More than one way to "go public"

More and more folks seem to think that "public ownership" is the answer to corporate malfeasance. So, instead of bailing out fossil fuel companies, public ownership should be instituted. Rather than permitting private ownership of an emerging COVID-19 vaccine, we should nationalize the vaccine industry in the US. Such thinking, it seems to me, recognizes a multitude of problems we have allowed to develop and emerge in our corporate oligarchy in part by not exercising anti-trust powers with any frequency, by allowing "too big to fail" firms to develop, by putting our democracy up for sale to the  highest  bidders through Citizens United and dark money. But, those promoting public ownership seem either to be duplicitous or ignorant or both. At the moment, we have a government that is behaving as if it is under corporate control and / or that of foreign powers. (In a global economy, are they the same thing?) To cite an old planning dictum: "More of the same never solved a problem." Corporations should not be treated as persons until and unless they face a death penalty for corporate malfeasance.

almost 40% of corn to feed & residual, almost 30% to ethanol

Photo by J. Harrington

So what are we to do? Give up? Definitely not. There are at least two avenues we should be exploring more vigorously. The first is to carefully consider if Elinor Ostrum's principles for governing the commons offer substantial solutions to our current problems and, if so, how they could be instituted quickly and widely and locally

8 Principles for Managing a Commons

1. Define clear group boundaries.

2. Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and conditions.

3. Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules.

4. Make sure the rule-making rights of community members are respected by outside authorities.

5. Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring members’ behavior.

6. Use graduated sanctions for rule violators.

7. Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution.

8. Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.

Second, we should look carefully at how open source systems function and are managed. It's been some years since I first read The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I believe that many of the issues raised therein are pertinent today. The Right to Repair movement continues to increase in relevance. This morning, after looking at some regenerative agriculture web sites, on a whim I searched "open source agriculture." There appear to be very interesting developments in that sector. That's encouraging, about as much as a web site promoting regenerative agriculture based on poultry. To purchase a Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share of 3 free range chickens, the cost cited is $45. Let's assume each chicken weighs 3 or 4 pounds, that means chicken costs about $4.00 to $5.00 per pound which seems competitive price-wise.

do they sell "field corn" at farmers markets?

Photo by J. Harrington

If we worked really hard, and cooperatively, we might trigger enough of a confluence of the commons principles with regenerative, open source, agroecological etc. farming to make it even less expensive economically and environmentally than continuing our current course of corporate controlled industrial food production, which appears to have passed the point of diminishing returns.

Doors opening, closing on us 

Marge Piercy - 1936-

Maybe there is more of the magical
in the idea of a door than in the door
itself. It’s always a matter of going
through into something else. But 

while some doors lead to cathedrals
arching up overhead like stormy skies
and some to sumptuous auditoriums
and some to caves of nuclear monsters 

most just yield a bathroom or a closet.
Still, the image of a door is liminal,
passing from one place into another
one state to the other, boundaries 

and promises and threats. Inside
to outside, light into dark, dark into
light, cold into warm, known into
strange, safe into terror, wind 

into stillness, silence into noise
or music. We slice our life into
segments by rituals, each a door
to a presumed new phase. We see 

ourselves progressing from room
to room perhaps dragging our toys
along until the last door opens
and we pass at last into was.

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