In my previous posts I gave a theory of the commons and some possible models that a future regime could use to manage them. Since then, I’ve spoken with a lot of people about it, and I get the sense that many don’t really grok commons and enfranchisement; what they are, how they work, and most importantly don’t see the lost potential of the commons during this era of universal enfranchisement. Therefore, this post is an addendum to the previous two posts, where I’ll give more examples of commons, enfranchisement, and the potential differentiating enfranchisement can bring. If you’ve not read the previous posts, go do so first. I hope for this post to be the last to directly speak about the commons, therefore any clarifications I find warranted will be edited into the bottom of this one.
Why universal enfranchisement is constraining
As the title of this article alludes to, the tragedy of the commons is actually a tragedy of enfranchisement. Handing out the franchise to too many Unable would have the effect of eroding the common, as previously covered. However, to counteract this erosion and “safeguard” what yet remains of the common, the privileges of the obtained franchise may conversely become diluted by the Central Authority (or curator of the common) instead, reducing the privileges the franchiseholder may enjoy regarding that common. Alternatively, commons that did previously enjoy differentiated enfranchisement would likely be forced to downgrade everyone to, what was previously, the lowest layer (or “tier”) of franchise within that common to keep it functional, whereby the higher layered (or “tiered”) franchiseholders would be subjected to a loss of privileges (but also responsibilities).
To give an example of what these loss of privileges could be, imagine the main street of large cities. They’ll usually have street performers performing there; having a some talented street performers can be fun and liven up the city, and delight those young of heart. They may or may not need a permit for this, a permit being a form of differentiated enfranchisement.
Now, imagine the scenario without permits; anyone could just go on the streets and start performing which, absent the enforcement of social norms, makes the common vulnerable to an influx or surge in street performers (and a likely correlated drop in street performer quality). If the situation got too untenable, i.e. the common becoming too dysfunctional to serve its main purporse of facilitating movement and commerce, the Central Authority would likely need to institute a ban on street performances, thus reducing the privileges of the franchiseholders, and eliminating the possibility of certain forms of positive externalities (in this case the delight street performers can bring).
In the second scenario, where street performers would’ve needed a permit before performing on the street, would’ve prevented this outcome, as the Central Authority had granted either itself or the curator of the common, the privilege of differentiating between franciseholders and thus the ability select and remove street performing franchiseholders at will in order to keep the common the most functional. However, if subjected to the demand of universal enfranchisement, that option would not be there, leaving the common and every franchiseholder poorer on average (except the Unable that are privatizing the common, whether out of malice or ignorance).
Universal enfranchisement does not just dissolve existing modes of differentiated enfranchisement, it also prevents us from thinking of new ways of partitioning the franchise. One example I’ve thought of is that highly ranked (i.e. high layer of enfranchisement) members of society/the community/the common could earn the privileges of acting as judge, jury, and executioner, in the vain of the comic book anti-hero Judge Dredd. Or similarly have acting judges or dispute arbiters that may arbitrate disputes outside the courtroom. Obviously, the requirements and responsibilities of these franchiseholder privileges would be enormous, but as we covered in the last post, we already do have positions in society that require a massive degree of investment to get into, though they’re usually limited to a narrow layer or sphere of commons (e.g. the courtroom).
Let me re-iterate that what I’m mostly talking about here is the sphere of the “public” commons (the ones conventionally perceived as public), as they are the most extensively subjugated to the demand for universal enfranchisement. “Private” commons are more free to differentiate their commons, and it’s not uncommon that middle managers in companies can e.g. act as judge, jury, and executioner within the sphere of commons they reside and/or curate. Though the “private” commons are still subject to some of the universalizing pressures, e.g. equality of opportunity regardless of gender, race, age, etc.
Depriving the commons
The concept of “privatization” was briefly remarked upon in the first article, however the concept would be well served expanding upon. Privatization, as the word implies, is when someone takes out of what is commonly owned - This can be physical things to the common, like stealing tools from a common workshop or picking flowers from a park, or it can be a more immaterial breach of social norms or expectations within that common, what is often referred to as “inappropriate behavior”. These privatizations can range from making noise in a library, where the common good of silence is privatized into one or a few people’s fun at the expense of the rest of the people at the library, to more serious acts of fraud, scamming, or bad faith interpretation of contracts, in business or commerce. Especially the latter example can be difficult prove or deal with through the court of law, raising the transaction costs of business and commerce, as the belief in the good faith of business partners dwindles, and the need for lawyers and laborious contracts takes its place.
