What do we have in commons?

After spending more time than we should have reading today's news and our Twitter timeline, it's fair to say we doubt that ousting the orange horror has done much to lower the level of contentiousness in our governance and communications. At the rate we're making progress, the plutocrats will stay in power until we're gone and the earth is but a scorched cinder.

who owns the soil eroded from a farm field?

Photo by J. Harrington

Let's try a mind game or two. Let's pretend that our government, supposedly a democracy, is actually a commons. Then let's look at Elinore Ostrom's 8 principles for governing a commons and see if we can envision how their application could and should modify how our governments actually work.

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. 

We would probably also benefit by redefining our "system" of agriculture as a food system and turn that system into a commons. We keep pushing and shoving and failing to really improve our ability to feed ourselves and help feed the rest of the world a healthy diet the way we've been going for the past couple of generations or so. Farmers are familiar with soil. It's fair to assume they're also familiar with holes in soil. Isn't it time for those who farm, and thise who process, distribute, sell, prepare and eat food to jointly recognize that, the first thing to do when you find yourself at the bottom of a deep hole is to STOP DIGGING! To use an old fashioned, and therefore dated but accurate assessment, we're still trying to maximize subsystems instead of optimizing a
system.

Common

By David Rivard

The American common is no collective or princedom

but privacies of need & pleasure as they intersect

in public spaces, tho the insufferable powers that be

breed their plots behind our backs, thinking us

witless, seemingly blind to their afflicted intentions,

just a bunch of demographic motormouths & screw-ups

to be targeted by commodities traders & search engines—

a marketing niche for every need, stereotypes

tagged by algorithms—here is a typical team

of baton twirlers in an airport bar, each of them clad

in foxy red track suits & tuned-in to the dollhouse

stimulations of pigeon-talking sales reps; there

is a previously undetected aggregation of retirees,

evangelical camp kids, kickass bowlers,

and mothy nuns in starched wimples, for whom

the news of the day means the aging boy-man

Hugh Grant's fear of double chins—neither of

these or any other data dump entirely false,

but so narrow-minded sometimes as to lose sight

of us entirely: the midtown lady in Capris,

a four-square surgeon off-duty & headed out

to play poker, the plumber fly-fishing by the river—

a sky of twilight slate now—not a word written on it.

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