Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "The commons" is a concept that many Americans have trouble comprehending..." (more)
Key Phrases: market enclosure, gift economy, reclaiming the commons, United States, Forest Service, New York City (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A tour de force narrative that draws the reader into high alert...." -- Ralph Nader

Silent Theft raises the kinds of questions that Washington typically represses. The book broaches issues that very likely are going to drive the next big turn of the political wheel. Silent Theft confirms the brooding sense, shared by many, of a system out of control.
Jonathan Rowe, Washington Monthly.
Bollier advances a powerful critique of the market über alles nonsense that is driving our nation and our prospects for genuine democracy into the ground. He argues, convincingly, that the privatization of the commons is disastrous even for those generally entralled with markets and the profit-motive.
Robert W. McChesney, Boston Review.
...get[s] at what I think is the fundamental, primary political issue that can be the underlying value for regenerating progressive politics in our country, and that value is the common good versus private greed.
Jim Hightower, Texas Observer.
The subject of Silent Theft is urgently important, and Bollier's handling of this complex set of issues is both deft and straightforward. The more people who read Silent Theft, the better our world. -- Norman Lear
A calm reasonable primer on a topic of enormous importance. Buy a copy, and when you've read it, donate it to that wonderful commons called your local library. -- Bill McKibben author, The End of Nature
A tour de force narrative that draws the reader into a high alert over what we have lost by allowing business lobbies and their captive government to turn rampant commercialism into the controlling ideology over our public assets and values. Silent Theft defines, with sure handed authority, a grand new mission for the beleaguered American commonwealth-that it should be governed by civic values not commercial, unaccountable supremacies. Enter this new world of human possibilities! -- Ralph Nader
This beautifully written, carefully argued book shows how little we learned from the past. Free and open resources have always been central to creativity and growth; Bolliershows how in a range of important contexts, free and open resources are being enclosed, to the benefit of the corporate class, and burden of Americans generally. -- --Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School, and author of The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World

Silent Theft raises the kinds of questions that Washington typically represses. The book broaches issues that very likely are going to drive the next big turn of the political wheel. Silent Theft confirms the brooding sense, shared by many, of a system out of control.
Jonathan Rowe, Washington Monthly.
Bollier advances a powerful critique of the market über alles nonsense that is driving our nation and our prospects for genuine democracy into the ground. He argues, convincingly, that the privatization of the commons is disastrous even for those generally entralled with markets and the profit-motive.
Robert W. McChesney, Boston Review.
...get[s] at what I think is the fundamental, primary political issue that can be the underlying value for regenerating progressive politics in our country, and that value is the common good versus private greed.
Jim Hightower, Texas Observer.
The subject of Silent Theft is urgently important, and Bolliers handling of this complex set of issues is both deft and straightforward. The more people who read Silent Theft, the better our world. -- Norman Lear
A calm reasonable primer on a topic of enormous importance. Buy a copy, and when youve read it, donate it to that wonderful commons called your local library. -- Bill McKibben author, The End of Nature
A tour de force narrative that draws the reader into a high alert over what we have lost by allowing business lobbies and their captive government to turn rampant commercialism into the controlling ideology over our public assets and values. Silent Theft defines, with sure handed authority, a grand new mission for the beleaguered American commonwealth-that it should be governed by civic values not commercial, unaccountable supremacies. Enter this new world of human possibilities! -- Ralph Nader
This beautifully written, carefully argued book shows how little we learned from the past. Free and open resources have always been central to creativity and growth; Bollier shows how in a range of important contexts, free and open resources are being enclosed, to the benefit of the corporate class, and burden of Americans generally. -- --Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School, and author of The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World

Product Description

Until a 1998 federal court decision, a Minnesota publisher claimed a monopoly on access to all federal court decisions. A Texas company recently filed a patent on a kind of rice grown in India for centuries. Other businesses now claim ownership of mathematical algorithms embedded in software, valuable public lands acquired for five dollars an acre, and icebergs that they plan to transport and sell as fresh water.

In Silent Theft, David Bollier argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we collectively own—publicly funded medical breakthroughs, software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often, however, our government turns a blind eye—or sometimes helps give away our assets.

Amazingly, the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed because we have lost our ability to see the commons. Spooling out one outrageous story after another, Bollier skillfully weaves together debates about the Internet, the environment, biotechnology, and the communications revolution. His fresh and compelling critique illuminates a rarely explored landscape in our political and cultural life.

Crisp and revelatory, Silent Theft is a bold attempt to develop a new language of the commons and, in the face of a market order that knows no bounds, to outline an ambitious new project for reclaiming our common wealth.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 260 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (March 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415932645
• ISBN-13: 978-0415932646
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #433,413 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Useful, December 7, 2002

By	Douglas Doepke (Claremont, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Bollier has written a very useful little book, of particular interest to liberals, Greens, and Libertarians, as well as the broader public. The book's thesis holds that the 'commons' -- understood as our collectively owned assets, (natural resources being one example) -- are under steady threat of enclosure (privatization) by an increasingly aggressive commercial sphere in search of expanding profits. His use of the more archaic terms 'commons' and 'enclosure' to describe the process is a shrewd one, connecting current encroachments to those more infamous enclosure laws of time past. Despite appearances, this is not an abstract bookish issue. Daily, the public faces such benchmark symptoms as depleted public resources, brand-name idolatry, open spaces overwhelmed by advertising, and threats to an unfettered internet. Ironically, what is disappearing, as Bollier points out, are those very public and personal places that provide a market economy with the societal wherewithall it needs to reproduce itself. Inasmuch as the market has its own parochial definition of rationality -- one that has increasingly become the public standard -- such commons are too often unable to justify themselves and thus are contracted and sold, disappearing at an alarming rate. Government's role in aiding and abetting these enclosures is also detailed, and while the book is severely critical of market myopia, it does not call for their elimination, but for an intelligent circumscription.

Traditionally, liberals have defended the public sphere. This work should help provide some backbone for rediscovering the importance of that commitment. It is a call to arms for those who understand the long-term significance of what the author calls the "Gift Economy", i.e. a free exchange among parties, as exemplified in the conditions leading to the explosive growth of the internet. Greens should like the emphasis on community-based solutions, while Libertarians should feel challenged to justify their paradigm, given the sociological priority of gift economies. Bollier's style makes for easy reading, along with a helpful bibliography. The book is neither weighty nor deep, but it does maintain a steady focus and serves as a useful compendium for understanding the rapidly shrinking public domain, and what we are losing in the process.

10 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nothing new here, February 15, 2003

By A Customer

Bollier does a credible hob outlining the issues surrounding the theft of the public commons. Many of the issues he highlights are unbelievable. Just thinking about how much of the public commons are being given away is truly astounding (the mining act of 1872 is one example that has always bugged me. A pretty good deal to lock up mineral rights for a few dollars an acre.)

However, Bollier comes up short in his recommendations. He outlines a few suggestions as to how to stop the "silent theft", however, many of his ideas will require a quantum change in how business operates. There is no way Congress will agree to any of them. I would loved to have seen him address how to jump that obstacle.