For those interested in a vision of a sane economy, member K.D summarised her key learnings from Peter Barnes’ landmark 2007 book Capitalism 3.0. Acting on his beliefs, Peter kindly donated the book to the commons, allowing it to be downloaded (pdf). It can be purchased here. Most of these are direct transcriptions from the book.
CAPITALISM 3.0
A GUIDE TO RECLAIMING THE COMMONS, PETER BARNES
BOOK SUMMARY
My initial ruminations focused on climate change caused by human emissions of heat-trapping gases. Some analysts saw this as a “tragedy of the commons,” a concept popularized forty years ago by biologist Garrett Hardin. According to Hardin, people will always overuse a commons because it’s in their self-interest to do so. I saw the problem instead as a pair of tragedies: first a tragedy of the market, which has no way of curbing its own excesses, and second a tragedy of government, which fails to protect the atmosphere because polluting corporations are powerful and future generations don’t vote. This way of viewing the situation led to a hypothesis: if the commons is a victim of market and government failures, rather than the cause of its own destruction, the remedy might lie in strengthening the commons. But how might that be done?
Part 2 proposes a number of new property rights, birthrights, and institutions that would enlarge the commons sector in one way or another. I like to think that these proposals blend hope and realism. Among them are:
• A series of ecosystem trusts that protect air, water, forests and habitat;
• A mutual fund that pays dividends to all Americans—one person, one share;
• A trust fund that provides start-up capital to every child;
• A risk-sharing pool for health care that covers everyone;
• A national fund based on copyright fees that supports local arts;
• A limit on the amount of advertising.
THE COMMONS
= Nature, Community and Culture
In this book I use the commons as a generic term, like the market or the state. It refers to all the gifts we inherit or create together.
This notion of the commons designates a set of assets that have two characteristics: they’re all gifts, and they’re all shared. A gift is something we receive, as opposed to something we earn. A shared gift is one we receive as members of a community, as opposed to individually.
Examples of such gifts include air, water, ecosystems, languages, music, holidays, money, law, mathematics, parks, the Internet, and much more.
There’s another quality to assets in the commons: we have a joint obligation to preserve them. That’s because future generations will need them to live, and live well, just as we do. And our generation has no right to say, “These gifts end here.”
Assets in the commons are meant to be preserved regardless of their return to capital. Just as we receive them as shared gifts, so we have a duty to pass them on in at least the same condition as we received them. If we can add to their value, so much the better, but at a minimum we must not degrade them, and we certainly have no right to destroy them.
But there’s no inherent reason why commons can’t be managed as commons.
Read More
