#thecommons — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #thecommons, aggregated by home.social.
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Growing up, I was always told to mock #socialism as a form of utopianism, as if that was a bad thing. #Utopianism was never a belief that something would happen, or that anything would be perfect. It was a thought experiment to consider what a perfect outcome would look like, so we could implement the ideas and get as close as possible. Meanwhile, #capitalism , #conservatism , #liberalism , and #libertarianism are just as #utopian in their dreams. Capitalism and libertarianism believe that if we JUST get government out of the way, we could have the #freemarkets work the way they are supposed to and lead to prosperity for all, never mind that corporations only exist because of #bankruptcy laws and standards created by Congress. Modern conservatism believes that if we just went back to a specific, unspecified time point when religion ruled, we would have prosperity again, never mind that America was never like that, even when we were at our most religious. #Liberals believe that if freedom, equality, and equity are guaranteed, but with a true free market that does require governments to regulate it, we would have true prosperity. The only difference is that #Marx , using arguments by #AdamSmith himself, poked holes in all of these ideas at their core. That the structure itself needed an overhaul of who holds power, or at least patched with a strong welfare state, and to work toward that utopian dream where the people held the power instead of the lords or #oligarchs and everyone was a lawmaker with direct democracy, there was a return of #thecommons that was just the norm for most of human history, and #personalproperty was something you physically used, erned and worked instead of from trading, hoarding and wasting while people starved aka #privateproperty . The day the lords stole the commons from the people was the day that socialism started to exist, with the Diggers and the Levelers attempting to take on the power of the lords and realizing they already ran their own villages, or communes and affairs in their areas, and the lords were just a middleman that contributed little to nothing. Hence the term #communism , which is a return to the natural commons people like #John Locke and #Voltaire and other #Enlightenment thinkers idealized, but capitalism has brainwashed people to ignore, forget, or never know in the first place they believed this while we were told to look up to them. Utopianism gives us the power to dream, to coalesce our ideas and our ideals. When we were told not to dream of our ideal world but were told to dream of their ideal, that's when the dream died and we just all became doomers. -
The Forks shops in Winnipeg has The Common craft beer and wine - and it’s lunchtime!
Flight of 4:
08. Blood Brothers Iron Eye Nitro Stout - Decent nitro treatment, creamy with a dry finish
10. Dead Frog Nut Brown Ale - Solid nut brown, tasty roast flavors, nothing outstanding
11. Godspeed Peat Smoked Lager - Amazing scotch lager, big peated nose, rich aromatics and a lasting caramel and leather ending
20. Godspeed Czech Dark Lager - Roasty malt and coffee, light body, fairly standard
#craftBeer #drinkLocal #beer #winnipeg #theForks #theCommons
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https://www.wacoca.com/tour/924115/ Hakuba, Nagano | TSUGAIKE ★★★ Ultimate Ski Trip at the Queen of Green ★★★ 長野県白馬栂池スキー場 #Food #HAKUBA #hotel #Okuto #OtariRoadsideStation #QueenOfGreen #resort #RestaurantCanopy #sightseeing #ski #SkiInSkiOut #SkiInnHakuba #SkiResort #skiing #snowboard #snowboarding #TheCommons #travel #trip #tsugaike #Vacation #スキー #スキー場 #スノーボード #ホテル #リゾート #六ヶ所村 #料理 #旅行 #栂池 #白馬 #観光 #青森 #青森ツアー #青森県 #青森県ツアー #青森県観光 #青森観光
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In 1829, when Englishman Thomas Peel tried to establish an agricultural colony on Australia, something unexpected happened: his workers simply abandoned him en masse; a 19th century style Great Resignation. Despite Peel's large amount of capital brought over from England, these workers didn't need to subordinate themselves to Peel's capital, as they could just... move over to the next plot of land and continue to go into business for themselves. Peel's capital had no command, as labourers still had access to The Commons. The enclosing of The Commons was the necessary to shift the power from landowners to owners of capital, and for capitalism to bloom.
Similarly, today, frontier AI labs command no control, unless they enclose The Commons:
- I have no reason to go to Claude or ChatGPT if I can readily find the information I need in an online encyclopaedia
- I don't need to reach for Claude Code if collaborative QA platforms thrive (yes, I'm aware StackOverflow had it's share of issues even before AI)Resisting AI today is the modern battle against enclosing our Digital Commons. I don't think that protections from scrapers are going to work, as they're most likely going to damage to discovery of content and knowledge.
#Capitalism #DigitalAutonomy #TheCommons #AI #LLM #Socialism #Labour
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Autonomies: **The anarchic culture of the commons**
https://autonomies.org/2026/02/the-anarchic-culture-of-the-commons/
By Regino Martínez, of the Montevideo based magazine, Anarquía The ground of a subversive collective imagination Let us begin with the obvious: in capitalism, common issues are rarely resolved by the people directly involved. While the hegemonic relationships in our society—those … Continue reading →
#Commentary #Anarchism #TheCommons -
We need to talk about Elinor Ostrom. 🗳️
She won a Nobel Prize for debunking the idea that common property always leads to ruin. Her work provides the empirical data for Autogestion.
