1. When it comes to the real-world consequences of those scientific findings, specifically the kind of deep changes required not just to our energy consumption but to the underlying logic of our economic system, the crowd gathered at the Marriott Hotel may be in considerably less denial than a lot of professional environmentalists, the ones… Continue reading
Date archives "November 2011"
Monique White and Nick Espinosa on the Occupy Homes Movement (#OccupyWallStreet Video Update)
Via Democracy Now: “A loose-knit coalition of activists known as “Occupy Homes” is working to stave off pending evictions by occupying homes at risk of foreclosure when tenants enlist its support. The movement has recently enjoyed a number of successes. We speak with Monique White, a Minneapolis resident who is facing foreclosure and recently requested… Continue reading
Should #OccupyWallStreet adopt the Debt Strike?
See also for extra background, David Graeber’s explanation below) Excerpted from Sarah Jaffe: “One of the fascinating things about the media dominance of Occupy Wall Street has been how the conversation has shifted away from the deficit-obsession of the last few years. Suddenly the debt that everyone is talking about is personal, individual debt—student loans,… Continue reading
Where does Money come From (2): exposing common myths about money
Excerpted from Mira Tekelova’s review of the Positive Money conference. “Josh Ryan Collins one of the co-authors of “Where does Money come From?” along with Tony Greenham, Prof Richard Werner and Positive Money’s Andrew Jackson, spoke enthusiastically and clearly on “Why there is so much ignorance about how the monetary system works.” Josh is clearly… Continue reading
#OccupyWallStreet Teach-in by William K Black: unindicted fraud and the 1%
a must see:
Juliet Schor talks on the plenitude of the commons economy at #OccupyWallStreet
Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, holds a lively talk on the new economy at 60 Wall St. see: julietschor.org, moneyandlifemovie.com She wrote Plenitude, a book on commons-oriented economics. Juliet Schor at Occupy Wall Street from StormCloud Media on Vimeo.
Where does Money come From (1): The consequences of a privately-created money system
only 8% of bank lending goes to productive activity. 92% goes to unproductive activity in the property and speculation fields Excerpted from Mira Tekelova’s review of the Positive Money conference “Ben Dyson was next up saying he had “a huge amount of information in the next hour”. He started from the beginning pointing out that… Continue reading
A Post-Growth Economy FAQ
What does a post-growth economy look like? By Jeremy Williams: “Does a sustainable economy mean an end to progress and change? ‘I don’t want to live in an economy where everything is the same, where progress is halted and human creativity is stifled’, is a common response to post-growth theories. I agree absolutely – I… Continue reading
Who invented the iPhone: The public and common origin of private innovation
Excerpted from Gar Alperovitz: “Take an obvious example: Many of the advances that have propelled our high-tech economy in recent decades grew directly out of research programs financed and, often, collaboratively developed, by the federal government and paid for by the taxpayer. The Internet, to take the most well-known example, began as a government defense… Continue reading
Discussing the Assemblies and Consensus of #OccupyWallStreet (4): benefits of slow speech
Excerpted from Matthew Remski, on the #OccupyWallStreet Human Microphone System: Of the countless intersubjective graces unfolding in Zuccotti Park and around the Occupy world, the “human microphone” is recapturing something as old as human learning. This is something sacred: a repurposing of voice, ear, and content that may serve no less than the remembering of… Continue reading
Moving from Binary to Ternary Thinking
I strongly recommend reading this! Excerpted from John Michael Greer: “In the tradition of Druidry I mostly teach and practice, there’s a neat mental trick for sidestepping the binary-producing mechanism when it’s not useful. It consists, first, of learning to recognize binaries at sight, and second, when a binary is encountered, looking for a third… Continue reading
The Spirituality of #OccupyWallStreet (2): the Logic of Usury vs the Logic of the Gift
It is absolutely no accident that the Occupy encampments in NYC and throughout the world are operating as communal gift economies with free healthcare (in the form of medic tents), free education (in the form of teach-ins, speakers, and lending libraries), free food, free shelter (in the form of donated tents, clothing, sleeping bags, etc.),… Continue reading
The Second Axial Age: Beginning to recognize our roles as global beings.
(background: the first axial age occurred the 6th B.C. and gave birth to the major world religions and Greek philosophy, as identified by Karl Jaspers) * Article: Another Turn on the Axis: Religious and Spiritual Evolution in the 21st Century. by Jim Kenney. Kosmos, Fall | Winter 2011 Excerpted from Jim Kenney, in Kosmos magazine:… Continue reading
Discussing the Assemblies and Consensus of #OccupyWallStreet (3): Visioning Emergent Leadership
Excerpted from Sharif Abdullah: “One of the constant mantras of the “Occupy Together” (OT) phenomenon is its “leaderless” nature. I support and applaud this… to a point. Anyone who has come to my workshops over the past ten years knows I’ve been an advocate of “Emergence” – defined as “leaderless distributed networks of information and… Continue reading
Creative Commons is to Free Culture what Shareware is to Free Software
Excerpted from Dmytri Kleiner: “All Rights Reserved,” publishers want you to buy it directly from their or their agents, and never share it with others, and likewise, the rights being reserved are the publisher’s rights. Yet, the very technology that made a recorded music industry possible, mechanical reproduction, also made it possible for its users… Continue reading
P2P history (4): 1848, 1968: when new communication technologies converge with new energy systems
The great economic revolutions in history occur when new communication technologies converge with new energy systems. … When internet communications manage green energy, every human being on earth becomes his or her own source of power, both literally and figuratively. Billions of human beings sharing their energy in vast social networks, like they now share… Continue reading