Nothing but a Number

“Money is a human creation. It is nothing but a number. Most of it is simply accounting entries in computer files. It has no existence, reality, or value outside the human mind. It is extraordinary that we, a supposedly intelligent species that prides itself on creating a great civilization based on popular democratic self-rule, allow money, a system of accounting entries, to rule our lives. Has it ever struck you how absurd it is that as a society we have so much work that needs doing and at the same time, so many unemployed people who would love to be doing productive work? How absurd, that two of our defining problems are homeless people and vacant houses? We are told there is no money to put the unemployed people to work meeting unmet needs and to put the homeless into the empty houses. What a powerful demonstration of system failure.”-David Korten

The Relativity of Rising Food Prices

Welcome to the new food economics of 2011: Prices are climbing, but the impact is not at all being felt equally. For Americans, who spend less than one-tenth of their income in the supermarket, the soaring food prices we've seen so far this year are an annoyance, not a calamity. But for the planet's poorest 2 billion people, who spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food, these soaring prices may mean going from two meals a day to one. Those who are barely hanging on to the lower rungs of the global economic ladder risk losing their grip entirely. This can contribute -- and it has -- to revolutions and upheaval.

-From the article The New Geopolitics of Food by Lester Brown in Foreign Policy Magazine

Abandoned Places of Empire

"So what’s an abandoned place of empire? It’s a place the economic engine has chewed up and spit out like the hull of a sunflower seed.  The world is full of such places, the are the casualties of capitalism, globalism, consumerism, imperialism, and narcissism. They are the result of the pursuit of profit at the expense of people.  America has littered the globe with them including the urban areas of her own homeland."-Rev. Tony Lorenzen, Sunflower Chalice

But Are We Well?

Dave Burris in Town Square Delaware joins the chorus of voices calling for an end to using the GDP alone as a measure of our economic health. 

For generations, government officials have measured the state of the state and nation via one statistic: Gross Domestic Product, formerly known as the Gross National Product.

It stood to reason that the greater economic production in our society, the better off everyone would be; the rising tide would lift all boats. And to a point, that proved true. The introduction of indoor plumbing greatly increased quality of life for Americans. As did antibiotics, the computer, and craft beer (okay, maybe that last on did more for me than society at large, but you get the point.)

However, somewhere along the line we reached a place where new innovations and GDP increases failed to bring real increases in quality of life. The iPad 2 did not magically increase quality of life over the iPad 1.

Not only that, but GDP is not a measure of overall well-being. As Dr. Martin Seligman discusses in his book, Flourish, GDP goes up anytime there is a divorce. Or a car crash. Antidepressant use rises, so does GDP. And so on.

Surely, there must be a better way in 2011 to measure the quality of life in our society, incorporating not only economics, but also long-term sustainability and overall well-being.

Read the rest at Town Square Delaware.

Umair Haque on The Opulence Bubble

I believe the mini-bubbles... are different ripples in what might call the surface of a superbubble: an opulence bubble. Here's what I mean by opulence bubble: our conception of the good life, as I've discussed with you, has been centered on what I call hedonic opulence — having more, bigger, faster, cheaper, now. But we might be finding out, the hard way, that the pursuit of lowest-common-denominator industrial age stuff might have been steeply overvalued, in terms of its social, human, and financial value. And now, it's coming back down to earth.

 Umair Haque in the Harvard Business Review.

God and Money: Is Your Religion Your Financial Destiny?

The New York Times has an interesting article on the correlation between religions affiliation and income which, it reports, is much larger than the differences among states and even larger than those among racial groups.

The most affluent of the major religions — including secularism — is Reform Judaism. Sixty-seven percent of Reform Jewish households made more than $75,000 a year at the time the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life collected the data... On the other end are Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Baptists. In each case, 20 percent or fewer of followers made at least $75,000.

The main driver of the religion/wealth divide is education, according to the study's authors.  The religious groups that had the most educated members, on average, also had the greatest wealth. 

The relationship between education and income is so strong that you can almost draw a line through the points on this graph. Social science rarely produces results this clean.  What about the modest outliers — like Unitarians, Buddhists and Orthodox Christians, all of whom are less affluent than they are educated (and are below the imaginary line)? One possible explanation is that some religions are more likely to produce, or to attract, people who voluntarily choose lower-paying jobs, like teaching.

