We begin with a new way of looking at things/entities/substances/instances/concepts etc.
We begin by categorising everything, I mean everything – from sub-atomic particles to galaxies to fleeting thoughts and complicated concepts – according to two binary factors. Mutability and regenerative-ness / replaceability.
Mutability is binary, with a sub-clause. Mutable means prone to change, and immutable means unable to be changed. These aren’t quite binary because in the middle are things not prone to change but able to be changed.
- Gold cannot be destroyed, but can be dissolved, where it loses its primary uses.
- Diamonds can be burned and they become coal.
- A mountain can be destroyed with enough time and explosives.
So we need to be careful with this definition, and introduce the concept of care. Gold, diamonds and mountains are immutable as long as we care for them – which is the opposite of purposefully destroying. Mutable is M and immutable / non-mutable is NM.
Regenerative / non-regenerative. Or replaceable / irreplaceable. We need a word that covers both…
This is not about whether something can be reproduced/regenerated, because being a precise copy does not matter, as long as the function remains the same. Yet replaceable lacks the notion of being able to regenerate an exact copy, if that is what is needed, for example a poem, once it is gone.
The idea is – if we lose the thing, the instance, is it a tragedy, or can we replace it with something functionally the same? Replaceable / regenerative is R. The opposite, as in non-regenerative, is NR.
The universe – physical, imagined and in-between – can be categorised in 4 ways:
NM+R
Diamonds are an example, and a good example of how categorising something can change with time and technology. A diamond is famously immutable, yet it needs care (we can turn it into coal). And it is replaceable – we can these days create an artificial diamond.
NM+NR
Gold is also immutable (with care), but as alchemists have discovered, we cannot replace it. Well, not yet anyway.
M+R
Water is mutable and regenerative. We could make it, and it recycles itself well. Carrots are also mutable and regenerative. They will rot, we can eat them, yet it is easy to grow more back. We don’t need that same carrot in our lives, any will do.
A Picasso is M+R. Without care, the painting will eventually fall apart. But, for its functionality, a forgery or print will have the same use – it is replaceable.
M+NR
This is where we get to the commons, and where care matters a lot. A volcano is, by definition, mutable. It is likely to blow itself up, to some degree. And we cannot recreate a volcano – to this day we haven’t even built another massive stone pyramid. But we can destroy a volcano, with explosives and time. We need care (in terms of being the opposite of wanton destruction) to keep it extant for a while.
But, considering nobody has every destroyed a volcano, and nobody is planning to, it is not part of the commons. It doesn’t need our protection at present.
A good M+NR example that qualifies for the commons is a person. In our society, people need care (even if it is self-care), and individuals cannot be replaced (not even with clones).
Language is mutable and non-regenerative. Languages easily disappear from lack of use, and then they could be gone forever. It is M+NR and it needs care, so it belongs to the commons.
Care
Care is what decides which M+NR instance belongs to the common or not. Does it need our care (or restraint from wanton destruction) in the real world (not conceptually) to continue in its current form, value and usefulness? If yes, it is in the commons.
Replaceable vs irreplaceable
If I am at a supermarket and choose to buy a 10cm long carrot instead of the 11cm long carrot next to it, the world will carry on in the same way. While they are different carrots with different attributes, whichever one is chosen makes no difference.
Whereas Einstein’s parents could have each had children with someone else instead. The result would still be humans with different attributes, yet the particular one called Einstein made a difference.
We Already Have Digital Examples
You may have heard of the Creative Commons. It is a modern version of the commons concept, but applied to the digital realm and copyright.
Creative Commons have a variety of licenses, and the one that fits our purposes best is:
CC BY-NC-SA: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.
What this means, for the wider commons, is that nobody can own anything in the commons, and nobody can profit from ownership. You may recreate the original in a new form, as long as you acknowledge the original, the original is unharmed, and any new version continues with the same obligations.
For creatives, this license means that the art/software can be enjoyed without cost. For the wider common, this means enjoyed, without cost, as long as no harm is done, because non-digital instances can be irreplaceable.
For example a lake. It is owned by the local community, and the wider society/country, and also the whole world, to varying degrees. But rather than owned, we should say looked after by custodians, and we have a right to use it.
Nobody can profit from owning the lake, but it is looked after and qualified people can use the lake as part of their enterprise, so long as no harm comes to it. Anyone is welcome to create their own lake, but the original lake(s) must be acknowledged and the same rules apply.
And a lake cannot be harmed. Unless you are going to harm a lake, and then create another in its place, in the same place, that is exactly the same, with all of the plants and creatures and microbes exactly the same as before.
The Commons Formula
There are a gazzilion things/instances out there and I am concerned that simplistic rules won’t cover everything, so that is a challenge and remains to be seen.
To belong to the commons, a thing / concept / instance / entity / substance needs:
To be mutable – it will degrade/lose function/disappear naturally, or through lack of care from humans, or through wilful harm from humans.
To be irreplaceable – creating another of it, that has the same qualities, value and usefulness, is not possible today.
To require care – a volcano is mutable and irreplaceable but we cannot care for it. A library – think of the Library of Alexandria – needs our care.
The License
The ancient concept of the physical commons can be merged with the modern concept of the creative commons:
- Anything in the commons (mutable, irreplaceable, needs care) is in the custody of all humans.
- The custodians should be primarily, but not necessarily, local and invested. Some things/instances are global in nature and should be taken care of globally.
- Anything in the commons can be enjoyed or used by any humans, subject to permission from the custodians, according to the rules of the custodians, and as long as the thing/instance is not changed in any meaningful or permanent way.
- Nothing in the commons can be owned.
- Anything in the commons can be reproduced exactly, or reproduced and modified, but the same license applies. The original remains as it was.
