This paper sets out a positive conception of voluntary action as a
unified type of economic activity, grounded in human group expe
rience and based in autonomous, self-defining and self-regulating
communities of nonmarket actors with shared mutual interests in
identified common goods. Such common goods include many types
of social services; community action; religious, scientific, and artistic
endeavors; amateur athletics; and a broad range of other nonprofit
activities. Key implications of the common goods approach, also
known as endowment theory, include rejection of efficiency, maxi
mization, Pareto-optimality, and other economic criteria as necessary
and sufficient standards for evaluating rational choice and rational
organization in the Commons, and substitution of more appropriate
rational standards.
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