Not capitalism, not communism: George Monbiot on why we need the commons

[@1spitfirepilot]

He is actually describing communism ( commons, community etc). Bring it on.

[@nicktrice4921]

It's only communism if the state administers the entire market and free enterprise ceases to exist. The Right's incessant paranoia about communism has led many to demonize anyone who admits our current form of capitalism is brutal, inefficient, and unsustainable, as well as dismissing anyone advocating for a greater emphasis on community and cooperation. Both the hard Right and the hard Left are becoming pathological. It is tearing our nation and our world apart!

[@엄마미안해-b3j]

@@nicktrice4921 communism is stateless, originally Marx argued that this transition should be made through socialism, but after a strike in Paris where communism people could hold state power they couldn't chance the trend of economy and the social interaction, so he said that the transition to a post-capitalist comunism must be directly stateless. And this dude is pretty much describing what I have studied about communism.

[@PixPunxel]

I have lived in Kibbutz Commune, which was sustainable for over 50 years, but lately, it started crumbling away. Why? Because some of the members feel they are contributing more than others. So they want that personal pay is different depending on contribution. And in the moment they did it, the Kibbutz was on the irreversible way of becoming collective instead of the commune. Human envy, and greed will very sadly ( and for no reason at all, because everyone had very good life ) always trump any "equality for all" organization. Very sad, but it seems ( at least in today society ) greed and wish to be better than the other, is the norm.

[@sanguinefan1734]

It's great to hear a reasoned argument for a restoration of the commons. Thomas Spence was one of the first to promote this idea two centuries ago. My only worry is that most people seem content to leave the running of things to others. Anyone who wants to run something should arouse our suspicions, so how do local communities actually select the right people to act in their best interests? I suppose I'm concerned that public apathy could scupper this great idea.

[@WeOwnIt]

We totally understand! We are currently in the process of coming up with a People's Plan for Water report which will detail governance, people and groups involved etc and how we think it should be run so please do watch this space. Please take a look at our online People's Plan for Water page where you can give your own input and ideas. weownit.org.uk/peoples-plan-water-map People are passionate and do care but the system we currently have doesn't work in a way that allows for people to have any input so we have to change that and we have to come up with a better model that represents the public as a whole.

[@jemgem9593]

I'd be starstruck too, George is awesome and knows exactly what the world situation is... on micro and macro levels 🌻

[@dieselcummins9638]

And absolutely no compensation to the robbers who grabbed our resources at fire sale prices, NO COMPENSATION!

[@Stalbans1953]

In other words, you're 100% against Monbiot's (reluctant) case for 'realpoitik' ?

[@sacredplanet8589]

Yes, fuck realpolitik. That's how the capitalists stab you in the back. They're never going to go for public luxury, private sufficiency. That is antithetical to their existence.

[@C0deH0wler]

Really? "Lots of people are coming to this wonderful place that comes with wonderful sights! Money to be had!" The point is to make sure crazy ones don't turn it into an industrial zone, or a mall solely based on car travel, accidentally. Even worse when they team up. Small businesses, all good. Hot dog vendors on cargo bicycles are welcome, of course! :) Also be careful of Councils wishing to implement minimum parking, thus needing to bulldoze all those trees.

[@69ESmarina]

I enjoyed this very much. Thank you both and We Own It!

[@japan32japan]

rina melendez eh... no.... you don’t own it..... the person that paid for it owns it :)

[@jamesafoley2662]

Great interview! This is what we need - participatory democracy and communities having a real say in how our resources and lives are managed.

[@Meekseek]

You think this is going to be in favour, wait and see. Anarchy yea sure good luck with that.

[@Libertarianach_na_h-Alba]

haha really, so you as a group get to dictate and decide my life and my choices, that's moral, really? And tell me, what right do you have to dictate my life?

[@Libertarianach_na_h-Alba]

​@@Meekseek It isn't anarchy, the useful idiots don't understand the fact that you can't have socialism without government central planning, think about it; if you get rid of the state, who the hell is going to dictate to me and stop me from starting up my own private business? The only way you can do that is forming a group of terrorists to try and government my life and that in of itself is government. So the nonsense about them having anarchy is just economic degenerate nonsense, it's not based on reality.

