David Bollier on The Commons

Interview here, with podcast and transcript. He briefly describes it as "the commons was a great way to describe how things get done outside of the market and the state, meaning through self-organized activities and self-governance to manage projects that create things of value." He goes on:

"I realized that the commons had great potential as an alternative political vision that is not some unified movement or ideology, like in the past, but something that is locally distributed and grounded in things that people love and want to protect. So, the commons is about sharing those things that belong to all of us that we want to protect in our ability to manage them for our purposes."


"We’re talking about a different mental register of paradigm for understanding the world. For so long, we’ve had this presumption of fiction that the homo economicus, the utility maximizing individual, is the chief agent in the way to see the world. The commons says there is a different way to see humanity—not simply as a notional ideal, but as a practical operational system and there’s countless examples out there."