COMMONS MAGAZINE
When Facebook quietly tried to claim ownership in any content that users put on the site, it incited a revolt. But here’s the interesting thing: the commoners won. Rather than risk the wrath of angry Facebook users and jeopardize its cool image, the website capitulated. It was a powerful demonstration of the power of online communities to negotiate their own “social contract” with the corporations that host them.
UMass economist Nancy Folbre has an excellent post, “Taking Responsibility for the Commons,” on the New York Times Economix blog today. Folbre detects “an accelerating attention shift toward the commons,” citing the Newsweek cover story, “We Are All Socialists Now”; the growing support by some conservatives for nationalization of American banks; and the statement by New York Times columnist David Brooks that we need to stabilize our “communal landscape” because we are “all in this together.”
Carl Malamud, the indefatigable advocate of access to government information, has launched a campaign to become the Public Printer, aka, the head of the Government Printing Office. It’s a campaign that ought to excite any citizen who cares about the rich possibilities of using government to invigorate democracy and culture. If President Obama is serious about making government more transparent and accountable, he could not choose a better candidate than Malamud.
What is called “economics” is really psychology on steroids. It starts with a model of human nature and extrapolates an entire scenario for how the world works from that. The model is homo economicus,the myopic protoganist of the economics texts. This hypothetical person has no social affinities, no lapses of judgment or hang-ups, no capacity even for thinking about anyone besides him or herself. He goes through life with an unfailing and relentless calculus of personal loss and gain.
As President Obama and his lieutenants scramble to try to prevent a major economic meltdown and social catastrophe, we have had little time to come to terms with a shattering reality: the “free market” as a public philosophy is dead. Unfolding events are discrediting some deeply rooted assumptions about American politics and policymaking. The neoliberal worldview – a vision of deregulation, privatization, free trade, limited government and few public services — is collapsing.
By Ralph Nader, re-printed with permission from The Nader Page.
While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated glacier day by day, the nation’s credit unions are a relative island of calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism.
David Bollier, author of “Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own,” appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” TV show to explain how digital technologies are spawning diverse Internet commons, which are generating new sorts of individual and community wealth. The trend is transforming key practices in various creative sectors, education, science, business and government.
There is an absurd Alice in Wonderland feel to the current economic crisis.
Public transportation use is at the highest level in decades. Buses and trains are overflowing, even after the steep fall of gasoline prices since last summer. Voters last November approved billions of dollars for new transit project across the country.
This is all wonderful news for anyone who cares about curbing the global climate crisis, cleaning up the environment and revitalizing our communities.
Computer programmer Richard Stallman invented a famous “hack” around copyright law when he created the General Public License, which enables a community of hackers to create their own commons of software code. Copyright law is used as a vehicle to serve the commons.
Joi Ito, the globe-trotting investor, democratic activist and CEO of Creative Commons, got frustrated that no one seemed to have a good photo of themselves that they could share. “People who are invited to conferences get asked all the time, ‘By the way, do you have a photo that we can use?’ But they don’t.” Or if people do have photoso of themselves, they generally aren’t legally usable. The photographer owns the copyright, and so anyone wishing to use the photo must obtain permission first, and perhaps even pay for usage rights.
One evening last November, Connie Borbeau encouraged several people gathered in a church parlor to talk about what, for many, is a frightening and deeply isolating topic.
“How is the economic crisis personally touching you?” Borbeau asked.
I am increasingly convinced that the digitally empowered citizen is going to be a major catalyst for reforming our political system. It will take time. More of politics and journalism must migrate to the Internet, and more citizen experiments must be conducted to see what works best. But we can already see a host of examples where citizens are using online platforms to expose scandals, shame public figures, influence mainstream debate, and secure actual reforms.
When Jimmy Wales, a refugee from options trading, set out to create an encyclopedia online, he thought first of the Britanica model, except with volunteers. He assigned articles to professional experts, and established panels for peer reviews. Then he started to write one himself – on options trading – and realized it was a drag.
All over the country, people are flocking to local events with speakers, films potlucks, music and more. Held in churches or community centers, community forums represent a return to local culture: entertainment and learning in our own neighborhoods, in the company of our friends, colleagues and neighbors.
A Conservative Party premier struck a blow for a commons-based society by revoking a paper company’s access to publicly owned timber and hydropower. The action was unanimously approved in the provincial legislature.
Danny Williams, a wealthy and unabashedly pro-business politician, blocked the AbitiBowater company from continuing to use public assets after it announced plans to shut down a paper mill that employed 900 in one of Canada’s poorest provinces.
This is adapted from a talk given by On The Commons Fellow Chuck Collins at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Jamaica Plain, Boston, on December 7, 2008:
As you might expect, the global economic crisis has spurred some gallows humor. Here’s a sampling:
What’s the difference between an investment banker and a pigeon? A pigeon can still make a deposit on a new Ferrari.
The commons is a term for the unearned storehouse that makes life possible on earth, the sunlight, water, air, wind, soil and other necessities that nurture and sustain life forms, allowing us to grow, multiply, die, and evolve. For humans, the commons is also the birthright to our accumulated culture, the knowledge, stories, music, art, technology, commerce, societies, institutions, religions, and laws passed along and modified across generations.
Kevin Kelly, the provocative tech commentator and futurist, offers a great meditation on the shifting meaning of property rights as more and more life migrates online. If lots of your mental life is lodged on a server somewhere (say, your blog or professional papers), or consumed from a server (such as movies or music), or accessed on the fly from your favorite websites or from your friends, what does it mean to “own” something, and how important is it, anyway?
Kelly writes:
In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt asked his labor secretary, Frances Perkins, to draft a plan to sustain Americans in old age. “Keep it simple,” he told her, “so simple everybody will understand it.” The Social Security Act adopted a year later created a brilliant old age pension system that has kept millions out of poverty and, because of its simplicity, fairness and universality, withstood every attempt to scuttle it.
Like most Americans, I’m guarding my dollars, but when my furnace died during Seattle’s coldest winter in decades, I needed to replace it. And when I did, with a high-efficiency Trane model made in Trenton New Jersey, underscored a lesson about what we need to do to craft economic stimulus policies that actually build for America’s future. And it reminded me that even the purchase of a furnace—a personal act—has great implications for the common good and the future that we all share.