I just want to preface this by saying I don't think I'm advocating for communism.
My garden is approximately six metres by seven metres. I own a lawnmower. My neighbours have gardens that are the same dimensions and they also own lawnmowers. Would it not be better if we had a communal lawnmower that we shared? It would save on money, collectively we could probably have a nicer mower than we'd have separately even if we chipped in less than we would to own one outright, save on storage and probably be better for the environment.
I know it wouldn't be without its issues, particularly when it comes to the likes of maintenance and responsibility, but it feels like we've gone too far the other way on individualism and lost an awful lot of community spirit.
I think /pol/ wasn't the best place for this, but alright.
First issue I can see is, presumably you and your neighbours all have gardens fenced off from each other, right? So how exactly are you supposed to give each other the lawnmower? Heft it through your house, or side passage, and then they heft it through theirs, every single time anyone wants to use it? Tracking dust and grass and other shit through the place? It just sounds like a really impractical tool to swap due to its size and weight.
>>93223 There's a little passageway behind all of our houses that you could use for this purpose. All you'd need would be a rota and somewhere to store it.
My neighbour cuts some of my grass, I fix electrical stuff for him.
We each have our specialism and tools. This works nicely.
Shared stuff and human nature make for stress and broken lawnmowers that nobody wants to fix.
Nice idea, talk to your neighbours (a good thing in itself) and go for it. Don't overinvest. You don't need our permission.
>it feels like we've gone too far the other way on individualism
This is unquestionably true, but at what point did we go to far? Was there ever a point we had the balance right?
We grew up with an expectation that the future was bright and that everyone would be able to have everything, but the dawning realisation is coming upon us that not everyone can have everything. Is it even ethical for some to have a thing, if everyone can't have it?
My personal feeling is that we could have sustained a relatively luxurious lifestyle without completely destroying our habitat and creating an economy of growth-based debt slavery in the process, if only we had kept the population under control. It was alright when there were a couple billion of us worldwide, it's not alright when that's not even one country.
We find ourselves now perpetuating a cycle akin to taking out loans to pay off debts. Every time we pay off the old debt we need to take out another loan to pay off the debt of the loan we just took out, and it has to be bigger each time. It's self evidently unsustainable, but the only answer you'll ever hear is "But we have to, or else we can't sustain it."
The question is, what drives us to desire our own lawn mower? Because this isn't just about lawn mowers is it. Why aren't we content to share a lawn mower? There are undoubtedly practical advantages to having your own lawn mower, but in the face of things, are they really that huge?
When I was a young lad, the ability to get in my car and fuck off away from my mum and dad's nonsense was probably one of the few things keeping me sane, keeping me in a social life when I lived far away from my mates, and I'd probably be a mess of a person if I hadn't have had that outlet. So, in general, although I'm a strongly lefty sort, I'm instinctually averse to anything that limits a person's independence. But where do we draw the line?
So, to summarise: I support your communal lawn mower incentive in principle. But I fear it may have lasting implications upon the aspiration of private lawn mower ownership, a right which men have fought and died for.
Both shared ownership and Communism fail when faced with peoples innate shittiness.
Who stores the lawnmower and does that entitle them to preferential useage?
If the lawnmower is damaged by misuse who pays and who deals with the inevitable arguments over damage due to misuse/general wear.
Why does that person always get to use the mower at x times when I want to use it then type ridiculousness?
Additionally I'm not sure community spirit in the UK ever was a thing outside of one off events or the trivia of life
Yes, everyone is all for the community right up until you step out the front-door. I share a couple washing machines with everyone in my building and while its relatively peaceful you still end up with annoyances like the washing machines being full of someone's washing they haven't picked up when you go down to use one. And then you get mould in the machine but of course it's nobody else's problem is it.
In response to your idea I would suggest modifying it. Take your neighbours gardens and mowers by force and those that submit can live as your serfs tending to cash crops on their former lands under your tutelage. It's hard work being a manager but necessary.
>>93228 Probably best if there's a state lawnmower and you get your lawn mowed by an otherwise unemployable.
