Shoot First

Group decisions are rarely nimble.  Especially many progressive and radical groups slightly ironically choose conservative (and oft slow) decision methods like consensus and sociocracy.

Bolo did not want to be this way.  [Or at least i did not want the labor collective Bolo to be this way.]  For individuals in the community if you want someone to do something for you – say build you a bookshelf or drive you to the train station you can offer them labor credits.  These are called Personal Service Credits or PSCs for short.

But in the labor collective we are sharing all these credits and one might reasonably expect we would talk about these things before just offering credits to someone outside the collective for doing something.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to being reasonable.

I initiated and after some discussion we were able to agree to a “shoot first” policy.  Where instead of needing to take a proposal back to the group before you could offer someone labor credits, you could simply offer them, in good faith, and come back to the group and say what you had done and why.  The presumption being your reasoning would be roughly similar to the groups.  And if you are wrong, the group will figure something out and know itself better for the exercise.

There is of course a funny story.  We were in Not Forum (one of the other transparency groups) and i assured Claire that Bolo had a “Shoot first” policy and i did not need to check with the collective before offering her labor credits.  Roberto looked at Clementine and mouthed “Shoot first?” and they both cracked up laughing not having heard of this before.