Adam Smith observed that only 2 of the 3 groups made any real contribution to the production process.  The workers contributed their time.  The capitalists contributed their capital that they either bought, but is now used and worth less than before it was used.  The Rentiers contributed their land, but have lost nothing.  Once the manufacturing of the bricks is done, they get their land back and it is still worth the same as it was before.  Any income they made by renting out their land was made without work, and without risk to their assets.  There is a word for someone that only takes, but doesn’t give back: a parasite.  Smith and those who carried on his work used the nicer term, Rentier.  This is where the phrase “economic rent” originates.  It originally described a no value-ad landlord.

Adam Smith and future classical economists existed in a time where the noble families of medieval Europe were still the large landowners.  The nobles had just turned into Rentiers.  Because they owned the land, they were able to rent it out to capitalist and workers and claim a portion of their profits and wages by charging “rent”.  They were able to do this without ever working.  It was unearned income.

Much of the work done by economists from Adam Smith until the late 19th century was all about finding and identifying “rent-seeking”.  These classical economists didn’t want to overthrow capitalism, they wanted to free it from the “rent-seeking” parasites.

Eliminating economic rent is the main objective of Smart Taxes.  That is why we promote Land Value Taxes, Cap and Share and support charging for the use of common resources.  We also promote ending the financial free lunch of our current money system through the green alternative money perspective as well as that of Modern Monetary Theory.  Enough promo:- here is another snippet from Maddog.

In the late 60s and early 70s “economic rent” saw a small revival among select economists.  For those select few, “Rent-seeking” was no longer defined as just “ownership of the land”.  It can take several shapes.  Rent-seeking is any income that is unearned. An alternative definition is “profit without a corresponding cost of production”.  “Economic Rent” can come from ownership of land and just “renting” it out for money. It can also come from collecting so much capital that a firm now has a monopoly and can set the price independent of supplydemand considerations, It can be from government monopoly granting, control of other “land” like our rivers, broadband spectrum, or “mineral rights” of land.  It can come from control of financial assets like capital gains, dividends, and interest on loans(especially usury). It can also come from political favors from the government….

…Political Implications

Economic rent was something I’d learned about in school several years ago and quickly forgot about it once the class was over.  Now in a post bank-bailout world, I ran across it again one day while researching another article, It was like a light-bulb clicking on in my head.  (A high-efficiency light bulb).  This is what progressives are currently fighting against.  This is the concept, the vocabulary, the name for the rage I feel in my gut at what’s happened.  The rentiers have taken over our country by masquerading as capitalists.

Climate Activists Target States With Lawsuits; Atmosphere As a ‘Public Trust’

Question 1 : Why do we need a European common agricultural policy?

We must create the market, regulatory and custodian conditions for our children’s security. The market does not currently account for environmental and social capital that needed to support us into the future. There are two main ways to fix this, regulation and through propertising, protecting and charging for the use of the natural and virtual commons. The first has succeeded only partly but is a very necessary condition for the second in a new common agricultural policy. This involves Trusts with appropriate remits as custodians of important commons e.g. River Basins, Carbon Sinks, Biodiversity, Fishery, Atmosphere Trusts etc. The Trusts set sustainability metrics and charge accordingly, distributing receipts to the beneficiaries. People who use less than average will gain, those who overuse or abuse lose. Farmers who practice carbon saving, biodiversity enhancing practices will succeed in the marketplace.

Question 2 : What do citizens expect from agriculture?

Security, safety and healthiness of the food supply is their priority. This can only be delivered by conserving bio-systems and natural resources as the foundation for agriculture. Secondly they want the benefits of a clean, diverse and stimulating environment for their physical and mental health. Thirdly, they want risk reduced and resilience to future shocks such as fossil fuel, water, phosphorus and other essential natural resource scarcity enhanced. They value the variety and uniqueness of local food products over bland uniformity. They want local food and farmers protected against low standard competition. A low price for food without all the above is worthless.

Question 3 : Why reform the CAP?