A List of Common Instances
Nature: air, water, DNA, endangered species
Community: playgrounds, libraries, accounting standards, money
Culture: language, religion, jazz, open source software
Who Is In Charge?
For common instance there should be a controlling body, and for each instance how that is determined and organised could be different. Ideally there is a mix of stakeholders involved, and that includes commercial enterprises at least being able to put their cases forward.
However, it would be good to have a meta-supervisor, an independent body with government funding and oversight, that makes sure that every common instance is appropriately looked after. This body can include arbitrators, data collection, investigations into which instances are not looked after (there will be a never-ending list of instances to keep them busy), and a think-tank looking into new ways of looking after the commons.
At the top layer, a statement regarding the commons should be in the national constitution, or equivalent, so courts have something legal to base decisions on.
Care Costs Money
Without a doubt, commercial enterprises cannot touch existing commons unless they enhance or improve it in some way. Or at a minimum, cause zero harm.
As we identified, the key to inclusion in the commons is the care factor. Either the instance needs care to maintain it, or care to protect it. This brings up the question of what to do when that care becomes too expensive? The answer is that a lack of money is never an excuse. Followers of the Modern Monetary Theory know that more money can be printed to provide government jobs, and that should be the case here. A lack of care because of monetary restraints is not an option, and governments must prioritise the commons above all else.
Leaving the commons and into the hands of a commercial enterprise is not an option. If a library lacks funding, and Amazon wants to buy it and rent out books for a fee, that is never an option. Neither is closing the library. The only option is to find the funding. The over-arching commons body can make a ruling around where the funding comes from.
Public Indifference
What happens if nobody cares. Here’s an example. Back in the 80s a local government body created a VHS library, seperate and distinct from other libraries. By definition, it is in our commons. But today, it has zero users – literally nobody is borrowing VHS tapes. So we need a mechanism that decides what is and ins’t in the commons, in a changing world. Another example is if sheep transitioned from being a commercial, renewal species, to an endangered one. It would then require inclusion in the commons.
Another example is dying languages. Keeping a language alive – with people actively using it – comes down to the will of the people. Some languages will stop living because of indifference, so we must allow for that possibility, combined with some serious archiving.
It Is An Ideal
The Commons License is a framework to help us move in the direction of an ideal result. Just as copyrights are abused by bad actors, the commons will fail sometimes.
It is widely acknowledged in advanced economies that equality is something to strive for. We have perhaps achieved the most with gender equality. Despite it being enshrined in law, there are gender characteristics which mean that women still end up with less, primarily because they tend to not work for periods of time when raising children (but also because they are more strongly represented in low paid work like child care). We will never reach absolute gender equality unless women are paid more at work, or paid to raise their children. Even then, we will never get the balance precisely right in a dynamic world.
So we must understand that this is an ideal to strive for. Especially when we are trying to protect nature and culture, there will be forces beyond our control, like hurricanes and war.
Not Getting Worse
The Commons License is a framework for working towards an ideal. The upper limit is that ideal, a perfect world of sorts. The lower limit has to be that we stop things getting worse. At the very least we protect the commons as they exist, with all the flaws.
The air is the purest physical commons instance there is. Nobody anywhere owns the air, the entire planet needs it, and harming it harms us all. For the most part, air pollution is an accepted by-product of modern society. Most chemical reactions cause something to end up in the air. Capturing such emissions is difficult and expensive, so we typically don’t.
Nature itself pollutes the skies. Forest fires are an easy example, and volcanoes can be the biggest contributor to climate change. Zero emissions from human activity would currently be unimaginable, as a lot of industry would shut down. So our starting point is that no individual industry, no individual polluter, can pollute more than it does today. If a factory wants to run more hours per day, to produce more product – even if there is less pollution per product – if the overall pollution rises we say no.
Paying for the right to pollute is not the answer, sends the wrong signals, and will not achieve our aims. The only way forward is less pollution – by improving methods and technology, reducing consumption, or finding alternatives. All of these can be funded.
Ending all pollution is an ideal, but not realistic. Solar panels are a godsend, but they require some pollution to be manufactured and transported. Ditto electric cars.
Nature Heals Itself
When I built a home on the edge of a forest, some native vegetation needed to be cleared for the building site. The small trees and scrub had no particular significance, not the sort of plants that people would protest the removal of. But here’s the thing, from bare land the house is now surrounded by all sorts of plants and trees that just arrived, naturally – transported seeds and rain was all it took. There is a book The World Without Us that documents when nature has taken over abandoned buildings and suburbs. The change is rapid and awesome. So we must include an understanding that nature can and will heal our wrongs with time. Not all of them (nuclear waste), but many.
Copyright
Where does art feature in all of this. We all agree that an artist who creates something that the public enjoys, should be compensated. The capitalist system works fine in that regard. The question here is how long a work of art remains in the capitalist system, via copyright. When first invented, copyright was for 14 years (with the ability to renew it once). Now, in the USA, because corporations are involved, it is 95 years.
I propose that we have a hybrid system. Transitioning from copyright to public domain (after a set period) is too harsh. I would like to see a middle phase that comprises of compulsory, low royalties that can be waived. Similar to the pittance received on streaming services today.
So, for 5, 10, 15 years, your copyright gives you absolute ownership of your work, do with that whatever you choose. Then for the next 20 years, it is under a creative commons license, with the original and all derivates paying a low royalty, like $0.001 per song stream, or $0.50 per movie stream. Then beyond that, open slather but the author/creator must always be acknowledged.
This would perhaps require a central digital depository of artistic works, and that would be universally useful anyway.
Note: this is a living document and will almost certainly change! But I own it, so I can do as I please with it, and the rules above do not apply. Yet.