Positive Sum Worlds- Remaking Public Goods

Thanks to their open source and permissionless nature, crypto protocols have rekindled a popular conversation about public goods. Indeed, the transparency and accessibility of blockchains has already re-imagined models of free exchange and association. Nevertheless, while crypto protocols operate as open networks, do they truly enact a public if solely comprised of private capital? Questions of scope, access, and ownership complicate our understanding of what is public on the internet. Public goods also rely on shared moral conditions, as any “good” is necessarily defined in relation to the value system of a given community. With these considerations, we advocate for an enhanced definition of “public goods,” in service of others and towards civilizational longevity.
Quotes
- In economics, a “public good” refers to anything that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous, that is, people can’t be barred access, and one person’s use doesn’t degrade another’s. Clean air is an example of a naturally occurring public good, while the electric grid is a public good created by people. What are the public goods of today’s industrial-knowledge society? Open source code, which supports millions of companies and independent developers, is often thought of this way. The cypherpunks considered privacy itself as a kind of public good. It seems only natural that online media archives and open digital infrastructure should qualify as well.