The CAP SFP has created distortions in competition and in price of land in Ireland. It rewards those who built high production in the reference period and discouraged innovation and new entrants to farming. A level playing field is required based on current practices and production. Large intensive farming especially tillage was incentivised; family farms with high food quality, environmental and social benefits lost out. It was based on a fossil fuel and fertilizer model that is inherently unsustainable. Farmers and foresters should be better rewarded for bio-system and diversity maintenance. Remuneration was based outputs not real outcomes i.e. real improvement in water quality or increase in soil or forest cover carbon. A new CAP must also establish agriculture’s claim to food waste to close the nutrient cycle in a new sustainable CAP.

Question 4 : What tools do we need for the CAP of tomorrow?

Independent agencies such as Trusts to monitor, manage and charge for commons resources and reward those who add to them. Real-time satellite monitoring for soil and forest cover carbon sequestration. Payments based on verifiable outcomes. Deductions for loss of carbon, biodiversity water quality in agriculture and forest cover. Special bonuses for increased biodiversity as most threatened resource. New standards and tracing systems tailored to small-scale local food production. Consumers better represented in agricultural agencies. A substantial quota of cleaned production and consumption food-waste reserved for agriculture to close the nutrient cycle, process damaging farm waste and support rural bio-energy production. Measures to make land available to new entrants to agriculture including horticulture and forestry.

From the Irish Times….

OLIVIA KELLY

A PUBLIC utility company should be established to manage water resources and levy water charges nationally, one of the State’s leading economists has said.

Prof John FitzGerald, chief economist with the ESRI, said responsibility for all water infrastructure and resources, including waste-water treatment plants, should be transferred to a new utility, which would be similar to the ESB.

The utility, which should remain public and not be privatised, would be financed through the levying of water charges. This would then allow it to raise investment money and would remove the need for direct State investment in water infrastructure.

Speaking at an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conference on local authority waste prevention programmes, Prof FitzGerald said the example of waste collection charges based on weight or volume proved that people responded to user-based charging.

“If you introduce water charges without metering, it will not do anything to reduce usage. Water charges should only come in when there are meters, where people are charged for what they use.”

The creation of a centralised water utility to collect charges, manage water resources and handle customer billing and complaints would deliver huge benefits in terms of efficiency, Prof FitzGerald said.

“I’m not suggesting we send someone down from Dublin to fix a leak in Belmullet, but a properly financed national water utility would be able to pool resources and create efficiencies.”

The utility should not be introduced until after metering had been established and there was an income from charges to fund its operations, he said.

The conference also heard that local authority waste prevention programmes, within their own offices and working with businesses and the community, were saving almost €1 million a year through a variety of waste, water and energy measures .

County councils involved in the agency’s national waste prevention programme, had succeeded in saving 37,500 tonnes of water, 1,530,000 kilowatt hours of energy and preventing or diverting 2,300 tonnes of waste a year.

“The EPA’s aim is to help to develop a network of prevention experts in Ireland’s local authorities that have the expertise and motivation to work with business, public organisations and communities, to reduce the volume of waste generated,” the agency’s director, Laura Burke, said.

Grant aid of €1 million a year was available under the programme to assist local authorities in putting waste prevention programmes in place. Projects undertaken since the programme was introduced six years ago concentrated on initiatives to reduce paper use, food waste, packaging and water and energy use and to change the behaviour and attitude of local authority staff, as well as external businesses and the community to their use of resources.

Sectors involved included the construction industry; farms; healthcare facilities; schools and colleges, retail and hospitality and tourism.

“One World in which Many Worlds Fit.”
from OnTheCommons.org — Everything

The following remarks were delivered by Silke Helfrich of Germany, a long-time international commons advocate, to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on January 28, 2010. Entitled “The commons as a paradigm for social movements and beyond” (version 1.0), Helfrich’s speech offers a strong, far-ranging case for why the commons holds promise in galvanizing social movements and building a new vision of society.

We can only promote the commons as a new narrative for the 21st century if they are identified as a common denominator by different social movements and schools of thought. In my point of view, enforcing the commons is not only possible, but strategically intelligent. Here are fifteen reasons why:

1. The commons are everywhere. They determine our quality of life in great many ways. They are present (even though often invisible) in the social, natural, cultural and digital sphere. Think about the things we use to learn (read and write), the things we use to move (land, air and sea), the things we use to communicate (language, music and code), the things we use to feed and heal (land, water, medicine) or the things our reproduction depends on (genes, social life).

