* Book: Firm Commitment: Why the corporation is failing us and how to restore trust in it. By Colin Mayer. Oxford Universithy Press, 2013 Excerpted from review comments by Justin Fox: “Mayer wrote a very interesting book called “Firm Commitment,” in which he argued that corporations had in the past succeeded and created economic value… Continue reading
Date archives "May 2015"
Rights to Water and Land, a Common Struggle
Author: Global Convergence of Land and Water Struggles – http://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/168775 “We, social movements, grassroots organizations and civil society organizations engaged in the defence of the rights to land and water, gathered in October 2014 in Dakar at the African Social Forum. We are fighting and protesting against natural resource grabbing, especially water and land grabbing… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: On the Socio-Political Potentialities of Experimental Productive Alternatives
* Article: On the socio-political potentialities of experimental productive alternatives. Yannick Rumpala. Paper presented at the inter-disciplinary workshop on “Political Action, Resilience and Solidarity” (18th-19th September 2014, King’s College London). Two cases were presented: “The RepRap 3D printer and open-source hardware developed on contributory bases, and local initiatives in food production, such as “Incredible Edible”… Continue reading
100 Women who are co-creating the P2P Society : Interview with Primavera De Filippi, on commons-centric law and governance
Interview with researcher Primavera De Filippi by Rachel O’Dwyer. Primavera De Filippi is a researcher at the CERSA / CNRS / Université Paris II. She is currently a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, where she is investigating the concept of “governance by design” as it relates… Continue reading
Movement of the Day: Longo Mai
Simon Fairlie of the Land Magazine presents an intentional community with a history of several decades and 10 working cooperative farms. For a full interview of a participant, Hannes Reiser, who has been resident at Longo maï since its beginning, and explains how its co-operative farms are structured in an interview conducted by Katharina Morawietz,… Continue reading
Measuring the impact of #madeinGoteo commons-oriented crowdfunding campaigns
In this article, we’d like to explain Goteo’s follow-up tracking process for successfully crowdfunded projects and their collective returns: how it’s performed, what results we obtain, and what conclusions the process allows us to draw. We do this together with Vicky Anderica and Raúl Magallón, our “tracker” collaborators in charge of following and analyzing the… Continue reading
An important book on the Energy Transition to Renewable Electricity
100% renewable electricity is not just a dream anymore * Book: Crossing Over: Making the Energy Transition from Fossil Fuels to Renewable Electricity. Roberto Verzola. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2015 (free download available) The author, Roberto Verzola, writes: “Much of the book’s contents are specific to the Philippines, where rooftop solar electricity became cheaper than grid-delivered… Continue reading
Swarm community on “basic income”
Source – https://discourse.swarm.fund/t/suggestions-for-the-swarm-community-on-basic-income-voluntary-basic-capital/183 These are only suggestions. It is meant to provoke discussions and to enhance the potential for the voluntary basic income experiments. 1) Create a new software license called the voluntary basic capital license (VBCL). This would be similar to the GPL but would designate by law that anyone using the source code… Continue reading
Why Demand is Collapsing for Everything
By Gail Tverberg. Original post here. The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article called, Glut of Capital and Labor Challenge Policy Makers: Global oversupply extends beyond commodities, elevating deflation risk. To me, this is a very serious issue, quite likely signaling that we are reaching what has been called Limits to Growth, a situation… Continue reading
How friendship became a tool of the powerful
An extract from an article by William Davies at the Guardian – http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/may/07/how-friendship-became-tool-of-powerful “In reducing the social world to a set of mechanisms and resources, the question repeatedly arises as to whether social networks might be redesigned in ways to suit the already privileged. Networks have a tendency towards what are called power laws, whereby… Continue reading
Seeing Like a State – How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning theory realized in Brasilia, the Great Leap Forward in China, agricultural “modernization” in the Tropics—the twentieth century has been racked by grand utopian schemes that have inadvertently brought death and disruption to millions. Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go… Continue reading
In China: the peer to peer translation effort for ‘Under the Dome”.
“The number of people who responded…was out of my expectation” Excerpted from Elizabeth Tyson: “The same spark that Al Gore inspired in many young people is now sweeping China – and much of the world – thanks to a new film and innovative effort to bring it overseas. Under the Dome, a TED-style documentary on… Continue reading
P2P Foundation Now Accepts #FairCoin
The P2P Foundation is a big supporter of FairCoop and now accept donations in FairCoin the Cryptocurrency for the social economy.[coinwidget address=”fEtAzqZkqaBXdYDeG9mjnJ6KUuaz1FHzM6″] FairCoop are currently donating 100000 Faircoins to organisations who share their vision for a fair-economy https://fair.coop/principles/ to find out how you can get involved continue reading – FairCoop donates 100.000 Faircoins! FairCoop will… Continue reading
More Social than #Bitcoin: Profiles on Complementary Currencies Part 1 The Brixton Pound
Raúl Carrillo: ““When people think of Brixton, too many think of gangs, drugs, and riots. We’re trying to turn that notion on its head.” That’s what Tom Shakhli, the general manager of the Brixton Pound, told me when I visited the team office at Lambeth Town Hall. A storied district in the middle of South… Continue reading
Could Chicago be the first city to create a Chamber of Commons?
“At Cooperation 2015, Michel Bauwens introduced the idea that we should create a Chamber of Commons to protect the commons sort of like the Chamber of Commerce protects business. Here are some rough notes on the idea. We will be discussing these ideas at a On the Table hosted by Sally Duros and Terry Edlin,… Continue reading
Why Conscious Capitalism is an illusion
“peer production and the emerging economy of the Commons may (and already do) provide the material conditions of an alternative future spirituality and self. An identity based on networks of cooperation rather than competition, and common property and sharing rather than privatization and commodification, has no need to generate a collective will that puts human… Continue reading