Commons Strategy
Operational Mechanisms
✴️ Symbiotic Commonwealth
🔮 Sustainability Theorems
A cross-domain analysis of Political, Economic, Cultural, and Ecological theories.
Political Theory
Citizen Assemblies
Economic Theory
Cooperative Ownership
Cultural Theory
Open Source Culture
Ecological Theory
Ecosystem Services
The Commons-Based Tools: Managing resources through community governance.
📑 Observations
Establishing a triage containing observations of social experience.
🪞 Self-Enquiry
How could models like Cooperative Ownership and Citizen Assemblies be applied to solve a specific problem in my community, and how do we properly value the Ecosystem Services that support all life?
🩺 Diagnosis Questions
1. Do resources circulate or accumulate?
2. Are needs met through participation or possession?
3. Does ownership create stewards or hoarders?
Related Variables
- Commons governance effectiveness
- Resource circulation velocity
- Wealth concentration trends
"The householder should regard all creatures as his own self, and distribute food to them all." — Taittiriya Upanishad
🩻 Targeted Organ
The Circulatory System
Capacity for Equitable Flow
🧾 Rationale
To ensure wealth and knowledge circulate as commonwealth, nourishing the entire community.
💉 Extraction/Cultivation
Community land trusts, mutual credit systems, and participatory budgeting.
😷 Defense/Propagation
Commoning: The social practice of collectively managing a resource, which inherently defends against privatization.
❌ Tetrad Analysis
- Object of Perception: Resource Management
- ENHANCES: Equitable distribution; stewardship; circular flows; community governance
- OBSOLESCES: Private enclosure; state bureaucracy; resource hoarding
- RETRIEVES: Medieval/indigenous commons with modern institutional design
- REVERSES INTO: Commons becomes primary mode, rendering state/market models secondary
📝 Partial Diagnosis
Circulatory Health: Resources flow through commons-based systems that prevent hoarding and ensure equitable distribution.
⚗️ Research Repository
🔮 Engagement Circle
🧊 Life Course
🎓 Case Study
Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre (1989-present)
Brazil's pioneering participatory budgeting process demonstrates commons strategy through citizen assemblies that allocate municipal resources, cooperative ownership of decision-making processes, open source methodology adopted globally, and explicit attention to urban ecosystem services.
Sources: Participatory Budgeting Project | World Bank Urban Development | International Association for Public Participation
📚 Literature
"Governing the Commons" by Elinor Ostrom (1990)
Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning analysis of how communities successfully manage shared resources through institutional arrangements that avoid both market failures and government control.