The commons are about how we share and use all these things. They are a vivid way of reproduction of our social relations— at any time. Therefore, they are better described with a verb (“commoning”) instead of a noun (commons). The commons are a special kind of practice of use and production of knowledge and material goods, where use value is privileged over exchange value.

Commoning is a practice which allows us to take our lives in our own hands, and to protect and widen what is common to us instead of witnessing its enclosure and privatization. Commoners’ rights are independent from formal convention and positive law. We just have them without having to ask anybody for permission, and we share them with others. The commons offer a different kind of freedom than the market. So the good news is — when we focus on the commons, we focus on how to shift things from the market sphere to the commons sphere, we focus on how to shift authority and responsibility from state bureaucracies to the many possibilities for users to “govern the commons,” and we focus on many issues and resources — as 75% percent of the world’s biomass — which are not yet commodified. This is encouraging.

2. The commons bridge sectors and communities, and offers a frame for the convergence and consolidation of movements. The issues we have to deal with have gotten overly complex. In order to reduce complexity, we have fragmented what belongs together. In the public political debate, there is a division into different realms of knowledge and authority. There are those who discuss issues related to natural resources (“the ecos”) and those who discuss cultural and digital issues (“the technos”).

The result is (overly) specialized communities for each of the hundreds of problems we are confronted with and many missing links. For the very diversity of the commons, this fragmentation will continue to a certain extent, but it also contributes to a loss of our common ability to keep track of the ongoing economic, political and technological processes and changes. This diminishes our capacity to react to theses changes and to carefully forward coherent alternative proposals. The commons can unify disparate social change movements, even those that have profoundly different dynamics, because they permit us to focus on what all common pool resources and all commoners have in common and not what separates them. Water is finite, knowledge is not. Atmosphere is global, a park is not. Ideas grow, when we share them, land does not. But all are common pool resources! Therefore none of them can be exclusive property of only one person. All are linked to a community. All are governed best if the rules and norms are self-determined or considered highly legitimate by the people how have to rely on those resources.

3. The commons recasts the ownership debate beyond the (sometimes fruitless) framing of public versus private. The claim for public ownership remains important, but have nation states really served as conscientious trustees of the commons? No. Do they protect traditional knowledge, forests, water and biodiversity? Not everywhere. There is much more than “public” and “private.”

A common pool resource can be possessed for short-term use (to reproduce our livelihoods), but we cannot do with it what we want. It is important to remember that the concept of possession for use is very different to the dominating conventional property. Possession doesn’t allow for alienation. Property does. And property allows for abuse and commodification, maximum monetization and the “externalization of costs” onto the commons — an ongoing process at the end of which all of us are worse off — even the richer among us who flee to gated communities.

4. The commons perspective is not a digital way of thinking. Its mode is not binary, 0 — 1, either — or. Nor does it focus on bottom lines like a single number of “success.” Our search is for solutions beyond opposite poles and beyond numerical metrics of “success.” It’s not simply private versus public, neither right versus left, cooperation versus competition, “invisible hand” of the market versus the plan of the State, pro-technology versus anti-technology.

From a commons perspective the focus is on the forgotten third element. It deepens our understanding about the commonly owned and the universal principles which work for people and protect their common pool resources. In the commons sector we privilege learning, and it is more about cooperation than about competition. The commons enhances self-determined rules and commonly developed and controlled open technologies instead of proprietary technologies which tend to concentrate power within elites and enable them to control us.

5. Talking about the commons means focusing on diversity. In the words of former Governor Olivio Dutra (Rio Grande do Sul) during the “World Social Forum: 10 Years Later” conference: “[The commons] enables unity within plurality and diversity.” The default but not defensive position is: “One world in which many worlds fit.” Doubtlessly, one of the strengths of this approach lies in the idea that there are no simplistic solutions, no institutional patterns, no “one size fits all” panacea, only universal principles such as reciprocity, cooperation, transparency, respect for diversity and others. Each community has to determine appropriate rules for how to access, use and control a common pool resource system based on such principles. This is complex — as the relationship between nature and society is — especially when we talk about global commons. There, the “community” is the whole of mankind, which refers us to the very necessity of a new multilateralism based on a commons approach.

