The European Dream Read Online Free PDF Page B

conventional idea that competition for scarce resources is the essential nature of human behavior—the Hobbes/Darwin ethic—gives way to the radical notion that cooperation is more vital to one’s survival and advancement. If that is the case, then what are the implications for how we define personal freedom?

Belongings vs. Belonging
    Recall that in the market era, freedom is defined as autonomy. One is free to the extent one is not dependent or beholden on another. To be independent, one needs to be propertied. With property, one can enjoy exclusivity and freedom. How does one secure property? By competing with others in an adversarial market setting. Network commerce suggests the very opposite definition of freedom. One’s freedom is secured by belonging, not by belongings. To belong, one needs access. With access, one can enjoy the freedom that goes with inclusivity. Freedom is found in shared relationships rather than isolation.
    If freedom means the power to experience the full potential of one’s being in the world, is that potential fulfilled by being walled off from others and surrounded by territorial boundaries, or by deep communion with others on common ground? The “deathbed” test is the best judge of which of the two definitions of freedom is closer to the mark. Contrast the man or woman who spent a lifetime collecting possessions and pursuing autonomy with the man or woman who spent a lifetime exploring relationships and pursuing intimacy. Which of these two can be said to have optimized the full potential of their being, resulting in the most freedom?
    Network commerce has consequences that go far beyond just a business model. Its assumptions about how best to optimize the individual good are deeply at odds with how we have come to define appropriate behavior and the good life in the modern era. Markets are based on mistrust, networks on trust. Markets are based on the pursuit of self-interest, networks on shared interest. Markets are arm’s-length transactions, networks are intimate relationships. Markets are competitive, networks are cooperative.
    The changing nature of how we think about our relationship to property is forcing a fundamental re-appraisal of the human condition, just as it did in the early modern era, when our ideas about property radically changed. The “great transformation” from proprietary obligations on the feudal commons to property exchange in a market economy marked a watershed in our thinking about the nature and purpose of human intercourse. Likewise, today the transition from property exchange in markets to access relationships in networks is again changing the assumptions about the nature of human activity.
    Unfortunately, there’s been scant discussion, either in academia or in public policy circles, about how to reconstruct our theories of property relations to bring them in line with the reality of network commerce operating in a globalized economy. A few scholars, however, have made attempts at revising our notions of property. The most important contribution to the discussion, thus far, comes from the late University of Toronto professor Crawford MacPherson, considered by many of his colleagues to be one of the distinguished contemporary authorities on the philosophy and history of property. (I first introduced MacPherson’s ideas in The Age of Access, published in 2000.)
    MacPherson starts his analysis by reminding us that our current concept of property is largely an invention of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We are so used to thinking of property as the right to exclude others from the use or benefit of something, says MacPherson, that we’ve lost sight of the fact that in previous times, property was also defined as the right not to be excluded from the use or enjoyment of something. MacPherson resurrects the older sense of property, the right of access to property held in common—the right to navigate waterways, walk along commonly used country