I suspect the only reason anyone would think it would be simple is probably because of a tacit assumption: that we are more *naturally* a certain kind of human -- homo commonus or something -- than anything else, that homo oeconimus was imposed on a natural human being longing to be set free!
born free. as free as the wind blows. as free as the grass grows. free to follow your heart. wah la dee da dee doh. wah wah wah la doh dee. blah blee blah blee blo.
i need sleep. i've been running since 3 a.m.
*thunk*
At 10:46 PM 8/26/2008, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>At risk of repetition, it's very important for us pro-commons types to
>realize that preserving the commons takes social network and practices,
>formal and/or informal institutions, different sets of incentives, and
>different psychologies that we are used to. These will be long in building
>and we have no idea how to create this. The people who think you take away
>private property. markets, and profit and poof! create beautiful
>self-regulating commons are just as deluded as the people in the FSU
>(Gorby among them) who thought that if just took away central planning and
>state control, poof! you would have beautifully functioning markets.
>Markets that function even as well (or poorly, for cynics, or both) as
>those in the industrialized west took almost a thousand years of social
>upheaval, legal developments, and institutional -- rearrangement, for lack
>of a better word. As some have noted here, the English Commons were the
>product of themselves several
> thousand years of development. (See E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common)