A form of property.

We may view commons as a common-pool resources. In the OVN tradition we use a more restrictive definition of the commons: organized pool of shared valuables that are immaterial, and can be tangible (open source software or hardware designs) or intangible (knowledge, social, cultural..) - digital commons. See distinction below between commons and pool of shareables below.

All valuable things in the commons must have the property of being sharable, i.e. accessible to more than one individual, with possible access or use restrictions set by the community, not inherent to the thing itself. The commons is there to be utilized in economic processes. For example, open source licenses set the rules of use, for example some forbidding commercial use. Thus commons is a class of assets that require a specific type of governance.

An OVN is generally conceived as a commons-based peer production network, with some community aspects.

Distinctions

In the OVN tradition, commons is distinct from a common-pool resources and a pool of shareables, which both contain tangible material resources (space, tools and equipment, consumable materials, ...) that can be degraded (for usables) or depleted (consumables) in use. Usables require maintenance, i.e. have costs associated with use. Consumables need to be replenished. Items from the commons (software, designs, manuals, etc.) are immaterial and cannot be warned-out or depleted by their access/use, on the contrary, their access/use is generative (using it can increase it). The tragedy of the commons was in fact a tragedy of common-pool resources, which are material.

All valuable things in the commons must have the property of being shareable, i.e. accessible to more than one individuals, with access restrictions set by the community, not inherent to the thing itself. The commons is there to be utilized in processes, in infrastructure and community development, including replenishing/maintaining the commons itself.

Commons are non-rival, elements of pools of shareables and common-pool resources are rivalrous.

The difference between pools of shareables and common-pool resources is that the former is a collection of material resources under various property regimes shared across a network/community, using rules that are specific to every item, or to every category of items, depending on their respecting property regime. For example, someone can put a personal drill in a pools of shareables, i.e. make it available for use by others while maintaining ownership, for a limited duration, under specific terms of access/use that are decided by the owner. Resources in a common-pool resources are not owned by individuals in the traditional sense and are governed by a generic set of rules that apply to all items, with specific rules that relate to the properties of items. For example, the rule can say that everyone has access under certain conditions, but for costly equipment for example, one needs to present credentials that pertain to safe and secure use, or one needs to contribute to maintenance.

Key elements of commons

See Wikipedia definition

resources
- depletable (material...) we call these shareables
- replenishable (social, cultural, intellectual...)
community
- producers
- managers
- providers
- users
boundaries
- extent of the resource
- community membership
rules
- preservation
- access
- use
- governance
- production
value
- gifts of nature
- capacities and culture of the past
- collective capacity of today

An OVN needs a commons with at least one separation: a portion that can be shared with the entire world, and another portion with restrictions for non-(active) affiliates. Tacit (non-formalizable knowledge) group knowledge is naturally part of the inner-commons, and is a determinant factor in the all open innovation game. The brand and logo of the OVN is part of the inner-commons, with access restricted ONLY to active affiliates. The knowledge developed by the OVN can also be part of the general commons. Some of technical documents are not public, but access to them requires only a formal request (register as an affiliate or at least an observer of the OVN - see Sensorica's organizational structure).

Using the commons doesn't incur use-costs.

Social capital, as a valuable, cannot be shared since it belongs to one particular individual, even though it can be transferred into tangible benefits for the entire network. But because it is not shareable it cannot be part of the commons. We can formulate a similar thought for reputation.

True commons

Proposed by Tibi in early 2023, during work with hREA, Valueflows and Kendraio

Hearing the term ‘digital commons’ we assume it refers to assets shared-by-default, portable and uncapturable, allowing anyone, regardless of organisational affiliation, to further contribute to their development, fork and remix. The present technical reality, though, has these shared digital assets stored on platforms like Github for software, or Thingiverse for hardware designs, where they are subject to the platform’s rules and limitations and are not very portable. Another major issue that plagues CBPP is the proliferation of random copies of files representing digital assets, which hinders practical collaboration.