[@dworkeen]

I like the ideals, I have concern for individual engagement. In youth I was politically active but with ageing not so much. How do we ensure that, as is common, the enthusiasts tend to take over. How do we allow the aged, the disabled of all types and those who have simply grown disenchanted with the effort needed to maintain a meaningful engagement.

[@samcoates1648]

Love the term 'public luxury'!

[@britishmgtow7251]

Do you love the term ' communism kills?

[@amandap9332]

@@britishmgtow7251 do you love the term capitalism kills?

[@britishmgtow7251]

@@amandap9332 No Do you love the term gulag? Communism has killed more than capatilism ever did, and its only 120 years old. Ps, did you post that comment on a product of capatilism? Yes you did, hypocritical idiot.

[@paulbunting43]

It has been horrid travelling on Southern Region with many trains cancelled owing to "Congestion" and "Engineering Works" so I would hang, draw and quarter Govia-Thameslink. When I was much younger I travelled on British Rail and it ran on time and perfectly well. Very occasionally, there were strikes but not these interminable delays, cancellations and high fares. Old Isambard Kingdom Brunel would be turning in his grave because he used to repair the tracks and signalling at dead of night by oil lamp so as not to interrupt the income from passenger's fares during the day. His 1859 Royal Albert Bridge over Plymouth Sound remains standing and carrying the trains to and from Cornwall. A proper engineer.

[@Meekseek]

It's all intentional.

[@Meekseek]

"Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class - involving high meat intake, the use of fossil fuels, electrical appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable.” - Maurice Strong, opening speech at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit The Green Economy - A Global Economic Suicide Pact

[@InnerSunshine]

Yes, I agree, a Public Commons model is more sustainable than a state-owned model.

[@SteveMoyer]

Responsibility is better than ownership. Responsibility is a virtue and ownership is a fight.

[@SteveMoyer]

Ownership asserts property rights. But there are no such things.

[@CplusO2]

Some of the money that was given to compensate slave owners came here to Australia. It was used to pay for the systematic murder of the first Australians. The sale of common assets was a breach of contract because the owners (all of us) were not fully informed about the deals and were deliberately misled. Great vid, thank you.

[@JugglinJellyTake01]

I love this idea. Liked and followed thanks and will order the book through my library today once I've finished a community gardening workshop. Agree with the problem of taking services back in to public or common ownership though mismanagement is also an aspect as is a sense of community justice and the denial of a voice and participation. The book 'The Last Drop: the politics of water' by Marianella Yanes and Mike Gonzales has a very important point made by the people of Cochabamba: 'Neither public, nor private but self determination'. Where Cochabamba has a stretegic union and over community 100 'unions' that tap into the municipal water system to build their own water supply we do things in a slightly different way. Our waterways are much more than just water, they are various ecological habitats, recreation areas, local history, food and much more. We have a lot that needs sorting out in terms of our catchment areas and the 'ownership' model. Custodianship maybe. Particpatory politics and the commons seems the most logical way of valuing our public or community luxuries. We have community groups that get involved in litter picking, dealing with invasive species, managing forestry, planting trees, maintaining paths, conservation volunteering in terms of AONB and SSSI's etc, we already do this in some ways just not in a joined up way that considers the whole catchment area. What I've not heard of is community events that connect these different strands and with the idea of public luxury. So do we tackle this from the bottom up or the tributaries down? Anyway got my gloves and secateurs for the community gardening.

[@dipakganguli2027]

Did you not miss out Housing, George, I think it should be not 3 but including housing 4. Housing will prove complex - how will the concept of communal ownership apply? The culture is based on the tradition of "An English Family´s home is their castle!" Your ideas are absolutely spot on. Thank you so much.

[@danielbtwd]

How about a national bank where the profits go back into society and all account holders are treated as shareholders and not prey. Would also put the banksters out of business.

[@amandap9332]

We have an existing system that could include that. The postal service. Post offices used to be banks, at least in the US. Fire all the bankers!

[@bigturnips]

Great stuff both, look forward to meeting you both soon.

[@tomverseUK]

Brilliant video.

[@WeOwnIt]

Thanks Tom!

[@delmawarden8204]

Brilliant ideas and analysis and very timely.

