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Social Transformation Through ‘The Commons’ (w/ David Bollier)

Adam Simpson: Welcome back to The Next System Podcast. I’m your host, Adam Simpson, joined today by self-described commons activist and rirector of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, David Bollier. David is the author of Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons. He’s also the editor of From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond with John Clippinger, as well as Patterns of Commoning, and The Wealth of the Commons with Silke Helfrich.

Wouldn’t you know it, David is here to talk to me today about the concept of the commons. David, welcome to The Next System Podcast.

David Bollier: It’s great to be here.

Adam Simpson: Great. Well, before we get into the concept of the commons, David, I wanted to ask you: How did you first come to learn about this concept, what made you embrace it, what really drew you to this kind of work that you do?

David Bollier: Well, in the 1970s and 80s when I was working for Ralph Nader, all of my friends were fighting what I would now call enclosures of the commons, meaning privatization and commodification of things like federally funded research, public lands and the air waves, which are used by broadcasters for free and so forth. All these were being taken private, but we really didn’t have a language for talking about this.nm

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Prepare for War: Globalism, Socialism, and Communism vs. Freedom

Prepare for War: Globalism, Socialism, and Communism vs. Freedom

“Peace Sells, But Who’s Buying?”  – Megadeath

“SI VIS PACEM PARA BELLVM.”  (If you wish peace, prepare for war) PVBLIVS FLAVIVS VEGETIVS RENATVS (aka: “Vegetius”)

“Peace through superior firepower.” – former President Ronald Reagan

***

History: It repeats itself and is consistently ignored before it does so. Ignored are the elements that lead up to the repeated event, although they blossom akin to flowers right before the eyes. One of the problems is doubting it, the “doubting” that the event is happening…is really happening. One of the elements that leads to that doubt is the event transpires almost imperceptibly, with such incremental slowness that it is not recognized as a single event that is happening.

In this case we are talking about the conversion of our society in the United States to full-blown dictatorship or a complete loss of rights guaranteed under the Constitution…such a loss that eventually leads to a dictatorship or a tyrannical, oppressive government. History shows us, and we ignore it.

The Founding Fathers have been degraded and ridiculed by the new society the media and their Communist masters are creating. Their mortal weaknesses are upheld at every chance in substitution for the enormity of the sacrifices they made to form the basis for our nation’s government. The Constitution of the United States of America took more than 11 years to create.

These Communists would have you believe that the Founding Fathers were a pack of illiterate morons who could not control their own lascivious appetites…who owned slaves and were elitists. These Communists have been infiltrating the United States for a hundred years…destroying the moral fabric of our society by destroying the family. The Communists infiltrated our government and camouflaged themselves with the names “Liberal” or “Progressive,” or some (such as Bernie Sanders) declaring softly, “I’m a Socialist.”

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Re-branding Dissent

Re-branding Dissent

In “The Next Crisis” I argued that the Global Over-Class have decided that Democracy is a threat to their wealth and power and have more than likely given some thought to how best to neuter it while appearing to do no such thing.  I suggested they would wish to keep the outward form of democracy, so as to keep us reassured and entertained, but remove any substance from it, leaving us with an empty but colourful stage show.

In part two  of the series, I offered a list of the various ways this could be done (a sort of manifesto for the Over Class or, as I have called them elsewhere, The Disloyal and noted how many of those things were clearly already underway.

For example item three of the manifesto said,

3) professionalized Governance. Democracy can be and must be neutered, and an effective way of doing this is to insist that amateur, elected officials MUST take the advice of professional (read corporate) advisors. Expand current law to enforce this.

If this seems monstrous now, their argument, I suspect,  will be that in an increasingly crowded, interconnected and globalised world we can no longer leave critically important decisions in the hands of the uneducated, in-expert and amateur.  We must, of course, still be free to choose but must, from now on, be helped to choose ‘wisely’. And how can we choose wisely if we aren’t given wise choices to choose from?  Oh, the Orwellian beauty of it! No prizes for guessing who will decide what is and what is not wise.

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Who May Use the King’s Forest? The Meaning of Magna Carta, Commons and Law in Our Time

Who May Use the King’s Forest? The Meaning of Magna Carta, Commons and Law in Our Time

The relationship between law and the commons is very much on my mind these days.  I recently posted a four-part serialization of my strategy memo, “Reinventing Law for the Commons.”  The following public talk, which I gave at the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin on September 8, is a kind of companion piece.  The theme: this year’s celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and its significance for commoners today.

Thank you for inviting me to speak tonight about the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta and the significance of law for the commons.  It’s pretty amazing that anyone is still celebrating something that happened eight centuries ago!   Besides our memory of this event, I think it is so interesting what we have chosen to remember about this history, and what we have forgotten.

This anniversary is essentially about the signing of peace treaty on the fields of Runnymede, England, in 1215.  The treaty settled a bloody civil war between the much-despised King John and his rebellious barons eight centuries ago.  What was intended as an armistice was soon regarded as a larger canonical statement about the proper structure of governance.  Amidst a lot of archaic language about medieval ways of life, Magna Carta is now seen as a landmark statement about the limited powers of the sovereign, and the rights and liberties of ordinary people.

The King’s acceptance of Magna Carta after a long civil war seems unbelievably distant and almost forgettable.  How could it have anything to do with us moderns?  I think its durability and resonance have to do with our wariness about concentrated power, especially of the sovereign.

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Tomgram: Engelhardt, Is a New Political System Emerging in This Country?

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Is a New Political System Emerging in This Country?

Have you ever undertaken some task you felt less than qualified for, but knew that someone needed to do? Consider this piece my version of that, and let me put what I do understand about it in a nutshell: based on developments in our post-9/11 world, we could be watching the birth of a new American political system and way of governing for which, as yet, we have no name.

And here’s what I find strange: the evidence of this, however inchoate, is all around us and yet it’s as if we can’t bear to take it in or make sense of it or even say that it might be so.

Let me make my case, however minimally, based on five areas in which at least the faint outlines of that new system seem to be emerging: political campaigns and elections; the privatization of Washington through the marriage of the corporation and the state; the de-legitimization of our traditional system of governance; the empowerment of the national security state as an untouchable fourth branch of government; and the demobilization of “we the people.”

Whatever this may add up to, it seems to be based, at least in part, on the increasing concentration of wealth and power in a new plutocratic class and in that ever-expanding national security state. Certainly, something out of the ordinary is underway, and yet its birth pangs, while widely reported, are generally categorized as aspects of an exceedingly familiar American system somewhat in disarray.

 

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Sustainability for Whom?

Sustainability for Whom?

The mission of UPSTREAM (formerly Product Policy Institute) is “sustainable production and consumption and good governance.” Sometimes I feel like we’re swimming against the tide in advocating a role for government action in ensuring sustainable production and consumption.

Big brands like Wal-Mart, Nestle, Procter and Gamble can effect rapid, systemic change in their global supply chains when it suits them. The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute and Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Circular Economy Initiative are doing great work by partnering with industry to redesign products.

Governments, on the other hand, are mired in political stalemate and often produce weak regulations when they act at all, especially in the international arena inhabited by the multinational corporations that produce the products we buy. Why even bother with public policy? Some government actors settle for “co-regulation” with corporate actors, or defer to voluntary corporate initiatives. For their part, foundations often support NGOs to conduct “market” campaigns targeting companies, or to partner with companies; in both cases the strategy is to access the power of corporations to effect swift, large-scale change.

What is the appropriate role for organizations that look out for the public interest – governments and nonprofits – in advancing sustainability in an environment in which the power balance has shifted dramatically to the private sector?

 

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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