Who Owns the Sky?

Former Interior Secretary Walter Hickel once explained: "If you steal $10 from a man's wallet, you're likely to get into a fight. But if you steal billions from the commons, co-owned by him and his descendants, he may not even notice."

Not since the Gilded Age of the 1890s has so much public wealth been shoveled into private hands with such brazen efficiency. Timber companies, corporate ranchers and foreign mining companies with cheap access to public lands are plundering our national patrimony. Congress obligingly turns a blind eye to the accompanying pollution, soil depletion and habitat destruction. Companies are rushing to patent our genes, privatize agricultural seeds and stake private claims on plots of the ocean. Broadcasters -- who for decades enjoyed free use of the public's airwaves, a subsidy worth hundreds of billions of dollars -- are attempting to exploit an equivalent amount of electromagnetic spectrum for digital TV. We the taxpayers pay billions of dollars to sponsor risky path-breaking federal drug research, research that too often is given away to pharmaceutical companies for a song. Then we pay a second time -- as consumers, at exorbitant prices -- for the same drugs.

And so on.

The privatization of public resources is not a new story, to be sure, but the current rapacity is truly stunning. Much of the immediate blame must go to the Bush administration, which has rewarded corporate contributors with one of the most sweeping waves of privatization and deregulation in our history. But while Republicans are the most aggressive cheerleaders for privatization, many Democrats equally enthuse about the "free market" as an engine of progress and deride strong government stewardship of resources.

This bipartisan support is why fighting privatization is so difficult. American political culture has a strong faith in the efficacy of markets and skepticism in the competence of government. Critics bravely cite individual episodes of privatization gone bad, but there is no compelling philosophical response or alternative grand narrative to the logic of privatization.

A new framework rises

An embryonic force to counter the push to privatize is gaining momentum, however: the concept of "the commons." The language is still rudimentary and people who rely upon the country's multiple commons have not yet built a shared philosophy, but even so a remarkably broad groundswell of activism is emerging.

The commons describes the many resources we collectively own that are being mismanaged by government or siphoned away by corporations. Some commons are physical assets, such as the global atmosphere, ecosystems, clean water, wildlife and the human genome. Some commons are public institutions such as libraries, museums, schools and government agencies. Still other commons are social communities, such as the "gift economies" of people who contribute their time and expertise to create valuable resources. Examples include scientific disciplines and Internet communities, both of which depend on the open exchange of information.

The point of talking about the commons is to reassert a basic truth: Power does not reside in government and markets alone. It also belongs to "we the people." This is not just a rhetorical point. The commons has its own moral authority, social effectiveness and political power -- which is why leaders of government and corporations routinely invoke the concept. Power in a democracy must constantly justify its moral and political legitimacy by associating itself with "the people."

To be sure, government often does act as a trustee for the American people, and markets can be efficient tools for material progress. What is too often ignored, however, is that the commons is a sovereign force in its own right. Sometimes the interests of the commons are best protected through its own institutions rather than through government or markets. Such institutions can take many forms: stakeholder trusts, land trusts, professional communities, civic associations, online networks, and cooperative arrangements like blood banks and libraries.