You can see the graph yourself and read the full analysis by following the link above.

The God of Wall Street

Interesting opinion piece by Mike Lux at the Huffington post today.  Lux asks "What Kind of God Do Wall Street Bankers Believe In?"

There was a pretty amazing moment Tuesday during the JPMorgan Chase shareholders meeting. A woman from the group Illinois People's Action, Dawn Dannenbring, who as a shareholder had the right to speak at the meeting, said to CEO Jamie Dimon: "As a person of faith, my God believes you shouldn't take advantage of people when they are down. Do you believe in the same God I believe in?" Dimon was apparently a little taken aback, answering, "That's a hard one to answer."

Well, I'm sure on one level it was. He wouldn't have known what religion the woman was, or what she truly thought about God. He probably has never been asked his theological views in his job as JPMorgan Chase CEO before. But even though I have no knowledge whatsoever of Jamie Dimon's faith or theology, I feel extremely confident in saying I know the answer: it would be "no."

You can read the rest at Huffington Post.

What if You Lived In Uzbekistan or Niger?

If it Were My Home is a tool that allows you to compare aspects of life in the states with life in other countries in terms of rates of HIV/AIDS, employment, energy consumption, infant mortality, class inequality, and other factors (based on CIA data).

Here were the results when I compared the U.S. to Russia.

Maybe I Should Try That

If you want me to seek the Presidency, please send unlimited corporate contributions to Laura Lee, P.O. Box...

Inward Blame has Been a Treasure for the Rich and Powerful

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register…
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.

—	Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter House Five

Signs of the Times

This is an older article, from last July, but I just discovered it from The Observatory, a design publication.  Michael Zimman writes about how he started buying (for $10 each) and collecting signs on cardboard asking for help.  The article features a slide show of some of the star pieces in his collection.  I was particularly struck by these two and the fact that people without money or homes must make the case that they are still good people.

From the "Being Broke is Not Abnormal" File

Read on Thought Catalog today that 85% of new college graduates are moving back in with their parents after they get their diplomas.

The Moral: If you are stuck with massive college and perhaps credit card debt and unable to find a job, or enough of a job to provide you with your own home, you are not a freak or a pitiful loser.  You are average.  In fact, you are part of the majority.  Relax.

Interview with Laura Lee author of Broke is Beautiful

I will be talking about Broke is Beautiful at 5:30 PM EST on May 25, on Scorpion Equinox streaming Internet radio.  You can tune in by following the link above.

The Truth About American Exceptionalism

"America has been and continues to be exceptional. At first we were exceptional because of circumstances that conferred on us enormous advantages over other nations. Today we are exceptional because of our culture, a culture born of our unusually fortunate history and now perhaps the single biggest handicap to our collective survival and prosperity in the less favorable circumstances of the 21^st century."

An excellent article by David Morris in On the Commons takes a look at the culture of American exceptionalism and how it impacts our nation today.  It is worth a read in its entirety, but here are a few highlights:

The central tenet of that culture is a celebration of the “me” and an aversion to the “we”. When Harris pollsters asked US citizens aged 18 and older what it means to be an American the answers surprised no one. Nearly 60 percent used the word freedom. The second most common word was patriotism. Only 4 percent mentioned the word community....

Far more than other peoples, Americans believe that skill and hard work are the keys to success and wealth is a measure of how hard you work or how skilled you are. Which leads us to believe that people should have the right to amass as much wealth as they can and view a graduated income tax as a punitive penalty on success and a sturdy social safety net an invitation to slothfulness, reduced productivity and an overall slowdown in economic growth...

To Republicans, inequality is unimportant because of another aspect of American exceptionalism, the unparalleled opportunity in the United States for those with ambition and grit to move up the economic ladder. They insist, and most of us firmly believe, that America is still the land of opportunity, that the probability of a rags to riches saga is much higher here than abroad.

But recent data contradicts that fundamental tenet of American exceptionalism. A Brookings Institution report comparing economic mobility in the United States and other countries concludes, "…"Starting at the bottom of the earnings ladder is more of a handicap in the United States than it is in other countries." And more broadly notes, "there is growing evidence of less intergenerational economic mobility in the United States than in many other rich industrialized countries.”

...American exceptionalism has bred a culture and value system that have in turn embraced policies that have made the pursuit of happiness exceedingly difficult.

