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The Commons: The Most Ignored & Essential Part of Democracy
“Conservatives” don’t want a discussion of the commons because they want to plunder it for private gain
It’s almost entirely absent from our political dialogue, but the issue of who owns the commons and how they’re to be used (and by whom) is at the core of almost all the major debates between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, and even those advocating democracy versus those trying to install oligarchy.
The commons is the stuff we all use: The air and water, the public roads and schools, the police and fire departments, the airways that our planes fly over and through which we send radio and TV signals, outer space and our oceans.
The commons, in aggregate, are one of the major stores of the wealth of a nation.
The commons of the oil or minerals under public lands are owned by we the people, for example, but there are people and corporations that want to take those resources and convert them to their own private profit.
One of the main reasons people throughout history have established governments is to protect and regulate the commons.
Which explains why some people and corporations are in a constant battle with government, and launch massive propaganda campaigns to say the government should be “smaller” and thus less able to protect the commons.
Whether it’s oil barons, or greedy ranchers who want to use public lands to graze their cows without paying a public fee that would help maintain and restore those lands, the commons are under continuous low-level assault by greed.
Similarly, polluters from mining companies to frackers to industrial operations increase their profits by dumping their poison into our commons, our air, soil and water, rather than paying the cost of cleaning up their own waste.
One of the biggest political battles of our day is defining the exact boundaries of the commons.
About half of all the electric and water utility companies in America are owned by the people, operated by state or local governments for the benefit of the citizens who use them.
