From time to time we like to look back through the blog archive. Here again we present an important contribution to abundance theory by Roberto Verzola: “It is almost by definition that economists predominantly focus on scarcity, when they define economics as the study of “the most efficient ways to allocate scarce resources to meet… Continue reading
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Roberto Verzola on counter-(peer)productive laws
This is Roberto Verzola‘s contribution to a online A2K symposium: “By “counter-productive”, I refer to laws which undermine, suppress or otherwise diminish the production and exchange of goods and services. Sometimes, such laws start off with good intentions. But when some powerful economic interests get disproportionate benefits from such laws, these get expanded, enhanced, or… Continue reading
Roberto Verzola: Finite demand makes relative abundance possible
A very important contribution to abundance theory by Roberto Verzola: “It is almost by definition that economists predominantly focus on scarcity, when they define economics as the study of “the most efficient ways to allocate scarce resources to meet infinite human wants”. If, indeed, people had infinite wants, then not even all the resources of… Continue reading
Economic Calculation (3): Can Distributed Energy Metering Be Considered as a Commons?
A thought module proposed by Roberto Verzola, via email: “Please look more closely at net metering and the energy exchanges that happen under it. It seems to be similar to the kind of (economic calculation) mechanism you are looking for, as follows: – It measures the individual contribution of a solar owner’s surplus (the reversal… Continue reading
True Accelerationism (3): Abundance is the basis of civilization, on the scale economics of renewable energy
A series on true accelerationist technologies that will be instrumental against biospheric destruction. “Although we might prize scarce items highly, civilizations are built on abundance. It is the abundance of biomass that fuelled our early use of fire. It is the abundance of fossil fuels that propelled the Industrial Revolution. It is the abundance of… Continue reading
An important book on the Energy Transition to Renewable Electricity
100% renewable electricity is not just a dream anymore * Book: Crossing Over: Making the Energy Transition from Fossil Fuels to Renewable Electricity. Roberto Verzola. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2015 (free download available) The author, Roberto Verzola, writes: “Much of the book’s contents are specific to the Philippines, where rooftop solar electricity became cheaper than grid-delivered… Continue reading
Wouter Tebbens reviews Wolfgang Hoeschele’s The Economics of Abundance
Republished from Wouter Tebbens: “Now let me intent to summarise Wolfgang Hoeschele’s book: * Wolfgang Hoeschele. The Economics of Abundance: A Political Economy of Freedom, Equity, and Sustainability. Gower Publishing, 2010 The creation of scarcity In the first part of the book, Hoeschele addresses the production of scarcity. The mechanisms designed to create artificial scarcity… Continue reading
Book of the week: The Rise of the Green Left and the Commons, by Derek Wall
A left take on the topic of the commons: * Book: The Rise of the Green Left” by Derek Wall. Derek Wall: “This book aims to inspire change and to resource it. The first chapter outlines what I see as the crisis and the solution. Basically ecological cycles are under assault on our planet, the… Continue reading
Contesting Abundance: Shared for the Common Good or Monopolized for Private Profit?
By Roberto Verzola Full post with footnotes here It is hardly news by now that digital technologies have made available an abundance of information and knowledge on the Internet and the Web. New technologies have created a global digital infrastructure, which, in turn, has become the basis for a new information economy, whose most obvious feature… Continue reading
Replacing Efficiency with Reliability
Coop-oriented thinker Bob Cannell discusses some of the ideas of our friend Roberto Verzola: “So what should we be looking for as our guiding light in an age of redundancy and low/no cost production. Roberto Verzola, at the International Conference on the Commons, Berlin, Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2010, says it is reliability. He… Continue reading
The corporation: a business automata that runs our lives and has become a ‘dominant species’
Reproduced from Roberto Verzola‘s popular article: “We created corporations and gave them life before Asimov drew up his Three Laws of Robotics. The First Law was: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” The Second: “A robot must obey the orders given it… Continue reading
Does the use of the internet automatically force us to accept certain values?
A contribution by Roberto Verzola, previously published in a dialogue on the p2p-foundation mailing list: “I find myself agreeing somewhat with Doug Engelbart, inventor of the mouse, who said we shape our tools and our tools then shape us. He talks of co-evolution of the human and their tools. We might call this “mutual determinism”…. Continue reading
Book of the Week (2): What is the Nature of Freedom in A2K demands?
* Book: Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property. by Gaelle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski (eds.). Zone Books, 2010 This book takes as its subject this new field of activism and advocacy and the new political and conceptual conflicts occurring in the domain of intellectual property. In this second and last excerpt, co-editor… Continue reading
Book of the Week: Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property (1)
* Book: Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property. by Gaelle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski (eds.). Zone Books, 2010 This book takes as its subject this new field of activism and advocacy and the new political and conceptual conflicts occurring in the domain of intellectual property. Our first excerpt is below, after the… Continue reading
The Ten Best P2P Books of 2010
This year, the crop of books on p2p related themes has been so overwhelming that I find it impossible to limit myself to the classic list of just ten books. I therefore have organized the list as a series of 10 clustered themes. The order of the listing is influenced by the quality of the… Continue reading
10 hypotheses about abundance and the commons
The following is from a really remarkable keynote speech by Roberto Verzola, Abundance and the generative logic of the commons, which was a keynote for the International Conference on the Commons, Berlin, Germany, Oct. 31 – Nov. 2, 2010. For the complete version with added commentary, go here. Roberto Verzola: “I will present my talk… Continue reading