Blogs originally formed a “commons,” even according to a narrow and technical definition of that term. They were always privately owned, of course. I’m the only person who can post here, because I pay the $9.95 monthly fee. However, the whole array of blogs, the “blogosphere,” originally had an un-owned feel. That was because you could visit any site you liked, and any blogger could link to anyone else. The blogs with the most incoming links were the easiest to find through search engines. Therefore, prominence was difficult to buy; it resulted from others’ “gifts” of links. Most blogs also permitted visitors to post their own ideas in the “comments” field, thus opening up space for free discussion. Finally, the clever “trackbacks” feature notified bloggers when their posts were discussed on other blogs. For example, when another site links to mine, it often sends a “trackback ping” to let me know; that site is then automatically listed here (under “links to this specific post”) so that you can see who has written something in response to me.

In short, the network of interlinked blogs belonged to no one, it was unaffected by money, and it was open to newcomers. In all these respects, it was a commons.

All commons are fragile. One form of the “tragedy of the commons” is pollution.

Continue reading →

The New Voice project launched its website today and issued a Request for Proposals. The proposal deadline is March 17. As the website says,

New Voices is a pioneering program to seed innovative community news ventures in the United States. Over the next two years, New Voices will help fund the start-up of 20 micro-local, news projects with $12,000 grants; support them with an educational Web site, and help foster their sustainability through $5,000 second-year, matching grants. New Voices is administered by J-Lab at the University of Maryland and supported by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Disclosure: I’m on the project’s advisory committee and will help read applications.

In a response to yesterday?s post, Mike Weiksner asks me to explain why I am enthusiastic about voluntary associations that create goods?one of the eight forms of ?commons? that I had identified. I?m in favor of creating things, because creativity is a valuable and dignified aspect of human life. Although preservation is important, we also need to put our own stamp on the world. But why should we create goods as members of associations? Here is a detailed answer, partly auto-plagiarized from an article of mine that?s in the Digital Library of the Commons.

Let me say, first of all, that associations are not always good. Just because a group is a nonprofit does not guarantee that it is fair, responsible, transparent, or honorable. Nevertheless, there is a great tradition of banding together into voluntary groups to make goods. This is what Alexis de Tocqueville found exemplary in the New World. He is often seen as a theorist of free association, but he especially admired groups that generated goods: ?The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to diffuse books, to build inns, to construct churches, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools.? I believe that such associational commons are the heart of ?civil society? and explain a considerable part of its appeal.

Furthermore, associational commons, while hardly infallible, have several advantages over other forms:

Continue reading →

A commons (or, as the Brits say, “a common”) is a shared

resource. Some common resources are made by the group that shares them; others

are found in nature.* Meanwhile, resources can be shared in a variety of ways.

In a libertarian commons, no one owns the assets at all; since there are no

property rights, everyone shares. In a communitarian commons, a tight group

of people owns a resource jointly. Membership may come as a birthright, as in

peasant villages. Members can’t sell or trade their rights. Some such communities

are very stable and efficient because there are thick bonds of trust and obligation

within the group. In a voluntary/associational commons, membership is a matter

of choice. One can join and quit at will (although joining may be subject to

the group’s approval). Whether it’s an informal network or a registered 501(c)3,

the association jointly owns certain assets. But associations differ from corporations

in that ownership is not divisible, proportional to investment, or purchasable.

If you quit the association, you simply renounce your stake. Finally, in a democratic

commons, the government owns and manages assets and holds them in public trust.

Combining the “made”/”found” distinction with the type of governance yields

the following taxonomy:

All of these forms have advantages and disadvantages. However, I am especially

enthusiastic about voluntary/associational commons that make goods. They are

the heart of Tocquevillian civil society, in my view. Communitarian commons

are too restrictive–and libertarian commons, too fragile–for my taste. In a

lot of my scholarly and practical work, I’m trying to give the libertarian commons

known as the Internet more of an associational feel.

*The “made”/”found” distinction

is really a matter of degree and can certainly be debated in particular cases.

Simon Schama, in Landscape and Memory, argues that almost all “natural” landscapes

have actually been deeply influenced by people.

Last week, I participated in a conference on the “ethical aspects of ultrafast communication.” It was funded by the Netherlands government as part of a massive technological program. Apparently, most of the Internet is now carried on fiber-optic cables that were laid during the dot-com bubble of the 90s. But the signals have to be switched, stored, and buffered using traditional circuits–with electrons rather than light waves. These switches and other components are slower than fiber-optic cables by several orders of magnitude. The Dutch are now optimistic that they can build “all-light” components that will increase the speed of the Internet by at least 100-fold, thereby expanding opportunities for voice, video, and interactivity.

The money that they are investing in this research comes from giant natural gas deposits that were discovered around Groningen in 1959. I asked whether the financial returns of the “ultrafast communications project” will go to the Dutch government, universities, specific companies, or to no one at all (if the inventions are put straight into the public domain). No one at the conference was sure. Nevertheless, the investment sounds smart to me.

There is an interesting contrast with countries like Nigeria, Venezuela, and Iraq, which seem to be much worse off because they have vast deposits of valuable raw materials than they would be otherwise. Countries fall into a “resource trap” when their governments can capture the revenue from raw materials and buy popularity with targeted social programs, while also maintaining advanced police states. The extraction of raw materials does not create many jobs or allow workers to form large unions, but it does bolster the state. Since good government is the key to economic growth, and natural resources often support bad governments, they can be a curse. But not in countries like the Netherlands, Norway, and Iceland, where excellent democratic government and an engaged citizery predated the discovery of oil or gas. In those cases, free resources are–as you might expect–a good thing.