Defend the Commons! - It’s Our Earth Too

[tabatha]

In 1968, Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons predicted that land and resources shared in use by individuals would eventually be degraded or destroyed. But as we celebrate Earth Month 2011, we are seeing something far worse: private corporations (at times working hand-in-glove with governmental bodies) plundering the commons for private gain, with catastrophic results. Since January, the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster, further damage from the BP oil blowout, groundwater supplies poisoned by hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, the USDA’s approval of Monsanto’s genetically-engineered alfalfa as “organic,” over a million dead or dying from Chernobyl radiation, and the environmental devastation of mountaintop removal coal mining have all made headlines.

Author Jay Walljasper’s All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons cites a 17th Century folk poem criticizing the practice of enclosure, in which the wealthy fenced off common land, rendering it and its resources private. The rhyme is as instructive now as it was then:

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine

http://www.independent.com/news/2011/apr/16/defend-commons/

[Duer 157099]

1. This really is the crux of the problem

No matter what else we do, if a few people are allowed to own and control all of the resources, it is game over.

This the the starting point.

[amerfayed]

3. 48 minute movie on the Commons: 'This Land is Our Land'

http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=146&template=PDGCommTemplates/HTN/Item_Preview.html

watermarked but still a must see

[tabatha]

10. Thanks!

[GliderGuider]

2. This isn't really a tragedy of the commons.

It's an issue of the privatization of profits and the socialization of costs, exacerbated by the fictive personhood of limited liability corporations.

If corporations were as vulnerable to sanctions as individuals are, such behaviour might be remediable. Thanks to 200 years of creeping corporate corruption of the world's legal systems though, this is not the case.

If I could extend the argument out a bit further, I would claim that private individuals are also guilty of such behaviour, but simply on a smaller scale. As the owner of a piece of suburban land, it may be my right to tear up natural habitats on my land and replace them with green monoculture lawns which I then over-fertilize with chemical nitrogen fertilizer. The nitrogenated runoff makes its way into the groundwater, through local streams to a river and then into the ocean, where it contributes to algae blooms and dead zones. While I am potentially vulnerable to legal penalties for such behaviour, I can join pressure groups to influence local zoning laws and prevent the passage of such laws (and yes, bribery and corruption occurs at those levels just as it does in Congress). I may not be BP or Monsanto, but my actions are different in degree rather than in kind.

I have no ready answer for the general problem. For the corporate aspect of it though, I would start by removing the shields of liability limitations and fictive personhood. That would at least make corporations more accessible to judgement, restitution orders and punishment for transgressions against the common good.

ETA: In my ideal world, if a corporation caused more damage than it could pay for, instead of asking the citizens (aka the victims) pay for it, the costs would be distributed among all other corporations conducting the same sort of business. That would create a "negative feedback loop" that might make the industry a bit more self-policing.

[DeSwiss]

4. K&R

Under God, with fees and compound interest for all

From the outset, capitalism was always about the theft of the people's sustenance. It was bound to lead to the ultimate theft -- the final looting of the source of their sustenance -- nature. Now that capitalism has eaten its own seed corn, the show is just about over, with the nastiest scenes yet to play out around water, carbon energy (or anything that expends energy), soil and oxygen. For the near future however, it will continue to play out around money.

As the economy slowly implodes, money will become more volatile stuff than it already is. The value and availability of money is sure to fluctuate wildly. Most people don't have the luxury of escaping the money economy, so they will be held hostage and milked hard again by the same people who just drained them in the bailouts. As usual, the government will be right there to see that everybody plays by the rules. Those who have always benefited by capitalism's rules will benefit more. That cadre of "money professionals" which holds captive the nation's money supply, and runs things according to the rules of money, can never lose money. It writes the rules. And rewrites them when it suits the money elite's interests.

Capitalism, the Christian god, democracy, the Constitution. It's all one ball of wax, one set of rules in the American national psyche. Thus, the money masters behind the curtain will write The New Rules, the new tablets of supreme law, and call them Reform. There will be rejoicing that "the will of the people" has once again moved upon the land, and that the democracy's scripture has once again been delivered by the unseen hand of God.

~ http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/07/waltzing.html">Joe Bageant, "Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball"

[GliderGuider]

5. ALL power hierarchies are about the theft of the peoples' sustenance.

It matters not whether the systems call themselves capitalist, communist, fascist, monarchic, democratic or republican, or if they are American, Russian, Australian or Burmese. If the backbone of the system is a power hierarchy, its core purpose is to pump wealth and power away from the masses at bottom of the pyramid and towards the power elite at the tip. The more advanced and entrenched the hierarchy, the more effective it will be at fulfilling its core purpose. There are no exceptions to this rule, only varying degrees of obscurantism and misdirection.

ETA: Since the roots of all wealth run deep into Mother Nature, the more successful a hierarchy is at fulfilling its core purpose, the more effectively Mother Nature is drained, shriveled, decimated and destroyed.

[DeSwiss]

6. Exactly. n/t

[tabatha]

9. Well put.

I have always stated that (civilized) man and nature are at odds.

"Uncivilized" man lived better with and closer to nature, and both could exist reasonably well together.

[annabanana]

7. Grabbed this little ditty for distribution!. . .n/t

[tabatha]

8. There was a last stanza that I did not include in the post.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Until they go and steal it back

[annabanana]

11. Oooo. .Thanks! . . . . n/t