Philippe Aigrain, a regular guest contributor to that most excellent of blogs, On the Commons, has a key contribution, where he asks: what is needed, in terms of policy and social conditions, for the commons to thrive. He strongly links the emergence of the commons to the existence of the welfare state, and gives a set of criteria one can use to judge the validity of measures in its favour.

Excerpt:

Information commons are a paradoxical offspring of the welfare state. They will deliver their true promise only if we develop new mutualisation mechanisms for their conditions of existence.

Why do we have a large educated population able to make valuable contributions to the information commons? Why do people have time to do these contributions (if they free it from television and other attention capturing media)? Why do we have the Internet, this precious neutral common infrastructure that (still?) puts controls and intelligence in the hands of end-users and transmits their production with the same priority that it transmits those of transnational companies? All of this comes from welfare states, in the US as in Europe. But it is a paradoxical achievement. Maybe it’s unfair, but we don’t tend to associate welfare states with the empowerment of individuals, with providing them with means to act on their own. In the golden age of welfare states we did see an incredible increase in productivity that fred a huge amount of free time for individuals, an increase in the level of education for most, and an ability for governments to invest in long-term projects even when lobbies of the time did not like them. But we also saw the capture of 3:30 hours per day by the passive activity of television viewing, the advent of a model of consumption where the why has been forgotten in favour of the how much, and a strong opposition between production (something for large companies), policy (something for governements and experts) and consumption (of both by individuals). We are now in another world.

For good and bad. The good is the empowerment of individuals, the new cooperative values, the emergence of lifestyles that value exchanges and solidarity between humans and with nature. The bad is that the ability of this new world to transform the economy and government so that they serve its values is still very much at doubt. This could be discussed from many angles : how the global regulatory environment is still predominantly influenced by some large installed business interests, how financial power on the economy distorts investment in favour of short-term gains and monopoly rent-seeking, how the fears of change are used to damage freedoms and immerse us in a climate of permanent emergency that is so hostile to the patient construction of better societies. I would like to stress another aspect of our present situation: we must quickly realise that nothing is forbidden in terms of sharing the funding of the conditions of existence of the commons. Whether it’s for the environement or for information commons, all schemes must be considered from tax to fees, from legal licenses to competitive intermediaries, from donations to public/private partnerships. None of these schemes is perfect, and each is adapted to different situations and aims. But no ideology should stop us from using one when it looks like the right tool for the job. Which job? Ensuring that the way contribution to the commons is made possible can scale up with the growing share of social life it has the potential to occupy.

There are some criteria to be used when any of the schemes is under consideration:

Does the intended scheme respects the autonomous ecology of the (for instance information or knowledge) commons?

Does the intended scheme empower contributors to choose which projects or directions will be pursued?

Is there a risk of biasing the direction of investment in the commons in favour of interests of specific groups, or in favour of short-term vs. long-term?

These criteria provide different answers, and that’s why no specific scheme can apply to all situations. Building large scientific instruments requires a priori decisions that are probably best dealt with by a mixture of government funding, peer-evaluation and societal debate. Deciding which freely accessible music information communities or collaborative media will receive funding is best left in the hands of listeners and readers. Thus, in this last case, donations, legal licenses whose product is distributed according to the interest of listeners and readers, and competitive intermediaries are probably the best candidates. Many other schemes are likely to pop up. Let’s just keep our eyes open.