Economics, Community, Commons

Learning to move beyond the market vs. state framework

""Over the past two centuries, a central challenge of humanity has been to fill the void of material scarcity, and we have succeeded to some extent. There is now enough food and other products to meet most human needs if they were distributed more adequately. That’s the challenge of the current century; and it’s not just a question of rejiggering the market. It also means reconstructing of the commons, both natural and social, which is the fundamental source of sustenance and well-being. The air, water and sunshine; libraries and language and the legacies of science – without these and much else like them, there will be scarcity and collapse no matter how hard the market churns.

""The commons exists outside the typical definitions of the market and the state. It is not simply a negative to the market’s positive; it is a parallel economy that does real work—often the most important work. Without clean air to breathe, for example, or a common fund of knowledge to serve as feedstock for invention and the arts, human society would grind to a halt, as would life itself. Yet the commons is functionally invisible today. Economists disparage it as a relic of benighted times, and extol private property rights as the key to human progress. The media pretty much ignores the commons, except for bits and pieces, and politicians do as well.""

Article: It’s Time to Replace the Economics of “Me” with the Economics of “We”