Tolfa is a beautiful town in Italy, in the Tolfa Mountains, with 95 percent of its surrounding land owned as a commons by the people. Here’s a brand new video giving an overview of the place: Tolfa is hosting the italian-norwegian study center, Centro studi italo-norvegese di Tolfa. The town also hosts the Norwegian writer and… Continue reading
Excerpted from Richard Heinberg: “All human societies consist of three interrelated spheres: first, the infrastructure, which comprises a society’s relations to its environment, including its modes of production and reproduction—think of this primarily as its ways of getting food, energy, and materials; second, the structure, which comprises a society’s economic, political, and social relations; and… Continue reading
From Charles Hugh Smith: “Mish recently posted excerpts of a Brookings Institution study on changing generational values: How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America. The gist of the report is that Gen-Y (Millennials) view money, prestige, adversarial confrontation and managerial methods differently from the Baby Boom and Gen-X generations, and that this set… Continue reading
This is the third of a series of six essays by Professor Burns Weston and me, derived from our book Green Governance: Ecological Survival, Human Rights and the Law of the Commons, published by Cambridge University Press. The essays originally appeared on CSRWire. I am re-posting them here to introduce the paperback edition, which was recently released. This extract was originally… Continue reading
Over here the situation is very bad, and people abroad are completely disinformed about it. Every day we read nonsense and bullshit on Grillo by people who completely ignore the reactionary, authoritarian nature of his movement. A harsh reality is biting our arses and we need to send a message in a bottle right now. … Continue reading
This short outline for the P2P management of water resources was written by Violeta Cabello Villarejo, and it’s excerpted from aquabits.net “Water has always been considered either a public good (in most cases) or a private one when it is appropriated to generate economic value, for instance in bottled water. Only at very local scales, water… Continue reading
Derek Wall writes for STIR Magazine about his experience working with Elinor Ostrom – In 2009, the American political economist Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Economics. Strictly speaking, she was neither an economist nor was the prize a Nobel but, in fact, the Swedish bank prize. Born “poor”,… Continue reading
how the ‘commons’ might become the basis for new forms of ‘welfare’ Excerpted from a discussion by provisionaluniversity in Dublin, Ireland: “While the current regime of austerity makes it impossible for the state to provide for the material well-being of the population it is wrong to imagine that a return to a golden past of… Continue reading
This is the second of a series of six essays by Professor Burns Weston and me, derived from our book Green Governance: Ecological Survival, Human Rights and the Law of the Commons, published by Cambridge University Press in January 2013. The essays originally appeared on CSRWire. This extract was originally published in bollier.org Is it possible to solve… Continue reading
Here’s Michel Bauwens’ contribution to this years, Ouishare Fest: The Age of Communities Michel earnestly talks about the opportunities and challenges of the FLOK Society — Free, libre, open-knowledge society — a project founded by three government institutions in Ecuador, aiming to make a transition to an open-knowledge common society. To find out more, please read… Continue reading
“Landsgemeinde Glarus 2006” by Adrian Sulc – German Wikipedia, own photograph by Adrian Sulc. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. With thanks to John C. Boik author of ‘Economic Direct Democracy: A Framework to End Poverty and Maximize Well-Being’ we are publishing here the foreword to the book by Lorenzo Fioramonti. The book… Continue reading
Excerpted from Jose Luis Vivero Pol: “The Tri-centric model to govern that transition to a commons-based economy Nowadays, in different parts of the world, numerous examples of local transitions towards sustainable food production and consumption are taking place . Based on Elinor Ostrom’s polycentric governance (Ostrom, 1990, 2009), food is being produced, consumed and distributed… Continue reading
We are reproducing this letter here as it has been signed by a number of well known progressive activists (See Below). Source – http://apoyointernacionalapodemos.wordpress.com/11-2/ In the wake of the European elections, we want to celebrate the emergence of PODEMOS as a political alternative in Spain. With almost no resources, just 4 months after its foundation,… Continue reading
Here is a very interesting interview from a major thinker on human emancipation, Cornelius Castoriadis. The interview was conducted by documentary maker Chris Marker for a series of TV episodes in 1989. The language is french but with very clear subtitles in English. Watch the video here:
This is from the unknown author of a French-language book, “L’espoir horizontal” Alternative et outil pour agir”: “When Gutenberg invented the printing press the deployment of knowledge outside of the clergy and nobility quickly caused problems in the institutions of the feudal system; the decline of feudalism significantly expanded science and the university, and radically… Continue reading
Welcome to the fourth in a series of essays exploring Wirearchy, “The power and effectiveness of people working together through connection and collaboration…taking responsibility individually and collectively rather than relying on traditional hierarchical status.” In today’s essay Jon Husband, the creator of Wirearchy, talks about co-creation, planning and a desirable, meaningful future. Check back next Friday for… Continue reading