I believe that what pessimistic analysts like Kurt Cobb fail to see is that while the mainstream system is indeed decomposing, and with the counter-mechanisms that provided solidarity with a context of a industrial-labour society, at the same time, new structures are emerging that are creating new compulsions and affordances for sharing, cooperation and expressions… Continue reading
Date archives "August 2012"
The rapid emergence of a commons-based alternative economy
Excerpted from Derek Wall in STIR: “What is emerging fast is the alternative of a commons based economy. Peer to peer, social sharing, collaborative consumption, commons, economic democracy are all terms that cover economic activity that moves beyond the market and the state, based on cooperation and harnessing human creativity. The economics of sharing is… Continue reading
Dale Carrico’s Open Letter To The Transhumanist Robot Cultists
Republished from Dale Carrico: (from: An Open Letter To The Robot Cultists) “Any child of two can indulge in wish fulfillment fantasizing. It’s not a philosophy. It’s not a movement. And the way you Robot Cultists do it makes you a kind of techno-transcendental New Age cult too hype-notized to notice you are functioning as… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Emerging Ownership Revolution
“ownership design is the most foundational” (David Korten) * Book: Majorie Kelly. Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution. Journeys to a Generative Economy. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2012 Here is the summary from the publisher: “As long as businesses are set up to focus exclusively on maximizing financial income for the few, our economy will be… Continue reading
Herman Daly’s proposal for 100% reserve banking
Via Paul Craig Roberts: In the article below, Herman Daly, a University of Maryland and former World Bank economist, makes the case for 100% reserves. This reform, once a principle goal of important economists, would terminate the ability of the banking system to create credit to finance its own speculations and return the power over… Continue reading
P2P Innovation from the Periphery: an interview on Smari McCarthy’s Iceland
Metahaven talks to Smári McCarthy about his agenda, urgencies, and interests. “In October 2008, the Icelandic banking sector collapsed. This momentous event was, relative to country size, the largest banking crisis ever suffered by a single state. Iceland’s recovery has been a case of democratic and ethical reforms. A 25-strong Constitutional Assembly re-wrote the constitution,… Continue reading
The enclosure of innovation and intellectual property by the Singularity University
A word of warning to naive students, by Wired magazine: “As it draws up plans to become a for-profit corporation, Singularity University has significantly tightened the terms under which its students may use the intellectual property they develop in their courses. When it was created four years ago with support from neighboring Google and Google’s… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Energy and the Wealth of Nations
* Book: Energy and the Wealth of Nations. Understanding the Biophysical Economy. By Charles A.S. Hall and Kent Klitgaard. Here is the summary on this important necessary change in our view of economics: “For the past 150 years, economics has been treated as a social science in which economies are modeled as a circular flow… Continue reading
The future of (participatory) religion? Part 2: interspiritual wisdom vs spirituality without religion
We present the second set of two hypotheses presented by Jorge Ferrer in this interesting conversation: * Article/Interview: : Rethinking the Future of World Religion: A Conversation with Jorge N. Ferrer. Integral Review. July 2012, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 22+ . In this interview/conversation with Bahman A.K. Shirazi four possible scenarios for the future… Continue reading
A critique of Lakoff’s moralizing of politics
Excerpted from Dale Carrico: “You may note that this puts me at odds with George Lakoff’s popular “moral politics” thesis. I do not agree that “we” are animals more suited to moral/subcultural framing of political questions as Lakoff repeatedly insists is the case. I think we are animals whose politics are re-constituted in culture, and… Continue reading
Rethinking Common vs. Private Property (4): towards responsible and democratic corporations
Excerpted from: * Article: Rethinking Common vs. Private Property. By David Ellerman This concludes our four part serialization of this important essay, which was started on August 20. David Ellerman writes, , on Re-constituting the corporation from first principles: The responsible corporation “There have been a few — very few — social commentators who have… Continue reading
Andre Ling’s critique of relational reality: objects are real!
Andre Ling’s reacts to our review of Charlene Spretnak’s book on Relational Reality, published yesterday: Objects Are Real!, By Andre Ling: ‘I must admit I get a bit frustrated by statements like ‘everything is interconnected’ or, more specifically this: ” the realization that all entities in this world, including humans, are thoroughly relational beings of… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Understanding the New Global Revolutions
* Book: Paul Mason. Why it’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions. Verso, 2012 The following is excerpted from a review by Kate Webb in Red Pepper (UK): “In the January round-ups few critics will fail to register 2011’s historic nature, but Mason, I’d wager, will be the only mainstream figure who’ll go so… Continue reading
Eight Points of Reference for Commoning
The context is introduced by David Bollier: “One of the great achievements of the late Professor Elinor Ostrom was the identification of key design principles for successful commons. She set forth eight of them in her landmark 1990 book, Governing the Commons. The wording of those principles is aimed at social scientists who study the… Continue reading
How the UK Conservatives are using ‘community rights’ to extend neoliberal and corporate privatisation
‘Community rights’ amount to the latest corrosive mutation of privatisation. The rhetoric of ‘rights’ and ‘localism’ is only cover for the accelerated transfer of power from the state to capital, from employees to employers and from service users to commercial contractors. We must rigorously scrutinise how these rights are implemented as part of industrial, civil… Continue reading
The Paradigm Wars: Open vs. Piracy
research on piracy as a paradigm of domination, in conflict with the open paradigm “The Piracy Paradigm project is K. Matthew Dames‘ historical critique of U.S. copyright law and policy. Using framing and copyright theory, methodologies such as policy analysis, historical analysis, and narrative; and the foundation of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,… Continue reading