6. Focusing the commons brings three “big C’s” into a new balance: Cooperation, Command and Competition. There is no cooperation without competition and vice-versa, but in a commons based society the recognition is gained by those who perform best in cooperation and not in competition. The slogan is: Out-cooperate instead of out-compete. The specific rules for cooperation in a commons system vary from setting to setting. Nobody can command them from above. From commons research and practice we learn, that all over the world many commons governance systems are self-regulating, that means: they are creating their own monitoring systems. Or they are self-regulating and coordinate at different institutional levels.

As far as “command” is concerned: Nobel Price laureate Elinor Ostrom advises: “It is better to induce cooperation with institutional arrangements fitted to local ecosystems than to try to command from afar.” At the same time “the systems from above” — governments, law, international bodies — can be critically important in empowering and facilitating the commons. But for doing this, they need a commons perspective inscribed into their logics and polity architecture as well.

7. The commons does not separate the ecological from the social dimension as a Green New Deal focus does. To a certain extend, it may be helpful to make the “economic value” of natural resources visible and it is certainly necessary to internalizes ecological costs of production into the whole production process. But it is not enough. Such a focus does not address the social dimension of the problem, it tends to deepen the market biased structures, linking the solutions with access to money. So who has, can afford the cost-internalization. Who has not, is worse off. Instead: the ecological and the social dimension find a common explanation in the commons. There is no such thing as a solution based on a commons perspective where those who haven’t are worse off.

8. The commons concept integrates different world views: There are attractors for socialist thinking (e. g. the common possession), for anarchists (the self-organisational driven approach), for conservative thinking (which values the protection of the creation), obviously for communitarian and cosmopolitan ideas (integral, diversity driven approach) and even for liberals (distance to state accountability, respect for individual interests and motivations in joining a community or a project). But it is quite clear that the commons cannot be a single political party program. That is its strength, and that is why mainstream political players so often misunderstand the commons or even try to co-opt the commons. If we care for a coherent commons discourse (see #9), they won’t succeed.

9. The benchmark for the integration of different political ideas within a commons paradigm is clear and threefold: (a) sustainable and respectful use of resources (social, natural, and cultural including digital), that means: no overuse and no under-use of common pool resources. (b) Equitable sharing of common pool resources as well as participation in all decision making processes about access, use and control of those resources and© the free development of creativity and individuality of people without sacrificing the collective interest.

10. The commons don’t have one, but many centers. Their governance structures are decentralized and varied as well. In other words: it is characteristic to the commons to be polycentric, which stands for a deeply democratizing approach both politically (principles of decentralization, subsidiarity and sovereignty of commoners and commoners rule making) and economically (the “commons mode of production” point makes us less dependent on money and market).

11. The commons strengthens an important core belief about human beings and behavior. We are not only, not even mainly the “homo oeconomicus” they made us believe we are. We are much more than selfish creatures looking for our own interest. We need and enjoy being embedded into a social web. “The commons are the web of life,” says Vandana Shiva. We enjoy to contribute, care and share. The commons strengthens the confidence in the creative potential of people and in the idea of inter-relationality, which means: “I need the others and the others need me.” They honor our freedom to contribute and share. This is a different kind of freedom than the market is based on. The more we contribute, more things we have access to. But note: it is not simply “access to everything for free.”

12. The commons offers analyzing tools that arise from categories different to those of capitalism, therefore the concept helps to “decolonize our thinking.” (Grzybowski) Commoners redefine “efficiency.” They ask how to “efficiently” cooperate and how to encourage and enable people to do so. They claim for (short term) usage rights to reproduce their livelihoods instead of limitless property. They honor traditional ways to protect the commons as well as traditional knowledge systems.

In short: the commons shed new light on many old political and legal regulatory processes. It makes a big difference whether I see the environment as a commons or as a commodity to trade with. It makes a difference whether water is understood as a commons, that means closely linked to the communities needs, or not. Or take seeds; conceive seed-diversity as a commons, means: harvesting self-determination and food-security. If society would recognize regional diversity of seeds as a commons, the State would put all available resources into independent, organic seed breeding and in protecting small farmers to continue their traditional way of seed-development instead of wasting taxpayers money for genetic manipulation and seed engineering.