[@Myheartofthematter]

Wow...people working together for the common good, such simple lifesaving and enhancing concept yet the greed and individualism society has aspired to seems to find this a threat. Why aspire to something that causes harm to the planet and people when we could aspire to an equal society where nobody grows at the expense of others and we are all healthier, happier and connected?

[@Libertarianach_na_h-Alba]

The reason why the _'starving time'_ occurred was the tragedy of the commons, it stemmed as a result of the absence of secure private property rights, because without private property the workers were not able to work for the fruits of their own labour. In other words, the commons tragedy stemmed from what was known as the _'free rider problem'_ where if one individual were to drop their work rate by 50 percent, it would result on _'free riding'_ off the backs of others. That means that although one individual working with less effort, they would still get pretty much more or less the same as the rest of the communal pool of people. When the rest of the group discovered that someone was getting pretty much the same with working with less effort, their work rate began to drop. We saw this experiment prior to the industrial revolution and was primarily the reason why there were periodical famines. It is precisely this that would 100% result in mass starvation because if you don't have secure private property rights, you can't work for the fruits of your own labour. This guy says otherwise, which is nonsense, communal ownership of property does NOT mean you get to work for the fruits of your own labour, it means you're forced into servitude where you can't work to earn for yourself. He also foolishly says that this isn't communism, which is more nonsense, no one cares what your definition of communism is by theory, how about communism in practice. Sack your worthless pointless theories about workers ownership and this theoretical fairy tale bed time story nonsense about a classless, moneyless and stateless system, it's all well speaking theoretical nonsense UNTIL you go to put something into practice and this is what people like this guy don't understand. Never mind the economic calculation problem and the billion and one products out there you'd have to plan production for, how are you going to know what resources to use and how much of said resource should be used to what given products? Even the immorality of a "GROUP" getting to dictate the lives of other people stripping them of their individual choice and dignity, he ignores the fact that each and every single individual all have different needs and wants, we're not a group, we're individuals. It was bad enough before the industrial revolution when there wasn't as much in the economy, how does that work out for a vast economy you have today with a billion and one different products out there? You can't just guess how much resource you're going to use and what given right does other people have to get to decide how much you as an individual should have or what you possess? The fact fools like this think that's moral sums up how evil they are.

[@DarrenBurgess1989]

Libertarian Views Scotty M Do you believe that hard work in this system results in positive output? We are social beings and belong to communities and we are individuals. You write a lot but lack critical thinking which is frightening because you clearly have a passion for your idiocy.

[@wdirtymonkey]

This is excellent, and I get why you want to draw the distinction, but common management of resources outside the state is entirely compatible with communism - just not state communism.

[@chuckkottke]

We are fleas on a living planet, though we had better get it right for both our own sake and for Gaia.🌎🌱

We Own It. Thank you for the upload, and thank you Cat for this important public video. Public ownership of all services supporting the citizenry of the country is obviously the most important aspect for future development of societies and governments worldwide. It will be the only way for eventual peace on this beautiful planet we call Earth. We have seen thousands of years of outright subjugation and exploitation of peoples, the land and environment by robber-baron thugs and psychopaths throughout history. At the top of the pyramid were/are the kings and emperors, down through all levels of society to the family level - the subjugation of women. This has been the way of humanity across the whole planet for all of known history of the world - including religions. The reasons for this are beyond the functions of this short comment, requiring a book to outline. Only one high ranking military officer in the whole of history has ever openly expressed his public regret that he fought in every war for the sole benefit of private corporations. That was an American, Major General Smedley Butler (30th July 1881 to 21st June 1940). The system that George Monbiot may be alluding to is communitarianism, which is *_not_* Communism. (Please refer to Britannica for the definition - tinyurl.com/y724b9bf ) To come to the level of communitarianism will require a totally new philosophy and ideology for all societies. It would need to be formulated throughout the world. A nigh-on impossible task, you may think? But not impossible! To reiterate, it would not be the dreaded collapsed Communism. Communitarianism can be accomplished over generations, starting with a new system of school education. The brilliance of human potential can be nurtured and accomplished for public good in all spheres. People would be honoured for their public achievements, instead of the situation we have today where they become moronic plutocrats, millionaires and billionaires to the detriment of the rest of society.

