Do you know what a commons is? It's an economic resource that's managed by it's participants and is not owned privately by an individual or corporation or the state. Protocols are commons, bitcoin is a commons.

When a community wants to organize itself, it might decide between private ownership and state control. David Bollier has spent decades arguing that thatโ€™s a false binary, and that there is a better way: The commons.

"The commons is as old as humanity," David says. "It's kind of the default setting for coordination and governance. It's just in the past 200 years or so, we've tricked ourselves into thinking that we're isolated individuals and that the social context and the Earth is irrelevant."

In this week's episode of revolution.social, i sit down with leading researcher and author about the commons, David Bollier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5nZU5cHhC4

https://fountain.fm/episode/SXI6pTtXZpwYPM0PSzRi

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I'm interested to listen to this! From my research on treecoppicing (for animal fodder and firewood) I think I remember that many forests were treated as commons in England for centuries.

That's exactly where "commons" research was developed! [1] The application to digital spaces started when the library sciences recognized similar processes going on in their realm. [2]

1) https://www.beyondintractability.org/bksum/ostrom-governing

2) https://direct.mit.edu/books/edited-volume/3807/Understanding-Knowledge-as-a-CommonsFrom-Theory-to

You asked him for examples of commons but I don't remember him giving any, except for Couchsurfing. I don't see how Couchsurfing qualifies since it was a private platform with governance rules entirely dictated by the owner of the website. Sure, there was a community there or something like that, but there are also communities on Facebook and no one says Facebook is a commons.

I also don't understand how Cashu is an example of commons, is it because it's a protocol? Except for the fact that they expose a standardized HTTP API, the mints themselves are privately owned like any business. Unless you're trying to say the market in general is a commons.

oh! the commies are doing a rebrand. adorable ๐Ÿ™‚

The commons isnโ€™t communist. Bitcoin is a commons. And I know bitcoiners arenโ€™t communist. But bitcoiners do not believe in using a currency held by the government or some shitcoin company. Bitcoin is governed by math, miners, the developers who make the libraries, clients, and users. If you try and commit blocks that donโ€™t comply with the governance rules itโ€™ll be rejected and you end up with forks like bitcoin cash. Thatโ€™s the community protecting the bitcoin commons. And yeah itโ€™s not communist. Itโ€™s a common resource useful to the participants but not owned or controlled by any of the members or the state.

lol.

these commons you speak ofโ€ฆ

they sound very communal. ๐Ÿ˜œ

relax. not all ideas in communism are bad. its just fun.

im with you.

i just like messing with you.

and truth be told, imo, we need more voluntary commons. they are places where amazing things happen.

The commons is not anti-market or anti-capitalist. Itโ€™s anyway of organizing a shared resource. You can and should do business and make money in a commons. Thatโ€™s the weird thing where everyone thinks itโ€™s some communist collectivist thing where everything is held in common. Nostr is a commons. We govern it together via the nips, relays, and clients. And not all of that software needs to be open source.

Bitcoin is a commons.

Are cooperatives (food coops in the US for example) included in "the commons"?

They can be, or not. Theyโ€™re orthogonal to the commons.

In Switzerland almost every city or village has an โ€œAllmeindโ€. Most share profits with inhabitants if they have citizenship.

Is the Comunism type of gouvernance also commons ?

For folks who are confused about how I used the commons to describe what Bitcoin or Nostr are might find this podcast episode I did where David Bollier interviewed me.

https://fountain.fm/episode/tTU3ohMY3Hsj89tbpeZ6

nostr:nevent1qqsga7pqh2uvrpxnvqgka2930z9593ny6flcpmwd25aagxgmlwxwfsspz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdu2yemkh

There's a reason for the Tragedy

What is this

The original concept of "tragedy of the commons" was developed by Hardin, and used the concepts from it to rationalize population control. The idea was challenged by Elinor Ostrom, which showed that the tragedy of the commons wasn't universal across many societies.

it's hard work keeping commons free and open, but the overwhelming incentive for users to keep it open far outweighs that of the few to own the commons. Hegalian dialectic that, the overwhelming incentive for liberty as a whole ๐Ÿ‘Œ

It actually fixes capital, and Adam Smiths invisible hand (decisions benefit community as a whole), capital kept in check by the "Adam Smith Invisible Bitch Slap" if you exploit the commons rather than nurture it.

Its actually pretty magical, with effective commons: soya lefties and Austrian econs both get desired outcome.

The trajectory for private capital is at a certain scale (evil international corp) can't compete with commons/coop, whereas private capital makes more sense for smaller scale (not evil international corp).

Actual free markets of competing capital + large scale coops/commons/ globalised apparatus.

Hard tho, you need the right tooling, such as public key crypto, bitcoin, nostr

๐Ÿซจ๐Ÿ˜ฎ

thanks for this episode. glad i listened to it in full. means a lot. really like david bollier. have listened to a lot of his episodes over the years. always down to listen to more. ๐Ÿค™