“As Simon Fairlie bluntly describes in The Land magazine, “nearly half the country is owned by 40,000 land millionaires, or 0.06% of the population, while most of the rest of us spend half our working lives paying off the debt on a patch of land barely large enough to accommodate a dwelling and a washing… Continue reading
Date archives "August 2015"
A Torus Network for democratic decision-making ?
Sabrina Presti, who works with the Catalan Integral Cooperative in Catalunya, has developed a proposal for a democratic decision-making system, or more generally to allow them to cooperate together around shared objectives, that is based on the geometric ‘Torus’ form, encoded in a software platform. Sabrina is Spanish-speaking so the English version of this text… Continue reading
Debating Common Wealth Trusts (1): public funds, vs basic income, vs commons funds
Via Thomas Hanna: (from a series of reactions to a proposal by Peter Barnes) “While Alaska is the only state to use its public fund to directly provide a level of universal basic income, other states do use the revenues they generate to fund a variety of social services (primarily public education). In Texas, for… Continue reading
Jakob Rigi on Building on What We Have Achieved So Far
Jakob Rigi is a marxist researcher focusing on peer production, who here offers an analysis of “What Needs To Be Done” in the current configuration. The text appeared in the Networked Labour mailing list. Jakob Rigi: “We can reach there by critically building on what we have so far achieved. Who is the we? Answer:… Continue reading
DEMOS XXI – supporting an important Web Documentary on 21st cy democracies
“As many recent events have made clear, such as the recent agreement with the Greek government, representative democracy is in a deep crisis, yet at the same time, we see a tremendous revival of self-organisation and therefore democracy in practice, emerging from civil society. Hence, we need bridges from the innovation and experimentation coming from… Continue reading
Climate Change, Values Change, Social Change (2): Foragers, Farmers and Fossil Fuels
“The 21st century, he says, “shows signs of producing shifts in energy capture and social organization that dwarf anything seen since the evolution of modern humans.” If you read only one post-Naomi-Klein climate change essay this year, let it be the one by Margaret Atwood. In this essay, she focuses on how different energy regimes… Continue reading
Small Loans, Big Problems: The False Promise of Microfinance
We would argue that there are other winners in what Hickel calls “the microfinance game”. Corporate interests of all stripes have a vested interest in seeing millions of people drawn more deeply into the debt-based globalized money economy. Reposted from Local Futures Helena Norberg-Hodge talks about the false promise of Micro-finance. Ever since Bill Clinton… Continue reading
Pavlos Georgiadis on a Plan C for the agricultural and food system of Greece
In this article, “What do the powers that be have planned for Greek Agriculture?”, author Pavlos Georgiadis analysis the negative consequences of the neoliberalisation of Greece on agriculture, a situation which will be much worsened after the recent accord: He writes that: “Despite the potential of our land, Greece now imports the majority of its… Continue reading
Climate Change Effects of Existing Common Wealth Trust Models
There is considerable interest among scientists and citizens to address climate stability. The role of common wealth funds are likely to be a very important component of effective transitional strategy, from a public support perspective. Most any program faces formidable resistance from industry which has sunk assets. Many people feel we don’t have comfortable margins… Continue reading
Video of the day: Dmytri Kleiner on Germany’s treason scandal
Activist and software developer Dmytri Kleiner gives his perspective on Germany’s treason scandal to RT International.
The challenges of building alternatives that scale
Alternative currencies should be considered an essential part of every communities tool kit for discovering and declaring a greater degree of economic sovereignty over their lives but are localised alternative currencies enough to challenge the power of a financial system that is global in its reach? Can the lessons learned in these communities be taken… Continue reading
Climate Change, Values Change, Social Change (1): Art and Energy
in the coal energy culture – a culture of workers and production – you are your job. “I am what I make.” In an oil and gas energy culture – a culture of consumption – you are your possessions. “I am what I buy.” But in a renewable energy culture, you are what you conserve…. Continue reading
Video of the Day: The Promise of the Commons
“For thousands of years, different ideologies have come and gone, but one that has always endured, even if it is now being steadily eroded, is that of The Commons — cooperatively managed lands and lifestyles that worked for the common good. The Commons encouraged decentralisation and relationship — healthy relations between people and between people… Continue reading
The interactive economy is not a supply chain economy
Republished from Esko Kilpi: “Over the past years, mobile technologies and the Internet have laid the foundation for a very small size, low-cost enterprise with the potential for managing large numbers of business relationships. The impact of these new actors has been hard to grasp because we are used to thinking about work from a… Continue reading
Introduction to Vinay Gupta’s Future Thinking
Listening to Vinay Gupta, master of resilience thinking for a world under threat, is always a feast and this must be one of the best conversations to get to know his thinking. At the start of this conversation, Vinay gives interesting details about the three big sources of his own evolution, and at the same… Continue reading
An example of participatory urban planning in Kamo, New Zealand
Entertaining presentation of an experiment in moving a local council from organisation-centric to citizen-centric, by Nick Williamson at TEDx ChristChurch: Watch the video here: