COMMONS MAGAZINE
Schools have a lot to learn from business about how to improve performance, declared Bill Gates in an Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2011. He pointed to his own company as a worthy model for public schools.
“At Microsoft, we believed in giving our employees the best chance to succeed, and then we insisted on success. We measured excellence, rewarded those who achieved it and were candid with those who did not.”
*Universal health care: This would include natural health treatments and psychological therapies, both of which save money over the long haul by preventing serious medical conditions.
*A fair electoral system: How about a voting system in which the guy who gets the most votes wins? Even better would be proportional representation (common outside the English-speaking world), which allows third and fourth parties to bring fresh ideas into the political debate without becoming spoilers.
The announcement that the US Postal Service will deliver packages for Amazon on Sundays came just a few days after a federal judge halted USPS’ sale of Stamford’s historic downtown post office. The juxtaposition of the two events throws into stark relief the new Janus-like philosophy of the postal service: a big hug to big business, the back of the hand to the public.
What happens when you apply the tools of the sharing economy to the mission of an enterprising arts organization? Four American theater enthusiasts create a community of four hundred that quickly explodes into four thousand and, together, amass a new bank of resources available to all. This is the story of HowlRound, a center for the theater commons where artists and theater makers promote best practices, share dissonant opinions, and engage in dialogue “with the hope of ensuring a vibrant future” for the field of theater arts.
Many research studies show a remarkable divergence between the way architects see their work and the way non-architects do — to such a degree that it is not uncommon to hear ordinary people wondering aloud how it is that architects, and architecture students, seem to want to make such strange and unpleasant buildings today.
Eager for the sharing economy to bloom in Vancouver, Chris Diplock, co-founder of the Vancouver Tool Library, designed the first research project to measure and report on people’s interest in the sharing economy at a municipal scale. He called it The Sharing Project. Diplock’s primary goals were to understand Vancouverites’ attitudes toward sharing, to measure the demand for shared assets in the city, and to highlight opportunities for growth within the sharing economy.
In the November 7th New York Times business columnist Floyd Norris writes about the conclusions of a study of a 2009 federal law intended to force down the hidden fees credit card companies impose on their customers:
When Neale Mahoney, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, set out to evaluate the effect of that law, he was confident he knew what he and his colleagues would find: It didn’t work.
In July 2011 the United States Postal Service (USPS) management announced it would rapidly close 3600 local post offices and eventually as many as 15,000. And shutter half the nation’s mail processing centers.
A frenzy of grassroots activity erupted as citizens in hundreds of towns mobilized to save a treasured institution that plays a key and sometimes a defining role in their communities. Only when Congress appeared ready to impose a six month moratorium on closures and consolidations that December did USPS management agree to a voluntarily moratorium of the same length.
For years Goldman Sachs gave only a tiny fraction of its profits, less than 1 percent, to charity. Then the depression hit in 2008 and the huge bank was in the public’s crosshairs for its role in that collapse and the billions it continued to give out in bonuses.
On behalf of everyone at On the Commons, I am thrilled to announce the six poets whose work has been selected to be published over the coming months in our new commons-inspired poetry column, UNCOMMON/WORD. The poets include Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Laura Hansen, Elizabeth C. Herron, Roger Higgins, Rumit Pancholi, and Mike Rollin.
Elizabeth Dingmann is the inaugural poetry fellow for Commons Magazine’s new commons-inspired poetry column, UNCOMMON/WORD. She worked with the magazine’s team of poet advisors, guiding the process of selecting poems that will be featured in the column over the next six months.
“There’s More to Life than the Pursuit of Private Pleasure”:http://www.utne.com/community/reimagining-the-good-life.aspx
Ah, the Good Life. Fine wine. Fast cars. Beautiful people. The beach house on St. Bart’s. The ski chalet in Switzerland. The apartment overlooking Central Park. The ranch in Montana. The castle atop . . .
Dream on!
Is art a commons? Or does collective creativity violate the individualistic nature of artists themselves? That’s a topic I’ve explored both in my art and in conversations with artists around the U.S.
Rev. Kenneth Gunn’s ministry at Chicago’s Bread of Life Church covers both the Bible and bicycles. He organized a bike club that regularly rides from the South Side church to Lake Michigan and along the Lakefront Trail. In his spare time, Gunn repairs donated bikes that he gives to kids in the predominantly African-American neighborhood.
Private systems are focused on making profits for a few well-positioned people. Public systems, when sufficiently supported by taxes, work for everyone in a generally equitable manner.
The following are six specific reasons why privatization simply doesn’t work.
1. The Profit Motive Moves Most of the Money to the Top
When J. Stephen Cleghorn realized that Paradise Gardens and Farm, his certified-organic farm in Pennsylvania that sits above the Marcellus Shale formation, was at risk of being “fracked” for shale gas extraction, he knew he had to act. But he did more than just act against fracking when he became the first private property owner in the United States to use a deed easement recognizing the Rights of Nature to ban all activities that would do systemic harm to the ecosystem both above and deep below the surface of his farm.
With Connecticut following Pennsylvania’s century-long lead by enacting legislation this year that applies the work of the Gilded Age economist and reformer Henry George, it is timely to look back at similar efforts in the U.S. of his Progressive Era followers, known then as Single Taxers.
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” —American essayist E.B.White.
The fate of the commons appears dire today. The environment is under full-scale assault. Public services are being slashed. Community bonds are fraying. Campaigns to privatize what belongs to all of us are on the march.
What can we do to protect all we share?
In 2009, when Congress passed the health care bill, only one Republican voted in favor. In 2010, with opposition to the new health care law as their rallying cry, Republicans gained a net 63 seats and control of the House of Representatives. They also won control of 11 additional states, bringing their total to 25.
On October 1st, the first day of the new federal fiscal year and the launch of the new health care exchanges, the victors of 2009 collided with the victors of 2010. The entire nation felt the impact.