By tracking content, in particular complex 3D models and the economic activity data, using Valueflows we generate incentives for collaboration around canonical resources, similar to how collaboration is structured on Github.

These new types of digital assets will be able to exist as standalone entities on a serverless infrastructure, with the following basic features:
Shared-by-default
Permissionless (anyone can access unencumbered)
Rules driven (govern interactions with it, including modification)
Unenclosable / uncapturable
Hard to clone

Commons economics

Via Michel Bauwens, Substack article.

Commons Economics are Biophysical NOT BASED ON ABSTRACT PRICING
Commons Economics are based on Abundance Design or Engineering NOT SCARCITY ENGINEERING
Commons Economics are centered around Contributions and Impact, NOT MERELY ON THE FLOW OF COMMODITIES
Commons Economics Recognizes the Commons as a Central Human Institution, NOT THE MARKET NOR THE STATE
Commons Economics are based on Open Collaborative Ecosystems NOT ON CLOSED COMPETITIVE ENTITIES
Commons Economics has a steady-state temporality, it is ‘Post-Growth’, NOT ORIENTED TOWARDS INFINITE MATERIAL GROWTH
Commons Economics requires a direct focus on the common good, i.e. it is purpose-driven, mission-oriented; i.e. pre-distributive, NOT RE-DISTRIBUTIVE
Commons Economics are relational, NOT INDIVIDUALIST OR COLLECTIVIST

   Commons Economics are Biophysical

Commons-Economics is based on recognizing the biophysical limits of the Earth. According to Peter Pogany for example, the Earth system is an Isolated System, it receives energy from the outside, but almost no matter (Pogany 2013). This means that earthly resources are limited and subject to thermo-dynamic decay (i.e. what is called entropy). Creating more order locally in one place, increases the disorder around that locality. But even if we practice circular economics, re-used matter will have lesser and lesser qualities, and no bio-circularity is 100 per cent; matter therefore inevitably degrades through usage. This means that such scarce resources must be managed wisely with a long-term perspective.

   Commons Economics are based on  Abundance Design or Engineering

Some resources are scarce, and can be depleted; other resources take a very long time to be produced by natural forces, such as petroleum, but are used on much shorter time scales by humanity. Other resources are available abundantly, like sunshine, while others still are renewable, for example, regrowing every season. The aim of a commons-based economics is to recognize these distinctions, and to favor natural abundance and renewability over resources that are subjected to overuse and terminal decline. This means working the regenerative forces of nature. As Giorgos Kallis (2019) writes in his seminal book Limits, “self-limitation for sharing a limited resource” is at the heart of commoning, whereby “users come together to devise collective systems that limit their use of a common resource, given the consequences of not doing so” (Kallis 2019).

   Commons Economics are Contributory

Before the seventeenth century, mainstream economic opinion was that value derived from the surplus of the land, and the rent of the land was managed by owners of the land. However, as industrialization proceeded, the mainstream vision moved to the position that human labor, and the ability to generate a surplus from it, created value. Value was created by the production and profit was realized through the sales of commodities. But with the advent of digital networks and the capacity to create vast commons of knowledge, software and designs through digitally facilitated common production, value is seen, in new ways by respectively the ‘netarchical capitalists’ vs the peer production communities.

To understand the value practices of the platform owners, the scenario of 'techno-feudalism', as proposed by Yanis Varoufakis and others, describes the new role of the tech platforms and platform capitalism: since producers and consumers increasingly need to access platforms to buy and sell, even capitalist producers become 'serfs' of the platforms that hold power over them (Varoufakis 2023). This power dependency allows platforms to extract rent, just as the feudal system did, and not profit derived from commodity production. In contrast, for the people engaged in true commons-based peer production, value is interpreted as deriving from the contributions to the common. Every contribution to the commons is visible and acknowledged, and forms the basis for any further valorization by added-value creating entrepreneurs. The P2P Value research project (P2P Foundation 2023), has demonstrated the emergence of contributory accounting practices in such ‘peer production’ communities, which creates the basis for the development of an entrepreneurial community around these commons, on which they are codependent. Value is therefore a function of contribution, and negative impacts are contributions that deplete value. Commons economics therefore moves to a new value model.

