COMMONS MAGAZINE
A lot of online communities seem to function as commons because people can interact and share things in an open way, and without any market transactions apparently taking place. But a great many social networking sites are in fact corporate platforms designed to make money. Users must agree to a long and complicated license – the “terms-of-service,” or TOS, contract – that the host corporation requires that all users accept.
One of the more vexing difficulties facing indigenous peoples around the world is how to protect their distinctive communal knowledge from being exploited by multinational corporations and other outsiders. The local knowledge can take many forms — ethnobotanical knowledge about the healing properties of plants and substances; a people’s ancestral songs, designs and artworks; and sacred knowledge whose access and use is meant to be restricted to designated individuals.
What happens when supplies of water, energy, public transporation and health care are privatized? A German documentary film, “The Big Sellout,” takes on this challenge by portraying the everyday consequences of privatized services. Director Florian Opitz shows how privatization looks and feels to a British train driver, a Philippine mother, a South African activist and the citizens of a Bolivian city.
Let me offer some good news about the state of your wealth.
Sure, your 401K tanked, the house lost a big chunk of its value, and things are looking shaky at work. Indeed, the Federal Reserve reported that Americans together lost $5.1 trillion in the last three months of 2008 alone.
But what we individually possess accounts for only part of our wealth. Each of us also owns a stake in some extremely valuable assets: clean air, fresh water, libraries, the Internet, parks, cultural traditions and much more.
If a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, why then has the Obama administration squandered its opportunity to use the bank bailout to institute much-needed structural reforms in the financial sector? Andy Kroll gives a depressing critique of the TARP bailout (Troubled Asset Relief Program) and the many other taxpayer subsidies of reckless, lawless and inept business behavior.
The void in our language for talking about collectivist endeavors is on vivid display in a Wired magazine article by Kevin Kelly, The New Socialism. The piece discusses how “Wikipedia, Flickr and Twitter aren’t just revolutions in online social media. They’re the vanguard of a cultural movement.”
By Paul Hawken
When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.
Although the Congressional cap-and-dividend bill was sponsored by a Democrat, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the idea of returning money collected from the auctioning of carbon emission permits to everyday citizens has been endorsed by one of the country’s leading Republicans, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California.
A few years ago, Russia sent a submersible craft 4 kilometers beneath the North Pole to plant a titanium flag on the floor of the ocean. Its purpose: to stake a claim on the continental shelf where there may exist oil, gas and methane hydrates, a mineral deposit that can be a source of energy.
I spoke at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society last week on a topic that preoccupies me a lot these days: “How shall we govern the commons?” As the commons becomes a powerful new model for creating value and managing shared resources, the complexities of how to structure a commons – legally, socially and (in online contexts) technologically – are becoming more urgent.
People cringe in horror when they learn that Bechtel, in its quest to privatize water supplies in Bolivia years ago, actually prohibited people from capturing rainwater in barrels. But it turns out that a similar rule already applies to water in the State of Colorado. Under a legal doctrine of “prior appropriation,” it is illegal for someone to capture rainwater because it is preventing water from reaching a river, whose supplies are already allocated and owned by someone.
Another sign of growing international interest in the commons: the World Social Forum has launched an initiative, “Reclaim the Commons.” The project aims “to popularize the notion of commons by opening a participatory space which allows us to share and discuss ideas and initiatives concerning the future of the commons.”
Let’s roust one another from the fear and stupor of the global economic crash. We have work to do to transform the economy we’ve created on the commons. It isn’t the breakdown of worldwide financial trading and credit that makes life miserable, nor would restoring the economy to its condition before the crisis make life more worth living. Returning to the way things were is no answer for how to forge a decent way of life.
We are the ones we have been waiting for! Ursula LeGuin
Each of us has unique skills and experiences to offer others. Each of us needs services from others that we can’t provide for ourselves.
How can we organize a broad-based system of exchange that doesn’t depend on money? Better yet, how can we use the exchange system to strengthen social networks by building trust, reciprocity, and a sense of ownership? SHiFT is an all-volunteer social network based in the Twin Cities that has taken on this challenge.
The SHiFT Time Bank
It’s official: the plastic trash that our technologically advanced society produces has generated…. a new continent. It’s twice the size of Texas, and it floats in the middle of the north Pacific Ocean. As reported by the London Times, the massive trash dump consists of six million tons of plastic bags, bottles and other synthetic throwaways in various stages of degradation. This is actually only one-third of the estimated 18 million tons of plastic junk floating in the world’s oceans.
The meaning of ownership and property is usually self-evident. If I own something, I can control how people may access and use it. I can sell it. And so on. But what is the justification for owning a priceless object that you did not create and that has great cultural significance to many people over generations?
Vermont Law School, a burgeoning hub of commons-oriented legal thinking, has released a major report that should be of interest to natural-resource commoners. Recalibrating the Law of Humans with the Laws of Nature: Climate Change, Human Rights, and Intergenerational Justice explores a new frontier in law: the rights of future generations to inherit a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
Professor Louis Wolcher of the University of Washington delivers a great speech about “The Meaning of the Commons” on this YouTube video. His speech is an introduction to the National Lawyers Guild’s one-day conference, The Law of the Commons, held on March 13, which I previewed “here.”:http://www.onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2404
Professor Louis Wolcher of the University of Washington delivers a great speech about “The Meaning of the Commons” on this YouTube video. His speech is an introduction to the National Lawyers Guild’s one-day conference, The Law of the Commons, held on March 13, which I previewed “here.”:http://www.onthecommons.org/content.php?id=2404
One of the more pernicious enclosures of the commons is the enclosure of time and consciousness. It’s pernicious because it is so subtle and rarely discerned. When commercial values such as productivity and efficiency become so pervasive and internalized, they crowd out other ways of being. Our very sense of humanity — full-bodied, spontaneous, spiritual — leaches away.