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There are aspects of everyday life that we consider so normal that we don’t even question them anymore. We recently discussed how everyone should have a job and go to work, but if we take a historical perspective we see that is a blip of human history. We assume it’s always been so and don’t think much about them. We get lulled to sleep and accept things that perhaps we should challenge. The beauty and excitement of looking to the future is that we can challenge those assumptions and see if we might do something else. It reminds me of a favorite MASH episode where Hawkeye leads a chant of “we want something else:”
In After Capitalism, The Circular Commons image describes a move to a social, political, and economic commons, as part of re-balancing our priorities from personal accumulation to collective well-being. This is not about trampling on the individual, but rather about getting individuals involved in the decisions affecting them — from resource management to governance. It’s a big mindset shift that gets back to the purpose of our lives and values as we move into the future. Why are we doing what we are doing? Capitalism encourages us to be individuals chasing the most toys. The commons approach reinserts community life to the forefront.
Let’s look at private property. It emerged with Agricultural Revolution (about 10,000 years ago) and gained steam about 500 years ago with enclosure, the process by which land that was previously shared and used collectively by a community (a commons) was privatized and fenced off. The historic commons are long gone and have been incorporated into the capitalist structure. Surely we don’t question that …
… but what if we did? Private property is part of the growth imperative of capitalism to keep finding new things to monetize (the process of taking something that used to be unpaid and making it paid) in order to keep the engine going. On the one hand it sounds fair to compensate, but on the other it turns more and more of life into financial transactions. Household activities become _[blank]_-as-a-service. We even proposed parenting-as-a-service once in a project.
It is hard to imagine a shift to a commons approach from today’s vantage point, but it’s not impossible. We’ve even done it before, in a much different context, and we can choose to do it again. – Andy Hines
Seriously, “…the process of taking something that used to be unpaid and making it paid…”.
what a negative and derogatory view of the economic engine that took the world out of poverty.
how about this, “the process of making something available to others that was previously unavailable”?
evil billionaires became billionaires when buyers voluntarily exchanged their personal wealth for what the evil billionaire’s made available via the “free but highly regulated marketplace”…