Who Owns the Sky?

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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18009

 

 

Who Owns the Sky?

 

By David Bollier, In These Times

March 2, 2004

 

Former Interior Secretary Walter Hickel once explained: " If you steal $10 from a

man's wallet, you're likely to get into a fight. But if you steal billions from

the commons, co-owned by him and his descendants, he may not even notice. "

 

 

 

Not since the Gilded Age of the 1890s has so much public wealth been shoveled

into private hands with such brazen efficiency. Timber companies, corporate

ranchers and foreign mining companies with cheap access to public lands are

plundering our national patrimony. Congress obligingly turns a blind eye to the

accompanying pollution, soil depletion and habitat destruction. Companies are

rushing to patent our genes, privatize agricultural seeds and stake private

claims on plots of the ocean. Broadcasters – who for decades enjoyed free use of

the public's airwaves, a subsidy worth hundreds of billions of dollars – are

attempting to exploit an equivalent amount of electromagnetic spectrum for

digital TV. We the taxpayers pay billions of dollars to sponsor risky

path-breaking federal drug research, research that too often is given away to

pharmaceutical companies for a song. Then we pay a second time – as consumers,

at exorbitant prices – for the same drugs.

 

 

 

And so on.

 

 

 

The privatization of public resources is not a new story, to be sure, but the

current rapacity is truly stunning. Much of the immediate blame must go to the

Bush administration, which has rewarded corporate contributors with one of the

most sweeping waves of privatization and deregulation in our history. But while

Republicans are the most aggressive cheerleaders for privatization, many

Democrats equally enthuse about the " free market " as an engine of progress and

deride strong government stewardship of resources.

 

 

 

This bipartisan support is why fighting privatization is so difficult. American

political culture has a strong faith in the efficacy of markets and skepticism

in the competence of government. Critics bravely cite individual episodes of

privatization gone bad, but there is no compelling philosophical response or

alternative grand narrative to the logic of privatization.

 

 

 

A new framework rises

 

 

 

An embryonic force to counter the push to privatize is gaining momentum,

however: the concept of " the commons. " The language is still rudimentary and

people who rely upon the country's multiple commons have not yet built a shared

philosophy, but even so a remarkably broad groundswell of activism is emerging.

 

 

 

The commons describes the many resources we collectively own that are being

mismanaged by government or siphoned away by corporations. Some commons are

physical assets, such as the global atmosphere, ecosystems, clean water,

wildlife and the human genome. Some commons are public institutions such as

libraries, museums, schools and government agencies. Still other commons are

social communities, such as the " gift economies " of people who contribute their

time and expertise to create valuable resources. Examples include scientific

disciplines and Internet communities, both of which depend on the open exchange

of information.

 

 

 

The point of talking about the commons is to reassert a basic truth: Power does

not reside in government and markets alone. It also belongs to " we the people. "

This is not just a rhetorical point. The commons has its own moral authority,

social effectiveness and political power – which is why leaders of government

and corporations routinely invoke the concept. Power in a democracy must

constantly justify its moral and political legitimacy by associating itself with

" the people. "

 

 

 

To be sure, government often does act as a trustee for the American people, and

markets can be efficient tools for material progress. What is too often ignored,

however, is that the commons is a sovereign force in its own right. Sometimes

the interests of the commons are best protected through its own institutions

rather than through government or markets. Such institutions can take many

forms: stakeholder trusts, land trusts, professional communities, civic

associations, online networks, and cooperative arrangements like blood banks and

libraries.

 

 

 

The Alaska Permanent Fund is a terrific example of a stakeholder trust. Every

year, the Fund gives every Alaska citizen an equal slice of revenues from oil

drilling on state lands. Now with some $27 billion in assets, the Fund generated

dividends of about $1,107 for every state resident in 2003.

 

 

 

One reason that public libraries, parks and land trusts serve the commons is

because they are institutionally designed to serve everyone. Unlike markets,

which cater to those with money, a commons generally aims to provide equal

access to a resource. Access is a civic or social right, not a privilege

reserved for those who can afford it.

 

 

 

An evolving moral economy

 

 

 

Surely the biggest, most robust commons in history is the Internet, which has

enabled an unprecedented type of bottom-up creativity and control. The Internet

has spawned countless collaborative Web sites, online discussion forums,

peer-to-peer file sharing communities and instant messaging networks.

Interactions on such commons are not governed by contracts or money changing

hands, but by social trust and reciprocity.

 

 

 

The commons, in short, has a different " moral economy " than the market. As any

economist will tell you, a market is based on rational individuals maximizing

their utility through economic exchange. By contrast, a commons tends to be

based on a community of shared values managing a resource according to

agreed-upon moral or social norms. The resource may or may not be recognized as

saleable property.