Socializing losses is yet another avenue of privatizing the commons, as the wealth or productivity of the common is privatized in order to cover for private losses. Here the keen reader would do well to think back on the first article, and realize that this form of privatization is usually a smaller subset of commons (often a company) that are externalizing their own dysfunction into another larger (sphere of) common(s), of which they are themselves a part of, in order to keep sustaining or growing themselves at the expense of the efforts and investments of others. And it goes without saying that the classic interpretation of privatization is also covered here.
By proxy of privatizing the commons for own gain, another deprivation of the commons comes from the lack of upholding that lays at the base of its continued function. I.e. when witnessing accounts physically stealing or taking something out of the common, or behaviors that violate immaterial norms or principles of that common. Maintaining the common as a franchiseholder (at least to the extent one’s degree of enfranchisement) is the minimal responsibility to ensure its continued existence (besides avoiding directly praying on the common), and can take the form of merely correcting someone’s behavior or admonish them, to more drastic measures of prosecution (correctional education, imprisonment, banishment). Though expected, maintaining the common should also be rewarded to ensure continued observance and maintenance, keeping free riding at a minimum. However, at this late age taking enforcement into your own hands can often times be frowned upon, to not even speak of the admonishment of the cultural aristocrats who’re still trying to maintain the commons of high culture in vain.
The last thing to note in this regard is not so much a deprivation of the commons, as much as it is directly attacking them with the intent of destroying them. Attacking the commons is basically a declaration of war, whether hot or cold, civil or state. And it’s under an attack that the functionality, productivity, and wealth of the commons are ultimately tested, against another competing set of commons. In this case, there’s nothing that can be done but defending ones own while aiming at the destruction of the competition. This could either be in the marketplace between competing companies, between states or tribes against outside aggressors or to-be-conquered, or between different population groups within an empire seeking to undermine each other to advance their own collective position (their position obviously being a common itself).
Enforcing the commons
As the previous paragraphs has alluded to, the enforcement of the norms of the commons are always reliant on the members of the commons themselves, even ones that does not ostensibly hold a direct responsibility. Holding direct responsibility are usually on a volunteer basis for smaller (sets of) commons, like being the caretaker of the shared finances of an apartment complex, or perhaps cleaning shared spaces. The larger ones will almost always have enforcers directly employed to enforce the norms, rules, or laws (all really being the same, just at different scales); examples of enforcers includes police, security guards, hallway monitors, auditors of various kinds, etc. Public sphere professional enforcers still constitute an example of differentiated enfranchisement that are still accepted, though even they too have come under scrutiny as of late.
However, even though professional enforcers exists, they are still massively outnumbered by the remaining franchiseholders, where their role is in reality more to act as a deterrent from defecting following the norms. Professional enforcers at minimum rely on the tacit conformity to the norms, rules, or laws by the vast majority of the common, only having to intervene relatively little (having read somewhere that 2% of a population committing crime would feel like a high-crime area, illustrating how little defection from norms that has to take place before a common starts to become highly dysfunctional). Professional enforcers cannot only be relied on to enforce norms in order to keep a common functional, as they are simply outnumbered and can obviously only dedicate limited attention to each instance of defection at a time - As we’ve seen, riots can quickly overwhelm law enforcement, security guards, and mall cops alike.
So how’s enforcement done, outside the sphere of professional enforcement? The first step is enculturation. Learning the norms and rules, whether tacit or explicit, are always the first rung of enforcement (tacit norms basically constituting what we call “culture” - Which is why separate commons develop separate cultures, though their explicit rules and norms might be the same, their tacit norms and rules differ, even if grown out of the same cultural basis, i.e. sitting atop the same larger common), though it’s today all too often also considered the only means. After learning the norms and rules of the common, “civic” enforcement can take many forms: Scolding, ostracization, demotion, threatening professional enforcement, banishment, … can all be lighter tools of cost imposition to return to compliance. Heavier tools for imposing costs are at this late age mostly only relegated to professional enforcers, but may include: Physically intervening, -restraining, -pacifying, -attacking, even all the way up to murdering. Not that the former can’t be very effective, in most cases that’s the only thing that’s needed, however it does remove some options of norm enforcement that’ll now have to be taken care of by professionals.
Common productivity
In the first post I went through what commons do - Lower transactions cost through shared material use and/or shared norms (culture) that regulates material reality. That is, we create commons for almost everything but for the simplest (or most private). As we’ve gone through, even private business or organizations are themselves just their own sets of commons for the people inside the business or organization to use: The factory is a set of commons that lowers the transaction costs enough that greater asset specificity can be invested into, e.g. machines that produce good, the buildings housing them, etc.; the school lowers the costs of teaching and learning; the insurance lowers the individual cost of materially recovering from adversity; The state reduces local transaction in return for global taxation; etc. Material investments are generally referred to as “capital” and immaterial investment as “social capital”.