(Hasn't Covid / furlough shaken loose thousands of gardeners looking to make it work? If not, why not?)
> I'm not sure community spirit in the UK ever was a thing
I'm sure it was, and is, but it doesn't scale imho. People (may) care about their visible neighbours and environment, but beyond that, it's every cunt for themselves.
Some people are just cunts (or so close to the edge that they have nothing left for others).
The underlying economics of this unsettle me.
In an ideal world the solution would probably be something like the local council owning a mower and either running a gardening service, or letting you rent it at a good rate. A little earner for them (so we can pay less of the dismal council tax) and cheaper for everyone else, maybe seeing your town's coat of arms on the shared mower or letting your neighbour/mate have a go because you rented it for 6 hours and you finished your lawn after 3 will even foster a little bit of community spirit.
But that's not what we're going to get, because local councils are so broke they can't even afford a mower and usually so bereft of vision they couldn't legally operate one either. So what will happen is that some dickhead in Silicon Valley will see the underlying economics and he'll make an app, which you can pay to rent a mower, which won't work without the app, and he'll rip you off as much as possible to use it because he's accountable only to the shareholders who paid him money for this scam, and the mower will be cheap plastic crap painted in some god awful branding prominently featuring a wanky name like "Grasshole".
The basic economics of having shared ownership without a tragedy of the commons are exactly the same - just rent it - but the question of who really owns the shared object completely changes the kind of world it represents. One a sort of local communitarianism where we own some necessities in common, the other the absolute worst sort of "individualism" where we all only exist to be milked for cash by the worst kind of wealthy American in a system like feudalism without security of tenure because technically he owns those necessities. Faced with their future, I'll cut my grass with a pair of cheap nail scissors before I give in to economic reality.
As with everything, what we really want is one hand on the steering wheel of our own lives. You could offer me a cheaper rented lawnmower, and I'd take it if I was poor, but what I'd really want is a lawnmower of my own. I'm willing to pay more for the peace of mind that the street won't turn against me if I break it. Sharing things comes with a degree of uncertainty that I would prefer to avoid, and if avoiding it was reasonably affordable, I would happily pay. And so would everyone else.
>>93244 What if it was a ride-on lawnmower?
They're great. I finally got round to fixing mine yesterday, It no longer has 20 degrees of toe out, so it doesn't take both hands to steer and still try to throw me into the ditch.
Weren't we all meant to have robot lawnmowers by now? Automation taking the bread out of the labouring classes' mouths?
I'm pretty sure I was promised that.
>>93245 >Weren't we all meant to have robot lawnmowers by now?
Already exist. The development as we speak is get some complicated PNT-AI-UAV-HAPs interface to work with it so it can have a truly autonomous 'fuck-off-ability'. The idea is someone nearby would own it and you'd be able to rent it out using your phone like those AI taxis being tested where it drives out to you and returns to home when it needs a charge/maintenance.
We'll probably get them shortly after farmers. Farmers in other countries that is, let's not be daft. Then the mowers will become sentient and trim us down to our toes.
>>93247 Well, yes. My question was more that they were meant to be ubiquitous, not that they exist at all.
(I've had one for years, it's a disappointment. I want everyone else to be disappointed, too, then maybe some clever bastard will write some replacement software for mine that makes it less retarded.)
What I've seen of robot mowers is they are very much like a roomba in that it just goes where it pleases, rather than leaving pleasing stripes. One of these on the other hand would be great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-4K9vL6cME
>>93245 We already have lawnmowers that push themselves; those have already been invented. And trees have been invented. And string you can tie round a tree trunk has been invented.
This is the great advantage of automation; it frees the British worker to be an entrepreneurial capitalist and wealth-creator.
They might do if you take them out for dinner first and compliment them on their fleece. I can't imagine many beastophiles engage in foreplay and instead ram their knob straight up that poor sheep's unsuspecting clopper.
The only thing better than communism is socialism. Instead of sharing a lawnmower you could have a community vote of who the community likes the least. Then this person could be made the slave laborer and could mow everyone's lawn for free until they die of starvation. Then after that the community has the next vote for lawnmower.
