COMMONS MAGAZINE
For a hit of inspiration, watch this six-minute video on “dama” in Mali. Dama is a term for the cultural practice of gift exchange, which is a critical source of survival and human dignity in cash-poor nations like Mali.
Why must profit-making be the measure of anything worthwhile and legitimate in American life? As usual, it takes a comedian to tell us the truth these days. On the Huffington Post: Bill Maher of HBO’s “Real Time with Real Maher,” nails what is wrong with so many aspects of our country today:
There is something ethically distasteful about anyone “owning” our DNA, yet that’s exactly what the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does. It grants patents in genes (among other things). With the sanction of the U.S. Supreme Court, which recognized patents in lifeforms in 1981, one-fifth of the human genome is now privately owned.
Imagine if the Sermon on the Mount had been protected by copyright law….or if Moses had required advance permission before anyone could copy the Ten Commandments. Would they have spread very quickly and become the religious icons that they have become?
Carrie MacLaren is one of the few people I know with the subversive wit and tenacity to critique the scabrous assaults of market culture on our basic humanity. I first got to know her almost ten years ago as a fellow-copyfighter. She was about to launch a brilliant project, The Illegal Art Exhibit, which put on display dozens of images, music and text that had been declared illegal under copyright or trademark law.
Fasten your seat belts – the corporate media and their ideological friends are starting to realize that online commons represent a more potent threat to their profitability than they had realized. Now they’re mad as hell and want to do something about it – like outlawing unauthorized Web links, charging news aggregators, and neutering search engines.
Dr. Sandeep Jauhar has written a poignant essay in the New York Times about the degradation of his medical practice by creeping commercial concerns. Instead of being able to dispense their best medical care, physicians are constantly worrying about reimbursement rates and insurance coverage. Many steer patients to expensive diagnostic tests in which they own a financial interest.
A lot of politics comes down to making a point through colorful theatrics and stories. By that reckoning, Sweden’s Pirate Party deserves an Oscar for the edgiest, most innovative and dramatic advocacy since Abbie Hoffman’s Yippie Party ran a pig for president in 1968. This time, however, the “pirates” are actually electing their own to serious positions.
An advisory council to the National Marine Fisheries Service is seeking to privatize the rights to catch fish on the waters off of California, Oregon and Washington State. In a process dominated by big trawlers, the Pacific Fishery Management Council plans to put a cap on the number of fish that can be caught – and then give exclusive fishing rights to the large commercial trawlers known as “draggers.” The scenario would be disastrous for many coastal communities whose economies depend upon a stable supply of fish.
The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed the first-ever federal bill to address global warming, which establishes a Cap-and-Trade policy that sets a limit on overall carbon emissions and gives companies the chance to buy and sell the rights to pollute. This legislation, the Waxman-Markey Bill, now awaits action in the Senate.
Some Democratic Congress members oppose the bill because it would hand over 85 percent of the pollution permits absolutely free to energy companies, and it would result in higher energy costs for everyday Americans.
While governments dither with their responses to global warming and peak oil – and free marketeers deny that there is a problem – a groundswell of commoners are taking the lead in building a new sort of locally based, sustainable civilization. The Transition movement is an audacious grassroots effort to imagine and plan for the inevitable disruptions that will arrive with climate change and declining oil supplies.
As wild as it might seem today, streets were once a commons used by everyone. People walked there, biked there, boarded streetcars there, even stopped there to have conversations with their neighbors.
But in the second half of the 20th Century, that all changed. Streets became the exclusive property of automobiles, and everybody else had better get out of the way— or else!
There’s s good reason why conventional businesses don’t like commons-based alternatives: they tend to have structural advantages that let them offer better quality products and services. The latest example is documented in an oped article in today’s New York Times.
With the onset of climate change deepening the world water crisis, discussions about how to manage our water systems, which once seemed wonky, are suddenly attracting increased public attention.
Iowa City has been talking a lot about taxes lately. I understand that the economy makes us especially aware of how our leaders spend our tax dollars and whether or not we want to contribute more tax dollars to the public coffers. The discussion has been contentious and adversarial, however. Whenever we have a discussion about getting and spending tax dollars, we should take a step back and also discuss what these dollars mean. In essence, these dollars help create the commons.
An important addition to the growing international dialogue about the commons can be found in the new anthology, “Genes, Bytes and Emissions: To Whom Does the World Belong?” http://www.boell.org/web/148-576.html (discussed in this previous blog post). Recently released in German, the essays in this book are now available online in English.
Jim Carlton of the Wall Street Journal: “Community forests are spreading across the U.S., as more cities and counties seek to rein in development and excessive logging by taking control of the woods themselves….. The trend started in earnest little more than a decade ago, but more than 3,000 cities in 43 states own and manage forests totally 4.5 million acres.”
Americans have gotten so accustomed to getting food from supermarkets, which are supplied by huge corporations with heavily advertised, brand-name foods, that it is sometimes hard to imagine a world of rich, homegrown variety. If you went to Nebraska, you once got Nebraska baked beans. If you went to Georgia, you might get possum and taters. Alabama kitchens would serve up oyster roasts, Rhode Island would serve Jonny Cakes and Montanas considered fried beaver tail a delicacy.
The Co-Director of On the Commons, Julie Ristau, led a lively discussion last month about current shifts in consciousness that offer hope for a commons-based society. Here are notes from that discussion with members of the Twin Cities WILPF (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom), recorded by Jan Hively.
If economic growth and planetary survival are on an inexorable collision course – as Peak Oil, global warming, species extinctions and many other trends suggest – then what is the path forward?