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Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
We are members of a multitude of publics, and we must bring the perspective of our full selves to the creation of public goods.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
one way to manifest positive externalities is to consider the success of others as your own.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
Understanding public goods as positive externalities enables us to consider people that are not typically classified as members of a public to be our beneficiaries. This definition stands in contrast to economic discourse, where non-contributing users of some public good are considered "free riders," indicative of market failure. How coul
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Consider a classic public good: a public park. We might say park visitors are generically "users" of this public space, or that anyone within driving distance is adequately served. But this categorization feels distinctly unsatisfying. "User" does not capture meaningful detail about a population that collectively values free acc
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to create a majestic and egalitarian society requires a more expansive vision of public goods than what can be imagined with economics alone.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
In today's world, capital is not scarce; ambitious visions for the public's benefit are.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
Each of these public goods, both actual and potential, are goods beyond the reductive economic sense. They satisfy values of privacy, the virtue of freely shared work, liberalism, accountability, and democratic participation, incorporating a shared sense of the good for parties well beyond the users of Web 3 today.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
Public goods are enacted by social institutions that reproduce patterns of behavior in the public interest.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
Every one of us is a beneficiary of the public goods of societies past. These grand projects humble us. Cathedrals, great canals, sanitation, the expansion of mass literacy—they tell us that the "goodness" of a public good is also measured in terms of its longevity. To match these great works, we must extend our time horizon. We want to e
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