Composting Capitalism: How Peer Production Reduces Waste and Builds a Regenerative Economy

Economies, like ecosystems, live and die. Firms rise, accumulate resources, compete, and eventually collapse. In capitalist economies, when firms “die,” their accumulated knowledge, infrastructure, and social coordination often rot away—liquidated, privatized, or locked behind intellectual property walls. This resembles an ecosystem where fallen trees never decompose, where nutrients are trapped in unusable form, leading to stagnation and scarcity.

But ecosystems thrive precisely because death is followed by composting. Fallen matter is recycled into fertile ground for new growth. In this essay, we argue that commons-based peer production (CBPP)—the collaborative creation of digital and material goods outside market logics—functions more like an ecosystem’s forest floor than capitalism’s landfill. By reducing resource misallocation, improving recycling of knowledge and materials, and minimizing losses from organizational “death,” CBPP offers a regenerative economic logic better suited to a resource-constrained planet.

Are We Living Through Collapse? Complexity, Digital Technology, and the Future Beyond Capitalism

The word “collapse” usually conjures images of sudden catastrophe: cities abandoned, empires falling overnight, institutions crumbling in chaos. But collapse can also look much slower — a gradual unraveling where the signs are everywhere but hard to pin to a single moment. More and more scholars are beginning to argue that this is where we are today: global society is in the midst of collapse.

This doesn’t mean the world will end tomorrow. It means that the institutions and economic logics that sustained industrial modernity — capitalism, liberal democracy, and even state socialism — are increasingly unable to cope with the world they have helped create.

The Case for Collapse

The idea that we are living through collapse is not new, but it has gained momentum. In The Epochal Crisis of Global Capitalism (2024), William Robinson describes a multidimensional breakdown: economic stagnation, political disillusionment, deepening inequality, ecological tipping points, and rising geopolitical conflict. For Robinson, this is not just another downturn — it’s an epochal crisis, one that capitalism cannot resolve within its own logic.