Perversion of the Commons
There has long been mutual assistance provided within groups of humans (as well as other animals) in times of need/stress at many levels: families; neighbors; cultures; nations; and even all of humanity.
With the invention of money came reduction of this assistance in order to further individuals' profit in the service of Exclusivism.
Bucky Fuller, in Critical Path has identified the main resources in the commons as gravity, sunlight, and metaphysics, the know-how that is under siege by intellectual property extends to our stored lore from generations past. 5Sir Tim Berners-Lee, testifying before a U.S. Congressional committee, made it clear that a fundamental feature making the network so successful was open standards without the burden of patents/royalties.
We are beholden to, but not slaves of our forebears. Just as the World Wide Web, largely because of it not having been patented, has transformed the nature of human inter-relationships, so can the innate human urge to cooperate with one another in commonly shared interests be maintained/enhanced through the process of "Connection" which is proceeding towards "everyone/everything/everywhere/always connected" at a dizzying pace.
In the early days of computer penetration of certain industries the Boeing Corporation employed an army of draftspersons who labored at myriad drafting tables to produce the thousands of drawings needed to manufacture airplanes. A small company in Sausalito, AutoDesk came out with AutoCAD and overnight (figuratively) made most of the slaves to T-square and dividers superfluous.
The same thing happens in many areas as automation replaces so much of what we were forced to do in times of slavery (as chattel or as wage slaves). Insurance is one such. Online services make the huge buildings and pompous overstructures of insurance companies, banks and stock market brokers increasingly obsolete - but these institutions have continued to resist these changes almost ferociously, to our detriment.
At issue in an election for president, the U.S. has been presented with the prospect of Universal Health Care, but in the guise of "Insurance" with its inevitable implication of Establishment practices that impose the sort of overhead characterized as a "troll under the bridge demanding our seed corn as toll".
Traditionally those opposing change have used catch-phrases such as "Socialized Medicine" or "Government Interference" to try to stem this tide and even the American Medical Association has at long last sided with efforts to improve medical care (and their image as greedheads) by espousing a system of "Social" rather than "Private" insurance for the business side of medicine.