Otherwise Society asks what we could build together, if unlimited by the constraints of the current human paradigm. What if we relearned how to coordinate like a village, and what if that village interrelated with other villages? As a Private Membership Association, decisions are made collectively, through an emergent process.

This Foundations page will be an evolving collection of the motivating ideas underpinning the Otherwise Society experiment. To help curate and develop these ideas, please join us in the Philosophers Guild on 2nd Wednesdays at the Commons.

To start, what is a commons? Elinor Ostrom was an economist, and Nobel Prize winner. Her work focused on commons around the world and how they were managed sustainably. Her interpretation of a commons was a shared resource, like a pasture, forest, or fishery, that is accessible to a group of people and where sustainable management depends on collective action and locally created rules, rather than solely relying on private ownership or government control. 

Ostrom laid out 8 principles for management of a commons:

1. Commons need to have clearly defined boundaries. In particular, who is entitled to access to what? Unless there’s a specified community of benefit, it becomes a free for all, and that’s not how commons work.

2. Rules should fit local circumstances. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to common resource management. Rules should be dictated by local people and local ecological needs.

3. Participatory decision-making is vital. There are all kinds of ways to make it happen, but people will be more likely to follow the rules if they had a hand in writing them. Involve as many people as possible in decision-making.

4. Commons must be monitored. Once rules have been set, communities need a way of checking that people are keeping them. Commons don’t run on good will, but on accountability.

5. Sanctions for those who abuse the commons should be graduated. Ostrom observed that the commons that worked best didn’t just ban people who broke the rules. That tended to create resentment. Instead, they had systems of warnings and fines, as well as informal reputational consequences in the community.

6. Conflict resolution should be easily accessible. When issues come up, resolving them should be informal, cheap and straightforward. That means that anyone can take their problems for mediation, and nobody is shut out. Problems are solved rather than ignoring them because nobody wants to pay legal fees.

7. Commons need the right to organise. Your commons rules won’t count for anything if a higher local authority doesn’t recognize them as legitimate.

8. Commons work best when nested within larger networks. Some things can be managed locally, but some might need wider regional cooperation – for example an irrigation network might depend on a river that others also draw on upstream.

We are working to 

Otherwise

Society