   Commons Economics Recognises the Commons as a Central Human Institution

Commons are not just voluntary practice, they are also institutions, i.e. a set of formalized practices that persist over long periods of time. Markets and states which emerged five thousand years ago, replaced kin-ship based tribal forms, which were largely based on gift economy logics and commoning[i] (Fiske 1993; Karatani 2014). But both markets and states are ‘extractive’ institutions, which require conquest or growth to sustain themselves. Historically, they have been subject to ascending and descending phases. In descending phases, when states and markets of a particular society increasingly fail to service the demands and needs of a local population, local communities tend to strengthen, or even create, new forms of commoning and their related institutions. These commons are designed to protect the productive capacity of the local environment for many generations to come, and the work of Elinor Ostrom has shown the long-term success of commons institutions. In the past, in the ascending phase of societies and civilizations, the market and state institutions were ascending and dominant, while depleting the local resources in their competitive endeavors, while in the descending phase, local populations would revive and regenerate their commons. But we now have a very specific problem: nation-states systems are dominated by transnational finance, and severely hindered in their capacity to reform and transform their national economies, and purely local responses are inadequate on their own.

What is necessary is to develop translocal and transnational productive and civic based commons institutions, that have sufficient power to protect human and non-human communities, the web of life, as well as the long-term viability of the global resource base. In this situation, translocal commons institutions have to become a dominant part of the system, powerful enough to regulate market and state forces in such a way that they cannot overuse the planetary resources at every scale. This requires a commons-centric society and civilizational model.

We can see transitional public policy models exemplifying a beginning of this shift, which requires a new recognition of the commons as a legal and institutional reality. We call this model the ‘partner state’ model, as, unlike in the welfare state model which sees the citizen as a recipient or client of services provided and managed by the state, here we see the creation of ‘enabling’ and ‘empowering’ practices, in which the public authorities are seen as a partner in a support network for relatively autonomous commons projects.

   Commons Economics is based on Open Collaborative

This principle refers to the shift in economic management from competing and ‘isolated’ firms, using impact-blind double entry financial accounting, to participation in open ecosystems reflected in common accounting visible to the whole network, and which integrate impacts and contributions by network participants and external entities.

Indeed, firms are profit-maximizing entities that are supposed to engage in universal competition; and capitalist accounting only sees resources and money coming in and out of an isolated economic entity, obscuring any and all ecosystems, and the so-called externalities. Though economics has evolved and enriched itself with many other approaches, it remains an important core of its world-vision. The competition of closed and discrete entities remains primary. All these axioms and practices are very far removed from the complex richness of individuals, communities and societies, which are always connected to each other and nature, and need a mix of competition and cooperation to survive. Humans and collective human entities are always already relational and part of societies. Competing collective organisms require a high level of cooperation in order to maintain themselves. At most, corporate capitalism sees itself from a ‘sports’ paradigm, in which people cooperate inside corporations, while they compete against each other; meanwhile nations see themselves as being in a similar situation.

What commons-based peer production brings to the fore is that they are open collaborative ecosystems, that individuals or collective entities can freely join or leave, and are able to contribute without asking for permissions. All the individuals and collective entities contribute to their common resource. Thus, we see a world emerging that consists of global-local open design depositories, such as Github, with a globally coordinated cyber-physical infrastructure at the service of all the contributors. It is not possible to imagine solutions to global problems when competing nation-states are conducting win-lose games over scarce resources. This is why commons economics focuses not primarily on competition, but on the capacity for cooperation.

