“Mutual Aid Networks build the local economy so it works both for people like you and for the larger goal of community wealth building. Collaborative economic strategies – timebanking, price-based mutual credit, shared resources, and cooperative savings and lending pools – are now being used successfully as separate strategies around the world. By bringing these… Continue reading
Date archives "July 2015"
Book of the Day – Cooperative Advantage
“When you run an organisation for the bene?t of everyone it touches, your achievements are more lasting and more meaningful than the old hoary achievements of so-called shareholder value. And when you accord each individual the dignity of ownership you unleash creativity and innovation on a scale few traditional business leaders dare dream of.” –… Continue reading
USA: “Examples of conservative socialism in practice” (i.e. sovereign wealth funds)
Excerpted from Gar Alperovitz and Thomas M. Hanna: “The most well-known case is Alaska. The Alaska Permanent Fund, established by a Republican governor in 1976, combines not one, but two socialist principles: public ownership and the provision of a basic income for all residents. The fund collects and invests proceeds from the extraction of oil… Continue reading
100 Women who are co-creating the P2P Society: Anne-Sophie Novel on sustainable localism
Anne-Sophie Novel is a French journalist, blogger and advocate at the convergence of different topics such as the sharing economy and sustainability, who will be active as well on the next big climate change topic in Paris, i.e. COP. The interview was conducted by Michel Bauwens. Marie Noéline who helped with the interview is the… Continue reading
Erik Olin Wright on the Role of the State, the Market and Civil Society
Erik Olin Wright, from a 2007 text in ‘Compass Points’: “Capitalism would be an unreproducible and chaotic social order if the state played the minimalist role specified in the libertarian fantasy, but it would also, as Polanyi argued, function much more erratically if civil society was absorbed into the economy as a fully commodified and… Continue reading
Bioecon – build a more human economy in harmony with life
Bioecon can be used as a tool to connect the different forms of solidarity economies on the globe. It is a project born in Argentina after the crisis hit there. Bioecon is a peer to peer, growth sensitive, decentralized and self regulated economic agreement in which the means of exchange is produced by participants as… Continue reading
The Hyper-Exploitative Labor Practices of Amazon.com
Excerpted from Trebor Scholz, first, on the working conditions in the warehouses: “Let’s start by asking for a show of hands: who has ever purchased anything from Amazon.com? It is incredibly convenient but, as I will show, in the shadows of this convenience linger the social costs for Amazon’s workers. Behind the screen: wage theft… Continue reading
Nicole Foss Interview
The full interview with Nicole Foss of The Automatic Earth from the upcoming documentary A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity. More info about the film: http://wurrukan.org/film
The European left in shock after the defeat of Greece
Six months after promising the end of austerity, the Syriza leadership had to sign an agreement which not just imposes an extreme neoliberal impoverishment of its people, but actually suspends democracy, since the agreement explicitely states that no laws can be voted without agreement of the European institutions. The radicality of this defeat is not… Continue reading
HORNET – Onion routing at network level to speed up and secure anonymous communications
This is a paper proposing improvements to onion routing, which anonymises data traffic and communications on the internet. The proposal is to put the routing protocol at network level, providing higher speed transmission and adding encryption features. HORNET: High-speed Onion Routing at the Network Layer In this paper, we address the question of “what minimal… Continue reading
The economics of Laudate Si as commons economics !
There is … a different sort of economics that helps us see the sense in what Francis proposes—the economics of the commons. This is a tradition that includes the “all things in common” described in the New Testament Book of Acts and the primacy of the common good over private property, upheld from Augustine to… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: The More-Than-Human Commons: commoning is caring
A really excellent and well-written (draft) essay on the implications of the commons for how we relate to each other and to other natural beings: * Source: The More-than-Human Commons : From Commons to Commoning. Patrick Bresnihan. Forthcoming Chapter in Space, Power and the Commons, Routledge.) Excerpted from Patrick Bresnihan: “Where the more-than-human commons departs… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Open Source Finance Hacking
“The hacker drive for de-alienated self-empowerment throws up tricky issues. As people with a hacker impulse gain confidence, they can become increasingly intolerant towards conventions, but also towards institutions like large welfare systems, which are viewed as being alienating in their own way. When combined with the individualistic streak, this can make for a libertarian… Continue reading
Feed Bristol: an example of how food as a commons works
Excerpted from Sophie Laggan: “Feed Bristol is a project that provides one example of how food as a commons works. The five-acre urban farm is managed by a group of volunteers and a few full-time staff. The volunteers are largely recovering from drug and alcohol addiction and use the site as a way to reconnect… Continue reading
Debating Post-Capitalism (1): a critique by Michael Roberts
I expect to see more critical engagements with Paul Mason’s important new book. This first one, based on the introductory essay which appeared in the Guardian, is by the Marxist economist Michael Roberts, a long excerpt: ” I have a lot of issues with what Mason argues and concludes. He starts his article of explanation… Continue reading
Documentary: what are the conditions to move from relative political democracy to full economic democracy ?
An excellent documentary, with english subtitles, coming from Sweden: “This is a solid, thought provoking documentary covering a relevant economic topic in-depth. The question of capitalism’s grip on the modern world is highly relevant today and the film questions if we should be pushing for a democratic cooperative way of doing business, showing case studies… Continue reading