ABSTRACT
This chapter explores more fully the idea of the 'paracommons' of yet-to-be salvaged natural resource surpluses, losses, wastes, and wastages. It examines a defining feature of the paracommons, which is its 'liminality'. Liminality exists because any paracommons arises out of the temporal difference between a perceived inefficient today and the promise of an efficient tomorrow. The chapter reviews salvageable resources via an exteriorising phenomenon, of 'something-hidden-inside-coming-out'. Part of society's conceptual struggles with waste and wastage is not so much due to their visibility as their invisibility or near visibility within the changing consumption of resources driven by societal and environmental trends driven by physical scarcity or new information such as health advice and prices. The chapter explains the distinctive technical, ethical, and political problems in governing the paracommons drawing attention to: the disparate 'commonist membership' that makes up the parties interested in the paracommons; and the powerful advantages held by the proprietor of the socio-technical system making the efficiency gains.
