The Economist magazine is a tireless—and globally influential—crusader for the free market. Each week it champions privatization and big business in smart, elegant, well-researched articles.
So it’s definitely worth noting when The Economist discovers the commons and declares in a headline, “it still pays to study medieval English landholding and Sahelian nomadism.”
The magazine singles out the work of Syracuse University’s Charlotte Hess in outlining how principles of the commons apply to modern fields such as medicine and information.
It also cites Indiana University’s Elinor Ostrom, who offers “the miracle of the Rhine” as a commons success story for our time—an extensive clean up of the river was initiated by citizens groups and local governments with industry and larger government bodies following their lead.
“The economics of the new commons…,” The Economist concludes, “may yet prove a useful way of thinking about problems, such as managing the internet, intellectual property or international pollution, on which policymakers need all the they can get.”