Introduction

• Key concepts [1] for a Global Common Wealth:

World History as a Thermodynamic Process and the coming of a Third Global World System. Peter Pogany.

Introduction by James Quilligan: Beyond State Capitalism: The Commons Economy in our Lifetimes. [2]

1. A framework for Local To Global Public Finance
2. Establishing Global Common Goods, a Global Resource Agency and a Commons Reserve Currency
3. The Co-Governance and Co-Production of the Commons through Commons Trusts (i.e. Common Wealth Trusts) on the basis of Social Charters
4. Replacing the scarcity-engineering of neoliberal markets by the abundance engineering of the commons, see the Abundance - Typology and the Wealth Typology
5. The context for policy change: Four Future Scenarios for the Global System, from: GLOBAL MEGACRISIS. A Survey of Four Scenarios on a Pessimism-Optimism Axis. By William Halal and Michael Marien.
6. Mark Whitaker's book, Toward a Bioregional State, proposes a global Bioregional Democracy based on Civic Democratic Institutions and a Commodity Ecology

Citations

Jose Ramos on Cosmo-Localism

"Cosmo-Localization describes the dynamic potentials of the globally distributed knowledge commons in conjunction with emerging capacity for localized production of value. The imperative to create economically and ecologically resilient communities is driving initiatives for ‘re-localization’. Yet, such efforts for re-localization need to be put in the context of new technologies, national policy, transnational knowledge regimes and the wider global knowledge commons."

- Jose Ramos [3]

A.J. Toynbee on the role of Small Scale within Big Scale

“The present day global set of sovereign states is not capable of keeping peace, and it is not capable of saving the biosphere’s non-replaceable natural resources. What has been needed for the last 5,000 years, has become technologically feasible in the last 100, but not yet politically, is a global body politic composed of cells on the scale of the Neolithic-Age village community - a scale on which participants could be personally acquainted with each other, while each of them would also be a citizen of the world state.”

- A.J. Toynbee [4]

Brian Holmes on how market and state failure can lead to a commons resurgence at the global scale

"Minqi Li's claim is that too many formerly peripheral countries -- especially the giants, India and China -- have moved into the position of what the world systems theorists call "semi-peripheral" countries, supplying mid-range or partially elaborated products to the central, high-technology producers. The result is a declining pool of people to exploit, both in terms of labor and resources, and in terms of defenseless markets that must necessarily buy products from the center. When large percentages of the world population have access to at least mid-level producer technology, capital can no longer accumulate at the former centers, whose power declines. The current state of affairs in Western Europe and the US/Canada seems to bear this thesis out.

In such a perspective, the p2p ideas and those of everyone working on p2p and commons approaches become far more pertinent. When the centers of capital accumulation can off the fruits of very high technology to all of those, across the world, who rise into the middle classes, then there is scant likelihood of winning them over to a cooperative approach -- the powers of capitalist seduction are just too strong. Yet in a condition of long-term stagnation, coupled with environmental threats stemming directly and visibly from capital accumulation, alternative proposals may become much more attractive across a flattening global hierarchy."

- Brian Holmes, August 2014

Engage Global, Test Local, Spread Viral

John Boik:

"No matter how promising the design of a new system might be, it would be unreasonable to expect that a nation would abruptly drop an existing system in favor of a new one. Nevertheless, a viable, even attractive strategy exists by which new systems could be successfully researched, developed, tested, and implemented. I call it engage global, test local, spread viral.

Engage global means to engage the global academic community and technical sector, in partnership with other segments of society, in a well-defined R&D program aimed at computer simulation and scientific field testing of new systems and benchmarking of results. In this way, the most profound insights of science can be brought into play.

Test local means to scientifically test new designs at the local (e.g., city or community) level, using volunteers (individuals, businesses, non-profits, etc.) organized as civic clubs. This approach allows testing by relatively small teams, at relatively low cost and risk, in coexistence with existing systems, and without legislative action.

Spread viral means that if a system shows clear benefits in one location (elimination of poverty, for example, more meaningful jobs, or less crime) it would likely spread horizontally, even virally, to other local areas. This approach would create a global network of communities and cities that cooperate in trade, education, the setup of new systems, and other matters. Over time, its impact on all segments of society would grow.

Cities, big and small, are the legs upon which all national systems rest. Already cities and their communities are hubs for innovation. With some further encouragement and support, and the right tools and programs, they could become more resilient and robust, and bigger heroes in the coming great transition." (https://medium.com/@JohnBoik/an-economy-of-meaning-or-bust-2aa46457b649#.1i09j8lv3)

Carl Schmitt on how a world state based on reciprocity would overcome perpetual war

"Were a world state to embrace the entire globe and humanity, then it would be no political entity and could only loosely be called a state. If, in fact, all humanity and the entire world were to become a unifi ed entity . . . [and should] that interest group also want to become cultural, ideological, or otherwise more ambitious, and yet remain strictly nonpolitical, then it would be a neutral consumer or producer co- operative moving between the poles of ethics and economics. It would know neither state nor kingdom nor empire, neither republic nor monarchy, neither aristocracy nor democracy, neither protection nor obedience, and would altogether lose its political character."

