Commons – Page 5 – Jonathan Rowe

Advanced Man

The privatization of the earth and all it contains ultimately is justified on the grounds of something called “progress.” To enclose a resource, or process, or aspect of life — that is, to impose a corporate ownership regime around these — is to re-render them in a way that will lead to human advance. Oases will bloom in the desert, miracle cures will emerge, invention and the arts will rise to ever-higher peaks of achievement. Just look at commercial television — pardon me, I tipped my hand there.

We commons advocates usually dispute this premise on its own terms. We point out that often the imposition of a corporate property regime upon a commons stifles innovation, as when a patent minefield stymies the cause of research, and the over-reaching of copyright impedes the artisitic creation the copyright laws was supposed to encourage. We also point out how the enclosure of a knowledge or resource commons drives the use of those in the direction of corporate convenience and gain rather than of human good. We get baldness cures instead of malaria vaccines, theme parks instead of wetlands and forests. And yes, commercial television.

How to Create a Real Ownership Society

Last year, when U.S. President George W. Bush declared the “ownership society” the theme for his second term, he was doing more than throwing up a polemical smokescreen for his policies of providing corporate executives and Wall-Street investors with everything they could possibly want. He was also introducing a radical vision for the entire world.

Through trade agreements and diplomatic and military muscle, the president and his cohorts are intent on re-engineering the world for the convenience of corporations. They want to eliminate every centre of power, every vestige of tradition or social values, that stands in the way. With the exception of a few nods in the direction of family and religion, the market will be the engine driving every aspect of modern life—every moment of time and every inch of space. The impact of this goes far beyond American national politics. Through leading international institutions such as the U.N., World Bank and World Trade Organization, Bush’s ideas about an ownership society are setting an agenda that will transform the world into a playground for multinational corporations.

Open Source Celebration

I’ve never been one for revelry, and I have a dislike of journalistic clichés to begin with. (Does anyone besides a journalist say “revelry”?) But I did go out on First Night in Boston once or twice, and if you’ll forgive me for saying so, it was neat. The strange part is, the whole thing is illegal. Not according to the laws of Boston; the mayor started it. Rather it is against the laws of economics, as conventionally propounded at least.

Those so-called laws say that what belongs to everyone belongs to no one, and therefore is sentenced to neglect and decay. No one will invest in that which they do not own. Hence the extension of “intellectual property” rights to practically any notion that passes through the pecuniarily disposed mind. Well, no one owns New Years Eve. Yet hotels, restaurants, places of entertainment – whole cities – are investing like crazy. Back in 1997, Rudolph Giuliani, then-mayor of New York City, proclaimed that New Year’s Eve brought an extra $57 million in economic benefits to the Times Square area alone.

How They Broke the Peace

Probably most of us have heard about the informal truces that broke out along the front during the trench warfare of World War I. The story is extraordinary in one respect, and yet utterly normal in another. Here they were, young men huddled in miserable trenches, the “enemy” in the same circumstance just 50 yards away. Shelling from one side would be returned promptly by the other. There was no gain, and yet men might die. The stalemate continued day after day, week after week. What would sane people do?

At these remote outposts, far from the high commands, rituals of cooperation emerged. The sides would shell at the same time each day, and to the same exact spots, so that the other could stay out of the way. If there was a mistake – the artillerymen far behind the lines couldn’t always be trusted – a soldier at the front would shout out an apology. “These people evidently did not know there was a war on,” one British officer reported with indignation and astonishment. “Both sides apparently believed in the policy of ‘live and let live.’”

The Vise Tightens

I was in Washington this week and Capitol Hill feels like a state of siege. The place is saturated with police – not friendly cops walking the beat, but police cars, often two or three at an intersection, faceless and grim. Fences and concrete barricades are everywhere. You used to be able to walk through the tunnels under the Capital to get from the House to the Senate office buildings. Now a staffer has to escort you.

You feel like an intruder in your own government, and in the buildings you yourself pay for. The lobbyists still are there. They exit from cabs in their tailored gaggles, crowd the couches in reception areas. What’s missing is a sense that anyone else belongs.

Subsistence and the Commons

Southern planters faced a major dilemma after the Civil War. Not only had they lost their slaves; now many former slaves refused to work on the terms the planters offered. … More

Who Owns the Beach

Some seventy percent of the earth’s surface consists of oceans, and we all own it. But getting access to what we own isn’t always easy. Or even possible.

Here’s the basic math. Half the population of the U.S. lives within 50 miles of the coast. But 70% of coastal land is privately owned; and the percentage is increasing all the time. A relatively small group of private owners constitutes a blockade to a much larger group of common owners. What gives?

Looting, Necessity and the Community of Goods

We reveal ourselves in our instinctive response to another’s need. When the President received reports of people breaking into stores in New Orleans, he saw a threat to property rather than a desperate need for food and water. Enough said.

In truth of course both were involved – lawless looting and desperate need. The extent of the latter became more apparent, when it came out that even the police had to break into stores to get crucial electronic equipment. A hundred miles north of New Orleans, a hungry man threatened to get his gun if the manager of the local Wal-Mart didn’t open it for business. How many of us wouldn’t do the same?

What Greenspan Can’t See

The President’s response to his administration’s ineptitude regarding Katrina has been to distance himself from it. He’s calling for an “investigation,” as though someone other than himself was in charge. His helpers meanwhile are mounting an attack on his critics and shifting the blame to local officials – red letter moves from the Karl Rove playbook.

I’m not sure it will fly. The story has gone pretty far beyond the White House spin. When the President appeared in staged photo-ops with his arms around children of color, it just reminded people of how little he has done. Then again, the Washington media is both obedient and gullible. Plus, the President’s critics haven’t done a great job of framing the issue either.

Traffic School

It is the nature of evil to wear us down. The drip-drip-drip of injustice and institutionalized greed, leave us both resigned and numb. Or else it insinuates itself into our lives until it becomes a new normal, and we cease to notice. Dictators understand this; Hitler turned the screws slowly. So too do corporations, which push the boundaries of the acceptable inch by inch instead of all at once.

This helps explain the generational aspect of dissent. To feel outrage, one must be able to remember — or at least imagine — something different. (Not for nothing do dictators and corporations seek to enlist children.) A Vance Packard could write with outrage at the psychological wiles of the modern advertising industry because, in the 1950s, he could remember when commerce was simpler and more straightforward.