Very interesting debate and argumentation of why it makes sense to have municipilities, and not private companies, manage local energy needs: “4 top energy experts from around the US address the city of Boulder’s plan to form a municipality to take control of Boulder’s energy future.” WARNING: this is NOT a boring video!
Date archives "October 2011"
Open Commons Linz
Originally posted on the Open Knowledge Foundation blog The following guest post is by Thomas Gegenhuber, Naumi Haque and Stefan Pawel, who are involved in Open Commons Linz. In 2010, the City of Linz, Austria completed a year-long study of an “Open Commons Region” for government. The findings of the study introduce a framework for open government, with the… Continue reading
Countering financial power through people’s debt audits and debt courts
The people of Europe must take power into their own hands. This week Irish campaigners completed phase one of their debt audit. The purpose of a debt audit is to allow the citizens’ of a country to examine that country’s lending history and to hold their politicians to account. Excerpted from Nick Dearden, director of… Continue reading
How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest
Jean Lievens has written an extensive synthesis of Yochai Benkler’s new book: * Book: The Penguin and the Leviathan. How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest. Written by Yochai Benkler. Random House, 2011 Jean Lievens: “Here’s a quit extensive synthesis of “The Penguin and the Leviathan,” in my opinion a wonderful book for anyone who is interested… Continue reading
Social and educational potential of FPGA design for the masses
This post is a summary written by Marco Fioretti, excerpted from his longer post here Making custom integrated circuits at home or school that are more powerful and much more flexible than the popular Open Source [Arduino www.arduino.cc] platform is still a relatively unknown concept. This activity, however, is not just much more affordable and… Continue reading
Juliet Schor on the Plenitude Economy
Via: “Presented by The Center for a New American Dream, and summarizing the content of Schor’s book Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, what I love about this video is that it absolutely brims with positivity, excitement and optimism. This is not about letting go of a system that is working well, yet is… Continue reading
Alf Hornborg: We need an economy with two incommensurable currencies
What we need is an economy with at least two incommensurable currencies, to distinguish between values that should not be interchangeable, such as local subsistence and survival versus globalized entertainment Excerpted from an interview with Alf Hornborg: Q: “Following David Harvey’s analysis of money, you have suggested that money is a social institution that generates… Continue reading