WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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The idea of “the commons” is the concept of public resources that are owned by EVERYone and not by SOMEone…like our public lands, or even the Internet. On Saturday several local groups held a public forum on the commons, hosted by a Bloomington woman who would become world famous less than forty-eight hours later. Elinor Ostrom is a long-time faculty member at the Bloomington campus of Indiana University and on Monday was named a co-winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics. Ostrom received the award for her work debunking the notion that a lack of central ownership spoils common resources. Ostrom says we don’t need commonly used property to be regulated by the state or controlled by specific individuals or companies. Instead, she argues that user groups tend to develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest and preserve the viability of a shared resource. Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom speaks about thinking globally and acting locally in just a few minutes, after she introduces panelists Jean Kautt from Bloomingfoods and publisher of PermaCulture magazine Peter Bane in this WFHB exclusive.
