want to go somewhere rural. Lay want to visit from time to time, not permanent. Meanwhile monastics want more hermit like. Without retreats how will be viable.
    • Legal structure: if you are pooling capital or investing time and energy need a
      • Need to be able to get in and out in some way (and want to know this going in)
      • Example: Joe joined a communitarian group in 80s. Led by charismatic guy. Bought properties and did them up. Everyone worked hard and loved it. Some point leader said needed a successor. Started taking him off for luxury travel. Started to be grumblings about money - no transparency. One guy started complaining and was ostracized and then left. Eventually Joe started to have doubts. Could sense others were "turning on him". One day he just left in the middle night. Had been there for 20y since 19 and had no money and nothing to show for his 20y - lost all his friends too.
    • A stable core group: need a core group that is stable - not just a couple of people who have met for the first time and are excited (this quickly dissolves away)
      • Probably require an existing friendship to provide the trust to enable things to get going
  • Question: what structures would create sustainable, powerful living communities [once started] and what processes would lead to more such communities being set up?

# 2016-07-26 - 2016 Talk draft

We spend around 1/3 - 1/2 of our waking hours "working"

The way we structure our work and life has a large impact on the wellness and wisdom of our lives.

Virtuous (or vicious) Cycle: wisdom (and wellness) enable us to create well and wise ways of working and living which in turn support us in being well and wise

TODO:

  • percentage of income spent on housing

#########

Ideas

  • Trends - why is this happening (not now)
  • Intellecutal history

Structure

Why - short

What are we talking about

  • Definitions …

An intellectual history

Context

  • Religions
  • Socialism
  • Individualism vs collectivism
    • Rise of the suburb. Played out in how we live and how we work

Why - and why not [A longer version]

Challenges:

  • incentives
  • preference alignment

More specific

  • capital

The co-spectrum

Relation to Art / Earth / Tech

What is a community

Critique

  • Being appropriated for "LAAS" - living as a service. WeLive.

    • Yes, maybe these are a bit better. But are they really communities. You meet your neighbours more.

    • Driven by lack of children?

      Convenience / Cost (Economies of Scale)

Purpose

Community

  • web of connections
  • shared culture (shared values, norms, meanings and history)

The corporation

Intellectuals

  • Amitai Etzioni
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