Our Common Wealth

17Reallocating Time

No man is an island, the poet John Donne wrote, and neither is the market. It needs a realm outside itself—a commons—for sustenance and life. It needs a natural commons in the form of water, air, trees, and the like. It needs a social commons in the form of language, sidewalks, community and respect for law. And it needs a temporal commons, a pool of time available for work outside the market. If this extra–market work doesn’t get done—if no one cares for young and old, serves as neighbor and friend, or attends to the work of the community—then the market itself will eventually collapse.

There is thus a symbiosis, and also a competition, between the market and the commons for our finite time as living beings. In recent decades, ...