A Brief History of How We Lost the Commons – And what we must do to get it back

Enclosure, in which property rights are literally taken or given away by government, is half the reason our commons is in such a steep decline today; the other half is a form of trespass called externalizing—that is, corporations shifting their costs onto the commons. Externalizing is as damaging as enclosure, yet much less noticed, since it occurs quietly and continuously, as in the case of pollution seeping into a river.

The one-two punch of enclosure and externalizing is especially destructive. With one hand, corporations take valuable stuff from the commons and privatize it. With the other hand, they dump bad stuff into the commons and pay nothing. The result is profits for corporations but a steady loss for everyone else, to whom the commons belong.

On The Commons
A Brief History of How We Lost the Commons: And what we must do to get it back
Peter Barnes