Chore Protocols

Issue #4: The most under-theorized domain on Earth

In this issue: The evolution of communal maintenance, experimental American phalanxes, compute-hungry societies, and hardened housing commons. Also, stay tuned for an editorial livestream – and some big announcements – on March 12th.

“Everybody wants a revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes.”

- Dorothy Day, co-founder, Catholic Worker Movement

Chores are arguably the most under-theorized domain on earth. Homo sapiens has landed robots on Mars, mapped its own genome, and developed sophisticated techniques for auctioning off bands of light, but somehow still finds itself fighting with friends and loved ones over the dishes.

What can be done? The anarchist would reject external structure, trusting cooperation to emerge naturally. In practice, it rarely does, or at least not for long – without supportive mechanisms, humans are simply too inconsistent, too easily swayed by strong personalities. As Karl Popper argued in his 1945 The Open Society & its Enemies, institutions are what separate us from beasts. Protocols – less reliant on fallible human operators than conventional institutions – go even further.

How might we, as the cool kids say, “protocolize” the problem?

In his 1913 Totem and Taboo, Freud famously speculated that early human tribes continually overthrew their despotic leaders, and over the course of millennia slowly discovered and rediscovered the idea of society. Similarly, cohabitating humans have continually invented and reinvented simple systems for managing chores, exemplified by the tabular chore chart.

The chore chart takes many forms: whiteboard, laminated print-out, or perhaps an online spreadsheet. The procedure is always the same. Tabulate the tasks which must be done, who is expected to do them, and by when. Who makes these choices is unclear. The consequences for not doing one's tasks are similarly hazy and the ability to swap tasks is limited. Changes must be made manually by somebody “in charge,” usually an informal “dictator” or in larger groups, a meeting or manager. Freedom evaporates.

If you should ever spot one of these charts in the wild, affixed to a refrigerator alongside engagement photos and holiday cards, ask a resident how it’s going. The answer will, typically, be “meh.”

Eventually, some savvy sapiens realized that they could transform the data-structure of the chart from a table to a wheel, unlocking a powerful new computing operation: with a single rotation, assignments could be updated fairly. As with macaques learning to shuck oysters, knowledge of the chore wheel spread.

But chore wheels (and charts) have an inherent shortcoming: not every task is equally difficult or rewarding, or always needs to be done at a specified time. Some would inevitably end up with tasks they disliked, or feel as though others got the better part of the deal. The wheel helped smooth out some of these edges, but offered only the smallest possible improvement.

In the early 19th century, the French philosopher Charles Fourier had an idea. A socialist thinker who pioneered the term feminism, Fourier imagined a new type of utopian community, based on the equality of labor, class, and gender. These communities, called Phalanstères, would assign points to different tasks, based on perceived difficulty and desirability. Those who did more difficult or unpleasant tasks would ultimately work less overall, fairly distributing the labor burden across the community, while giving individuals the latitude to pursue their passions. As Herbert Marcuse would reflect over one hundred years later, in his book Eros and Civilization: “Fourier [came] closer than any… to elucidating the dependence of freedom on non-repressive sublimation.”

Fourier’s ideas were popular in 19th century America, with Phalanxes founded across the country’s northeast. Yet, as John Humphrey Noyes recounts in his 1869 The History of American Socialisms, these Fourierist communities struggled to realize their utopian vision – in large part due to their limited technologies. Lacking computational aids, communal leaders would spend long hours accounting for the day’s work. As a member of one North American Phalanx would write: “Our days were spent in labor and our nights in legislation.”

One could say… he had a point. Worn down on two fronts, by the hard work and meager rewards of their communal life, these communities all eventually disbanded.

The selection pressure on protocols is intense, with perceived frictions weighed harshly against supposed benefits. Some communities, weary of systems, eschew them entirely. Instead, they adopt the “bragging board” – a techno-anarchist regime where contributions are made spontaneously, in exchange for social recognition. They work, to an extent, and their advocates are eager to preach the gospel. “Down with fairness!” Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll find that nobody is bragging about scrubbing toilets. There’s help for that.

“No system” is no answer. A growing abundance of research shows that without formal structures, domestic labor tends to break down along stereotypical gender lines. In a pinch, there’s always cleaners. In coliving spaces, you’ll sometimes hear that “with enough people, cleaners are basically free.” Few stop to ask, however, who’s actually doing the work, or at what cost. These issues are often swept under the proverbial rug.

The picture is getting clearer. Across this dizzying series of dialectical cartwheels, we see how neither an over-systemization nor under-systemization of the domestic sphere redeems us. It is the synthesis of structure and culture that allows us to thrive.

Over the years, a handful of spunky social entrepreneurs have tried their hands. In the early 2010s, a group of friends founded HabitRPG (now Habitica), an open-source app which promised to “gamify” your habits, letting “players” unlock 16-bit fantasy gear as rewards for doing their chores. More recently, projects like FairShare and CoExist have entered the “chores space,” offering digital tools to help rebalance domestic labor. While socially high-minded, these solutions are essentially electronic chore charts, offering little in the way of protocol-level innovation. Though helpful at the margins, these solutions do not delve deeply enough into the structure of the problem.

In the early days of the pandemic, a game designer, a social scientist, and this author got together and took a shot at making a better system. Drawing influence from Elinor Ostrom’s economics and Stafford Beer’s cybernetics, we envisioned a mechanism more flexible than the chores chart, more accountable than the bragging board, with all the benefits of Fourier’s points and none of the administrative headaches. Over many months of lockdown, my collaborators and I exchanged flurries of emails, debating ideas and design tradeoffs. In the end, we produced an invention simply called “the Chores app.”

The Chores app is simple. Each month residents owe 100 points, which are earned by doing chores. Similar to the Fourierist protocol, the points value of a chore is relative, but unlike in the original, the points value of a chore is not static – rather, it increases slowly until someone claims it. This innovation is critical, as it allows for greater flexibility without loss of accountability or a requirement for hierarchy. The total number of points is fixed, but residents can change the relative priorities of chores, such that some accrue a relatively larger share of the total points, faster, and are thus done more often, as well as define and refine new tasks as needed – allowing for the collective governance of individual contributions. With modern, virtually limitless access to calculating machines, people don’t need to spend their “nights in legislation”.

In late 2022, Los Angeles’ Sage House was the first community to use the Chores app. Now, several more communities have joined them. The journey had its bumps, but after 2+ years and much resident feedback, we can say with confidence that the system works. People like the visibility they get from doing chores, and the flexibility they have to contribute when it works for them. They like that accountability is built-in, freeing them from having to police each other’s contribution. The inverted framing – from being “assigned” tasks to choosing to perform them, fundamentally changes how participants relate to their labor.

Overall, the house stays clean, costs stay low, and nobody is stressed. Instead, chores became a way to bring people together; you may not look or sound like me, but we can still form a community based on reciprocity and acts of mutual service. The shift of mental charge from people to computers hardens the housing commons, making it more robust to turnover or interpersonal conflict. The tool isn’t perfect. Aspects of the mechanism could be simpler and more intuitive, and there are opportunities to add nuance and flexibility on the margins, but the fundamentals are strong. The Chores app is open-source, and you can use it today.

As the center ceases to hold, and tribal consciousness spreads once more, the most radical act may in fact be the smallest – that of direct, concrete, unglamorous service to the people who are literally the closest to you.

Maybe the real utopia was the dishes we did along the way.