If you are building a cooperative, her design principles are non-negotiable. They are the difference between a robust commons and a failed experiment.
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Words shape reality. In the US/UK, 'Fiduciary Duty' almost exclusively forces directors to serve the shareholder. In the European Social Economy, the legal concept of 'Intérêt Collectif' frees them to serve the community. ⚖️
The Social Economy Glossary maps these 'untranslatables' so we can stop importing extractive logic into democratic economic spaces. 📖
https://rootandbranch.online/library/social-economy-glossary/
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#CommunityGardens and #Libraries: A Perfect Pairing
Library lawns are growing in popularity as sites for community garden projects
April 14, 2022
"#Libraries are often lucky enough to have a free plot of land to bring garden programming to their community. We will explore what it takes for a library to begin a community garden and some examples of successful community gardens already in place.
"The modern world has created a divide between people and nature. Increasingly, people don't know how or where their food originates. Many people feel #disconnected from the #NaturalWorld, and some have never planted a garden.
"But as author #MichaelPollan puts it, 'the garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.' A community garden can introduce people to #nature, #plants, and #GrowingFood in an approachable way. Engaging with a garden can teach people about the interconnected world and provide a rewarding experience and skillset.
"Libraries are often lucky enough to have a free plot of land to bring garden programming to their community. We will explore what it takes for a library to begin a community garden and some examples of successful community gardens already in place.
Starting a Garden
"A community garden is a piece of land cultivated by a group of people, either individually or collectively. These gardens are commonly found in urban settings, but similar ideas exist in rural communities.
"Libraries offer an excellent setting for a community garden. They already provide books and classes on gardening, so they are a perfect location to experiment with those ideas.
A community garden can range widely in size and scope, depending on the land and resources available by a given library. Gardeners can cultivate even a few square feet into an educational opportunity for the community. Participants can construct a full-scale community garden if a library has more room to spare.
"Constructing a garden might be intimidating to some, but even someone with no prior experience can make it happen with the community's help. Businesses and community members will often donate their time, tools, and labor to help bring a community garden to life. By reaching out to the right people, a single library staff member or community member can organize the implementation of a multi-bed community garden."
FMI - https://action.everylibrary.org/community_gardens_and_libraries_a_perfect_pairing
#SolarPunkSunday #LibrariesRule #TheCommons #MoreGardensLessLawns #growYourOwn #FoodSecurity #BuildingCommunity
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Extreme individualism and the entrepreneurial self of neoliberalism are 'clogging up courts' of Western democracy
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-21/growing-number-sovereign-citizens-clogging-australias-courts/106035790
#individualism #HyperIndividualism #neoliberalism #Liberalism #libertarians #SelfInterest #extremism #citizens #judicature #state #law #constitution #legitimacy #interdependency #TheCommons #society #governance -
Since my workplace is encouraging us to get to know AI tools, I've been utilizing them a wee bit. One thing I've found is that AI (at least Google AI) is willing and able to outline it's weaknesses. GOOD! Until we get a handle on this shit (especially corporate / capitalistic gain from it), I suppose it's good to get to know one's "enemy." And yes, if we could find a way to sustainably power AI and use it for the common good, it could help us. But given #CorporateColonialism and all, I wouldn't count on it.
#AI #TechBros #Tools #UsingTechnologyForGood #TheCommons #ShareKnowledge #OpenSource #LtG #World3 #StabilizedWorld #ABetterWorld #KnowledgeForTheFutureNotProfit
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Free Zine from @CrimethInc
#MutualAid, #TheCommons, and the #Revolutionary Abolition of #Capitalism
Revisiting the Difference Between Mutual Aid and #Charity
2025
"Much has been made of the distinction between charity and mutual aid. Charity is top-down and unidirectional, while mutual aid is supposed to be horizontal, reciprocal, and participatory. In practice, however, the majority of today’s self-described mutual aid projects remain more or less unidirectional efforts to provide goods and services to those in need.
"This has contributed to a situation in which conventional non-profit organizations are rebranding themselves with the language of 'mutual aid,' while some anarchists have given up on the concept entirely, fed up with a rhetoric that some say amounts to 'mutual aid being good and radical, and charity being bad and conservative.'
"Is there more to the distinction than this? How could we unlock the revolutionary potential of mutual aid?"
