George Monbiot

It atomizes society.

It weakens the social bonds that make our lives worth living.

And into that vacuum grow these violent, intolerant forces.

We are a society of altruists.

But we are governed by psychopaths.

But it doesn't have to be like this.

It really doesn't, because we have this incredible capacity for togetherness and belonging.

And by invoking that capacity, we can recover those amazing components of our humanity, our altruism and cooperation.

Where there is atomization, we can build a thriving civic life with a rich participatory culture.

where we find ourselves crushed between market and state, we can build an economics that respects both people and planet.

and we can create this economics around that great neglected sphere, the commons.

The commons is neither market nor state, capitalism nor communism, but it consists of three main elements, a particular resource, a particular community that manages that resource, and the rules and negotiations the community develops to manage it.

Think of community broadband or community energy cooperatives

or the shared land for growing fruit and vegetables that in Britain we call allotments.

A commons can't be sold, it can't be given away, and its benefits are shared equally among the members of the community.

where we have been ignored and exploited.

We can revive our politics.

We can recover democracy from the people who have captured it.

We can use new rules and methods of elections to ensure that financial power never trumps democratic power again.

representative democracy should be tempered by participatory democracy so that we can refine our political choices.