The Commons

The Missing Third Option

For decades, every economic debate has been about how far to move the dial between "private" and "public." But there's a third option that's not on that dial at all.

Option 1 Private Ownership

Individuals, investors, or shareholders own productive assets and receive the financial upside.

On the dial

Option 2 Public Ownership

The state owns assets on behalf of the public and governs them through public institutions.

On the dial

Option 3 — The Missing One Community Ownership

The people who depend on, participate in, or produce through an institution own it together. Workers are owners. Surplus is shared with the people who created it. This option isn't on the dial at all — it operates on a completely different axis.

Off the dial entirely — a different axis

"The left wants more public. The right wants more private. The center wants 'the right balance.' But community ownership isn't really on that dial. It's on a different axis entirely. And that matters because most political arguments are downstream arguments about distribution — 'Who gets the money?' — when we need to go one level up. Ownership is upstream of distribution."

— Josh Allan Dykstra, Work Will Kill Us All

This was taken from us.

The commons is one of the oldest economic concepts in human history. We're reclaiming what always belonged to everyone.

In medieval England, commons were literal shared land: pastures, forests, fields that communities had recognized rights to use. Ordinary people held rights to the resources they needed to survive.

Then came enclosure. Between roughly the 1500s and the 1800s, wealthy landowners fenced off those shared fields and consolidated them under private control. Landless people now needed wages to survive, and wages required employers.

Our modern version of capitalism didn't emerge from nowhere. It was, in significant part, built on the enclosure of something that previously had been held in common, together.

And once we see enclosure as a pattern, we start seeing fences everywhere. Healthcare. Housing. Education. Food and water. Fenced off… and sold back to you.

Two economies. One civilization.

We don't replace capitalism with one big new system. We build a second economy that lives in parallel — The Commons alongside The Market.

Survival Economy

Everything required for a good life in the modern world. Governed by economic democracy — everyone getting a say not just in political structures, but in economic ones too.

Community-owned, not shareholder-owned
Priced at cost, not profit
Governed by the people who depend on it
Structurally protected from enclosure

Optional Economy

The Market

Basically what we have now, just with fewer things in it. The Market keeps doing market-y things — the stuff that makes life weird in delightful ways.

Competitive and experimental
Profit-driven where appropriate
Dynamic and fun
Optional, not existential

What goes in The Commons.

These are the things we most urgently need moved out of The Market. Not a comprehensive list — a starting point. The floor is local and alive; it gets defined by communities and upgraded over time.

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Healthcare

A Commons hospital wouldn't close because "margins are thin" — because there are no margins to protect.

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Housing

Zero U.S. states where a minimum-wage job is sufficient to rent a two-bedroom apartment.

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Education

We cannot meaningfully participate in a modern economy or democracy without quality education.

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Clean Water

U.S. communities still experience lead and PFAS contamination. If anything belongs below the floor, clean water does.

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Energy

When deregulated energy markets face scarcity, customers can suddenly face thousands of dollars in charges.

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Basic Banking

5.6 million U.S. households remain unbanked. We actually had postal banking from 1911 to 1967. We had it. We gave it away.

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Healthy Food

The U.S. produces a staggering food surplus. The problem is that healthy food gets priced and distributed like a luxury good.

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News & Information

Democracy requires access to accurate information. Quality journalism sits behind paywalls while algorithmically optimized clickbait is free.

Fix the floor here, and we won't fix everything. But we will fix the things that make everything else harder to fix. And the floor isn't permanent — it's a living agreement with the intention to keep upgrading as we learn more.

The Shape of a Just Economy

The Floor AND The Ceiling

The Commons builds the floor, Maximum Extraction draws the ceiling. Together, these things define the shape of a just economy — a bounded space where life can flourish.

The Floor

The Commons

Survival goods and services provided to, and owned by, the community they serve. Nobody falls below the floor.

The Ceiling

Maximum Extraction

A structural ceiling on how much any one person or entity can extract from the economy. See "A Wealth Tax" below for more info.

Full credit: Kate Raworth drew this shape. We're building the architecture that enforces both boundaries simultaneously. In other words: she drew the donut, we're baking it.

