Jim Luke (@econproph) is an economics professor at Lansing Community College and pioneer of their Open Learn Lab. Jim is Running errands for ideas at the intersections of economics, org theory, higher ed, and open pedagogy. His economist’s take on Open Education, higher education and how we can use The Commons for the good of learners is truly fascinating.
They took a reasonable stab at defining the commons, but never quite got it concretely for those who’ve not come across it before.
I also appreciated Jim’s idea about the commons being needed to be applied to smaller groups around the size of the Dunbar number. Larger groups definitely seem to have issues as things scale up, not the least of which is the potential for free-riding. Colin Woodard’s book could be looked at from an economics perspective particularly as different nations within America have different approaches to the commons and who pays for what and how much trust those groups have with each other.