Will Work for Free

How has the idea of the apprentice-- not the Donald Trump program but the tradition of mentoring young people in a trade-- evolved into the idea of the intern-- the lowly, unpaid office surf?  Ross Perlin in
Lapham's Quarterly looks at the history concluding:

Every society has its gift economies—you probably don’t pay a relative for babysitting, for instance—but young people working for free en masse is something new and frightening. What’s amazing is how quickly we’ve become inured to it, how naturally we’ve accepted the idea of “investing in ourselves,” bartering for connections and resume line-items. It’s a useful reminder that the notion of work is hardly an eternal verity—more like a shifting, uneven landscape, fought over and redefined in every culture and in every age, in spite of hallowed old chiselings in stone.

Is Vocational Ed the Most Valuable Education We Can Offer?

Excellent article at The Times Higher Education on the vocationalism of higher education.  Phil Baty writes:

A wise person, according to the psychologist Barry Schwartz, is like a jazz musician. Both refer to the notes on the page "but dance around them, inventing combinations that are appropriate to the situation and people at hand".

They know "when and how to make the exception to every rule" and "when and how to improvise", Schwartz explained in a 2009 talk for the ideas network, TED. The wise person can handle real-world problems - those complex, ill-defined challenges whose contexts and parameters shift constantly.

His riff was picked up by another Schwartz - Steven, the vice-chancellor of Macquarie University in Australia. In his 2010 vice-chancellor's lecture, he said the sector had to "wise up" and "restore wisdom to universities".

Professor Schwartz lamented that universities "were once about character building but now...are about money". In this "age of money", he continued, courses are increasingly vocational, designed to train graduates for their first job: in law, accounting and pharmacy, "but also golf-course management, contemporary circus performance, hairdressing salon management...
"Politicians and universities often refer to skills shortages. Apparently we need more circus performers and salon managers. But no one seems to worry about a shortage of philosophers, historians and ethicists."

The UK government's higher education reforms place English universities more squarely than ever in the "age of money", with a market and a bottom line to mind.

With evidence already emerging that a drive to introduce more vocationalism into the curriculum is pushing out arts, humanities and social science degrees ahead of the total removal of public funding from such courses, Schwartz's warnings have proved prescient.

 You can read the full article by following the link above.

What if the Economy Listened

Scott Gast writing on Post Growth ponders what it would mean for the world if we measured the economy's effect on something other than the market itself;

But what if the economy listened? What if, for a minute, the economy stopped talking to itself—to its own swirl of messages and indicators and pundits and forecasts—and actually gave an earnest ear to the world around it? Here’s Steingraber in a 2009 column for Orion magazine:

“Imagine that ecological metrics were as familiar to us as economic ones. Imagine ecological equivalents to the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P that reported to us every day—in newspapers, on radio, on websites, on the crawl at the bottom of TV screens, on oversized tickers in Times Square—data about the various sectors of our ecological system and how they are faring. What are the atmospheric parts per million of carbon dioxide today? Has the extinction rate become inflationary? What is the exchange rate between sea ice and fresh water? What is the national deficit of topsoil?

Suppose that ecological pundits discussed every night on cable TV the ongoing disappearance of bees, bats, and other pollinators and the possibly dire consequences for our food supply. Suppose we received daily reports on the status of our aquifers. Suppose legislators and citizens both agreed that if we don’t take immediate action to bail out our ecological system, something truly terrible will happen. Our ecology will tank.”

***

What would a listening economy look like? One thing I bet it wouldn’t look like would be a growing economy. A listening economy would be aware of the world beyond itself—that there is a world beyond itself—which means it would know that there’s no more room to grow. It would be a good conversationalist: it would listen to the world it lives in and respond accordingly. It would be less noisy, because listening requires periods of quiet and slowness and caution. It would be principled—and its highest principle might be the precautionary principle. It would know that listening is progress. It would know that listening is related to learning.

Jubilee on Wall Street

Watch as Christian activist Shane Claiborne and members The Simple Way give away money on Wall Street.

“Some of us have worked on Wall Street, and some of us have slept on Wall Street. We are a community of struggle. Some of us are rich people trying to escape our loneliness. Some of us are poor folks trying to escape the cold. Some of us are addicted to drugs, and others are addicted to money. We are a broken people who need each other and God, for we have come to recognize the mess that we have created of our world and how deeply we suffer from that mess. Now we are working together to give birth to a new society within the shell of the old. Another world is possible. Another world is necessary. Another world is already here,” Claiborne says announcing the Jubilee celebration.

