The Commons of the Future: Building Blocks for a Commons-based Society

The Commons of the Future: Building Blocks for a Commons-based Society, an article by Christian Siefkes [PDF]

Excerpt:

Contrary to the myth spread by Garrett Hardin in his “Tragedy of the Commons ” article [Hardin 1968], commons were not “anything goes” areas which anybody could use and abuse at will. Rather, there were community-defined rules stipulating how a commons could be used, protecting it from overuse, privatization and other forms of damage. The eventual demise of commons-based systems was due to a systematic process of “enclosure ”: of driving away the villagers from the commons and privatizing the formerly common resources. The commons did not collapse, they were “ stolen, ” as common sentiment at that time expressed it.

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Christian is the author of ‘From Exchange to Contributions: Generalizing Peer Production into the Physical World’: