Common Wealth: The #1 Idea That Can Change the World

Time magazine’s March issue listed the idea of “common wealth” as the number one idea that is changing the world.

Here is a key passage of their write up on common wealth:

“That’s why the idea that has the greatest potential to change the world is simply this: by overcoming cynicism, ending our misguided view of the world as an enduring struggle of “us” vs. “them” and instead seeking global solutions, we actually have the power to save the world for all, today and in the future. Whether we end up fighting one another or whether we work together to confront common threats—our fate, our common wealth, is in our hands.”

And get this, it’s written by Jeffrey Sachs, AN ECONOMIST! I can hardly believe it.

If the significance of this fails to register, just consider that economics is referred to as the dismal science and studies the allocation – and they do not traditionally mean sharing – of scarce resources.

And that the for the last few decades or so, those economists espousing unchecked competition as the path to freedom and prosperity – the free market camp – have ruled the discipline. This camp includes Sachs who is famous for helping developing countries move toward competitive, free-market economies.

And that it was these free marketers who provided the intellectual underpinning of the conservative movement, whose success has lead to the systematic plundering of the American people’s common wealth for over 20 years through an indiscriminate and extreme level of privatization and deregulation (I should know, I helped as an employee of a trade association in DC) and may yet bankrupt the US Government through war.

So for an economist, and a famous free marketer like Sachs, to see common wealth as the idea that has greatest potential to change the world, and for him to write something as visionary, and just plain damn hopeful as the above, is nothing short of a miracle. Nothing dismal about it.

In any case, I’m all for a free market with the infrastructure to share my stuff with whomever I want and so that others can do the same. And that allows me to allocate my resources – without mediation – to the projects that I think will do the most for the common good. Call it a free market. Call it common wealth. I don’t care. In the end, it’s common sense.