   Commons Economics requires a direct focus on the common good

The common good refers not just to the addition of all individual interests and utilities, but to interests and utilities that benefit the ‘whole’ system in which the agents participate. A contrario, market ideology believes that if every market player works for its own interest, that this creates the maximum amount of wealth creation, which can then eventually be redistributed through the state. In this vision, the common good is not seen as inherent, but derivative. But the commons are designed structurally to benefit its members and contributors directly, i.e. the common good is part of the structure and practice itself. Commons institutions by contrast are also based on the relationality present in the community, in which every contributor is not only working for themselves as isolated individuals, but improves a common resource that benefits everyone with access to that resource. In contrast with the market function, commons contributors directly produce for use value of the ‘totality’ of their commons, producing the common good from within the practice itself. Commoners contribute directly to the whole of the project, and every contributor benefits from it, and in the case of digital commons, everyone can benefit from it as a non-rival good.

   Commons Economics has a steady-state temporality

Societal and civilizational entities have always been subjected to cycles, going through ascending and descending phases before reaching collapse or chaotic transformations, Extractive institutions serially exhausted their core territories and the dynamic regeneration of societies often occurred in different places. There was always an ‘escape’ from overshoot. But with global overshoot, that opportunity no longer exists, and the very cycle leading to overuse has to be overcome. This means that under planetary realities, societies have to ‘escape’ this cycle, and must learn to function permanently within ecological logics. For example, “Japan’s Tokugawa period, between 1600 and 1868, was one of relative peace, prosperity and strikingly unusual population stability. From a carrying capacity perspective, this period highlights one potential ideal; reflecting a societal system that was both resource self-sufficient and well aware of its population limits” (Lane 2014:71).

   Commons Economics are relational

There is a long tradition, for example in the economic views inspired by the Christian tradition in medieval Europe, to recognize that human wealth and happiness is primarily based on relational wealth. A contrario, neoclassical economics is based on the isolated Homo Economicus as an individual who expresses his desires and goes about his life in utilitarian ways, with competing entities offering supply to these demands. Commons relationality is different. Alan Page Fiske in his Structures of Social Life (Fiske 1993) distinguished for ways of relating which are also ways of allocating value. In capitalism, prices are the mechanism for guiding choices and behavior, this Fiske calls Market Pricing. Authority Ranking is the mechanism for allocating according to status, either by birth as in the feudal mode, or through meritocratic selection. Equality Ranking is what is known as the gift economy, whereby individuals or groups give to others, creating a need to re-gift. But commons are yet different: in this context, individuals contribute to a group, and create a valuable common resource, which in turn unlocks access to resources. So commons economics are based on the relational logic of Communal Shareholding, through practices of commoning that create joint value.

External links

A conversation on the commons

The Commons and why we need to Occupy them - James Quilligan

Commons category on p2pfoundation

Also shared by Helene Finidori on Next Edge, from one of her posts:

"The commons can be described in many different ways and along various dimension. It is at the same time object, process and result operating at various levels and scales, from the most global -the whole system, to various nested or fractal 'local' levels -the parts.

As objects, the commons embody the Common Wealth, the 'Assets' that are inherited or created, shared in common, and serve a livelihood (natural, social & cultural resources, genetic and biologic diversity, knowledge, etc), that people can take care of, nurture, replenish, grow.
As a process, the commons embody the Common Ethos, a Culture, the ways of being and doing in common that epitomizes in commoning (caring, sharing, nurturing, governing the assets in relationship with others with empathy, equity, justice, mindfulness...)
As a Result, the commons embody the Common Good, the outcome of the process (well being, quality of life, prosperity, abundance) which is the life blood of the process and a condition for the growth of the assets.

The commons is both an input to the dynamic interactions between people and their contexts, and an output thereof. All these dimensions need each other for the world to thrive. For progress to materialize, output must be greater than input. Commons in all their diversity and all the types of value they create must grow. And ideally each of our sustainability initiatives is actually would be geared to grow a part of it."

Commons

Contents

Distinctions

Key elements of commons

True commons

Commons economics

External links

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