Nota de Carmelo: Conocí a Peter Barnes en el verano de 2004 cuando estaba dándole los toques finales a "Balada Transgénica". Estábamos en Point Reyes, California, en un excelente retiro/escondite para escritores llamado Mesa Refuge. Ese día tuvimos una excelente conversación sobre... bueno, de todo desde el concepto del "commons" hasta el calentamiento global, los cultivos transgénicos y la ecopolítica del maíz mexicano. Barnes, quien fundó la empresa Working Assets Long Distance, ha dedicado sus energías y esfuerzos recientemente a cultivar el concepto del commons (que en español es algo así como comuna o espacio común) y a demostrar que se puede usar de manera innovadora para proteger el ambiente y la calidad de vida. Vean la página de su nuevo proyecto: http://onthecommons.org/

http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_3689.cfm
http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-1576753611-0
http://www.skybook.org/author.html

• Reading Capitalism 3.0 is like putting on a new pair of glasses. It is clearly written, provocative, and fresh. And it offers a sharp new tool for solving the problem of capitalism’s threat to the commons.

  Michael Pollan, author, The Omnivore’s Dilemma

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Our current version of capitalism—the corporate, globalized version 2.0—is rapidly squandering our shared inheritances. Now, Peter Barnes offers a solution: protect the commons by giving it property rights and strong institutional managers.

Barnes shows how capitalism—like a computer—is run by an operating system. Our current operating system gives too much power to profit-maximizing corporations that devour our commons and distribute most of their profit to a sliver of the population. And government—which in theory should defend our commons—is all too often a tool of those very corporations.

Barnes proposes a revised operating system—Capitalism 3.0—that protects the commons while preserving the many strengths of capitalism as we know it. His major innovation is the commons trust—a market-based entity with the power to limit use of scarce commons, charge rent, and pay dividends to everyone.

Capitalism 3.0 offers a practical alternative to our current flawed economic system. It points the way to a future in which we can retain capitalism's virtues while mitigating its vices.