You can read the content of this zine online in at the link below:
https://crimethinc.com/zines/mutual-aid-the-commons-and-the-revolutionary-abolition-of-capitalism#TaxTheRich #EatTheRich #CapitalismKills #CapitalismSucks
#GreedKills #Oligarchy #Oligarchs #Oiligarchy #TechBillionaires #CrimethInc
#BillionairesShouldNotExist -
A review of The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
Johanna Wilkes
#Care #Reciprocity #Economy #TheCommons #Serviceberries #NaturalWorld #Books #CurrentlyReading #BooksAboutFood #BookReview
#Read all you want! #OpenAccess
#Share generously! #KnowledgeSharing
#Grow your understanding of #Food
#Repeathttps://canadianfoodstudies.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cfs/article/view/732
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Some concepts that help illuminate how progressives think about the world
#enshittification, #technofeudalism, #degrowth, #TheCommons, #UBI, #anarchism,
#intersectionality, #CriticalRaceTheory. You can say they are #radical. Whatevs. But compared to what's animating the other side, it's really pretty tame stuff. https://3m.fyi/posts/a-list-of-some-progressive-ideas/ #ProgressTerms -
excited that this piece was published in the @lseimpactblog.bsky.social today. I've had a lot of thoughts about #AI, #Copyright, & #TheCommons of late...
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2025/05/06/does-ai-have-a-copyright-problem/ -
It's Monday. Hope y'all are having a day! ("Have a good day" seems like a lot of pressure in these times.)
I wrote a thing about
euphemism
the Left
doge
Musk
the destruction of the commons
and trauma.Here's the first part:
the Lack in the Left
https://courtcan.com/2025/04/10/the-lack-in-the-left/#euphemism
#theLeft
#doge
#ElonMusk
#theOther
#theLack
#thePublic
#theCommons
#trauma
#boundaries -
Kelly and @ZachWeinersmith have some interesting thoughts about The Commons - *our* commons - and techbroligarchofascists' attacks on it.
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#LuckyBlackCat dropped another video. Long form as usual - debunking " the tragedy of the commons"
#environment #anticapitalist #thecommons #garrethardin #capitalistpropaganda
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#capitalism #accounting #externalisation #TheCommons #environment #HumanLife #subversion #economy
I am not sure how to phrase a query for the search (and do not want to use an LLM), so let me ask here.
I am looking for people and resources relevant to formulate structured requirements of nature-centric accounting, to integrate usually externalised costs of "enviroment services" aka the commons, materials, and human life, into mainstream capitalist P/L accounting.
Seemingly non-revolutionary, in effect it could upend the whole capitalism which relies on externalisation of costs and privatisation of benefits.
Is anybody doing anything in this regards? Please? -
Older white guy rants to me and a fem colleague about how the Ford government lets private long-term care coorprations/condo boards and landlords grift the living hell out of regular people, but prefaces his rant with, "and beleive me, I'm no socialist." I couldn't get a word in edge-wise, but I'd love to a have asked, "why not? And what do you want then?" I'm so glad that generally folks seem much more willing to use socialism and identify as a socialist (at least in the Anglo-Americas I experience) than they were even just 10 years ago, but encounters like these are bizzare. If you have a problem with private ownership of land, you really ought to have a problem with a socio-economic system that privileges just such an arrangement and trends, pretty well inevitability, towards (neo)liberalism and then the slide to fascism. Socialism (/anarchism/communism/communalism, etc.) is the alternative, friend.
#OnPoli #CanPoli #TheFords #Ford #QueensPark #WagTheDoug #PoliticalEconomics #Socialism #Housing #CostOfLiving #HousingCrisis #Socialism #Communism #Communalism #Anarchism #DegrowthCommunism #Degrowth #TheCommons #ABetterWorldIsPossible
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Get rid of landlords, fix the problems. The devs of Cities: Skylines 2 removed the 'virtual landlord' that takes in rent because rents were getting too high. So now, a building's upkeep is evenly split among renters (imagine that), and they came up with a formula for calculating rent:
Rent = (LandValue + (ZoneType * Building Level)) * LotSize * SpaceMultiplier
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The degradation of public lands and biodiversity in settler societies:
"Grazing, fracking, logging, mining and permits for other private interests are imperiling wildlife, soil and vegetation already under siege by global warming...We are not safeguarding our public domain. The government agencies overseeing it are failing us. The private interests that want the land for profit have planted their teeth in the government. The national trend is against the preservation of the commons. Huge stretches are effectively privatized, public in name only... It is an infuriating battle when the agencies deemed to guard our public lands are the same ones putting them in jeopardy."
“This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West”, Christopher Ketcham (review)
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https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2019-07-26/review-this-land-chris-ketcham
#NSWLogging #LoggingIndustry #BiodiversityCrisis #ExtinctionCrisis #governance #Book #BellingenLogging #SettlerSocieties #extractivism #cattle #AgencyCapture #TheCommons #Bellingen #koalas #wildlifeImage: Logged biodiversity habitat rushing through Bellingen main street
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After two years of construction and anticipation, a 26-acre Hermann Park renovation is set to open to the public on Saturday.
#Houston #News #HermannPark #HermannParkConservancy #HoustonParks #TheCommons
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Can you actually #degrowth in America and still be happy? Lockyer 2017 examines an #ecovillage in northeastern Missouri, Dancing Rabbit, where they have cut consumption to roughly 10% of national average and maintain a high degree of life satisfaction. #TheCommons #LifeCycleAnalysis
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@Edent 100% into a fund to support new artists. ABBA and The Beatles should have dropped out of copyright by now. #CulturalHeritage #TheCommons