[@Libertarianach_na_h-Alba]

Is it really, so how do you plan to achieve that in the face of government price controls that distort the information of profits and losses? Another economic illiterate with no understanding of a single thing he's even on about. That's what happens when you remain in a state of ignorance of the subject of economics. You have to love the sheer ignorance of your type.

[@ProjectWander]

We can't even get people to agree to wear a mask, how could we get people to agree on any of this?

[@LeanAndMean44]

Out of the Wreckage: A new politics for an age of crisis.

[@dennismiller5725]

WATER, IS AN EXCELLENT SOURCE FOR COMMONS, AS IS ARBORIAL FORESTS SUCU AS IN THE AMAZON, SIBERIA, ALASKA, THE HIMALAYAS, AS WELL AS EQUATORIAL AFRICA ZND ASIA

[@robertallen6013]

change only comes through crisis and there is no crisis in most peoples eyes, it will come,, shame we are not advanced enough to move before theres a crisis but thats humanity

[@grb1969]

A fair idea of re-socializing the expropriated commons, but deconstructing neoliberal asset-value inflation is structurally impossible by a simple fee transfer mechanisms paid out to the asset-hoarding classes. Presumedly, the middle class was enticed into the moral hazard of wealth accumulation through asset-value inflation specifically so that they would have a vested interest in the monetized corruption tactics of the ruling classes. The realignment of social values across all market institutions is not viable through regulatory means alone, (without the violence of global civil wars). One of the core-causalities of institutional moral corruption is the systemic fungibility of our commodified economy, which premisses conflation of human values, labor prices, resource value, and asset price. The reevaluation of the efficacy of fungible money has brought rise to blockchain accountability of cryptocurrencies, but this doesn't address the price-to-value disparity of markets that are subjected to the time-value of rentier extortion mechanisms like interest, unearned income, and unearned wealth (at the expense of the commons). It's an interesting problem to solve, which is compulsory if we seek to avoid the worst attributes of the collapse of civil society. A non-violent solution is needed, which may necessitate a radically different accountability methodology for the inequities enabled by monetary systems designed to support the plunder of our global commons. ... I would suggest that a socially accountable non-commodified monetary system is a prerequisite for any transitional economy; this design would also need to be reversible, which adds complexity only because of its voluntary nature.

[@AdryNT]

George Berven "...non-commodified monetary system..." I'm curious what you think this might look like, as I'm finding it to be something of a Buddhist kone (i.e. a thought-stopper). Are you familiar with Professor David Graeber's work, "Debt: The First 5000 Years"? He discusses how ancient cultures used money primarily to rearrange social relations, and it was when we started using money for market exchange that unpayable debts started creating the mass slavery in early settled cultures. In other words, money for market purposes and commodification of human life have traditionally gone hand in hand. I found your comments insightful, however, so I'm curious what you might have in mind.

[@grb1969]

@@AdryNT Thank you for your curiosity. Yes, a "non-commodifed" monetary system could be imagined as a scalable gift economy that conveys our individual subjective values, in addition to our objective utility values. Money, and its currency derivatives, are a weak methodology of social management because they impart economic motivation for growth and exploitation without the dynamic stability of a legitimate social equality; the resulting economic inequity then becomes a feature of fungibility that drives frontier expansion at the externalized cost of unconstrained moral hazards (violence). Because of this, the realignment of social, economic, and environmental values is pragmatically impossible through a statutory/regulatory approach. Systemic change can more easily adjudicate the causality of social disregulation where symptomatic intervention has failed. Imagine the systemic disintermediation of moral corruption. Imagine social and economic accountability of representative governance and institutional hierarchy. Imagine direct democratic decentralization of power as a legitimate methodology of political detante. These goals are elusive because they violate the assumptions that form our biases, which are rooted in the fundamentalist fears of scarcity and mortality. It is difficult to explain these processes, without invoking an involuntary cognitve-dissonance when the collective mindset pronounces that, "there is no alternative". First, we must grieve the reality that the existing systems of social governance are little more than a Ponzi-scheme designed (unintentionally) to ensure oligarchic domination. I'll try and return to this thread when I have given these ideas more consideration. As a primer, add Gar Alperovitz (Pluralist Commonwealth) and more Michael Hudson (Killing the Host) to your video selections. This will help. Lastly, it is important to view systemic alternatives as reversible non-violent transitional economies rather than a utopian solutions to avoid the existing inevitability of dislocation.