13. In the commons sector, there is a great diversity and quantity of actors. Over the past several years, international interest in the commons paradigm has quickened. Several organizations and commoners now have significant transnational constituencies (Creative Commons, Wikipedia, Free Software and Free Culture Movement, sharing platforms, the anti-mining organizations, the alliances working for a Bem-Viver approach, the worldwide movements for sustainable agriculture, the Water Commons, community gardening, citizen communication and information projects and many others). Actually, it is a spontaneous, explosive growth of diverse commons initiatives. Since Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Price in Economics (October 2009) many universities have rediscovered the academic interest in the commons.

14. The commons is an alternative mode of production. The problems we are confronted with are not problems of resource-availability. They are problems that arise from the current mode of production. Fortunately, in some areas, we are witnessing a shift from the capitalist mode of production (based on property, command, value exchange via money, resources and labor exploitation, dependent on growth and striving for profit) into a commons mode of production (based on possession, contribution, sharing, self interest and initiative, where the GDP is a negligible indicator and the aim is a “good life” (bem viver).

Many “Commons-based Peer Production” projects are developing successfully. This is especially true for the production of knowledge (Wikipedia, Free Software, Open Design). But there is a thrilling discussion going on about how principles of commons based peer production can be transferred to the production of what we eat, wear and move with, at least to a certain extent. I believe that this is possible. Firstly because knowledge makes up the lion’s share of each kind of production. All goods are latent knowledge products. There is no car production or egg production without a concept and a design behind (which make the lion’s share of its “market value”).

Secondly because there are many kinds of commons sectors (care economy, solidarity economy) which have not been commodified yet and where commons values and rules are deeply rooted. Those sectors are evidence that every day many of the things we need to live are produced outside the market.

15. The commons discourse is a discourse about cultural change. It is not a mere technological or institutional approach. Instead, it offers a new frame for political and personal thinking and acting.

Why now? Because the moment is ripe for the commons.

1. Given the historical moment of change, the commons are currently being rediscovered in many contexts. Market and state (alone) have failed both in the protection of common pool resources and in satisfying peoples needs. Actually, free market fundamentalism that now prevails is under siege. Its system of economic analysis, public policies and worldview is losing its explanatory value, not to mention public support. More and more people realize that it is not for the market that we enjoy biodiversity, cultural diversity and social networks!

2. New technologies enable new forms of cooperation and the decentralized production of what up to now have been monopolized core technologies of the industrial age. Today, we can relocate even energy or electricity production into the social commons (citizen solar power stations, home-power stations). We can decide which are useful news and information for the community and reproduce them ourselves with “the biggest copy machine” that ever existed: the internet. The ongoing major revolution in production allows for a change of rules. This is a major threat for monopolies.

3. The ongoing processes put the individual in a position to engage in a wider context. A modern commons perspective is not headed “back to the past.” The perspective is not one of mere re-localization, but the horizon is: local, decentralized and horizontal cooperation in distributed networks, so that people can self-enable to create things together, available for them and others — if they want. The aim is to widen the commons sector and commons based production as far as possible and lesser depend on the market.

This is only possible, if the new mode of production is able to solve even complex problems, if it is able to “peer-produces” artifacts even large companies would have difficulties to prepare for logistically, financially and conceptually. And it is! Just think about Wikipedia or an open source car. Maybe we would have developed VIPs (vehicles for individual transportation) based 100% on recyclable materials, which consume only a liter/100km if corporations would not have enclosed technologies and controlled the market. In a world where a commons-mode-of-production is general, there is no more centrer and periphery.

4. There are new legal forms to protect collective use rights and free and/or equitable access to the commons: the General Public License (GPL), ShareAlike licenses, ownership models for natural resources with an built-in mechanism to protect for speculation and avoid over-exploitation, stakeholder trusts on single common pool resources, the acequia water management systems in Mexico or the Johads water management systems in India or the Allemansratten (rights of each person) in countries of Northern Europe. Those are powerful tools we have to learn more about and develop further. It is an area where we need a great deal of creative legal thinking and innovation, and we need respect for the great variety of formal and informal rules to protect the commons worldwide.