You can read his article recounting the event at Red Letter Christians.

The Impossible Hamster

Watching their Commerical Intake

"Let’s convince our friends and family, our neighbours and our classmates that the mental environment is as precious, and as vulnerable, as the lushest stretch of rainforest. Let’s get people thinking about their mental health in the same way that they think about their physical health—two sides of the same tarnished coin. Get households banishing TV pollution at the same time they banish toxic detergents. Get parents watching their children’s commercial intake as closely as they watch their sugar intake. Challenge students to say no to corporate curricula with the same fervor they say no to oil spills. Let’s train people with mood disorders to reduce their mental burdens, in the same way that people with allergies reduce their chemical burdens. Let’s turn psychologists into mental ecologists, pioneers of a new and vital social science, In other words, let’s get into detox before there’s no turning back.”

—	Adbusters, January/February 2006 (as found on Tumblr with no link to original article)

The Detroit "Maker Culture"

"As a city, we’ve been a maker culture since the beginning. When the city was still flourishing, we were a part of making—the hands on production of automobiles, clothing, shoes, and leather goods. We were so tangible. Some of the best goods came out of Michigan, and Detroit in particular, and I think that’s so deeply ingrained in all the generations. The grandfather did cars, and from there, the sons and daughters made products that other places in the country didn’t have the skills to do. Detroit was raised by, and into it. It’s part of everyone’s being—we are a community and city based on producing things.... You can’t blame the city, but we’ve been doing it for 20-or so years now, which is longer than the crash. We need to apply new structures and new systems to it, because right now, the old one does not work. The old paradigm for making and producing no longer applies. In order to succeed, we need to think of new ways. This is where the idea of the artist comes in."-Veronika Scott, metro Detroit artist quoted in Bad at Sports

I Am Woman: See Me Shop?

There is one of those "tell me about you" quizzes zapping around the social networks.  (The checked answers of the version pasted here are not mine, just the ones filled out by the person whose post I copied.)  What struck me about this little quiz about your masculine and feminine sides is that a full three of the choices for the "girl side" are related to shopping.  You lose three points on your "girl" side if you do not check "you love to shop," "shopping is one of you favorite hobbies" and "you love shoe shopping."  There are also a few answers that are marginally about shopping such as "you own more than 10 pairs of shoes."

YOUR BOY SIDE/YOUR GIRL SIDE.

YOUR BOY SIDE
[x] you wear hoodies
[x] you wear jeans
[x] dogs are better than cats
[ ] it’s hilarious when people get hurt
[x] you’ve played with/against boys on a team
[ ] shopping is torture
[ ] sad movies suck
[ ] you own an XBOX
[ ] you own a Wii
[x] you played with Hot Wheels as a little kid
[x] at some point in life you wanted to be a firefighter
[ ] you own a DS, PS2 or Sega
[x] you used to be/are obsessed with Power Rangers
[x] you watch/watched early morning cartoons
[x] you watch sports on TV
[ ] you go to your dad for advice
[x] you have played sport at a state level
[x] you used to/do collect collector trading cards
[x] you have worn baggy sweatpants
[ ] it’s kind of weird to have sleepovers with a bunch of people
[x] green, black, red, blue, or silver are one of your favorite colors
[x] you love to go crazy and not care what other people think
[x] sports are fun
[ ] you talk with food in your mouth
[ ] you sleep at night with your socks on
[ ] you have fished at least once
TOTAL = 15

YOUR GIRL SIDE
[x] you love to shop
[ ] you wear eyeliner
[ ] you considered cheerleading
[ ] you wear the color pink
[ ] you go to your mom for advice
[ ] you hate wearing the color black
[x] you like going to town
[ ] you like getting manicures and/or pedicures
[ ] you like wearing jewelry
[x] you cried watching The Notebook
[ ] skirts are a part of your wardrobe
[x] shopping is one of your favorite hobbies
[ ] you don’t like Star Wars     
[ ] you are/were in gymnastics
[x] it takes you around a half an hour to shower
[x] you smile a lot more than you should
[x] you have more than 10 pairs of shoes
[x] sometimes you care about what you look like
[ ] you like wearing dresses sometimes
[x] you like wearing body spray or deodorant
[ ] you wear high heel shoes
[x] you used to play with dolls as a kid
[ ] you have put makeup on others
[ ] you like being the star of almost everything
[x] you love shoe shopping
[ ] pink is one of your favorite colors
TOTAL = 11

