Garrett Hardin, 1968 article 'Tragedy of the Commons' describes that in a commons the rational herdsmen in his own best interest is compelled to add to his herd perpetually, competing against other herdsman sharing the commons. These herdsman don't see the limits to the commons until they have brought ruin to it all.
Julie Ristau is the Co-director of On The Commons and part of the organization’s leadership team that works to apply commons-based approaches to real-world problems.
Every once in a while commerce loses its grip on government. This is the time commoners lobbying for a fortified commons can get government to act on their behalf. Lobbying should include "new property rights to commons trusts, building of commons infrastructure, spawning a new class of genuine co-owners." When in all likelihood commerce regains its political dominance the commons will have safeguards and stakeholders preventing it from being dismantled on the behest of big business. The commons will be entrenched for the long haul.
"When capitalism started, nature was abundant and capital was scarce; it thus made sense to reward capital above all else. Today we are awash in capital and literally running out of nature. We are also losing many social arrangements that bind us together as communities and enrich our lives in nonmonetary ways. This doesn't mean capitalism is doomed or useless, but it does mean we have to modify it. We have to adapt it to the twenty-first century rather than the eighteenth." "....How do you revise a system as vast and complex as capitalism?
I am very new to the ideas disseminated by the Commons movement and I have recently started reading a book called Capitalism 3.0 by Peter Barnes of the Tomales Bay Institute (merged with Common Assets). I would like to begin this blog with a series of ongoing notes on this very good book. Thank you.
"it’s not surprising that, filled with emotion, the demonstrators wrap themselves in the national flag. Oh, the flag, the flag! In Tunisia and Egypt and every other country, this piece of cloth held up as a symbol of national identity, conflating who we are with an abstraction for which we must be prepared to lay down our lives. But sooner or later this too will fall by the wayside."
1) peer production: wherever a group of peers decided to engage in the production of a common resource 2) peer governance: the means they choose to govern themselves while they engage in such pursuit 3) peer property: the institutional and legal framework they choose to guard against the private appropriation of this common work
Julie Ristau is the Co-director of On The Commons and part of the organization’s leadership team that works to apply commons-based approaches to real-world problems.