5. Last but not least: once you put your nose into the commons, you discover astonishing new things. You connect with hundreds of dynamic communities. You have unexpected insights, you learn about encouraging projects and ideas and you multiply your networks. It’s energizing.

Did you know, that there is an OpenCola project? Or that the biggest lake in New Zealand, Lake Taupo, is full of trout? In the very touristic Taupo region, there is much “pressure on the ressource”, but the trout population continues enjoying the lake because the New Zealanders follow a simple rule: Fish what you need to eat (for doing so, you get a fishing permit from local authorities), but don’t sell the fish. So, you won’t find any trout on the menus of the hundreds of restaurants in the region. Remember: The commons are not for sale.

Or did you know something about open source biology and participatory medicine? Have you heard about the countless local seed banks — especially in the South — and the sheer incredible treasures they care for us? Do you know where the growing international open-access scholarly publishing movement is at in its effort to make sure that we will have free access to what has been publicly funded — knowledge production. Are you aware of the intercultural and the community gardens movement or of the commons regimes used by lobstermen in Maine/USA to prevent over-fishing of lobster? And what to think about the crisis commons, where hundreds of volunteers contribute their expertise and collect information using modern information technologies in support of disaster relief for post-earthquake Haiti?

The commons are something that brings enthusiasm back into political debates. Young people are all ears when they learn about peer-to-peer-production, because that’s what they do. The “ecos” are all ears when they learn about the copyleft principle which enables the viral reproduction of software and content. They learn that “this complicated license stuff” is to defend our freedom for access to knowledge and cultural techniques. That is precisely what they claim for in their field. The “technos” get motivated to use their amazing abilities for helping to manage complex natural resource systems. In other words: The commons widen the horizon, they bring a fresh breeze of non-dogmatic and dynamic collective thinking and practicing along.

The commons are a powerful, self-enabling and self-empowering concept to constantly recreate a dignified life. It is what we need to build a diverse and irresistible movement based on a coherent political and conceptual thinking.

Silke Helfrich
Porto Alegre (RGS), January 28, 2010

An Equal Right to Pollute (and the Polluter-Pays Principle)

In the recent climate talks in Copenhagen, it was no surprise that developing countries objected to taking their feet off the pedal of their own carbon-paced growth; after all, they played little part in building the congested eight-lane highway of a problem that the world faces now.

One smart suggestion I’ve heard, sort of a riff on cap-and-trade, is that each person has an equal right to pollute and that there might somehow be a way to monetize this. By this accounting, your average Ethiopian can sell her underpolluting ways (people in Ethiopia emit about 0.1 ton of carbon a year) to the average American (about 20 tons a year) and use the proceeds to deal with the effects of climate change (like drought), educate her kids and send them to university. (Trust in capitalism — we’ll find a way.) As a mild green, I like the idea, though it’s controversial in militant, khaki-green quarters. And yes, real economists would prefer to tax carbon at the source, but so far the political will is not there. If it were me, I’d close the deal before the rising nations want it backdated.  (link to article)

So progress of sorts where a natural commons and its rightful benficiaries are recognised by a person with a serious stake in the current system.  Full marks.  But sadly Bono does not quite make the moral insightful link to the virtual commons of culture.  In the same piece he pleads for Chinese sytle crackdown on music freeloaders.  We accept that struggling musicians and composers need financial reward but there are better ways that the heavy hand of copyright law.   David Bollier of On the Commons could enlarge his perspective . He writes here and here. The Barcelona Charter for Free Culture launched in November outlines best this approach re struggling artists

We declare our concern for the well-being of artists, researchers, authors or other creative producers. In this Charter we propose a number of possibilities for collectively rewarding creation and innovation. Free/libre and Open Source Software, Wikipedia, and many other examples show that the model of Free culture can sustain innovation and that knowledge monopolies are not necessary to produce knowledge goods. In cultural production, what is sustainable depends to a significant extent on the type of ‘ product’ (the costs of a film for example, are different from those of an online collaborative encyclopedia). Projects and initiatives based on free culture principles use a variety of ways of achieving sustainability beyond the voluntary economy. Some of these forms are consolidated. Some are still experimental. A widespread principle is that of combining several sources of finance. This has the added benefit of guaranteeing independence..

