The Ownership of the Internet and the World Wide Web in Vermont

The internet is an interesting case, since it was created entirely with taxpayer\u27s money by DARPA, while the world wide web was created at CERN in Switzerland and placed into the public domain voluntarily in 1993. The internet and web have many features of a commons, and many people refer to the internet commons . Kubiszewski (pronounced cube- ih-shefski) explores the intricacies of the internet and world wide web to determine if internet companies are extracting economic rent from the public and how it could be recovered. She finds that companies are making a substantial profit by utilizing a resource that was developed by a collective whole and not through their own efforts. In particular, services of ISPs connecting people to the web should be subject to rent as well as the provision of web domain names. Kubiszewski determined that the average profit for Fortune 1000 companies is 7% and everything above that could be considered economic rent. She finds that economic rent from public telecoms to be $17 million, private ISPs to be$3.3 million, and domain names $9.3 million. Totaling up all the economic rent, we find that economic rent owed to Vermonters is approximately$30 million per year. Instead of dividing this money into equal dividend of about $50 per person, which promotes consumption and encourages the investment into private goods, the money would be placed into a trust with the primary purpose of supporting and furthering research and intellectual development in an open forum

Measuring Genuine Social Progress

Nations need indicators that mesaure progress towards achieving their goals - economic, social and environmental.People want to see true measures of success, not just economic measurements that track financial activity. So why are we still using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to gauge our successes? Standard economic indicators, like GDP, are useful for measuring just one limited aspect of the economy - marketed economic activity - but GDP has been mistakenly used as a broader measure of welfare

Can Nuclear Power Be Part of the Solution?

The author discusses the importance of incorporating the full costs of operating a nuclear power plant in the U.S., such as climate impact, risk of accidents, and safe disposal of radioactive waste. He argues on the need for changes in the country\u27s evaluation of nuclear power which include the elimination of subsidies, and the requirement to buy full-coverage insurance for accidents. The author further highlights the cost of greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power plants

Institutions for Managing Ecosystem Services

Two decades of research into the management of what economists call common-pool resources suggests that, under the right conditions, local communities can manage shared resources sustainably and successfully. These revolutionary findings challenge the long-held belief in the tragedy of the commons. Instead, we have found that tragedy is not inevitable when a shared resource is at stake, provided that people communicate. In many places—from Swiss pastures to Japanese forests—communities have come together for the sake of the environment and their own long-term well-being. Common-pool resources have two features: first, they are shared resources whose use by one person makes them less available for use by another; second, it is typically very difficult to limit the public’s access to them (through laws or physical barriers). Many, but not all, ecosystem services can be categorized as common-pool resources. Consider, for instance, the clean water provided by an intact watershed, the pollination provided by a community of bees, or the carbon sequestration provided by a healthy forest. These are public goods, but individual use can degrade a watershed or strip a forest, compromising these benefits for all. As we look to develop institutions to better manage ecosystem services, and ensure their resilience over time, we can benefit from the lessons learned in the management of common-pool resources. The principles below, gleaned from research into the successful stewardship of common-pool resources, can guide the establishment and evolution of institutions to manage many ecosystem services

Spatial variations in contributors to life satisfaction: an Australian case study

What people consider important, and how these factors contribute to their self-reported life satisfaction (LS), varies significantly across regions. Here, we analyse for the first time how LS varies across space and what factors best explain LS at different locations. Geographically weighted regressions (GWR) were used to analyse the relationship between LS and seventeen objective variables across Australia. We find that contributors to LS vary considerably but individuals living in relative proximity to each other share similar perspectives. Taking into account the spatially explicit heterogeneity of a population allows for the assessment of federal policies at local or regional levels, increasing the likelihood that their impacts will be consistent with the original intent. It also enables the perspectives of the diversity of cultures within a nation to be better understood

Searching for the Sweet Spot: Managing Information as a Good that Improves with Use

‘Additive’ goods and services are defined as those that improve with use. They are not naturally rival, or even non-rival, but are “anti-rival.” Information is an example. Information can be made excludable through the use of patents and copyrights, however this does not necessarily lead to socially optimal production and allocation. A more flexible, open access, and decentralized process for the production and allocation of information could improve social welfare. This dissertation describes the challenges and problems with privatizing and restricting access to information and reviews alternative mechanisms for its allocation. Two particular issues at opposite ends of the access spectrum are: (1) strict barriers to private industry databases and (2) quality perception and control of open access information. The first chapter discusses our current system of producing and distributing information and potential ways to stimulate the transition to a new regime. This paper concludes that some of the ideas to seed such a transition include: (1) redefining wellbeing metrics; (2) ensuring the wellbeing of populations during the transition; (3) reducing complexity and increase resilience within institutions; (4) expanding the “commons sector”; and (4) using the internet to remove communication barriers and improve democracy. The second chapter discusses our current system of determining which information to produce, which resources to allocate towards the production of information, and how to distribute that information once produced. The paper concludes that alternative incentive methods, both inside and outside of the market, of producing information and new methods for distributing it to those that can make best use of it, would improve social welfare. These include: (1) prizes; (2) non-monetary incentives; (3) capping salaries; (4) research consortium; and (5) publicly funded research. Chapter 3 explores the difficulty in determining basic energy information under the current proprietary information system using an analysis of the energy return on investment (EROI) of wind energy. It utilizes a meta-analysis of the energy return on investment (EROI) to obtain basic information about the energy inputs and outputs necessary for the manufacturing, installing, operating, and decommissioning of wind turbines. This analysis shows an average EROI for all studies (operational and conceptual) of 25.2 (n=114; std. dev.=22.3). It concludes that making information proprietary severely limits the accuracy of EROI estimates and increases the difficulty of making the best social choices. Chapter 4 explores the perceived credibility of web-based information using an experiment with Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and the Encyclopedia of Earth. Compared to Encyclopedia Britannica, both Encyclopedia of Earth and Wikipedia were found to provide a statistically negative perception of credibility. The other factors analyzed (presence or absence of an author, references, a biased sponsor, or an award) contribute to “brand equity” a composite characteristic that takes significant time to develop. The relatively new Encyclopedia of Earth has not yet developed enough brand recognition to affect credibility one-way or the other, but its positive characteristics should help build the brand and credibility over time

Toward better measurement of sustainable development and wellbeing: a small number of SDG indicators reliably predict life satisfaction

In 2015, all 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These 17 goals, 169 targets, and 232 indicators (including over 650 indicators if all the subdivisions are included) are intended to guide and improve sustainable wellbeing and life satisfaction for everyone on earth. Challenges include the fact that many indicators are not measured or reliably tracked in many countries, the cost of tracking is unclear, and no explicit overarching goal exists. To highlight some of the problems with this approach, we model life satisfaction(LS) survey scores by country, as a proxy for overall wellbeing, as the dependent variable against the official 232 SDG indicators. Using a constrained linear regression approach (LASSO), we identify a model that includes only 8 of the 232 indicators and explains 84% of the variation in LS. These eight indicators are proxies for economic, social, and environmental variables. We also cluster countries according to these indicators and LS showing correlation within geographical and cultural regions. We discuss these results with regard to the meaning and measurement of sustainable development vs. sustainable wellbeing and its relationship with LS and the SDGs. We recommend how these results can be used to prioritize goals and measurement efforts to create more meaningful and useful measures of sustainable wellbein