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
sari and
Visions of truly global DAOs representing billions of people are a fantasy. But if we apply our principle of "positive externalities" to include future citizens of the places we live, protocol-built public goods starts to look more like community-driven industrial policy.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
Each of these examples is based on a different idea of what makes life meaningful—on an idea of what is "good" (Taylor, 1977). Public goods are non-excludable and non-rivalrous, but more importantly, they are objects that satisfy values that are shared.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
A social body is united not only by the things it makes use of, but by a multitude of shared traits, including geography, ethnicity, religion, taste, culture, history, and values. This is why, no matter their claim to universality, instantiations of public goods are always local . Locality is created and felt through shared space, time, or
... See moreSam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods


When we think of the public, we should think expansively. This is not to say that we must consider everyone in the world as a part of our public. As we emphasized in our essay on squads, we also celebrate small, self-selective communities and trust-based groups. But by considering the effects (positive and negative) that we might have on groups at
... See more