Ralph welcomes back former Nader’s Raider, David Bollier to update us on his latest work protecting and appreciating what we possess together as a community, the Commons. Then, we take a look back at highlights from some of our best 2020 interviews, featuring Dr. Bandy Lee, Dr, Michael Olsterholm, Professor Adolph Reed, broadcaster Glen Ford, socialist Nathan Robinson, environmentalist, David Freeman, journalist, David Dayen, and activist Katey Fahey.
David Bollier is an author, activist, blogger and consultant who spends a lot of time exploring the commons as a new paradigm of economics, politics and culture. He co-founded the Commons Strategies Group, a consulting project that works to promote the commons internationally. More recently, Mr. Bollier has become a fellow podcaster with his new program “Frontiers of Commoning.” Among many other works, Mr. Bollier wrote the quintessential book on the subject, “Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Commons.”
“I’d be curious for example on the availability of the new Covid vaccines. Are they going to be privatized? Probably. Versus Jonas Salk with the polio vaccine where his response famously was ‘Could you own the sun?’ He considered it a moral outrage to try to privatize the polio vaccine.”
David Bollier, author and host of the podcast “Frontiers of Commoning.”
“On the internet, social sharing in a non-market way was the norm until Silicon Valley got wind of it and said, ‘Oh, let’s create the sharing economy,’ which is no more than a capital-driven micro-rental economy. And they call it ‘sharing.” Well, it’s not ‘sharing,’ it’s a market. And this is again where people come together to create value and the corporate sector comes in to try to capture and monetize it.
David Bollier, author and host of the podcast “Frontiers of Commoning.”
Power of the Commons/2020 Highlights