Beautiful and inspiring ‘ad hoc’ interview with author Eduardo Galeano during a visit of the Acampadabcn in plaza Catalunya on the 23rd of May 2011. Please watch for a dosis of “Vitamin E” or political enthusiasm (Eduardo explains the etymology of enthusiasm as ‘keeping the gods inside’): You need to install or upgrade Flash Player… Continue reading
Date archives "July 2011"
On the difference between the Middle Eastern and European mobilizations
Some stimulating thoughts from David Graeber: “Military regimes like Egypt live on fear. Their leadership assume that most of the populace despise them, but people are aware that any attempt at mass opposition will be met instantly by torture and death. For most of those who live under these regimes, “political life” is a matter… Continue reading
A comprehensive critique of the weaknesses of Bitcoin
Sebastiano Scròfina (republished from Quora): “Bitcoin has many advantages over the traditional currency system but it is undermined by two major security weaknesses that make it technically unreliable on the long run, and by at least three major economic weak points that will prevent it from ever becoming a real currency. At Kakigarden we’re developing… Continue reading
David Brin’s case for fourfold openness and transparency
Excerpted from David Brin: “An overall trend toward greater openness will be essential to our survival as individuals, nations, and even as a species. We have bet our lives, and our children’s, on the continued success of a civilization that provides our material needs better than any other. One that has inarguably fostered greater levels… Continue reading
How should social movements respond to the crisis in Europe?
What is at stake in Greece is a core aspect of the political tradition of the Enlightenment that made it worthy to be called universal and inspired the national and social revolutions of modernity: that is the commitment to social egalitarianism rather than social privilege, to the redistribution of wealth rather than its accumulation. The… Continue reading
Sustainable Fisheries Are Community-Led
Via the Solutions Journal: “The collapse of fisheries worldwide endangers the livelihoods and food security of tens of millions of people. These fisheries are often small and ill-suited to top-down regulatory intervention. In many cases, a “tragedy of the commons” scenario—in which each individual fisherman seeks only to maximize his own catch—leads to overfishing and… Continue reading
Book of the Week (3): Towards civil democratic institutions in a world of watershed commons
* Book: Toward a Bioregional State. Mark Whitaker, 2005. Two days ago, we presented the ‘Commodity Ecology” as one of the two core concepts of the book above. Here is the second core concept, with which we conclude our book of the week treatment. The Civic Democratic Institution form (CDI) is a structure for defensibly… Continue reading
#spanishrevolution update – #stopretallades & #marchaindignada
View “#20J #21J #23J #marchaindignada #stopretallades” on Storify
Can organic agriculture attain ‘miraculous’ productivity?
Some organic farms seem to attain very high productivity, such as this farm which claims to produce one million pounds of food on three acres. I asked some of our p2p foundation associates with expertise on food production for commentary. Here is Steve Bosserman: “These articles have some truth, but they don’t tell the whole… Continue reading
Paul Gilding on the Great Disruption: Effective Global Default is only a matter of time
“It’s time to stop just worrying about climate change, says Paul Gilding. We need instead to brace for impact because global crisis is no longer avoidable. This Great Disruption started in 2008, with spiking food and oil prices and dramatic ecological changes, such as the melting ice caps. It is not simply about fossil fuels… Continue reading
What is Abundance-Based Money?
Second in a series by Eli Gothill: (find out more here) Eli Gothill: “What is abundance-based money? To describe money as abundance-based, rather than scarcity-based, is much like comparing “free speech” to “free beer.” Like “free speech,” abundance-based money is money which anyone can create. However, to create money, as opposed to empty symbols, it… Continue reading
Crowdfunding as the trojan horse of the commons
by Platoniq (promoters of Goteo, an open platform for crowdfunding the commons) Contact goteo via twitter or identi.ca From mass funding to collective Crowdfunding implies a whole new paradigm of the network and Internet possibilities to create new socioeconomic models. Summarizing its recent history, it appeared first as sporadic cases (between the nineties and the new century) with… Continue reading
Users to Begin Regaining Control over their Data in October 2011
Community Wireless Networking (CWN) was featured in a recent post on this blog. The practical motivation to set up CWN is heightened in areas where broadband infrastructure is lacking. CWN is a type of mesh networking often relying on manipulation of DSL routers using techniques such as OpenWRT. Mesh networking applications set up in industrial… Continue reading
Understanding the new non-representational politics that are animating the new social movements
People of Greece have shown an impressive willingness to struggle. It is now time they also dare to win… No more mediation by political parties, established or not, seems to be one of the new principles behind recent mobilisations. Is this the right way to approach political and social struggles today? How can we understand… Continue reading
Vinay Gupta on what’s wrong with global governance and what we can do about it
Talk by Vinay Gupta at the Winchester School of Arts: The video is continued here:
Common Property Rights and Abundance (Diagram)
Via: Wolfgang Hoeschele has an interesting diagram in his book The Economics of Abundance (p. 149) , of which this is a modified version. The explanation, adapted from his book, are below. Wolfgang Hoeschele: “Many of our current property rights are designed either to allow a small number of people to monopolize those resource (imposing… Continue reading