The commons are the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit. Characteristically, this involves a variety of informal norms and values (social practice) employed for a governance mechanism.Commons can also be defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates.
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👉 Commons in the context of Collective ownership
Collective ownership is the ownership of private property by all members of a group. The breadth or narrowness of the group can range from a whole society to a set of coworkers in a particular enterprise (such as one collective farm). In the latter narrower sense, collective ownership is distinguished from common ownership and the commons, which implies open access, the holding of assets in common, and the negation of ownership as such. Collective ownership of the means of production is the defining characteristic of socialism, where collective ownership can refer to society-wide ownership (social ownership) or to cooperative ownership by an organization's members. When contrasted with public ownership, collective ownership commonly refers to group ownership (such as a producer cooperative).
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Commons in the context of Common ownership
Common ownership refers to holding the assets of an organization, enterprise, or community indivisibly rather than in the names of the individual members or groups of members as common property. Forms of common ownership exist in every economic system. Common ownership of the means of production is a central goal of socialist political movements as it is seen as a necessary democratic mechanism for the creation and continued function of a communist society. Advocates make a distinction between collective ownership and common property (the commons) as the former refers to property owned jointly by agreement of a set of colleagues, such as producer cooperatives, whereas the latter refers to assets that are completely open for access, such as a public park freely available to everyone.
Commons in the context of Georgism
Georgism, in modern times also called Geoism, and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that persons should own the value that they produce themselves, while the economic rent derived from land—including from all natural resources, the commons, and urban locations—should belong equally to all members of society. Developed from the writings of American economist and social reformer Henry George, the Georgist paradigm seeks solutions to social and ecological problems based on principles of land rights and public finance that attempt to integrate economic efficiency with social justice.
Georgism is concerned with the distribution of economic rent caused by land ownership, natural monopolies, pollution rights, and control of the commons, including title of ownership for natural resources and other contrived privileges (e.g., intellectual property). Any natural resource that is inherently limited in supply can generate economic rent, but the classical and most significant example of land monopoly involves the extraction of common ground rent from valuable urban locations. Georgists argue that taxing economic rent is efficient, fair, and equitable. The main Georgist policy recommendation is a land value tax (LVT), the revenues from which can be used to reduce or eliminate existing taxes (such as on income, trade, or purchases) that are posited to be unfair and inefficient. Some Georgists also advocate the return of surplus public revenue to the people by means of a basic income or citizen's dividend.
Commons in the context of Village green
A village green is a common open area within a village or other settlement. Historically, a village green was common grassland with a pond for watering cattle and other animals, often at the edge of a rural settlement, used for gathering cattle to bring them later on to a common land for grazing. Later, planned greens were built into the centres of villages.
The village green also provided, and may still provide, an open-air meeting place for the local people, which may be used for public celebrations, such as May Day festivities. The term is used more broadly to encompass woodland, moorland, sports grounds, buildings, roads and urban parks.
Commons in the context of Global commons
Global commons is a concept to describe international, supranational, and global resource domains in which common-pool resources are found. They are "areas that lie outside of the political reach of any one nation State". Global commons include the earth's shared natural resources, such as the high seas (international waters), the atmosphere and outer space and the Antarctic in particular. The global commons concept investigates how those shared resources that lie outside of national borders can be managed or governed.
Commons in the context of Citizen's dividend
Citizen's dividend (CD) is a proposed policy based upon the Georgist principle that the natural world is the common property of all people. It is proposed that all citizens receive regular payments (dividends) from revenue raised by leasing or taxing the monopoly of valuable land and other natural resources.