The commons without coercion: what we share and why it pays off property you want to share, and rules people have kept for centuries

By evening, everyone is using it

Here's a scene typical of our circle. One of us has put together a system for working with AI agents: a set of settings and instructions that make the assistant programs do noticeably better work. He puts it in a shared place. By evening, everyone is using it.

No one asked for permission. No one wrote down who now owes whom. No one worried that someone else would use it and get ahead.

If you described this to an outsider, they would most likely wince: "That doesn't happen. Sooner or later someone will start taking more than they give, and the whole thing will fall apart." I hear this objection often, in different forms. It even has a scientific name, and we'll get to it.

But first, how it works for us.

What we share

I'm talking about a narrow circle of people who hold the same principles I do. The main one is non-aggression: no one uses force, pressure or threats against another. And we understand that we're heading toward the same goal.

Within this circle, quite a lot is shared.

A shared knowledge channel. Someone finds a solid study, a handy tool, a good article, and it shows up there right away.

Shared code repositories. A repository is a folder with a program and the full history of its changes, which anyone with access can connect to. If one person writes useful code, the others have it at the same moment.

A knowledge base. Notes on what we've already figured out, so that no one has to figure it out again on their own.

Systems for working with AI agents, like in the scene above. And ordinary household things.

My own project, imhuman.space, also circulates freely and openly within the circle, as does my other work. There are no attempts to hide anything from our own people. In essence, it's a system of transparency and resource sharing: a result one person creates is immediately available to everyone.

What it gives us

I can't remember a single case where this kind of sharing ended badly. The benefits, on the other hand, are visible every day.

First: everyone stays informed. Technology now changes faster than one person can keep up with. When several people follow it and share right away, each of them knows more than they would have learned alone.

Second: less wasted work. No need to write the same code three times, search for the same answer three times, figure out the same tool three times. Time, money and energy go into new things, not repetition.

So sharing pays off in the most down-to-earth sense. Then why is the belief that the commons is doomed so persistent?

The tragedy of the commons

In 1968, the ecologist Garrett Hardin published an essay in the journal Science called "The Tragedy of the Commons" Source 1. His reasoning is simple.

Imagine a pasture open to all herders. Each herder thinks: if I bring one more cow, all the benefit from it goes to me, while the damage from the extra grass it eats is shared by everyone. So it pays for me to bring one more. Everyone thinks this way. The meadow gets trampled, and everyone loses. Hardin's conclusion sounds harsh: freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

Anyone who has lived with roommates knows the everyday version. A shared fridge where someone's yogurt disappears and no one throws out the expired food. A shared kitchen where everyone leaves "just one plate," and a week later the sink is full.

It sounds convincing. Hardin reasoned as in a thought experiment: what happens if a resource is open to everyone and there are no agreements. Checking how real people actually handle real pastures came later.

What Elinor Ostrom found

Elinor Ostrom, an American political scientist, spent decades looking at how people actually manage common pastures, forests, fisheries and water. In 2009 she received the Nobel Prize in Economics, the first woman to do so. The Nobel committee noted that she had shown how common property can be successfully managed by its users Source 2.

Ostrom published her main book in 1990: Governing the Commons Source 3. Her conclusion: the tragedy is not inevitable. Where people agree on the rules themselves, a common resource can last for centuries.

Below are two examples. They come from her research, not from my own experience.

Why it worked for them

By comparing stories like these, Ostrom identified the conditions under which a commons lasts. Her book lists eight Source 3. Here are the main ones in plain words:

1. It's clear who belongs. It's clear who has the right to use the resource and where its boundaries are. Common doesn't mean open to just anyone.
2. The rules fit the place. What works on an alpine meadow doesn't have to work in a Spanish orchard. Rules are written for a specific resource and specific people.
3. The rules are written by those who live by them. The users themselves take part in changing the rules. That's why they follow them.
4. You can see who takes what. The resource is monitored, usually by the participants themselves. You can't hide a cow in a meadow.
5. Sanctions are proportionate, disputes are settled quickly. A first minor violation brings a small fine, not expulsion. There's a simple, inexpensive place to settle disputes, like Thursdays at the cathedral.

The bee and the hive

I think it comes down to the position from which a person looks at the commons.

The usual question goes like this: what am I willing to give, and what will I keep for myself? It comes from the personal ego: there is "mine," and any transfer is a loss.

But if you step back and look at yourself from the outside, from a meta-position, you see something else. There are several of us, and we have a common goal. Something like a collective ego appears, a shared "we." And the question changes. It's no longer "what should I give" but "how do we distribute things so that everyone is well." At worst, so that no one loses. Ideally, so that everyone wins.

The condition: we are safe for each other

For now, I don't extend this principle to everyone around me.

To share openly, the people who use the commons need to hold the same principles. There has to be an agreement between us, essentially a social contract: we are safe for each other. No one uses what's shared against another. No one takes anything on the sly.

This matches Ostrom's first condition: it's clear who belongs. A commons without boundaries quickly turns into Hardin's meadow.

And one more thing. All of this works only by consent. No one obliges anyone to share. Everyone decides for themselves what to put into the commons and what to keep, and anyone can step away at any moment. Everything else rests on this voluntariness.

A commons that grows with use

There's a special kind of commons where tragedy doesn't threaten at all: knowledge and code. They can't be trampled. If I've read an article, there's no less of it left for you. On the contrary, the more people use it, the more people there are to fix mistakes and add something new.

You can see this clearly in open projects. Wikipedia has been written by volunteers since 2001, and it has become one of the most visited reference resources in the world. Linus Torvalds started the Linux operating system in 1991 as a personal project, and today it runs most of the internet's servers and every Android smartphone.

To me, this is an example of the same commons, only on a larger scale. Our circle works like a small version of such a project: every contribution immediately becomes shared and makes everyone richer.

1. 1

   The commons isn't doomed. Hardin described a meadow without rules; Ostrom showed that with rules a commons lasts for centuries.

2. 2

   A commons lasts where it's clear who belongs, the users write the rules themselves, and violations are visible and sanctioned proportionately.

3. 3

   Within a circle with a common goal, the question "what should I give" becomes "how do we distribute things so that everyone wins."

4. 4

   You can share openly where there's an agreement on mutual safety. And only by consent.

5. 5

   Knowledge and code don't diminish with use, they grow, which is why sharing them pays off most.

What's next

I have a separate project I've called the Healthy Care Environment. In it, I tried to formalize the principles of such an environment: one with no coercion, where decisions are made only by everyone's consent, and in the end everyone wins or at least no one loses. I reduced these principles to specific terms that everyone understands the same way.

Someday I'll put it into shape and publish it, and write a separate text about it. If you're interested, subscribe so you don't miss it.

I've already written about how such agreements work in everyday life in A Home Where It's Safe to Tell the Truth.

I'm interested in people who believe that agreement is possible. That utopia isn't science fiction but a matter of the ability to agree: to agree on rules and keep them. If you're one of them, or you have something to discuss, let's get to know each other.