The startup culture has become pervasive in this society. Capital is drawn to startups because they promise fast growth and big returns on investment. Their business plans are all about growing and making money. There is only one catch: Most of them are increasing inequality and are contributing to the destruction of our environment. In… Continue reading
Date archives "September 2014"
Social business design and p2p work re-engineering in IT teams
A great example of how work culture is changing inside corporations. Here is the example of Spotify Engineering Culture:
What if Psychological Distress came from inequality and domination ?
From the author ‘David’: “David ?: “The impression of healthy competition among a wide variety of counselling and therapy approaches that this picture may give is, in my view, in itself misleading, for in fact they all share one very important assumption. What’s more, despite the appearance of radical contrast, they share it also with… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Metaprogramming and the Labour of Code
* Article: Cultural Techniques of Cognitive Capitalism: Metaprogramming and the Labour of Code. Jussi Parikka. Cultural Studies Review, VOL 20, NO 1 (2014). (UTS ePress) From the abstract: “This article addresses cultural techniques of cognitive capitalism. The author argues that to understand the full implications of the notion of cognitive capitalism we need to address… Continue reading
GMO – A Game of Russian Roulette
Excerpted from Resource Insights. With each step we take in the production and deployment of new GMO seeds, we are playing a game of Russian roulette. – Kurt Cobb “GMOs, however, offer a classic case of unforeseeable systemic ruin. We will know we are ruined by this untried technology after the ruin happens (perhaps in… Continue reading
Whitepaper on the Bio-Commons
“With regards to biotechnology, society relies mainly on patents as means to enable and secure innovations. In recent years, the limits of this intellectual property regime has become increasingly evident. New approaches to biological knowledge and technology (have emerged), such as the attempts to establish open access and open-source practices”. This abstract was posted on… Continue reading
Why We Need A Cooperative Ownership Revolution
The Evergreen Coop in Cleveland Ohio provides an example of how cooperative and community owned enterprise help rebuild communities. The following extract is from Chapter 4 of Towards a New Form of Economic Development: Why the Need for an Ownership Revolution Has Never Been Greater. a dissertation by Jerome Birolini. Schumacher College, MA Economics for… Continue reading
Book of the Day: With Liberty and Dividends for All
Everybody talks a lot about economic inequality, but there don’t seem to be many credible proposals out there, let alone ones that have political legs. French economist Thomas Piketty documented the deep structural nature of inequality in Capital in the 21st Century, but the best solution he could come up with was a global wealth tax. Good… Continue reading
Sut Jhally on The Factory in your Living Room!
The Factory in the Living Room from Sut Jhally on Vimeo. Commentary below by David Week. ” In a traditional capitalist society, labour creates value, and capital captures that value: workers in a factory produce a car, and the surplus value of the car is captured by the factory owner. Unions (where they still exist)… Continue reading
A New Anthology, “From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond”
I’m happy to announce that a new collection of essays that I’ve co-edited with John Clippinger, executive director of ID3, has been published. It’s called From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond. The fifteen essays in the book explore a new generation of digital technologies that are re-imagining the foundations of digital identity, governance, trust and social organization…. Continue reading
There are Thousands of Alternatives
Launch of Transformap: There are Thousands of Alternatives. We will put them on a Single Map! Transformap-Workshop 4th International Degrowth Conference September 3rd, 2:30 pm – 4:30 pm, Leipzig University, S 328 TRANSFORMAP A network of about 50 individuals and organizations – from civil society, science and social business in Germany and Austria – invites… Continue reading
Post Capitalism
In an interview recently, Aftab Omer observed that I seem hesitant to describe Sacred Economics as a post-capitalist economic vision. I replied that I am not talking about the end of capitalism, bur rather a transformation in the nature of capital, so that capitalism no longer bears the social dynamics to which we are accustomed.After… Continue reading
Beautiful Solutions — Call for submissions!
Source : http://beautifultrouble.org/2014/08/07/beautiful-solutions-call-submissions/ Call for Submissions BEAUTIFUL SOLUTIONS: A Toolbox for the Future “For ten years, I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me to contribute to just this kind of book.” —Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies *Please forward & repost* The collective that brought you Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox… Continue reading
Labour in the circuits of global markets: theories and realities
This is to announce the new issue of Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation, entitled “Labour in the circuits of global markets: theories and realities: It is Supply chains are becoming ever more tightly integrated as corporations vie with each other to bring their products to global markets before they lose their value through replication or… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Creating a Sustainable and Desirable Future
Robert Costanza and Ida Kubiszewski. Creating a Sustainable and Desirable Future: Insights from 45 Global Thought Leaders. World Scientific, 2014 URL = http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/8922 Description By Roberto Costanza of Solutions Journal: “Ida Kubiszewski and I have just released a new edited book titled: “Creating a Sustainable and Desirable Future: Insights from 45 Global Thought Leaders” that I… Continue reading