[P2P-F] Fwd: Commons Future: Rise & Fall of a Libertarian Utopia

Tue May 24 07:24:00 CEST 2011

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jay Walljasper <jay at jaywalljasper.com>
Date: Tue, May 24, 2011 at 1:48 AM
Subject: Commons Future: Rise & Fall of a Libertarian Utopia

 Dear Commoners:

This is an excerpt from All That We Share that I worked up into a story for
the OTC website.  It takes a look at a (fictional) experiment in libertarian
anti-commonsism from the perspective of an article written in the year 2035.

it's gotten some attention on the web, including links from the Wall Street
Journal and the Libertarian Party (although I am not expecting either to
recant anytime soon).

I thought you'd get a kick out of it.

Rise and Fall of a Libertarian UtopiaA commons resurgence in one Texas town,
as seen from the year 2035BY JAY
WALLJASPER<http://www.onthecommons.org/users/jay-walljasper>
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Movements don’t live on bright ideas and hard work alone. Martin Luther King
Jr. said that movements need to offer people a portrait of what the future
could look like. So here is a vision of a commons-based society of the
future, rising out of the ashes of greedy individualism in a gated community
outside Houston. Excerpted from On the Commons’ new book “All That We Share:
A Field Guide to the Commons”: (The New Press)

Cato, Texas, seen as it looked in 2012, the height of its fame as an
experiment as in extreme individualism. At that time the town offered no
government services and very few civic organizations. (Credit: Photo by
Walmart Stores under a Creative Commons license from flickr.com)

This outer-ring suburb of Houston, founded as a gated community in 2004,
gained widespread media attention for its almost complete lack of
government services.

>From the Wolf Network Information Link
26 May 2035 1:15:29 p.m.

CATO, TX (USA)— Libertarians, with their revulsion of government and worship
of greedy individualism, dominated politics in the U.S. from the 1980s until
the second decade of the 21st Century.

Their mission was to dismantle nearly all government programs outside of the
military, law enforcement, corporate subsidies and highway building. They
deemed the public sector outmoded and dangerous— a threat to our economic
liberties and future prosperity.

So-called conservatives of that era heralded the free market as an
infallibly efficient instrument capable of directing decisionmaking at every
level of society. They ascribed almost mystical powers to the market, and
invoked its wisdom as if this economic theory was actually a sacred union of
the Ten Commandments and the Laws of Physics.

The fact there was nothing at all conservative about this political agenda
seemed to trouble no one on the right. (Many moderate and more than a few
liberal politicians and pundits also jumped on the libertarian bandwagon.)
Indeed, rather than “conserving”natural resources and cultural traditions it
was actually a radical plan leading to their devastation, and the weakening
of the whole intricate web of ecological systems and human relationships
which today we call the commons.

The basic blueprint of libertarian ideology was to privatize practically all
of the commons, from municipal water supplies to the management of our
parks, with the idea that owners’ drive for profits would result in the best
outcomes for everyone.

It’s not clear whether free market advocates actually believed this would
work, but they certainly knew it would result in the best outcomes for
wealthy investors and corporate top dogs who lavishly supported them with
money and media attention.

Libertarianism reached its high water mark in American life in 2010 when the
zealously anti-government, anti-tax Tea Party scored notable success in the
mid-term elections, essentially taking over the Republic party and putting
the Democrats on the defensive. But over the next few years it gradually
disappeared from U.S. politics, as people realized that libertarian policies
enacted over the previous thirty years were undermining economic security,
community wealth, environmental quality and cooperative spirit for the vast
majority of Americans.

*Libertarian Paradise Lost*

If you were looking for a place that symbolized the triumph of
libertarianism in the early years of the century—the abiding faith that
economic competition represents the only path to the good life and that
government is essentially our enemy—Cato, Texas, would be it.

This outer-ring suburb of Houston, founded as a gated community in 2004,
gained widespread media attention for its almost complete lack of government
services. The local water utility was a subsidiary of the Bechtel
Corporation, and nearly all the community’s children attended private prep
schools or Christian academies.

Even the police department was run by a security company, with different
levels of protection available to households depending on the premiums they
paid. Most lower-cost plans, for instance, did not cover house calls for
nuisance crimes, burglaries, or domestic disputes.

Cato never attracted anywhere the 125,000 residents projected by its giddy
developers. Today, the population stands at 4,200, down from about 11,000 in
2014. At one point there was serious discussion about leveling the place to
create parkland and community gardens, but the town got a reprieve when a
station on Houston’s expanding light rail system opened near what had been
the community guardhouse.

But the real change happened in 2019 with the formation of People United to
Build Livability in Cato (PUBLIC). Buffy Ayn Beauchamp, one of PUBLIC’s
instigators, recalls, “At that time, all anyone could talk about was what’s
wrong with Cato—no sidewalks, no parks, no locally owned businesses, no one
who knew their neighbors. But this community had some good things going for
it too, namely that a lot of people living here were willing to roll up
their sleeves to make things better.”

*Commons Regained*

Meeting weekly in the back room of the local Starbucks, PUBLIC drafted an
ambitious agenda to tackle the town’s problems by looking at what everyone
shared in common—a sentiment that would have been anathema to the
community’s founders. Launching a baby-sitting co-op, youth mentoring
programs, neighborhood tool exchanges, a car-sharing club were the first
orders of business of this hard-charging organization.

Then came the new park, the public school, a community recreation center,
and the recycling depot—all funded by state, federal and foundation grants
but built by local volunteers. A vacant mall was fashioned into a Main
Street, and a Latino cultural center now occupies the Old Navy store. Local
churches spearheaded construction of a community-owned grocery, café,
hardware store, fitness center, and cantina. The Houston Park District took
over management of the country club, opening it to the public.

Strolling through the community on a spring evening, there are few reminders
that the town began as an experiment in creating a privatized utopia.
Indeed, historical preservationists recently lost the battle to save a
statue of economist Milton Friedman that stood next to the now demolished
guardhouse at the town’s main entrance, where today you’ll find a memorial
to victims of the Great Texas Heat Wave of 2021. Cato now embodies the
spirit of the commons—the renewed emphasis on cooperation and mutual aid
that gradually emerged as a solution to 21ST century economic and social
conditions—as much as any town in America.

Jay Walljasper
**Writer  *Speaker *Storyteller*
JayWalljasper.com <http://www.jaywalljasper.com/>
*
*
*
*

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