The following article was featured in the February
2006 issue of Vermont Commons.
From Common Wealth to Common Property
by Peter Barnes
We all know what private wealth is, even if we don’t own
much. It’s property we inherit or accumulate individually,
including our fractional claims on corporations and mutual funds.
When President Bush speaks of an "Ownership Society," it’s
this kind of wealth he has in mind.
But there’s another trove of wealth that’s not so
well-known: our common wealth. Each of us is the joint recipient
of a vast inheritance. This shared inheritance includes air and
water, habitats and ecosystems, languages and cultures, science
and technologies, social and political systems, and quite a bit
more. Though the value of these manifold gifts is hard to calculate,
it’s safe to say they’re worth trillions of dollars.
Indeed, according to Friends
of the Commons, their aggregate value probably exceeds that
of everything we own privately.
There is, of course, a qualitative difference between private
and common wealth. Private wealth is normally propertized, common
wealth is generally not. You can sell shares of private stock
and walk away with cash; you can’t do that with shares
of sky. We humans have a long tradition of enjoying gifts of
nature and society without legally owning them.
It would be sad to end that, or any other good tradition. But
in some cases, end it we must, for the following reason: much
unowned common wealth is in grave danger. It’s in danger
both of physical destruction and of enclosure by private corporations
(with the latter often leading to the former). Unowned air gets
polluted; unowned genes get patented. Because of capital’s
ceaseless quest to grow, anything valuable that isn’t legally
nailed down will sooner or later be grabbed or consumed.
We could rely on government to protect our common wealth,
but as I wrote a few days ago, that would be to misplace our
trust. Government is, most of the time, the handmaiden of profit-maximizing,
cost-externalizing capital. Far better, when we have a chance,
to lock up common wealth as common property, to be passed on,
undiminished, from one generation to the next.
What are the advantages of doing this? Property rights are powerful
human inventions. In essence, they’re social agreements
to grant certain people (owners) enforceable privileges. Once
established, they’re constitutionally protected and very
difficult to take away. If private owners use property rights
to protect their wealth, why shouldn’t we as common owners
do so too?
Because property rights are so powerful, it’s largely
through them that economies are shaped. Feudal econmies were
based on large estates passed from lords to their eldest sons,
alongside commons that sustained the commoners. As capitalism
emerged, the commons were enclosed and a slew of new property
rights were concocted, almost all designed to confer some advantage
on capital owners.
Common property — as distinct from common wealth, and
from individual or government property — has a long though
little-known history. Frequently it is property owned by a community — a
tribe, a village, a people. Individual rights to share in the
property depend on membership. If you’re born into the
community, your share is a birthright. Conversely, if you leave
the community or die, you lose your rights. Shares aren’t
saleable to strangers as they are with corporate stock.
Common property is normally managed as a unit on behalf of the
whole community. Typically also, future as well as living generations
are taken into account by the managers. A classic case is the
medieval common pasture; its survival for centuries, contrary
to the ‘tragedy’ myth, is the ultimate example of
sustainable management.
What forms might common property take today? The answer, as
you might expect, is varied: conservation
easements and outright ownership by land trusts, birthrights
to property income (á la the Alaska
Permanent Fund), "copylefts" that allow non-commercial
reproduction (á la Creative
Commons licenses), open access and "common
carrier" guarantees, pollution permits, "time
dollars" and more. Some of these rights would be tradable,
others wouldn’t. Management of the rights would be placed
in the hands of trusts, non-profit corporations and hybrid entities
of various sorts. Managers would be driven not by profit-maximization,
but by community-based criteria. I’d nominate four to the
top: (1) preserve common assets, such as gifts of nature, for
future generations; (2) live off income from shared gifts, not
principal; (3) distribute income from shared gifts on a one person,
one share basis; and (4) the more the merrier.
Such common property rights would represent the "we" side
of the human psyche, just as private property rights represent
our "me" side. Both sides, I’d argue, need representation
in our economy more or less equally. Common property rights would
also manifest our connection to ecosystems, future generations
and non-human species, crucial interests that, at present, have
no traction in the marketplace.
While the main reason we need common property is to save the
planet, there’d be ancillary benefits as well. These include
non-labor income for all, a more vibrant culture and a less distorted
democracy. These benefits would arise because well-managed common
wealth adds to well-being in ways private property can’t.
The bottom line is this: a true Ownership Society would protect
both our private and our common wealth. George Bush isn’t
likely to build it, but over time, we can.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Peter Barnes is an entrepreneur and writer whose most recent
book, Who Owns The Sky?, addresses climate change from
a commons perspective. He co-founded Working Assets Long Distance
and several other socially responsible businesses. Currently
Peter is writing a book entitled Capitalism 3.0: Enriching
Ourselves By Enhancing Our Commons, to be published in 2006
by Berrett-Koehler. He lives in Point Reyes Station, California,
where he is a senior fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute. (www.onthecommons.org)
