TheCommons--Spaces-Thoughts-Economics

This is the third of a three-part installment of a report on the future of the commons, which is based on conversations at a retreat held at Crottorf Castle in Germany, in June 2009.

This blog post continues the one started yesterday - a report on the future of the commons as discussed by the commoners who met at Crottorf Castle in Germany, in June 2009.

Two examples of copyright and religion in conflict: Indonesian batik designers, and sermon sharing sites.

David Bollier outlines some possible online governing strategies for the commons.

essay by Janet Hively
To create a commons-based society, people need more than exposure to new ideas. They need tangible ways of practicing and living out these bright possibilities. Old habits about how we organize and pay for work maintain the sharp divisions between rich and poor and tie us to the consumer values of the market-based society. At this time when unemployment due to layoffs is growing, we should try out some new ways to share the work and spread the wealth.

The commons, said Wolcher, citing Linebaugh, is not simply a conflict over property rights. It is about "people expressing a form of life to support their autonomy and subsistence needs." The commons is a verb - "commoning." It's about "taking one's life into one's own hands, and not waiting for crumbs to drop from the King's table."

Perhaps what is going on here is a new kind of crisis/tragedy of the commons. Unlike the old commons that gets fished-out or over-grazed, the digital commons appears to be this endless supply of storage and bandwidth. However obviously those things do cost money to someone, and while both have gotten cheaper, in the volume being used by YouTube or Facebook, it adds up quickly.

commons blog from Germany

Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York times writes in praise of third world sweatshops. I swear I'm not making this up, and he does an excellent job of selling something truly monstrous to those who think that Economics is a science. Found on Furl.

David Brooks, in an op / ed piece to the New York times, discovers that participation in the market does not magically transform human beings into the rational beings that one could easily see that they aren't by ... oh, say, talking to them.

The site has been allowed to expire, but can still be found in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. The personal blog of one of academia's many "adjuncts", those who've responded to the stubborn refusal of many institutions to create full time teaching positions by stringing together part time teaching jobs.

The author eventually left teaching.

A little reality for a chance. Blog post about outsourcing. No, it's not good press.

Ah, all of this, and you get paid $1200-$1500 / semester, IF your class doesn't get cancelled, and I would know about the salary. I was about to become one of those adjuncts, teaching introductory probability and statistics, when I found that only three students at that college were willing to sign up for that class, listed in the schedule as being taught by the well known Prof.Staff. (He gets around a lot). I still remember walking down the street, wondering what happened, when passing a line of people hoping to get into a class that did seem to be of interest to students - "finding your animal spirit guide". No, I'm not making that up.

A little about the "privileged" life that the backbreaking work they did in graduate school made possible, for so many, while the former frat boy executives who drank and cheated their way through school have so often ended up having to struggle by on six figure incomes, as they stare forlornly out their corner office windows.

I'm not guessing about the frat boys. I've tutored and graded the papers of a number of these "achievers". A little more truth about life in the so-called land of opportunity, in the Postmodern Era.

More blasphemy. This time, evidence of a relative absence of wage mobility in the present day US and the rise of a class hierarchy.