I Am Quite Indifferent To It

"...I have never had money, and because I am not used to having any, I am quite indifferent to it.  I simply cannot make myself work for money."-Anton Chekhov

Some Things Cannot Be Bought and Sold

"We have appropriated the language of investment  and profit to describe endeavors that ought rightly to remain distinct and free from market considerations... To a certain extent, the predisposition in favor of acquisition is built into the discourse of capitalism, and that itself deserves vigilance as long as people of  faith live under the banner of enlightened self-interest.  But the marketing language that dominates descriptions of human interaction in a capitalist economy obscures a much deeper understanding of the gift character of all that is, and our familial relationship to all life and especially to each other. We lose at great cost common expressions that remind us that some things cannot be bought and sold. Some times, places, relationships, and words should not be subjected to the terms of economic transaction. At least the discourse of the church should reflect this."-Marilyn McEntyre, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies

The Most Useful Subjects for Work are at The Top

"

Now our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there’s a reason. The whole system was invented round the world there were no public systems of education really before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism.

So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas: Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don’t do music, you’re not going to be a musician; don’t do art, you’re not going to be an artist. Benign advice — now, profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in a revolution.

And the second is, academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can’t afford to go on that way.

"

-Sir Ken Robinson, TED Talks

The Roomies Who Bonded Over Garbage

Meaning of Prosperity

"My hunch is this: we can cut, slash, and burn all we want — all the way right down deep into the black heart of austerity, until we're reduced to shivering in caves, hunting with stone axes, and singing songs by firelight. But if it's the city at the other end of the economic world we wish to reach — the shining city on a hill we once called prosperity, a conception of richness that, resonantly American, was never merely about hands grabbing at wealth, but about imagining, building, and creating lives that were authentically richer — then we might just have to get serious not merely about what it is we don't do, but what we will do differently tomorrow than we have done for the last several decades."

-Umair Haque, Harvard Business Review

Love for Libraries

"The richest person in the world – in fact, all the riches in the world – couldn’t provide you with anything like the endless, incredible loot available at your local library. You can measure the awareness, the breadth and the wisdom of a civilization, a nation, a people by the priority given to preserving these repositories of all that we are, all that we were, or will be."-Malcolm Forbes, Forbes, 16 February 1981

From the web page of my local library.

New Resource: Ready for Zero

I just added a new resource to the list on the right. Ready for Zero is a free online financial tool that lets you track your credit card debt, explore options, and make and follow a plan to eliminate it. Their slogan: "Kicking debt's butt, one day at a time."

The Illusion of Money Part 2: The Rich Think They're Broke

Great article over at Good today (why do you think they gave it that name?) with charts and graphs and all that stuff. Comes to the fascinating sociological conclusion that the wealthiest Americans don't realize that they're making more than everyone else. Folks who make $250,000 know they're not poor, but they compare themselves to the Warren Buffets of the world and see themselves as being in the middle:

Only 6 percent of people making $250,000 say their own taxes are too low, but 30 percent of people making $250,000 say that "upper-income people" pay too little in taxes. That suggests that a large number of people making $250,000 don't think of themselves as being "upper-income people."

The bottom line is that many wealthy people have simply no idea how wealthy they are relative to the rest of Americans. Chalk that up partially to a consumer culture that was for years defined by living outside of one's means. Thus, even rich people found themselves struggling to pay bills when the economy went south.

Catherine Rampell at the New York Times also theorizes it's the "Middle Kingdom effect": "[P]eople who are rich but not the richest—in the $250,000 zone, say—see they have more than lots of poor people, but also much less than a few very visibly rich people. Then they conclude they’re in the middle, so they must be middle class."

The Illusion of Money: Yet Another Thing That Makes You Spend Too Much

Dan Ariely, a Duke University behavioral economist, and author of the book Predictably Irrational, suggests that the complexity of the U.S. tax code is yet another force that leads Americans to spend more than we can afford:

In the US, we all know the gross amount that we make a year, but it’s not as clear what our net income is. It’s actually very complex because we get our salary, some of which the employer withholds, and we have no idea what we’ll get back when tax day comes around. We can get back some money (depending on our expenses/deductibles), trends in our stock market portfolio, health care, etc. And we don’t figure this out until April 15th (if not later) of the following year!