- Carl Schmitt, cited by Kojin Karatani, Structure of World History, p. 305

Topics

Global Commons and Participatory International Systems

1. Global Commons and Common Sense. Jorge Buzaglo. real-world economics review, issue no. 51 [5] : policy proposals for a global governance of planetary commons
2. Four Principles and Corollaries of Network Society and the New International Governance. By by Alexander Schellong, Philipp Mueller. [6]
3. Hilary Cottam on Participatory Global Governance Systems: Winter 2010 (Vol.XXXI. No 4) edition of the Harvard International Review. [7]
4. Philipp Mueller on Planetary Public Policy‎ and Open Statecraft
5. Steve Waddell on Global Action Networks
6. Developing the Meta Services for the Eco-Social Economy: on developing a framework for an eco-social economy - includings its arrangements to manage natural commons. Text proposed by Feasta, Ireland. By Brian Davey with the assistance of John Jopling.
7. In his book, Occupy World Street, Ross Jackson proposes the creation of a Gaian League.
8. The Political Economy of Sharing. By Adam Parsons.

Institutional Proposals for Global Governance

• Share The World's Resources
• Concert of Democracies
• Gaian League
• International Simultaneous Policy Organization
• World Future Council

People and Visions

Poor Richard: Framing the discussion in the contect of P2P-driven global governance

Poor Richard:

"Can a hollowed-out, privatized government to effectively cope with the increasing complexity of social and environmental crises such as global warming.

I agree that the failure of government regulation to curb the destructive activity of large corporations is only likely to worsen with the increasing privatization of government and the increasing complexity of global problems. So what can p2p culture do about this?

1. Establish powerful, confederated P2P Guilds and Leagues based on various global commons of knowledge and expertise so that mitigations, adaptations, and other interventions can be crowd-sourced by massively distributed, parallel, and open networks of peers.

2. Establish many strong, self-reliant economies at the local geopolitical (or Eco-political) level by forming partnerships between the P2P guilds and progressive local communities. These partnerships would maximize economies of scope via peer production and would also be strongly confederated with their peers bio-regionally, nationally, and globally.

3. One more maneuver that may be necessary to assist this process I will dub “castling”, a term borrowed from the game of chess. What I mean by this is a shifting of local populations between adjacent local geopolitical jurisdictions (such as cities and counties in the US) so as to create political, social, and economic majorities of p2p culture in the targeted locations.

The resulting strongly confederated p2p cultural strongholds might stand the best chance of competing with the large corporate entities, excluding them from the “castled” commons, and limiting the scope of their environmental destruction." (http://almanac2010.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/guilding-the-lilly/)

Alex Evans

1. Shooting the Rapids: "argues that the key challenge is to join up the dots between the institutions, processes and actors that we have now. Part of this task involves expanding the scope of multilateralism to engage much more intensively with non-state actors"
2. Multilateralism for an Age of Scarcity: paper uses the shared operating system / shared awareness / shared platforms framework (follow-up of Shooting the Rapids)

James Greyson

See: Seven Policy Switches for strategic change on a planetary level

James Quilligan

1. Toward a Commons-based Framework for Global Negotiations
2. People Sharing Resources. Toward a New Multilateralism of the Global Commons. James Bernard Quilligan Kosmos Journal, Fall | Winter 2009: this article frames what a global commons-based policy and governance structure should be.

PM

• In the book, The Power of Neighborhood and the Commons‎, author PM makes the following proposals:

1. Six Modules for the Institutions of the Global Commons‎‎
2. Three Institutional Spheres of Commoning‎

Towards Open Civil Societies

• See the work of Steve Waddell on Global Action Networks

• Nora McKeon: Civil Society and the United Nations: Legitimating Global Governance-Whose Voice. (Zed 2009).

Key Resources

• Don Tapscott’s whitepaper, Global Solution Networks: Understanding the New Multi-Stakeholder Models for Global Cooperation, Problem Solving and Governance, 2012. [8], see: Global Multi-Stakeholder Networks‎‎

Key Articles

James Quilligan

On the overall framework of a Commons and Civil Society oriented global policy and governance framework that insures sustainability:

• James Bernard Quilligan. People Sharing Resources. Toward a New Multilateralism of the Global Commons. Published in Kosmos Journal, Fall | Winter 2009

• James Quilligan on Multilateralism 2.0 and the Role of the State in the Commons

Others

• We Need To Balance our Masculine Global Economy With Feminine Global Governance. John Bunzl.

• Six Mind Changes Necessary To Achieve Global Community Policies.

Key Books

• George Monbiot "has written 'The Age of Consent' which calls for a new political movement to democratize existing global institutions." [9]

• The philosopher Peter Singer has written 'One World' which examines the ethics of globalization. [10]

• Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have argued that we are creating a new order of supranational organization in 'Empire'. [11]

John Bunzl

Books by John Bunzl, the founder of Simpol, the International Simultaneous Policy Organization.

• Global Domestic Politics – A Citizen’s Guide to Running a Diverse Planet. By John Bunzl.

Amazon

• People-Centred Global Governance - Making it Happen!, by John Bunzl. [12] ; download

Others

• Divided Nations. by Ian Goldin