Category:Commons Economics

• See: Introduction to the P2P Foundation Wiki Material about Commons Economics ; and: Quotes on Commons Economics

Commons Economics is, simply, economics that involves what we understand as Commons in one way or another. This has been a much neglected aspect of economics as taught in traditional business schools, which are often based on the assumptions of a capitalist economic system, and tends to ignore Commons, perhaps because they cannot be bought or sold. In contrast to neoclassical and neoliberal economics, Commons Economics doesn't start with the scarcity paradigm, but with maintaining and growing abundance through mutualization and sharing resources, and it looks systematically for win-win strategies.

To understand this, see:

1. Abundance Logic vs Scarcity Logic
2. Abundance and the Generative Logic of the Commons, a text by Roberto Verzola

Much of this material was originally brought together for a conference in Berlin in 2013, called ECC2013, the Economics of the Commons Conference.

Key Concepts of This Category

One key distinction is between digital commons and material commons. Much has been written about digital commons and the related economics. Digital, or intellectual, goods are by nature non-rival, and whether they are 'excludable' depends on Intellectual Property law. The commons movement is promoting various licenses to facilitate the sharing of knowledge, see for example: the Creative Commons licences; Copyleft, Copyfarleft and Copyfair.

An important distinction is between Rival vs Non Rival Goods (alternatively, "rivalrous").

At the P2P Foundation, we see an evolution from the original natural resource commons, as described by Elinor Ostrom, to digital and knowledge commons, via urban commons that mutualize shared resources for urban citizens, and towards an emergent productive commons, which we call Cosmo-Localism or Cosmo-Localization. See our summary at: History and Evolution of the Commons.

Like the P2P Foundation, some authors see Commons Economics as some kind of evolutionary development forward from capitalist economics, towards post-capitalist economics. Among these, notably, is Kojin Karatani, spelling out the Evolution of the Modes of Exchange.

In practical terms, we see this expressing itself in the need for Cosmo-Localization, i.e. a model of collaborative production that combines the subsidiarity of material production (pragmatic localization), ecological sustainability (producing within planetary boundaries), and social equity.

See for example, the emerging model of Multifactory Models for the Community Economy.

The three characteristics of Library Socialism, another name for Commons-Based Economics are:

1. Complementarity
2. Irreducible Minimum
3. Usufruct

Useful learning resources

Introductory

• Rival vs Non Rival Goods ((see also: Wikipedia: Rivalry (economics)).
• Wikipedia has a useful page on digital commons economics - Wikipedia: Digital commons (economics).
• Our overview page on Abundance-related material
• Our page on Commons explains commons concepts more generally.
• The page Common Pool Resource goes into more detail about resources in a commons economy.

Deeper Study

• Common as a Mode of Production by Carlo Vercellone
• Five Framing Conditions for a Commons-Oriented Economy
• The 'Circulation of the Common' = Analytical concept proposed by Nick Dyer-Witheford in a landmark essay of the same title.. It refers to the social reproduction mechanism of Peer Production, in a process analogous with the Circulation of Capital described by Marx.
• Whitepaper: From Monocapitalism to Multicapitalism: 21st Century System Value Creation. By Bill Baue. R3.0, 2020

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Material by the P2P Foundation

• Value in the Commons Economy: report by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Niaros
• P2P Accounting for Planetary Survival describes the infrastructure we will need for developing commons economics
• Introduction to Commons Economics

Visualization

Source: The Big Sustainability Illusion

"to-do-list that data & information needs to contribute to:"

Related Categories

• Category: IP stands for Intellectual Property. Category: Free Software is a means to produce freely shareable software, and is enabled by different P2P Licences - see our Category: Licensing

• What pricing is for the market, and planning is for state-driven economies, so is mutual coordination for commons economics, see: Category: Mutual Coordination

• Category: P2P Accounting tells us how to account for value in contribution-based systems