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.
Capitalism’s Brittle Death Cycle
Classical capitalism places the firm at the center of wealth creation. As Ronald Coase (1937) explained, firms exist to minimize transaction costs in markets, but their survival depends on profit maximization and competitive advantage. This firm-centric orientation generates two consequences relevant here:
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Systematic misallocation. Studies of productivity in the U.S. and developing countries show large gaps in efficiency due to resource misallocation across firms. Hsieh and Klenow (2009) estimated that if resources were reallocated efficiently within China and India, productivity could double. Yet capitalist competition does not automatically achieve this efficiency because firms hoard knowledge and protect rents.
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Wasteful organizational death. When firms fail, much of their accumulated know-how disappears. Bankruptcy law prioritizes creditors, not the preservation of productive ecosystems. Scholars of “zombie firms” (Caballero, Hoshi & Kashyap 2008) have shown how capitalism often keeps unproductive firms alive artificially, tying up resources, or else destroys them abruptly, wasting assets and labor skills.
From an ecological perspective, capitalism’s mode of death is more landfill than compost heap.
Peer Production’s Regenerative Logic
In contrast, CBPP is structured around open sharing, modularity, and iterative reuse. Yochai Benkler (2006) identified its core logic: contributions are motivated by reputation, reciprocity, or shared purpose rather than exclusive profit, and outputs are governed by open licenses that prevent enclosure.
Digital domain. In free/libre open-source software (FLOSS), when a project “dies,” its code can be forked, archived, or absorbed elsewhere. Nothing prevents reuse. Wikipedia contributions are never lost to bankruptcy; even abandoned wiki projects remain available as digital commons. Blockchain ecosystems illustrate this dynamic: when protocols fail, treasuries are forked, communities migrate, and innovations are reused. The composting function is built into licensing and architecture.
Material domain. Less visible but equally significant are initiatives extending CBPP into physical production. Sensorica, for instance, is pioneering “open value networks” to coordinate, distributed fabrication without firm boundaries, using p2p economics. Shared labs, designs, and processes persist beyond the life of individual projects. Contributions are tracked through accounting systems that distribute benefits and preserve reputational value, ensuring continuity across cycles of activity.
Here, organizational death leads not to loss, but to recycling of designs, know-how, and physical resources.
Comparative Analysis: Landfill vs. Forest Floor
We can now sharpen the analogy:
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Capitalism resembles a landfill economy. Knowledge and resources pile up in proprietary silos. When firms fail, much of this potential is lost. Misallocation arises because information about resource use is privatized and distorted by price signals.
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CBPP resembles a forest floor economy. Contributions, once made, remain accessible. Redundancy exists, but in an evolutionary, generative way (like genetic diversity), rather than wasteful duplication. “Death” of projects or initiatives fertilizes new ones through modular reuse.
This shift has measurable implications. Studies of FLOSS communities show higher innovation recombination rates than in proprietary systems (West & Lakhani 2008). In material commons, open hardware projects reduce R&D duplication by orders of magnitude compared to competitive proprietary firms.
Trajectory of Growth and Consolidation
CBPP has grown exponentially since the 1990s. FLOSS today underpins most of the internet infrastructure (Red Hat, Apache, Linux). Wikipedia dwarfs any proprietary encyclopedia ever attempted. Blockchain ecosystems are creating new transactional and governance infrastructures outside state and corporate control.
Meanwhile, material peer production infrastructures—makerspaces, fab labs, agroecology commons, and networks like Sensorica—are building the capacity to produce physical necessities collaboratively. New incentive systems—contribution accounting, impact metrics, reputation economies—are emerging to complement or replace profit as motivational drivers.
This infrastructure represents not only expansion but consolidation: the creation of durable institutions capable of self-reproduction outside capitalism’s financial circuits.
A Speculative Horizon: Composting as Dominant Logic
If CBPP were to become the dominant economic logic, what would change?
- Reduced misallocation. Resource allocation would be guided by transparent contribution accounting and community needs rather than firm profit maximization.
- Improved recycling. Designs, processes, and infrastructures would persist and be iteratively reused rather than lost to bankruptcy or enclosure.
- Less redundancy. Instead of each firm duplicating R&D in secrecy, open collaboration would minimize waste while retaining beneficial diversity.
- Survivability under scarcity. On a planet facing environmental degradation and resource depletion, models that recycle and compost efficiently will be more adaptive than ones that waste and hoard.
In short, economic models that compost cope better with ecological limits. Capitalism evolved in an era of relative abundance; CBPP is evolving as a survival strategy for scarcity.
Conclusion: From Waste to Regeneration
Capitalism’s mode of economic death is brittle, wasteful, and misaligned with ecological realities. Commons-based peer production, in both digital and material domains, offers an alternative—one that recycles contributions, preserves know-how, and builds regenerative capacity.
The angle of “death and composting” helps us see what is at stake: an economy that locks nutrients in landfills of failed firms versus one that turns every death into new life.
As natural resources tighten, the adaptive advantage of composting economies will only grow. The choice ahead may not be ideological but ecological: whether we cling to a brittle, wasteful system or nurture the forest floor of peer production already spreading beneath our feet.
References (selective):
- Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks. Yale University Press.
- Coase, R. (1937). The Nature of the Firm. Economica.
- Hsieh, C.-T., & Klenow, P. J. (2009). Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in China and India. Quarterly Journal of Economics.
- Caballero, R. J., Hoshi, T., & Kashyap, A. K. (2008). Zombie Lending and Depressed Restructuring in Japan. American Economic Review.
- West, J., & Lakhani, K. (2008). Getting Clear About Communities in Open Innovation. Industry and Innovation.
- Sensorica: https://www.sensorica.co
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Sensorica is implementing its OVN model for material peer production. You can donate to support the amazing people who have sacrificed for the past 15 years to refine peer production.
NOTE: This post has been produced with the help of AI, encapsulating Sensorica's 15 years of uninterrupted experience with material peer production, embracing complexity, leveraging emergence.
