SMITH, Jeffery J.President,
Forum on Geonomics
jjs@geonomics.org;www.progress.org
Land Rights course: www.course.earthrights.net
Share Earth’s worth to prosper and conserve.

“This Land is Our Land” is a recent video (2010) subtitled, “The Fight to Reclaim the Commons” and was previously titled “Silent Theft”. It’s by author David Bollier (Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication); it’s available from the Media Education Foundation.

Featured speaker Bollier cites a new international movement that is trying to reclaim our commons by modeling practical alternatives to the restrictive monopoly powers of corporate elites. Given the overlap in values and goals, perhaps advocates for commons could be natural allies of BIGists.

A leading figure in this movement steeped in democratic principles, Bollier places the commons within the American tradition of community engagement – such as good ol’ barn-building by a work party of friends and neighbors – and the free exchange of ideas and information; he could have cited Ben Franklin, man of many inventions, who did not believe in patenting a thing (although the absence of patents and copyrights cost dividendist Tom Paine a fortune).

Bollier shows how commercial interests are undermining our collective interests; for more than three decades, transnational corporations have been busy buying up what used to be known as the commons — everything from our forests and our oceans to our broadcast airwaves and our most important intellectual and cultural works. He bucks the rising tide of anti-government extremism and “free” market ideology.

To see the whole video, click here:
https://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=146

If you’ve not thought much about your heritage and the now-absent commons, Bollier’s film will be informative. But be forewarned: it perpetuates the stereotypes of rich vs. the rest, business vs. the rest, right vs. left, commons vs. market (which is actually part of the commons), as if reality is only black and white.

Of course, the rich, the right, the corporations do commit atrocities, but so do the poor, the left, and governments. Indeed, now in Africa and Central Asia, the biggest land-grabbers are governments such as those of China and Saudi Arabia. And while markets might not be ideal tools for distribution, they are quite useful for efficient and sufficient production. Let’s use them for what they are, not blame them for what they are not.

Bollier’s is a common (no pun intended) mistake, but mistake it is. There is no good reason for one promoting a third way – which the commons approach could be – to take sides. By alienating the people comfortable with freedom, he hampers progress toward justice. The people who’re wary of government and long to live free of oppression are many millions (see North Africa) – many more than the few propagandists and apologists for the current system of crony capitalism. Bollier might benefit by vacating his ivory tower long enough to get his hands dirty and rub elbows with ordinary folk fighting corruption in most countries on the planet.

The other main problem with Bollier and his colleagues is that they either don’t see or are too cautious to mention the most relevant part of the commons – the commonwealth. You’re human and you know how humans are: to us, money matters, even matters more than nature or the environment, never mind any commons. Caution is not persuasive to people open to change, the ones who must support proposals for stewardship or a Citizens Dividend or basic income; it comes across as cowardice at worst and uninspiring at best.

The real issue is not ownership, whether holding some land individually or as a group. The real issue is: who gets the profit – the rent, the immense flow of money that society spends for nature. You might own land with a house on it, but it requires you to make mortgage payments to lenders. Your government might own an oil field but in America when oil companies don’t pay the agreed upon royalties, the US Government turns a totally blind eye. No, it’s not who holds title, it’s who gets the rent.

Rent dwarfs wages and interests. It’s our spending for surface land, buried resources, spectral airwaves, ecosystem services, and those government-granted privileges such as corporate charters, utility franchises, copyrights/patents, and bankers’ sovereignty. In any economy it is so much money that if society shared it, one’s monthly dividend check, deposited into one’s bank account, would easily be enough to constitute a basic income (to cover the costs of the basics: rudimentary housing, a non-packaged diet, non-label clothing, a metro pass, and medical insurance).

Ironically, if Bollier were bold enough to mention the commonwealth, then a vast majority would pull for sparing the environment. Presently, too many people see the false dichotomy of income vs. environment as true. Actually, there are feasible technical solutions to almost all environmental challenges. Society does not use them, is ignorant of them, due to the entrenched power of present rentiers, the few who siphon off most of society’s spending for land and oil, other natural resources, and government-granted privileges. But share that rental flow, and people would become secure enough to think straight. A critical mass would see that the healthier the planet, the higher its locational values, and the fatter one’s social dividend.

Recover that fat flow with land dues and other dues and fees and you can abolish taxes. Share the recovered public revenue and you can abolish subsidies such as corporate welfare. To win your fair share of Earth’s worth, maybe it would help some to talk about ownership and commons, but you’ll do the most good by touting geonomics and an equal extra income to all.