[@dalewolver8739]

How does one go about convincing the populace that this is in their best interest. With such a vast chasm of ideologies, the thought of anything going against their brainwashed belief systems that the market is working for them.

[@Meekseek]

"Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class - involving high meat intake, the use of fossil fuels, electrical appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable.” - Maurice Strong, opening speech at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit The Green Economy - A Global Economic Suicide Pact

[@Libertarianach_na_h-Alba]

In translation, they, as a 'group' want to regulate YOUR life and get to centrally plan and 'DICTATE' your life and YOUR decisions. Evil.

[@TheDominicProject]

kinda missing the point. These are unnatural habits SOLD to us by constant propaganda. Buy buy buy, fill your home. Never mind the blood spilt, the workers taken advantage of, the natural resources consumed. It is evil to continue living a certain way, if that way will ultimately lead to mass extinction and climate turmoil. The economy is already a suicide pact,... name a country that isn't in debt? Our system does not run off a set amount of resources, it consumes all sustainability be damned. How about making an economy which runs off of things we own, rather than the hyper-inflated finance sector. So much of the wealth in the world is thin air, loop holes and tax havens. It has no material relevance. So get with the program

[@yvonnelewis9421]

Yes, global environmental socialism is the way forward but , and it makes me miserable to say this, it's my observation - as someone with decades of life experience(!)- that so many people simply just don't care. It's not class specific and it doesn't seem to matter whether you're ignorant or educated, young or old; selfishness and greed prevail. That's what we're up against; human nature. I don't believe that we are essentially altruistic (far from it). What a nasty old cynic I've become!! However, I read and listen to George Monbiot to give me a dose of optimism when needed. .........

[@Thunderwolf666]

"It's not capitalism and it's not communism". Correct. It's anarchism. But people get prickly when you say "anarchism" because they don't understand what it means. What Monbiot says here makes sense, but anarchists have been saying this for years.

[@Libertarianach_na_h-Alba]

Is it really, so when you get rid of private individual ownership and you get rid of the government, who is going to stop me starting up my own private business, huh? Oh, that's right, you're going to need a set group of people to try and govern my life. It wouldn't matter if you say: "that's not government." Your words are useless, that by definition is governance. And the reason people like you are useful idiots is because the reason the periodical famines stopped was the Enclosure Movement. Ignorance such as yourself would result in millions dying of starvation.

[@Thunderwolf666]

@@Libertarianach_na_h-Alba Cool, someone else who doesn't actually understand what Anarchism means.

[@Libertarianach_na_h-Alba]

@@Thunderwolf666 There is no such thing as collectivism and anarchism, it is yourself who doesn't comprehend this fact, even dating centuries back with clans here in Scotland and elsewhere there were leaders and what misery life was under collectivism. The fact you think you can eradicate private individual ownership and then have anarchy at the same time proves you're economically illiterate.

[@Thunderwolf666]

@@Libertarianach_na_h-Alba OK boomer

[@brianlaudrupchannel]

Sounds like fancy socialism

[@touche97]

thanks George. .why can you be listened to by those in power? . i guess you are a threat to those with land and loot.

[@tommulder9420]

Frankly fuck "paying enough for them to go away" for private owned stolen land, offer them a little compensation or at best the price they stole it for, either that or just put them in jail or offer them the choice to opt out through opting for the guiliotines. Fuck letting them get away with it with pockets filled.

[@tommulder9420]

Otherwise I support these steps to become eventually free of markets and state altogether. And just be a collection of collectives of the commons run by direct democracies. Wether those collectives are effectively anarchist, socialist or communist. Scale is an important issue in this. We really should consider these well thought through steps to abolish market and state altogether.

[@KuttappanVijayachandran]

Kindly comment on the experience of TVA owning and managing the water and land resources of Tennessee Valley.