And what are the consequences of knowing our gross yearly income and not much else? I think it causes us to feel richer than we really are and spend accordingly. Why would this be the case? There’s a phenomenon we call the “illusion of money,” which is the idea that we typically pay attention to nominal amounts of money rather than real amounts. For example, the illusion of money means that if inflation is 8%, and you get a 10% raise, you would feel better than if there was no inflation and you got a 3-4% raise. The basic idea is that we pay attention to the nominal amount rather than the purchasing power, and don’t realize what our money is really worth.

In terms of our tax code, this suggests that in the US we focus on our gross yearly income, feel richer than we really are, and consequently end up spending more money.

The Commons in an Age where Sharing is "Socialism."

I read two articles back to back this morning. The first in Mother Jones with the title Pawlenty's Education Committee: Kindergarten Sharing Is "Socialist".

It describes a 2003 battle in Minnesota over educational standards for the state's schools. Mother Jones reports "Members [of the] standards committees dismissed sharing and cooperation as 'socialist' ideas..."

This illustrates the problem many of us have in arguing for values in anything but marketplace terms. (A common theme of this blog.) An excellent article by David Bollier in Share the World's Resources argues that supporters of the idea of the value of the commons (our shared resources) need to find a better way to celebrate its history and defend its importance. Here are some excerpts, but I recommend the entire article:

So much of nature, culture and economic activity utterly depend upon the commons – the atmosphere, the oceans, wildlife and seeds as well as the Internet, scientific knowledge and creative works, among countless other commons. And yet corporate-dominated markets are doing everything they can to privatize and commodify our commons. After all, there is big money to be made in mining the deepsea ocean floor, patenting the genes of plants and animals, claiming proprietary control of agricultural seeds, owning new sorts of synthetic nano-matter that can replace ordinary substances, and owning mathematical algorithms that power software programs.

The great, unacknowledged scandal of our times is the market enclosure of things that belong to all of us. Instead of having free or low-cost access to the shared resources that belong to all of us, companies are privatizing them and forcing us to pay...

we commoners need to do a better job of articulating and advancing what I call the value proposition of the commons. Here’s what I mean by that. The market has its own well-developed, aggressively promoted story about how material wealth is created and human progress is advanced. It’s a story about how private property rights, money and market exchange generate wealth. It’s a process that considers Gross Domestic Product a proxy for happiness. The market story is a story of bigger, better and faster, and it is the dominant norm of our time, a global religious catechism that is only now starting to come unraveled, thanks to the economic crisis of 2008.

The commons is a very different narrative – one that fills out that picture that this mainstream economic narrative omits. The value proposition of the commons cannot be expressed as a “bottom line” because it’s all about community empowerment and social equity and ecological security. Unfortunately, this is a fuzzy and complex storyline in the public mind, at least right now.

Some other reasons that the commons narrative has trouble going mainstream have everything to do with the intrinsic nature of the commons. Unlike the market narrative, which presumes to be standard and universal, the commons consists of countless distinctive and locally rooted examples, each different. The market celebrates quantitative measures of its performance, and so comparisons about who’s best, who’s richest, and so forth, are easy. By contrast, the value of the commons tends to be qualitative, social, spiritual, ecologically complex and long term. Needless to say, these values cannot be plugged into a spreadsheet and put into rankings, like the “Commons 500.” As a result, the commons is harder to see and name as a distinct sector – and therefore, it can be harder to reclaim a commons or build one from scratch...

Now, the argument is often made that the commons is simply a vestigial, pre-modern throwback. They say it’s impractical, it’s inefficient, it’s a “tragedy.” With the failures of communism and state socialism still hanging in the air, the claim is made that self-organized collective action threatens “freedom.” We need to fight these myths by asserting the real value-proposition of the commons...

I think we need to recover a world in which we all receive gifts and we all have duties. This is a very important way of being human. Tragically, the expansion of centralized political and economic structures tends to eclipse our need for gifts and duties. We rely on money or the state for everything. And so we forget what Ivan Illich called the “vernacular domain” – the spaces in our everyday life in which we create and shape and negotiate our sense of how things should be: the commons.

And finally, for your enjoyment, a classic video from the socialists at Sesame Street: