Today, our Commons are mostly invisible in life in the United States, but about two billion people around the world depend on Commons for their livelihood, like water, fisheries, farmland, roadways, air and other natural resources vulnerable to theft and seizure by corporations that want to do fracking, privatizing, or monetizing every aspect of these resources.
The push for privatization is a way for corporations to plunder our commonwealth and life blood ends up with such results as our groundwater sold for brand-label bottled water, the patenting of the human genome, and the replacement of shareable agricultural seeds with proprietary GMO (genetic modified organisms) that must be bought year after year.
The word Commons was termed in the 16th-19th centuries by the English gentry. They would seize the village pastures, forests, and waterways for their private use. These seizures were called “enclosures.” This drove the people who now were dispossessed from their Commons to the cities, like London and Manchester, where they became beggars and workers in the new industrial order.
The concept of “enclosures” was repeated in Asia, Africa, Latin America and it is still going on today in those countries and our own country. Investors and hedge funds are buying up forests, farmland, and water rights. How can the free-riding abuse of the oligarchies, like the Koch brothers, be put in check when they keep getting laws passed by using the American Legislative Exchange Council (A.L.E.C.), which ensures their grip on the Commons to do with what they want for profit?
Maybe the downfall of the people who plunder the Commons will be the Internet Commons/Digital Commons, which is free now once the access is purchased. This information puts light on the importance of the Commons and ways to protect them. Net Neutrality is a perfect example of corporations trying to take over a Common, the Internet. This would be third revolution and it is coming.
We must understand how the takeover of the Commons occurs, and how it will play out in the third industrial revolution, which is coming in what will be called “Zero Marginal Cost,” a hybrid economic system of zero profit enabled by social commons, which is a throwback to how civilization began.
The world and its people are changing, and the Internet with all the social media sites are informing people to what’s really happening with our earth’s resources. Examples of this can be seen in New York and San Francisco where younger people are not buying cars or houses and, instead, are sharing cars and houses. Living this way, a person doesn’t need as much money. Is this worth fighting for? It is the only way to save the planet and the workers of the world?
In the meantime, the $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage (had the minimum wage kept up with inflation it would be around $24 an hour). An increase in wages would help tide the low-wage people over until … a solution is found, the world ends, or we all learn to get along and share.
The survival of American democracy requires the existence of a flourishing union work force. In a survey, 68 percent of Americans approve of labor unions. So, as an old sheet metal organizer, I say we need to go all out in organizing while the soldering iron is hot, to use a sheet metal workers tool. We should organize all workers no matter where or what kind of work they do. All workers have the right to belong to a union and all should support each other. If you, in your work place, do not know how to form a union, then do what Napoleon’s military adopted adage, ‘Jump into the battle and then figure it out.’ One of the best ways to organize is worker to worker and plan it out over a meal or coffee and talk to other union workers to see what would work best for you and also what unions are winning at this time. Just go for it. When things are in disarray, like the shit show in Washington, D.C., they might not even know what you are doing until it is too late for them to push back aga...
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