Even further however, even in what we consider “private life” we also create commons - What is a household but a common for a few people to reduce to cost of living? What is a family but a common for reducing the cost of raising children (among other things)? And I could go on. Commons truly do permeate all facets of human sociality (and may even be the basic building block of humanity, after language itself), and we create them wherever we go, whether they’re considered “private” or “public”.
It might be prudent to point out that anything that is generally considered “private” are always sitting atop (or within) larger public commons. Private property relies on the norm for private property, thus itself being a common good (or good of the common). However, more importantly, the greater implication is that there isn’t really anything that is truly “private” - All property, or ownership claims, are public, with just a high degree of autonomy delegated to it by the Central Authority. And that’s the case with any form of suzerainty within a sphere, it’s always delegated and sanctioned by the Central Authority.
The prowess of the commons of the West
The reason the West has been able to establish its dominance through to the far corners of the world, is because the West has some of the most productive and highly functional commons, resulting in higher trust, lower corruption, better security, better economies, higher specialization, etc. - In short, greater social capital and a more functional political economy than basically the rest of the world. And to get to the same place as the West means the rest of the world must get their commons in order, so they can build more refined institutions, and eventually get to the same point.
By the same token however, at this late age, there doesn’t seem to be that good an understanding of the uniqueness of Western commons, in the West. We’ve grown up completely engulfed in functional commons, an abundance of social capital which has led to an abundance of capital. As the commons are not very well understood, this has lead people to give different solutions on how to improve things, many to the detriment of the commons, which would actually erode the felicity of their intended outcome.
On one hand, I’m thinking of Liberals, Libertarians, Capitalists, etc. that are intent on privatizing as large swathes of society as possible, and create markets wherever applicable (and often also where not applicable). As the astute reader might have realized, markets are themselves commons, and is something authors like David Graeber has gone over in detail. However, the problems with markets are that they start where commons end, and as Adam Katz has noted, markets are the small “spaces” between institutions, kind of being the void between commons that can’t really “connect” due to various constraints. Below the market (white “void”) is shown as the capillaries through which separated commons (grey) can connect.
The market is typically pictured as something much “larger” where more “activity” happens than it does in reality, and anything public is basically just hindrances that inhibit market activity. Like something that blocks the flow of water, and like water, they believe the market will always find a way around the hindrances. Below is shown this market primacy, where things like companies and just any private inititative are just considered a part of the market itself.
However, markets aren’t nearly as productive as functional commons; the seeking to marketize as large parts of our culture as possible will actually lead to reduced productivity, and as it’s been happening under neoliberalism this is one of the big vectors undermining our commons.
On the other hand, I’m thinking of progressives of various forms who, out of chronic big scenic thinking, believes that everyone can just share all spaces, uphold all responsibilities, and enjoy the positive externalities, without needing to actually demonstrate proper commitment. This kind of big scenic thinking would lead one to conclude that there can be no valid reason to exclude some over others, and can only imagine that one would do so out of meanness, hate, or other prejudiced responses, because the big scenic thinking mistakenly treats everyone as having already properly signed, i.e. properly demonstrated commitment, even when it isn’t the case.
No mind is less practiced in the distinguishing of prospective saboteurs from potential contributors to the commons than one subjected to big scenic thinking. Such a person starts from the axiom that everyone has & can. And, as Adam Katz has discussed, big scenic thinking is dominant in our late age, and one of the challenges to overcome in the transition to a Postliberal order. And it’s this psycho-cultural phenomenon that drives the push for universal enfranchisement, which is another big vector undermining our commons.
So, with regards to the status of the commons of the West, no, we shouldn’t be looking to marketize everything, or allow just anyone entrance - We should actually be looking to in the other direction and aim at creating more and greater, and increasingly sophisticated commons, with appropriately enfranchised franchiseholders. The West have enormously productive commons which has yielded a cornucopia of wealth, freedoms, possibilities, technological progress, etc. But we need to be careful and not let the decay and eventually collapse, lest we’ll bring about a new dark age. The commons of the West have been built up over thousands of years, been invested into by hundreds of generations of men and women, in order to get us where we are - And as the children and heirs of these men and women, who intended them for us (“I just want my children to have a better life”), this liquification from either side is destroying what’s been built on blood, sweat, and tears for so long. And which is why understanding the commons is so important to course correct.