David Bollier

A memorable Dilbert cartoon strip features Dogbert as a “creativity consultant” who is directed by his boss to come up with some hard quantitative data.  The boss barks:  “The only way to make decisions is to pull numbers of the air, call them ‘assumptions,’ and calculate the net present value.”  The punchline:  “Of course, you have to use the right discount rate, otherwise it’s meaningless.”

That encapsulates the faux-rigor of regulatory decisions for protecting health, safety and the environment.  Ascertaining the dollar value of human life using the most rigorous science possible is a politically useful charade. 

As the New York Times recently reported, the scientifically determined value of a life at the Environmental Protection Agency has gone up from $6.8 million in the Bush II years to $9.1 million at present.  Across town, the FDA decides whether to ban an unsafe drug based on a valuation of $7.9 million per life.  In deciding whether automakers will install new safety features, the Transportation Department figures $6 million.

A small group of innovative commoners in Phoenix is closing in on an innovative breakthrough:  a commons-based revenue model for photovoltaic solar energy development in cities.  It’s called the Solar Commons, which sports the tagline, "The sun shines for everyone." 

The idea is to use the public rights of way in cities and towns to collect solar energy, and then channel the revenue to a community trust.  The trust will manage the solar panels and electricity sales, and distribute the revenues to help the community.  In this case, the Solar Commons will support low-income housing and commons education efforts in Phoenix. 

It sounds simple enough, but the Solar Commons has taken considerable out-of-the-box thinking and operational innovation to get on track as a demonstration project.  Among the challenges:  the city-commons relationship, legal liability and project maintenance and management.  At this stage, the Solar Commons is on track to becoming a demonstration project.

The larger cultural campaign to fight the huge inefficiencies of global trade and foster re-localization of the economy has gotten a nice boost from a new film, The Economics of Happiness, produced by the International Society for Ecology and Culture. The film, available as a DVD, describes how “going local” is a powerful way to make our economic lives and culture more stable, eco-friendly and socially benign.

Helena Norberg-Hodge, director of the ISEC, points out the madness that tuna caught off the East Coast of the U.S. is flown to Japan to be packed, and then is shipped back to the U.S. for sale. By the lights of 18th Century economic theorists, this is considered “efficient” and “rational.” Of course, the economics of global trade only work because the vast externalized costs and hidden subsidies are ignored. Companies enjoy huge subsidies to use more energy and technologies to ship more things around the world. The costs of massive unemployment, rural migrations to cities in poor countries, and ecological destruction are “off the books.”

The U.S. Government’s ongoing crusade against WikiLeaks and the Egyptian Government’s shutdown of the Internet for five days force us to ask the question:  How shall the commoners retain their right to communicate with each other when their own governments intervene to stifle communications that threaten their power?

Eben Moglen, a long-time free software advocate, is promoting a great insurance policy:  decentralized, portable, personal servers.  He calls them “Freedom Boxes.”  The idea is that everyone should have a small, cheap personal server about the size of a cellphone charger.  Such devices already exist, he points out in today’s NYT, and cost about $99, and will likely become cheaper in coming months and years.  (A speech that Moglen gave on this topic, “Freedom in the Cloud,” on February 5, 2010, can be seen on YouTube here.  )

What’s missing at the moment is the software to make them easy to use.  So Moglen is calling upon the software programmers of the world to develop free software that could make the Freedom Box a viable, pervasive part of the Internet infrastructure.  We would no longer have to depend upon the good graces of a Google, Facebook or Internet service provider to reliably connect us or transact business for us.  We would have assured communications and commercial relationships without the threat of government interference or snooping, often through underhanded means.