The Commons Fund

Think of the Alaska Permanent Fund — but for everyone, and for everything survival requires. Since 1976, Alaska has redirected oil extraction revenue into a permanently endowed fund that pays dividends to every citizen. It doesn't get spent down. It doesn't sunset. It compounds. The Commons Fund works on the same principle — a structural reservoir of capital that builds new Commons institutions, sustains existing ones through hard times, and grows the floor over time. Same model, bigger scope.

But how do we pay for it?!

It's the first question everyone asks, and we're here for it. The truth is: we're already paying for most of this — we're just not getting the results we need. But for the new parts, here's how the Fund gets funded:

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Natural Resources

When private companies extract oil, minerals, or timber from publicly owned land, some portion of that value should flow permanently into The Commons Fund. This money already exists — right now it splits between the Treasury and state budgets and disappears into general spending. Alaska has redirected extraction revenue into a permanent public fund since 1976. The model works. We redirect it instead of losing it.

⚖️

A Wealth Tax

Extreme private wealth doesn't materialize in a vacuum — it depends on publicly funded infrastructure, educated workers, functioning legal systems, and markets created by millions of people. Economist Gabriel Zucman has proposed a 2% annual minimum tax on fortunes above roughly $100M. Applied globally, it could raise ~$390 billion annually. The Commons Fund gives concentrated wealth somewhere regenerative to go: into permanent shared assets rather than a general budget to be spent down.

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Point-of-Creation Requirements

Any organization above a certain scale, operating in a survival-good sector, defaults to Commons ownership from the moment it registers as a business. New housing developers above a certain scale register as a Commons Corp as part of formation. New healthcare organizations do the same as a condition of licensing. We don't need to purchase and convert everything that already exists — we just change what gets built next. This dramatically reduces how much transition capital The Commons requires.

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A.I. Shared Wealth

A.I. was built on an extraordinary foundation humanity created together: generations of publicly funded research, human knowledge accumulated over centuries, the collective output of billions of people. We ought to capture some portion of its gains and route them into The Commons Fund rather than allowing all of that new wealth to accumulate with the private owners of the technology. Because we all helped create what A.I. was built on, we should all own some of the upside.

This isn't "big government." It's a different architecture for ownership. The Commons doesn't replace capitalism — it removes survival from capitalism's jurisdiction, and funds itself in the process. And here's the thing: providing decent living standards for 8.5 billion people would require only about 30% of current global resource and energy use. We have enough. We are not resource-constrained. We are ownership-constrained.

The Commons doesn't replace The Market. It disciplines it.

The moment a Commons entity exists alongside a Market entity, something interesting happens: they have to compete. The Market claims to love competition. Well — buckle up.

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When Commons healthcare exists

A Commons hospital delivers better outcomes at lower cost with better-treated workers. The for-profit hospital down the street faces a choice: improve or lose patients.

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When Commons housing exists

Commons housing stays permanently affordable and well-maintained. Private landlords in the same market have to compete on something other than pure extraction or watch their tenants leave.

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When Commons banking exists

A Commons bank offers accounts with no fees and no minimum balance. Predatory check-cashing operations lose their captive market.

What The Commons looks like, assembled.

① OWNS Community

The people who depend on the institution own it together. Workers are owners. Surplus is shared.

② OPERATES Commons Corp

Self-managing teams run the org. People closest to the work have true authority over the work.

③ MEASURES Commons Impact Partners

Independent specialists measure whether the org is truly helping life flourish — and watch for drift toward capture.

④ PROTECTS Commons Trustees

Selected from the community by lottery (sortition). Two-year terms. They serve, they audit, they go home.

Where we are.

The Commons isn't a finished blueprint, it's a direction. Let's build the next viable thing in the direction we want to go, then the next, and the next...

Phase 1 — Done

Research & Framework

The intellectual architecture is available in Work Will Kill Us All. Get your book here.

Phase 2 — Now

Coalition Building

Assembling the Founding Advisory Team. Identifying pilot communities. Building the public movement.

Phase 3 — Next

First Pilots

One city. One Commons Corp entity. Healthcare, housing, or banking — wherever we find willing partners.

Phase 4 — Eventually

Commons Corp Legislation

State by state, the same way B Lab did it. Maryland first, then Delaware, then everywhere.

Hear it straight from Josh.

Four of the most common questions about The Commons, each answered in under 3 minutes.

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