[@Libertarianach_na_h-Alba]

They wouldn't dare, because real world examples fly in the face of the stupidity of socialists.

[@paulgibbons2320]

Equal say and equal shares is concerning. My experience of these things is that, that never is the case. Some people are disinterested. Some entitled busy bodies will take control of it an some decenting voices will be shouted down an marginalised. The equal shares equal say idea does not work. You can evidence that. I know I would not turn up to meetings about my shares in a water provider. I doubt many would.

[@OldScientist]

Own this: There has been a 10% decline in natural disasters since 2000 (CRED). Globally the ACE index (accumulated cyclone energy) 1980-2021 shows no increasing trend. Global Hurricane Landfalls 1970-2021 (updated from Weinkle et al, 2012) shows no trend. Satellite data since 1980 shows a slight downward global trend for total hurricaine numbers with 2021 being a record low year. The IPCC reports in AR6, chapter 11, "The total global frequency of TC [tropical cyclone] formation will decrease or remain unchanged with increasing global warming (medium confidence)." Not that I really care about what the IPCC says. Multidecadal variability in Atlantic hurricaines is most probably related to the AMO (Vecchi et al, 2021). NOAA data 1851-2021 shows no trend in number of hurricaine landfalls with the record high being 1886. What the data from NOAA SPC shows about tornados: EF1-EF5 (1954-2022) no trend; EF3-EF5 (most destructive) (1954-2022) 50% decline. No EF5s in US since 2013 (a record absence). The Global Land Precipitation Anomaly from AR5 will disappoint with deviations from the average increasing by 0.2% per decade, but if you look at the actual data, it's just very variable over the decades. Drought appears to be decreasing globally (Watts et al, 2018) measured by SPI 1901-2017. For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes (extreme temperature, drought, flood, storms, wildfires) declined 98%--from an average of 247 per year during the 1920s to 2.5 in per year during the 2010s. Data on disaster deaths come from (EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels,Belgium. ) Globally 2000-2019 there was a large decrease in cold-related deaths and a moderate increase in heat-related deaths (Zhao, 2021, Lancet). However, coldwaves are over 9 times more likely to kill than heatwaves, so the overall result is very beneficial. What else? Oh, deserts like the Sahara have shrunk considerably since the 1980's and the Earth has greened by 15% or more in a human lifetime (NASA). The Great Barrier Reef's coral cover has reached the greatest extent ever recorded. On extinction the rate is very low: 900 known lost species for 2.1 million known species in 500 years (IUCN), so from observations there are an average of slightly less than 2 species lost every year. Out of a known species total of over 2 million. That gives an annual percentage loss of less than 0.0001%. That's background extinction. At that frequency it will take over 930,000 years to reach 80% extinction of species experienced at the K-T boundary that saw the extinction of the dinosaurs. Of course, extinction is a natural part of the evolution of life on this planet with the average lifespan of a species thought to be about 1 million years. It is estimated that 99.9% of all plant and animal species that have existed have gone extinct. There is no climate crisis.

[@zeideerskine3462]

Bring back the good old Saxon Commons indeed.

[@cpsemmens]

A lot of this appears to be repainting existing political theories with a modified terminology. I suppose this means that decades of erroneous preconceptions and lies can be cast aside by saying this isn't X or Y ideologically. However, that doesn't mean that it isn't. This may help those who are subject to those political misconceptions to be introduced to the ideas of socialism, communism and anarchism and their various combinations and recombinations, however, that doesn't make this a radically new alternative. Examples or models for such a communal, or "Commons" approach would be the Anarcho-communist polity of Marinaleda. The common ownership of the means of production and distribution lie at the heart of 'Left' political theory. As GM pointed out, true local control of 'national' resources like the NHS and the national grid cannot be efficiently split up to the community level, and the problem of local income disparities due to the presence or absence of resources is something that cannot be glossed over, as they would create wealth divisions and drive population migrations into those areas. The same applies to national transport and the road, rail and air networks, so state control of strategic services is still required, but the ownership of those strategic services should be communal or cooperative to prevent them being summarily sold off by any future, unfortunately elected, capitalist regimes.

[@bradkeen1973]

67 million different people are going to somehow come together as 'the commons' and all agree on how to manage water resources? Wow!

