archive/dissertation

The most ambitious commons-inspired project to date, the Ecuadoran government’s “Free, Libre, Open Knowledge” program, or FLOK, seeks to transform the entire nation from its current extractive, oil-based economy to one based on a protected commons of both real and digital resources. Under these policies (still in development), intellectual property would be considered part of the commons. This would lead to the creation of hyperlocal factories, schools, and labs, freed from the constraints of licensing fees. So the thinking goes, this would then allow companies to operate with greater fairness, efficiency, and sustainability. The FLOK project originates with a specific set of Latin-American socioeconomic concerns. Foremost among these is “biopiracy,” the practice of industrial agricultural companies such as Monsanto, which patent organic technology developed over centuries by local and indigenous farmers. Here in the United States, we can find an analogue in the practice of tech giants such as Apple or Google, that rely on the open-source commons for many of their products’ architectures, profiting without paying back into the digital commons. In response to these challenges, FLOK proposes the development of peer-production licenses under which only commoners, cooperatives, and nonprofits would enjoy free usage of intellectual property bounded by the commons; corporations would have to pay.

At first glance, the so-called “sharing economy” appears to be based in these commons principles. At least in some superficial way, this is true. We have gone from buying music on records or CDs to downloading MP3 files to simply subscribing to Pandora or Spotify. Owning music—or a car, for that matter—is becoming less important than having access to it. This is certainly a step on the path from hoarding to sharing. Except the many sharing platforms and services are not sharing at all but renting. We don’t collectively own the vehicles of Zipcar any more than we collectively own Spotify’s catalogue of music. And as private companies induce us to become sharers, we contribute our own cars, creativity, and couches to a sharing economy that is more extractive than it is circulatory. Our investments of time, place, and materials are exploited by those who have invested money and actually own the platforms.

[...] yes, some of us might find ingenious engineering solutions to resist insidious marketing, but in all this celebration of modern technology, shouldn’t we also do something about the marketing itself? Why force consumers to monitor themselves and hone their willpower techniques if we can make it harder for food companies to sell unhealthy food or target children? Instead, political action all but disappears; rather than reforming the system, we just tinker with ourselves and tend to our reservoirs of willpower the way Swiss bankers tend to their vaults.

[...] this is the way I want us to consider Wal- Mart, however briefly: namely, as a thought experiment—not, after Lenin’s crude but practical fashion, as an institution faced with which (after the revolution) we can “lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus,” but rather as what Raymond Williams called the emergent, as opposed to the residual—the shape of a Utopian future looming through the mist, which we must seize as an opportunity to exercise the Utopian imagination more fully, rather than an occasion for moralizing judgments or regressive nostalgia.

WTF? Without owning a single room, Airbnb has more rooms on offer than some of the largest hotel groups in the world. Airbnb has under 3,000 employees, while Hilton has 152,000. New forms of corporate organization are outcompeting businesses based on best practices that we’ve followed for the lifetimes of most business leaders.