Since this quote isn’t going to make it into my thesis after all, I’m preserving it here for future reference:
Business, let it be said, is no more a villian than a lion whose metabolism needs gazelles. Companies are in the business of maximizing competitive performance in the market, and use of the commons simply represents an available resource and frequently a path of least resistance. That is why fortifying the commons is not equivalent to attacking the market, which clearly generates many important benefits for our society.
…the issue is not market versus commons. The issue is how to set equitable and appropriate boundaries between the two realms – semipermeable membranes – so that the market and the commons can each retain integrity while invigorating the other. That equilibrium is now out of balance as businesses try to exploit all available resources, including those that everyone owns and uses in common.
Bollier, Silent Theft, 3-4.
Welcome to Thinkery, est. 2003. At the moment, I'm an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Syracuse University. I'm interested in new media, historical conceptions of authorship, and human/machine agency. I write about all of that elsewhere, mostly, and keep this space for other areas of investigation about the world: namely, cooking, gardening, and travel.
