- Paperback: 260 pages
- Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (Feb 7 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0415944821
- ISBN-13: 978-0415944823
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 408 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #405,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
Review
Bollier gives convincing examples of how natural resources (including water), public information, federal drug research, and public space are all being snapped up for private gain.Mr. Bollier describes valiant efforts to reclaim those things, places, and information held in common-to be shared forever by the private gain of no one.
-Brian Smith, Earth Justice IN BRIEF.
-Brian Smith, Earth Justice IN BRIEF.
Book Description
Until a 1998 federal court decision, a Minnesota publisher claimed a monopoly on access to all federal court decisions. A Texas company recently filed a patent on a kind of rice grown in India for centuries. Other businesses now claim ownership of mathematical algorithms embedded in software, valuable public lands acquired for five dollars an acre, and icebergs that they plan to transport and sell as fresh water.
In Silent Theft, David Bollier argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we collectively own-publicly funded medical breakthroughs, software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often, however, our government turns a blind eye-or sometimes helps give away our assets.
Amazingly, the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed because we have lost our ability to see the commons. Spooling out one outrageous story after another, Bollier skillfully weaves together debates about the Internet, the environment, biotechnology, and the communications revolution. His fresh and compelling critique illuminates a rarely explored landscape in our political and cultural life.
Crisp and revelatory, Silent Theft is a bold attempt to develop a new language of the commons and, in the face of a market order that knows no bounds, to outline an ambitious new project for reclaiming our common wealth.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
"The commons" is a concept that many Americans have trouble comprehending. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
"The commons" is a concept that many Americans have trouble comprehending. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing new here,
By A Customer
This review is from: Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth (Hardcover)
Bollier does a credible hob outlining the issues surrounding the theft of the public commons. Many of the issues he highlights are unbelievable. Just thinking about how much of the public commons are being given away is truly astounding (the mining act of 1872 is one example that has always bugged me. A pretty good deal to lock up mineral rights for a few dollars an acre.) However, Bollier comes up short in his recommendations. He outlines a few suggestions as to how to stop the "silent theft", however, many of his ideas will require a quantum change in how business operates. There is no way Congress will agree to any of them. I would loved to have seen him address how to jump that obstacle.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly Useful,
By
This review is from: Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth (Hardcover)
Bollier has written a very useful little book, of particular interest to liberals, Greens, and Libertarians, as well as the broader public. The book's thesis holds that the 'commons' -- understood as our collectively owned assets, (natural resources being one example) -- are under steady threat of enclosure (privatization) by an increasingly aggressive commercial sphere in search of expanding profits. His use of the more archaic terms 'commons' and 'enclosure' to describe the process is a shrewd one, connecting current encroachments to those more infamous enclosure laws of time past. Despite appearances, this is not an abstract bookish issue. Daily, the public faces such benchmark symptoms as depleted public resources, brand-name idolatry, open spaces overwhelmed by advertising, and threats to an unfettered internet. Ironically, what is disappearing, as Bollier points out, are those very public and personal places that provide a market economy with the societal wherewithall it needs to reproduce itself. Inasmuch as the market has its own parochial definition of rationality -- one that has increasingly become the public standard -- such commons are too often unable to justify themselves and thus are contracted and sold, disappearing at an alarming rate. Government's role in aiding and abetting these enclosures is also detailed, and while the book is severely critical of market myopia, it does not call for their elimination, but for an intelligent circumscription.Traditionally, liberals have defended the public sphere. This work should help provide some backbone for rediscovering the importance of that commitment. It is a call to arms for those who understand the long-term significance of what the author calls the "Gift Economy", i.e. a free exchange among parties, as exemplified in the conditions leading to the explosive growth of the internet. Greens should like the emphasis on community-based solutions, while Libertarians should feel challenged to justify their paradigm, given the sociological priority of gift economies. Bollier's style makes for easy reading, along with a helpful bibliography. The book is neither weighty nor deep, but it does maintain a steady focus and serves as a useful compendium for understanding the rapidly shrinking public domain, and what we are losing in the process.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews) 30 of 30 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly Useful,
By Douglas Doepke - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth (Hardcover)
Bollier has written a very useful little book, of particular interest to liberals, Greens, and Libertarians, as well as the broader public. The book's thesis holds that the 'commons' -- understood as our collectively owned assets, (natural resources being one example) -- are under steady threat of enclosure (privatization) by an increasingly aggressive commercial sphere in search of expanding profits. His use of the more archaic terms 'commons' and 'enclosure' to describe the process is a shrewd one, connecting current encroachments to those more infamous enclosure laws of time past. Despite appearances, this is not an abstract bookish issue. Daily, the public faces such benchmark symptoms as depleted public resources, brand-name idolatry, open spaces overwhelmed by advertising, and threats to an unfettered internet. Ironically, what is disappearing, as Bollier points out, are those very public and personal places that provide a market economy with the societal wherewithall it needs to reproduce itself. Inasmuch as the market has its own parochial definition of rationality -- one that has increasingly become the public standard -- such commons are too often unable to justify themselves and thus are contracted and sold, disappearing at an alarming rate. Government's role in aiding and abetting these enclosures is also detailed, and while the book is severely critical of market myopia, it does not call for their elimination, but for an intelligent circumscription.Traditionally, liberals have defended the public sphere. This work should help provide some backbone for rediscovering the importance of that commitment. It is a call to arms for those who understand the long-term significance of what the author calls the "Gift Economy", i.e. a free exchange among parties, as exemplified in the conditions leading to the explosive growth of the internet. Greens should like the emphasis on community-based solutions, while Libertarians should feel challenged to justify their paradigm, given the sociological priority of gift economies. Bollier's style makes for easy reading, along with a helpful bibliography. The book is neither weighty nor deep, but it does maintain a steady focus and serves as a useful compendium for understanding the rapidly shrinking public domain, and what we are losing in the process. 0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
That Routledge prices an essentially POD paperback at $35 is ironic,
By miss prism - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth (Paperback)
Next time, Bollier might consider self-publication via [...] or a small press either willing to agree to a modicum of author-controlled pricing, or who can be trusted to have an incentive to sell to the general public, and thus to price low for that market, rather than assigning his copyright to a maximalist corporate monetizer (non-profits being every bit as interested in self-interested monetization as for-profit firms. Indeed, they tend to gouge the consumer much more than for-profit firms, sometimes due to the fact that their smaller markets are actually higher cost, sometimes due to their own inefficiencies). Authors are far more interested in free dissemination for the lowest possible price, that is, just over cost, than are publishers to whom authors hand over exclusive control. Authors should insist on retaining controls. If individuals retain controls and approvals over the use of their property rights, then they are able to defeat the efforts of corporate assignees to monetize their intellectual property inappropriately. That means that intellectual property rights must be defended, not condemned. Thus, the netizenry has leapt to the wrong conclusion in their calls for the abolition of property rights. Property controlled by individuals themselves is far more secure from the sins of corporate hoarding and aggregation that Bollier here deplores.
11 of 22 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing new here,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth (Hardcover)
Bollier does a credible hob outlining the issues surrounding the theft of the public commons. Many of the issues he highlights are unbelievable. Just thinking about how much of the public commons are being given away is truly astounding (the mining act of 1872 is one example that has always bugged me. A pretty good deal to lock up mineral rights for a few dollars an acre.) However, Bollier comes up short in his recommendations. He outlines a few suggestions as to how to stop the "silent theft", however, many of his ideas will require a quantum change in how business operates. There is no way Congress will agree to any of them. I would loved to have seen him address how to jump that obstacle. |
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Business & Investing > Popular Economics
- Books > Business & Investing > Real Estate
- Books > Law > Law Practice > Reference
- Books > New & Used Textbooks > Business & Finance > Economics
- Books > New & Used Textbooks > Business & Finance > Real Estate
- Books > New & Used Textbooks > Law
- Books > New & Used Textbooks > Social Sciences > Political Science
- Books > Nonfiction > Philosophy
- Books > Nonfiction > Politics
- Books > Professional & Technical > Accounting & Finance > Industries & Professions > Real Estate
- Books > Professional & Technical > Law > Law Practice > Reference
- Books > Reference > Law
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
