Ruminating on common cud.

Sometimes I wonder whether everything in economics can be reduced to a sheep analogy. From the start, Ba-Ba Blacksheep teaches us about supply - three bags full - about demand - one for the boy- and about tax - one for the master. We also learn about the process of turning a sentient being with the apparent ability to respond to economic interrogation into a commodity - have you any wool? Perhaps this marxist-vegetarian critique of pre-school literature should be studied in greater depth although I dare say it already has.

It doesn't always have to be ovine often any ruminant would do the job. Goats were the ruminant of choice when I studied commons theory as an economist. The argument goes thus: If we were all goat farmers living in a pre-industrial village - probably one of those ones you see on biscuit boxes - and we all used the village common to graze our goats then we would exploit the common ownership and overpopulate with goats. However, if we all had our private piece of land there would be an individual cost from over population and so we would graze just the right number of goats for the society. This tragedy of commons is a nice illustration of the conflict between short-term private interest and social goods.

Self-interested profit-maximisers aren't fans of commons. Nor are [neoclassical] economists. We can take the reverse argument for looking at intellectual property. Suppose we all wanted to make money from our ideas. Why be creative when you get no money from another using your intellectual property? If creative commons really existed then no one would create.

(Found in flickr commons. Taken from The County Archives in Sogn og Fjordane and photographed by Paul Stang. Note the fence!)

Fortunately, I am a bad economist, and so are users of flickr. Yet I wonder what the incentives are for contributing to creative commons. The corollary would follow that the profit motive is missing. I would side with a social explanation: recognition of peers, participation in a collaborative process, and perhaps an altruistic one as well.

Twinset&Purl has written a great piece about the creativity potentials of commons and broadly I agree. However, I would like to propose two things to think about:

1. Creative use of found or commons material isn't new, has a long history, and was important in artistic circles in the last century despite the copyright law. Three examples that spring immediately to mind: Picasso's violins from 1912, the cut up period of William Burroughs, and the sample culture of electronic music. While these examples profited artistically, they also did monetarily. Whenever I think something is out dated, I always have to check to see whether I’m just being naive.
2. I wonder about the decline of the profit motive. Perhaps we have been captured by some form of sample bias. Let us not forget that one of the key requirements of Woolf's fictional sister of Shakespeare, along with a room of one's own, was an independent income. Use of and access to the internet is not evenly distributed by income - especially by world standards. It's easy to be creative when you have a job that gives you the income and time to do so. Perhaps we are already in the position where the use of creative commons is reserved for an elite. I also would like to know how many creative people want to contribute creative commons up to the point where they can start charging for it.

Certainly current legislation feels clumsy however, I think the discussion of it gets much more complicated when considering scientific information. Perhaps this is because the peer review system in science already gives a non-profit, social benefit and peer recognition that relies on private intellectual property rights. I think the six level CC is an interesting attempt at mitigating the threat to the nonrivalry and nonexcludability of intellectual property while protecting it from the tragedy of commons exploitation. I wonder whether it can be formally implemented. Anyone wanting to read a thought provoking manifesto on the use of cut and paste, found text, and commons in art might like Reality Hunger by David Sheilds, which I am currently reading.

Next: flickr.