 

 

 

The " moral economy " of the commons can be so efficient and creative that it

sometimes outperforms the market on its own terms. The GNU/Linux operating

system, now in use on one-third of the nation's servers, is perhaps the best

proof of this fact, along with hundreds of other open source software

communities. Countless Web communities achieve valuable types of coordination

and collaboration that a market regime, with its expensive legal, marketing and

payment apparatus, could not easily match.

 

 

 

This is a key reason online enterprises based on social networking – open source

software, Friendster, peer-to-peer file sharing, instant messaging, viral

marketing – are thriving, while conventional enterprises that seek to manipulate

and control online consumers are less successful. Online sharing and

collaboration is cheap, easy and socially convivial – a reality that " does not

compute " in the neoclassical economic model.

 

 

 

Enclosure of the commons

 

 

 

It can be difficult to argue against privatization when the conventional wisdom

holds that government is an inept bumbler. Part of this stems from three decades

of relentless government-bashing by politicians and corporate PR firms.

Government's image also has suffered from its basic obligation to serve

everyone, including difficult, high-cost " customers " (Medicaid patients, rural

postal patrons), while companies are free to capture the most profitable

customers for themselves. Government bureaucracies are hobbled in other ways –

personnel rules, budget limits, no market access to capital – that make them

less able to respond nimbly to changing needs.

 

 

 

In the face of such rough currents, opponents of privatization should therefore

identify the people, and not the government, as the victim of privatization.

Talking about threats to these many commons helps to make a stronger,

affirmative case for reclaiming the public's wealth.

 

 

 

A language of the commons more clearly identifies who is being betrayed and

offers a richer understanding of what happens when a resource is privatized. In

this regard, " enclosure of the commons " is a useful term. In 18th and 19th

Century British history, the aristocratic classes prevailed upon Parliament to

seize the meadows, forests and wild game that common people relied upon as a

matter of custom. Enclosure is the term used to describe the appropriation of a

resource that belongs to all and its conversion into private property owned and

controlled by a wealthy few.

 

 

 

When the commons is enclosed, prices generally rise and people must ask for

permission to use a resource previously available to everyone. Enclosure also

changes the management and character of a resource. The goal for resources

governed by the market is to maximize financial return. When a resource is

managed as a commons, the goal is to secure sustainable long-term benefits for

everyone who belongs to the commons. The resource – wilderness, scientific

research, genetic information – does not need to be turned into property and

sold; it can be managed in its " non-property " form for everyone.

 

 

 

A report on the commons

 

 

 

The Tomales Bay Institute and other defenders of the commons recently prepared a

first annual report on " The State of The Commons. " The report, which can be

ordered or downloaded at www.friendsofthecommons.org, describes the scope of our

common wealth, surveys the state of six important commons and makes some

recommendations for the future.

 

 

 

The good news is that the market value of the broadcast spectrum has increased

as the technology for cell phones, pagers and other wireless communication has

advanced. So many companies want to use the public's airwaves that the federal

government can now extract a great price for it – and put those funds to public

use.

 

 

 

There also are opportunities to curb pollution of the global atmosphere while

establishing a commons trust fund. A new " Sky Trust " proposal is gaining

momentum to require companies to bid at auction for the right to release their

carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The money would then be placed into a Sky

Trust owned by all citizens. Under this scheme, companies would have financial

incentives to reduce their pollution, and the public would reap dividends from

the Sky Trust that could be used for public purposes or rebated to individual

citizens as dividends, in the style of the Alaska Permanent Fund.

 

 

 

The point of any " commons solution " is to protect our shared resources from

expropriation and mismanagement. This means that we need to begin to assign

legal rights to our common wealth – our airsheds, aquifers and ecosystems,

pressured by markets. We also need to breathe new life into the " public trust

doctrine, " a legal rule that since Roman times has declared that certain parts

of nature belong to the public and cannot be given away by governments or seized

by private parties.

 

 

 

Many activists are starting to recognize the strategic value of the commons

paradigm, including defenders of fresh-water supplies, wildlife and indigenous

cultures. Libraries are talking about saving the " information commons, " and a

new nonprofit group, the Creative Commons, now offers licensing alternatives to

copyright to promote the sharing and re-use of music, film and writing.

Residents in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont have organized themselves as the

Kingdom Commons to fight a windmill farm in a pristine wilderness area.

Advocates of sustainable fisheries, parks and open spaces, and the public's

airwaves are invoking the commons as a way to fight corporate enclosures.

 

 

 

The growing popularity of commons-speak is a hopeful sign. Not only does it

reconceptualize the privatization issue in more advantageous terms, it gives

people a way to assert a moral and social connection to resources that belong to

us all. Disparate progressive causes that now labor in isolation could begin to

recognize their political affinities, and begin to hoist up a new public

philosophy with its own powers to combat privatization.

 

 

 

David Bollier is author of Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common

Wealth; the co-founder of Public Knowledge, the advocacy group for Internet and

intellectual property issues; and a fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute.

 

 

 

 

 

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