Glossary
The vocabulary of the commons dividend — defined, linked, and shareable.
Commons
Resources, systems, or bodies of knowledge that belong to no single individual or corporation and are shared by all of humanity — either by nature (the atmosphere, oceans, electromagnetic spectrum) or by collective creation (the accumulated body of human knowledge, open-source software, and now, behavioral data). The defining characteristic of a commons is that it cannot be privately created but can be privately exploited. The absence of a price mechanism for commons inputs is the central accounting gap this book addresses.
Earth (The Finite Ground)
The first of the three commons — the physical planet and its resources: atmosphere, oceans, freshwater systems, minerals, forests, soil, electromagnetic spectrum, and orbital slots. Earth is finite; its capacity to absorb waste and provide resources has hard limits. Every economic activity that draws from or deposits into Earth’s systems is drawing from a shared account. A royalty on Earth use — proportional to how much is extracted or deposited — is the mechanism for making these withdrawals visible and compensated.
Light (The Inherited Knowledge)
The second commons — the accumulated body of human knowledge built over centuries by scientists, mathematicians, engineers, philosophers, and open-source contributors working in public institutions or contributing freely. It includes: published scientific research, mathematical foundations, medical knowledge, engineering standards, open-source software, and publicly funded technological breakthroughs. No product or service exists that does not stand on this foundation. Light is not infinite, but unlike Earth it is non-rivalrous — one person using knowledge does not deplete it for others. What it lacks is attribution and compensation.
Signals (The Intimate Patterns)
The third and newest commons — the behavioral data generated by billions of people as they navigate digital and physical life. Clicks, searches, purchases, location data, social connections, attention patterns, sleep cycles, health indicators. Individually, each data point is trivial. Aggregated across billions, it is the raw material for the most valuable prediction algorithms ever built. Unlike Earth and Light, Signals are both generated and consumed by living people — making the royalty relationship particularly direct. A data royalty is a payment from platforms to the people whose behavior they have commercially exploited.
Commons Dividend
A periodic cash payment made to every person on Earth, funded by royalties collected from companies that use the three commons — Earth, Light, and Signals — as inputs to their economic activity. The commons dividend is not welfare: it is not means-tested, it carries no conditions, and it does not require political favor. It is benefit income — the return on a share held by every living person in the shared foundations of the global economy. The dividend rises as more commons royalties are collected and falls if commons use is priced out of the economy — a feature, not a bug.
Commons Ratio
A numerical score — between 0 and 1 — that measures what fraction of a company’s value creation depends on commons inputs versus purely private inputs (labor, private capital, proprietary IP). A company with a commons ratio near 1 is almost entirely dependent on the three commons; a company near 0 uses minimal shared inputs. The commons ratio is the basis for calculating royalty obligations: higher ratio, higher royalty. It is calculated from a combination of resource extraction data, licensing records, and behavioral data usage reports.
Sector Coefficient
An adjustment factor applied to the commons ratio for different industry sectors. Because some sectors are structurally more dependent on commons inputs than others (fossil fuel extraction versus artisan manufacturing, for example), a sector coefficient adjusts the royalty calculation to reflect average commons dependence within each industry category. The sector coefficient prevents commons royalties from inadvertently penalizing labor-intensive industries while exempting capital-intensive extractive ones.
The Four Gates
The four existing institutional checkpoints through which commons royalties are collected: Customs (import/export manifests at ports), Exchanges (securities trading platforms), Licenses (government-issued resource and spectrum licenses), and Platforms (digital platform regulatory frameworks). Each gate already processes large volumes of commercial activity and already has enforcement infrastructure. Adding a commons royalty line to each requires new rules but not new institutions — a crucial feature for near-term adoption.
Royalty Intensity Ratio
The specific royalty owed by a company, expressed as a percentage of its revenue (or alternatively, its gross profit). The royalty intensity ratio is derived from the commons ratio and the sector coefficient, adjusted for the company’s specific commons footprint as reported through its compliance filings. A higher royalty intensity ratio means more of the company’s revenue is understood to derive from shared inputs — and more flows back to the commons dividend fund.
Compliance Certificate
An annual document issued to companies by a national commons authority or equivalent body, certifying that the company has calculated and paid its commons royalty obligation for the year. The compliance certificate is required for access to certain market privileges: public procurement bids, stock exchange listing in participating jurisdictions, and customs clearance for imports in adopting countries. The certificate mechanism creates a soft enforcement pathway that does not require direct coercion — market access is the lever.
Hard Ban
The enforcement mechanism of last resort in the commons royalty framework. A company that repeatedly fails to comply with commons royalty obligations — and has lost its compliance certificate — can be subjected to a hard ban: exclusion from the participating country’s market, denial of customs clearance, or delisting from exchanges. The hard ban is designed to be sufficiently severe that no rational actor would prefer it to compliance, while being sufficiently narrow that it targets specific companies rather than entire industries or trade relationships.
The Fund
The institutional vehicle through which commons royalties are pooled and distributed as dividends. The Fund operates similarly to a sovereign wealth fund: it receives royalty payments, invests a portion for long-term sustainability, and distributes the remainder as the commons dividend on a regular schedule (monthly or quarterly). At small scale, national commons funds can be established in participating countries; at global scale, an international commons fund — operating through existing multilateral institutions — would distribute to everyone regardless of citizenship.
Founding Shareholder
A person who joins the Shareholder at Birth movement before the commons dividend framework has been formally adopted anywhere. A founding shareholder is making a statement — that they believe the principle is correct, that every person born is a shareholder of the benefits generated by the shared foundations of the economy, and that the time to say so out loud is before it becomes obvious. Founding shareholders receive updates on the movement and are listed (optionally) as early supporters. Every impossible thing becomes obvious the same way.
Join as a Founding Shareholder
A Founding Shareholder is someone who joins before the framework is adopted. A statement of belief that every person born deserves their share.
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