Lots of interesting people here in Whistler, Canada, to discuss the design of an ethical economy that can span the world. Organized by Caroline Smalley and with a very active media team with In this podcast, Tammy Lea Meyer, several interviews per day are being conducted. This is a joint interview with myself and Michael… Continue reading
Date archives "October 2015"
Robin Hood Coop funds 3 commons building projects
Great news from Robin Hood Coop. Needless to say, we’re very excited about continuing with our part of the CIC/Commons Transition project, and we’d like to thank the board at Robin Hood for having chosen it. This press release was originally published on the Robin Hood Coop blog. You can read the full text of… Continue reading
If Thomas Edison was Alive Today, The US would Ban Electricity to Protect Lantern Makers
John Robb, writing for HomeFree America, examines the dangers of state-enfoced monopolies. There’s a growing majority of business owners in the US who would rather cheat that compete (despite what you might be thinking, it wasn’t always this way in the US). Business owners willing to bribe a politician in order to protect their company… Continue reading
New report by STWR challenges the official discourse on ending global poverty
The Sustainable Development Goals – despite their positive and progressive rhetoric – by no means constitute a transformative agenda for restructuring the global economy and meeting the basic needs of all people within the means of our shared planet. As we explain in STWR’s latest report, the basic assumptions that define the SDGs discourse –… Continue reading
The Cryptocurrency-Based Projects That Would Pay Everyone Just for Being Alive
Creating a decent basic income system now, even if it had only a little money in it at first, would give every potential beneficiary an incentive to see it grow. For a policy proposal that has an approximately 0 percent chance of being passed by the US Congress right now, universal basic income is an… Continue reading
“Don’t Owe. Won’t Pay.” Everything You’ve Been Told About Debt Is Wrong
This article first appeared in Yes! Magazine (August 20, 2015) The legitimacy of a given social order rests on the legitimacy of its debts. Even in ancient times this was so. In traditional cultures, debt in a broad sense—gifts to be reciprocated, memories of help rendered, obligations not yet fulfilled—was a glue that held society… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Urban Revolutions and the Network Commons
“Citizen networks, wireless or not, could become a transversal infrastructral layer, reaching across society and different domains, becoming a revolutionary enabler of a new urban life in a way that points beyond capitalism as we knew it. … Rather than having corporations and the state who centrally organize production and consumption, in such a commons… Continue reading
Le Temps des Communs: Biggest Commons Festival Ever
Le Temps des Communes, surely the largest festival of the commons ever, is about to get underway! The festival is not just a single event in a single place, but a series of more than 250 self-organized events to be held over the course of fifteen days in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada (Quebec) and several… Continue reading
03 Renaissance, the Peak Hierarchy video
Quite cyber-utopian, but fun to watch and well produced, reminds us of the promise of Open Government, Open Data, Open Source. Watch the video here:
Beyond the Sustainable Development Goals: uncovering the truth about global poverty and demanding the universal realisation of Article 25
The following reproduces the introduction to Share the World’s Resources report about global poverty and the realization of Article 25. You can read the full report here. The Sustainable Development Goals – despite their positive and progressive rhetoric – by no means constitute a transformative agenda for meeting the basic needs of all people within… Continue reading
Podcast of the Day: Isabelle Frémeaux, John Jordan and the rise of the insurrectionary imagination.
The following podcast (and text) is reposted from the Transition Network website. Isabelle Frémeaux (IF) and John Jordan (JJ) are the co-founders of the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination. It’s a collective which , according to Isabelle, “aims at opening spaces, real or virtual, and bringing artists and activists together to work on and co-create more… Continue reading
Why we will need Transformaking for climate change and the post-peak metal era
Excerpted from a text from co-organizer Jean Noël Montagné, without associated pictures, sent via te what-the-flok email list, September 2015, announcing a festival on the subject: (english text from native french speaker, not corrected) “I am the founder of a hackerspace in Nice, france, called Nicelab, ” Open Laboratory of Nice”. I started collaborations with… Continue reading
Towards an Open Labour: a call for Corbin to move the Labour Party and the UK towards deliberative democracy
“Open Labour means three things then: first, to be sure, a much more open Labour party, with a culture and democratic ways of doing things that really is fraternal not sectarian or administrative. Second, a party and movement much more open to ideas from within and without, especially over how the economy and the constitution… Continue reading
Michel Bauwens Interviewed for the Berlin Future Forum on Peer to Peer Spirituality
By Pedro Jardim and Alexa Clay for the Berlin Future Forum, October 2015 The beginning of the video covers familiar ground, but gradually the questions of Alexa veer towards spiritual concerns. Watch the video here at:
Workers are about to become much more powerful: How will capitalism adapt ?
“An influential study by economists at Delft University has concluded what many of us suspected. A flexible workforce needs an expanded management bureaucracy to oversee it. Because precarity damages trust, loyalty and commitment, say the Delft researchers, it demands more management and control. An entire generation of free-market workers has begun to act according to… Continue reading
The incredible success of the social media Red Labour Campaign Behind Jeremy Corbyn’s Victory
The #JezWeCan social media campaign has been, by a long stretch, the biggest single campaign for an individual politician this country has ever seen. … It’s about the democratic possibilities which are opened up by this new medium and this extensive reach. It gives us leverage where previously there was very little – and it… Continue reading