Four circles in Judaism, anchored in time and place, repeatedly seek to remind us that life is rightly lived as a commons. Excerpted from Rev. Tracey Lind: “Judaism puzzles over this dilemma of the commons, how to balance sharing and ownership, progress and stability, and answers the question in four ever-expanding concentric circles. They are… Continue reading
Date archives "September 2013"
The cooperative revolution in Edinburgh, Scotland
Excerpted from a lecture by councillor Andrew Burns: “The way different services in Edinburgh work, will – and does – vary, but the objective of finding new ways of working in partnership with local people will remain constant. And over recent months, we have certainly not considered turning absolutely all services into co-operatives, and we… Continue reading
Podcast of the Day: Merce Crosas on Open Big Data
Mercè Crosas interviewed by Celya Gruson-Daniel – The Next Challenge: Open Big Data We chose three of the podcast interviews by Celya Gruson-Daniel to present to you. Celya has just finished a tour of the United States interviewing more than 60 people on their views about science, open source and reproducibility. Essentially this is a user’s guide on how… Continue reading
Connecticut Passes Commons-Based Land Value Taxation
Republished from Joshua Vincent in On The Commons: “On June 20, 2013, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy signed into law an act permitting – as a pilot program – a tax reform that turns traditional taxation on its head, as it also embraces the idea of the commons as a resource for the community to provide… Continue reading
Project of the Day: the Un-Convention global music community
Excerpted from Ruth Daniel: “Un-Convention is a grassroots, DIY and independent global music community and a series of events and initiatives crowd sourced from its community. It is based inside The University of Manchester. It is un-conventional in its approach, locally driven and globally connected. It seeks to inform, empower and reach those with the… Continue reading
Technofixes Will not Work Without Absolute Scale Limits to Commons Resource Use
A contribution by Brian Davey: ‘A commons regime takes steps to protect the “resource” that the commons jointly manages/owns/cares for. More specifically the words “protecting the resource” means setting an absolute scale limit on its use. The commoners will set a scale of use for grazing a commons, or fishing a river, or taking water… Continue reading
Interview of Arun Sundararajan on the sharing economy: could it actually enhance income equality?
I think there’s a very good chance that if sharing economy activity becomes sufficiently widespread, it could very well reduce income inequality. It takes flows of commerce that used to be between individuals and companies and shifts them to being between individuals and other individuals. If you think about a thousand dollars flowing from you… Continue reading
On the flaws of the TaskRabbit Model
Via, excerpted from ALYSON SHONTELL: “Like any startup, TaskRabbit is not without flaws. A few weeks ago, we received a troubling email from one of the TaskRabbits (people who are hired as contractors to run all the errands). We were told TaskRabbit has a number of fundamental flaws. Particularly, while becoming a TaskRabbit is a… Continue reading
Chris Cook on what constitutes a True P2P Credit Clearing Architecture
It has recently been argued/shown, that the WIR Bank in Switzerland is not a true mutual credit system, as it is the WIR Bank which creates the credit based on collateral. According to Chris Cook, it is therefore not a true p2p system, what then, would be such a system? He explains: “This is an… Continue reading
From nation-centric to world-centric approaches
Excerpted from an interview by PCDN’s Maha Hilal with John Bunzl of Simpol (Simultaneous Policy): “Can you explain what you mean by conceptualizing problems nation-centrically? Yes, let me give you an example. Let’s take the problem of horrendously excessive bankers’ bonuses. Most people, when they’re confronted by this get very angry. They get angry with… Continue reading
Why the Pirate’s swarm economy is not Silicon Valley’s sharing economy
When we talk about the end of workplaces and lifetime employment, please don’t get the wrong idea. This has nothing to do with what Silicon Valley and venture capitalists are now calling the “sharing economy.” It was once the darling of open source advocates and socially-conscious entrepreneurs, but I now consider the term “sharing economy”… Continue reading
Podcast of the Day: Adam Marblestone of the BioBright Project
Adam Marblestone, interviewed by Celya Gruson-Daniel – The BioBright Project We chose three of the podcast interviews by Celya Gruson-Daniel to present to you. Celya Gruson-Daniel has just finished a tour of the United States interviewing more than 60 people on their views about science, open source and reproducibility. Essentially this is a user’s guide on how to hack… Continue reading
The corrosive effects of green puritanism: or why some people should fly
An excerpt from Sharon Ede: “I was horrified at some of the responses to Transition Towns Founder Rob Hopkins’s decision to fly to the US and help strengthen the Transition movement there (Hopkins had made a public commitment not to fly years ago, after seeing Al Gore’s documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’). In his May 2013… Continue reading
Project of the Day: the Community Democracy Project in Oakland
From an interview with Sonya Rifkin, co-director and co-founder of the Community Democracy Project, which began in November 2011 in Oakland, CA., by Mira Luna: * What is the Community Democracy Project’s plan? A participatory budgeting initiative to amend the city charter, which would go on the city ballot for the Nov 2014 election. It… Continue reading
Proposal: A Cooperative Strategy for Distributed Renewable Energy (3): a call to action
Excerpted from Kevin Carson: “Cooperatives offer immense potential to influence social change. But the cooperative model is not without its inherent complexities, and those engaging the cooperative sector must not be naïve; the cooperative can be gamed for the benefit of a select few at the expense of larger member-owners. The board governance model of… Continue reading
Crowd Farming at TEDxSydney 2013
“The story behind feeding the entire Sydney Opera House audience of 2,200 people at TEDXSydney 2013 with crowd sourced locally grown food.” Watch this amazing experience here: