First of all, it’s linguistically interesting to note that English has this term “the Commons”. And it’s a very common term there, because the root is “common” – and in English we use “common” very often, every day, in all sorts of contexts. In German, on the other hand, the equivalent of “the Commons” is the word “Allmende”. And “Allmende” is a word that’s very rarely used, which is why it sounds unusual and strange at first. In German it sounds almost like “Alimente” (alimony) and the verb “alimentieren” – to keep someone on handouts – and today “alimentieren” has a mostly negative ring to it. I remember an appearance, a speech by the far-right politician Alice Weidel, in which she spoke of “alimentierte Messermänner” – “knife men living on handouts” – in other words, very derogatory and deeply contemptuous of human beings. That’s another reason why I think “the Commons” is a much more established and relaxed term, above all in the English-speaking world.
But let’s look at a few examples of how the Commons work well in everyday life. We have, for example, material goods like water: we need water, we’re made of water, and without water there’s no life. For a long time we humans shared water as a matter of course. And the rain that falls isn’t artificially limited – at least not yet; nobody has a private-capitalist claim to it. When the rain falls on my skin, I can feel it, enjoy the rain, and the plants I have can thrive on the rainwater. Or the air we breathe: it’s one of the most elementary examples of the Commons, of the Allmende – of resources that are available to all of us humans without restriction.
I also remember that as a child at school in the GDR I had access to school meals that were practically free – there was only a symbolic charge. That applied to the school meals including the milk: every child could choose between three kinds of milk – strawberry fruit milk, vanilla and chocolate – and they only cost a few pfennigs. Chocolate was, I think, 15 pfennigs and vanilla 10 pfennigs; so chocolate was a bit more expensive, but it was pfennigs, so really every child could afford it.
Salvador Allende established something similar back in the 70s in Chile: in Chile, children even got free milk and free food at school. And that’s exactly what the capitalists didn’t like. The USA overthrew Allende because they wanted a far-right, imperialist government and not Commons-oriented governments based on the common good – especially not in South America. Because that would have meant their monopoly on power and their imperialist power structures would have crumbled, since otherwise this model would eventually have caught on and taken hold in North America too.
That’s why they spread far-right, or rather right-wing populist, propaganda and immediately conjured up the spectre of communism. That came easily to them partly because a great deal of abuse really was committed in the name of communism and socialism – by clinical psychopaths like Stalin. Because Stalin was no communist, and he was no socialist either: he was simply a psychopath who exploited the ideology of the time for himself. Just like Putin or Netanyahu today – none of these figures give a damn about ideology; the only thing they care about is their personal power. For Netanyahu, it’s simply opportune today to say: “I’m right-wing.” And back then Stalin simply exploited the historical and socio-political conditions brutally for his own ends and manoeuvred himself into the position of power in the Communist Party – without even remotely understanding the actual ideals of socialism and, above all, of Marxism.
And we can carry the Commons principle straight on with a very important good, one that isn’t material but immaterial: our language. We’re allowed to use human language without restriction. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and all the other billionaires can’t stop us from using human language every day, developing it further and analysing it – and we don’t have to pay any money for that. That reminds me of the saying: “The best things in life are free.”
I could go on with the list like this. For me, immaterial goods are above all also trust, human closeness, humour and ingenuity. In a broader sense, all of these things are also the Commons for me, because they emerged from evolution over thousands of years and we’re all part of this bigger whole. Nate Hagens calls this the “superorganism” – something bigger than us as individuals: we’re part of a system that is bigger than the sum of its parts.
And right now, here in Leipzig, straight out of my everyday life, I can think of another example that has a lot to do with the Commons, at least partly: “teilAuto.net”, and there specifically the “cityFlitzer” service. Because with the cityFlitzer, I simply book a car spontaneously for short trips – in my case, for example, 30 minutes on average – get in and drive off. And that requires the other users who drove the car before me to treat this shared good responsibly: for example, to refuel, or to report certain things if there’s an error message or if items have been left behind in the car.
For me, all of that is lived Commons practice, because it means that we humans have come to an understanding and agreed to stick to certain rules – even if at first we may not be directly forced to. Because in theory I could just ignore the fact that the car’s tank is almost empty, that there’s an error message, or that someone has forgotten something in the car. But I understand: if I ignore it, the next person might ignore it too. And I want to, and I have to, contribute to a bigger whole, because that’s exactly what we humans have learned and internalized over the course of evolutionary history.
In my view, we also see the Commons principle in things like digital infrastructure. It, too, should be accessible to all people as freely as possible – regardless of financial status or other criteria and of an individual’s standing, just like access to drinking water.
And here, too, I see “The Long Tail”, or rather the massive drop in prices, because the prices for such goods have in some cases fallen by 90 percent by now. I remember a chart that showed what solar modules – and with them the generation of solar energy – still cost ten or fifteen years ago, and that the price has since fallen by 90 percent. It’s similar with other goods, above all digital ones: we already mentioned Gmail storage and Google Drive, in other words cloud storage – there, too, the price has now dropped by about 90 percent.
And I see it very similarly with tokens when it comes to using AI models. For now, budgets are still partly artificially limited. I remember when I used ChatGPT for the first time in 2023 – still the very first model – I only had limited access and then had to buy more tokens. Now, three years later, the price of tokens has already plummeted. The Chinese models are in the race, and it’s a question of months, not years, until the price of tokens practically goes to zero.
And that’s exactly when other goods gain much greater value: and these goods are human qualities – being human itself. It’s the way we perhaps communicate and think chaotically, that we express things in leaps and bounds and are imperfect. All of that will rise in value in the future and command a higher price than automated tokens – because in the future those will practically be thrown at us.
By the way, there’s also the “Commons-Institut”, where exactly this is being researched intensively. Because I believe the Commons hold a real key to solving the big challenges we’re increasingly facing: a hugely important core building block for us humans and for being human.
Who would you like to talk to about this thought?
Thank you. Every answer fits – take it with you into your day. Would you like to share something yourself?