Based on an article in the Der Spiegal.

The Global Innovation Commons is a massive interactive archive of energy-saving technologies whose patents have expired, been abandoned or simply have no protection. The idea is to let entrepreneurs and national governments query the database on a country-by-country basis to identify helpful technologies that are in the public domain. Once identified, these technologies for energy, water and agriculture are prime candidates for being developed at lower costs than patented technologies.

The World Bank is a partner on this project, along with the International Finance Corporation’s infoDev unit. The World Bank has estimated that the technologies in the GIC database could save more than $2 trillion in potential license fees. The Global Innovation Commons essentially seeks to bring the advantages of the open-source software development model — open participation, faster innovation, greater reliability, cheaper costs — to technologies that are claimed to be patented.

Here’s how the Global Information Commons describes the role of patents in impeding innovation — and how the new database helps establish a new open-innovation commons:

For the past 30 years, patents have been abused. Rather than serving the public’s expansion of knowledge, they’ve been used as business and legal weapons. Over 50,000,000 patents covering everything you do have served to keep you from benefiting in many aspects of your life. Many life-saving treatments have been kept from the market because they threaten established business interests. The world’s ecosystem has been severely damaged because efficiencies have been kept from entering the market.

In the face of all this, however, there is the good news: The thirty-year “cold war” of innovation is over. Today, you now have access to it all. In the Global Innovation Commons, we have assembled hundreds of thousands of innovations – most in the form of patents – which are either expired, no-longer maintained (meaning that the fees to keep the patents in force have lapsed), disallowed, or unprotected in most, if not all, relevant markets. This means that, as of right now, you can take a step into a world full of possibilities, not roadblocks. You want clean water for China or Sudan – it’s in here. You want carbon-free energy – it’s in here. You want food production for Asia or South America – it’s in here. (Link to article)

Tragedy of the Commons R.I.P.; hat tip to Jay Walljasper

The biggest roadblock standing in the way of many people’s recognition of the importance of the commons came tumbling down this week when
Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for economics.
Over many decades Ostrom has documented how various communities manage common resources – grazing lands, forests, irrigation waters, fisheries— equitably and sustainably over the long term. The Nobel Committee’s recognition of her work effectively debunks popular theories about the Tragedy of the Commons, which hold that private property is the only effective method to prevent finite resources from being ruined or depleted.

Awarding the world’s most prestigious economics prize to a scholar who champions cooperative behavior greatly boosts the legitimacy of the commons as a framework for solving our social and environmental problems. Ostrom’s work also challenges the current economic orthodoxy that there are few, if any, alternatives to privatization and markets in generating wealth and human well being.

The Tragedy of the Commons refers to a scenario in which commonly held land is inevitably degraded because everyone in a community is allowed to graze livestock there. This parable was popularized by wildlife biologist Garrett Hardin in the late 1960s, and was embraced as a principle by the emerging environmental movement. But Ostrom’s research refutes this abstract concept once-and-for-all with the real ife experience from places like Nepal, Kenya and Guatemala.

“When local users of a forest have a long-term perspective, they are more likely to monitor each other’s use of the land, developing rules for behavior,” she cites as an example. “It is an area that standard market theory does not touch.”

(Garrett Hardin himself later revised his own view, noting that what he described was actually the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.. Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, also winner of a Nobel prize, comments, “Conservatives used the Tragedy of the Commons to argue for property rights, and efficiency was achieved as people were thrown off the commons….What Ostrom has demonstrated is the existence of social control mechanisms that regulate the use of the commons without having to resort to property rights.”

Hence, Smart Taxes favours inter alia, land value taxes to encourage sustainable development and efficient infrastructure investment; Cap/Tax and Share to encourage carbon shift and renewable energy investment; Non-debt money to create the conditions for a steady state economy; Equity/Capital Partnerships to align developer, investors, managers and consumer interests in the construction and ownership of building, energy and infrastructure assets- as well as other evolving policies for resource charging and partial reimbursement of the receipts as a citizens dividend.

But we also claim that these fiscal and monetary mechanisms are based on neglected truths and political imperatives that have been brought into sharp relief by the current financial and environmental crises.  These truths revolve around the concept of ‘the commons’; both natural (as in the atmosphere) and virtual (as in scientific knowledge), their ownership and proper management.

In this regards, Smart Taxes supports the fine work of the legal community in North America that is developing a  legal political framework for ‘the commons’ as outlined their report;- ‘Recalibrating the Law of Humans with the Laws of Nature: Climate Change, Human Rights, and Intergenerational Justice’.  It is particularly relevant now as the Social Partners in Ireland interrogate what measure, if not economic growth aka GDP, should guide future decision-making.   Aspiring to maximise ‘wellbeing’ alone we suggest , is a dangerous criteria that does not pass the time test.  As the Climate Legacy Initiative authors (a joint initiative with The University of Iowa Center for Human Rights) point out..

“The rights of future generations implicate, among other things, a merger of environmental and human rights law. It is a developing field of law that, in the name of intergenerational justice (or equity), requires a balancing of the well-being of future generations with that of present generations when making contemporary societal and environmental decisions. “

The report proposes priciples that are worth printing here in full.

The ten legal principles briefly…, providing for both commons and government activism, can protect the rights of present and future generations to the environmental necessities of life, community, and dignity. This is best understood, we believe, by viewing them together as an interdependent whole, again defining the commons to mean all the creations of nature and society that we inherit jointly and freely and hold in trust for future generations, a constituent ecological commons included.

1. A life-sustaining, community-nourishing, and dignity-enhancing ecological commons is afundamental human right of present and future generations.
2. It is the duty of each generation to pass the commons on to future generations unimpaired by any degradation or depletion that compromises the ability of future generations to secure their rights and needs.
3. The services and infrastructure of the Earth necessary for humans and other living beings to be fully biological and communal creatures shall reside within the domain of the commons.
4. All commoners (the public or a defined community) have rights of access to, and use of, the ecological commons without discrimination unrelated to need. Such rights shall not be alienated or diminished except for the purpose of protecting the commons for future generations.
5. Publicly owned commons belong not to the state but to the commoners (the public
   or a defined community), both present and future, who are entitled to the benefits of
   their commons.
6. It is the responsibility of government to serve as trustee of commons assigned to
   it by law for present and future generations. In fulfillment of this responsibility,
   governments may create new institutions and mechanisms as well as authorize
   responsible parties to manage the commons or resources therein. All actions taken by
   government or its designees must be transparent and accountable to commoners.
7. The precautionary principle is a useful guide for protecting the commons for present
   and future generations.
8. Eminent domain (the “taking” of private property for a public use and subject to
   payment of just compensation) is the principal legal process for moving private
   property into the commons and protecting or enhancing the commons.
9. The market, commerce, and private property owners shall not externalize damage
   or costs onto the commons. If the commons are damaged, the polluter, not the
   commoners, pays.
10. Future generations shall not inherit a financial debt without a corresponding
    commons asset.

The Climate Legacy Initiative is  based in the environmental law centre of the Vermont law School and its report and important supporting documents in the appendixes can be downloaded here.

by Robert Stavins (Guest Contributor @ Gristmill) at 7:51 AM on 04 Mar 2009

….Fifty years of economic analyses have demonstrated that water demand is responsive to price changes, both in the short term, as individuals and firms respond by making do with less, and in the long term, as they adopt more efficient devices in the home and workplace. For example, when Boulder, Colorado moved from unmetered to metered systems, water use dropped by 40 percent on a sustained basis.

But prices are typically set well below the social costs of the water supplies, since historical average costs are employed, rather than true additional (marginal) costs of new supplies. Although water scarcity typically develops gradually across seasons of low rainfall and low accumulations of snow pack, pronounced droughts are usually felt in the summer months of greatest demand. The economically sensible approach is to charge more at these times, but such “seasonal pricing” is practiced by less than 2 percent of utilities across the country.

A reasonable objection to jacking up the price of water is that it would hurt the poor. But we can take a page from the play book of electric utilities who subsidize the first kilowatt-hours of electricity use with very low “life-line rates.” Indeed, the first increment of water use can be made available free of charge. What matters is that the right incentives are provided for higher levels of usage.  Link to full article