[@DarrenBurgess1989]

Brad Keen I WOW at your lack of understanding and imagination. Stop and think and you’ll go a little further in life. The commons is a collective of separate communities and yes we certainly have the technology to access 67 million people. Just because you can’t see past your nose does not mean there is nothing in front of you. Try with not much effort to not be a mindless drone.

[@arryhuk]

Global environmental socialism is the only way, Hegel would totally approve and the rest of nature would breathe a sigh of relief 🙂

[@richardgregory3684]

Where does the name communism come from? The Latin _communis_ meaning "common". And make no mistake, communism is exactly what is being proposed here. This sounds exactly like "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" - ownership by "the People" which will sound very familiar to anyone who lives in the USSR. And if water is a "common resource" how do you deal with the problem of inevitable inequality? There will be water-rich areas that have vastly more than they need - and other areas that have vastly less than they need. And presto, you get transfers between them, and the people who are having their resource taken will want something for it in return. a presto! You just recreated capitalism.

[@snowstrobe]

Surely it should be Not Capitalism, Not Socialism? ie. not the Market, not the State. Natural resources [inc land] should def be handled as a Commons. Modern tech makes a Commoning Economy [and direct democracy without political parties] much more possible. With things like direct financial transferal and open large scale debate that the online world offers.

[@ienekevanhouten4559]

Yeah! George for world leader!

[@Libertarianach_na_h-Alba]

Yeah, for so-called world leader, let's just ignore the fact private ownership of property put an end to the _'starving time'_ that was caused as a result of the 'commons' because what the hell does history and economics matter, let's just go along with feelings and try and place feelings above facts.

[@pc2753]

So how does this differ from distributism?

[@jamesmilligan960]

its a shame starters booted this into the long grass

[@jamesmilligan960]

sorry! starmer's booted it into the long grass

[@yttean98]

George you should say Pragmatism, not Commons ie find the ways/methods that will work for the majority of the people, and then sprinklers along the way with some idealisms if they can work. This is nothing new look at China, she uses a combination of tools from both Capitalism and Socialism.

[@SalvadorCiaro]

No Communism 😥

[@tomowens1571]

be very careful, they tried this logic in California, not only is there now w water shortage, if you decide to have a water butt on your property and catch rainwater, the state tax you for it as it's now commonly owned or state-owned more accurately.

[@likklej8]

Jaques Frescos ideas are relevant here, that resources are commonly owned but on a whole wide world basis. The end of nationalism

[@skuzzlebutt33]

I love that man, but I fear we will have to go through the destruction of society as a whole before humanity wakes up to such possibilities. I think it would be a hard sale for people to give up there nationality but there are ways we can incorporate nationalism.

[@Meekseek]

Just don't tell them about weather modification causing the floods and drought Georgie boy.

[@donfox1036]

What about 'the tragedy of the commons', I.e. the tendency to abuse a common resource? How is that controlled?

[@gligo7586]

He explains that there is a democratic mechanism that gives everyone an equal share/say, so I suppose it would be up to the communal shareholders to determine in what way a particular resource is managed.

[@Libertarianach_na_h-Alba]

@@gligo7586 Really, and how does that "democratic" group get to decide HOW MUCH resource is used for EACH and EVERY single product out there on the market? After all, there are a billion and one different wooden products and not all wooden products are the same, there are many different types of wood and different colours, different styles of wooden tables, benches, chairs and a billion and one different other wooden products. So with all those options, how do you then decide how much to produce of each and where the wood is best allocated without consumer demand?

[@guyoflife]

The tragedy of the commons has bean debunked Google Elinor ostrom. The guy who came up with it even admits it should be called tragedy of unmanaged commons.

[@DarrenBurgess1989]

Libertarian Views Scotty M There will still be demand, I beg of you stop being so misinformed, you are wasting your own time and clogging your brain with silliness. Grow up a little.

[@koerttijdens1234]

Lazy folks own nothing.

[@DarrenBurgess1989]

Yes because all of the children of wealth and land inheritance are hard working innovative people who contribute greatly to society and cleaners, nurses and fruit pickers are splitting their time between their main home and holiday home. Think! It only hurts the first few times you do it and then you’ll get used to it.