Great lecture at the re:publica conference in Berlin: “The distrust of the dominant extractive model of the “sharing economy” is growing. Labor and logistics companies such as Uber have been criticized for eliminating democratic values such as accountability, dignity, and rights for workers. Using various examples, Scholz will introduce what he calls platform cooperativism, an… Continue reading
Date archives "June 2016"
How to Bootstrap a Bossless Organization in 3 Easy Steps
My first impression at OuiShare Fest was a weird utopian blockchain mania: a poorly understood but massively hyped technology that will somehow fix all our social, political, and economic inequities. As I got to know some of the people here though, I started to see through the fog of hype and find a lot of incredible… Continue reading
The cyber-age demands a politics of the spirit
A recent article written by Indra Adnan: “As people explore new forms of agency online, where is the politics that can serve their growing sense of possibility? For a little while now I’ve been waking up in the morning feeling ready for something. When people ask me “how are you?” the answer, is “Good. Excited”—though… Continue reading
The Gender Wage Gap Part Two: Discrimination or Choice?
Is the gender wage gap due to discrimination or choice? This week’s video explores the popular idea that women experience a “motherhood penalty” and men experience a “fatherhood premium/bonus” in working wages, and that this contributes significantly to the wage gap. I investigate whether these constructs hold up under close scrutiny and also share why… Continue reading
Reclaiming the social commons: converging labor and the commons
This is a review by Birgit Daiber on the conference, “Transform! Europe, Seminar on “Production and Common”, held in Rome, on March 11-12, 2016. Birgit Daiber: “With the Workers Recuperated Companies (WRC) and self-organised post-labour-projects as common goods a new colour integrates into the spectrum of Commons. The reports of some of the initiatives in… Continue reading
When the Ethnographic Method Goes Open Source
A recent article titled ‘Ethnography: A prototype’ and co-authored by Alberto Corsín Jiméneza & Adolfo Estalellaa. “The article describes a long-term collaboration with a variety of free culture activists in Madrid: digital artists, software developers and guerrilla architectural collectives. Coming of age as Spain walked into the abyss of the economic crisis, we describe how… Continue reading
Procomuns Plenary 12: Value and Collaborative Production
Video of a presentation on the topic of value and collaborative production, with Marco Berlinguer. Note: All Procomuns videos feature simultaneous translation, please switch from left to right channels to change languages. This plenary was filmed at PROCOMUNS, a 3 day event which was held in Barcelona in March, 2016 to discuss commons-oriented approaches to… Continue reading
Project Of The Day: Casa Jasmina
Imagine a world constructed for people other than you. Like other people, you likely had no voice in how this world operated. But unlike most other people, this world does not reflect your values. It is portrayed as an exciting new paradigm. Most other people accept or even support it. No one seems concerned that… Continue reading
New Systems Series: Possibilities and Proposals (volume 2)
“The second volume of papers in the ‘New Systems: ‘ series offer visions ranging from the cooperative solidarity commonwealth and the civic economy of provisions to fresh takes on commoning and democratic eco-socialism. In ‘Commoning as a Transformative Social Paradigm‘ David Bollier outlines the ways in which the commons provides a critique of neoliberal capitalism… Continue reading
Reflections on the European Commission agenda on the Collaborative Economy and discussion about Platform Cooperativism with Trebor Scholz
The following is extracted from Procomuns’ newsletter- Sign up here. In this second newsletter from procomuns.net we want to refer to the new European Collaborative Economy agenda, which establishes guidelines for Member States on how they should regulate and what should be the Collaborative Economy policy of Members States. Is also an invitation to rethink… Continue reading
The Gender Wage Gap Part 1: Why Statistics Are a Bitch
This is the first of three videos that will tackle an investigation of the gender wage gap in an attempt to go beyond popular rhetoric and get underneath its underlying causes. This week’s video discusses the often quoted statistic that women earn 77 (or 79 or 82) cents on every man’s dollar for the same… Continue reading
Decrypting Cryptocurrency
Digital communication technologies hold the possibility of re-orienting the way we exchange value and think about money. Do digital currencies like Bitcoin have the ability to change the global economic order? Can machine learning, automation, and cryptocurrencies unleash exponential innovations that unseat the financial institutions at the top of the monetary pyramid? In Extraenvironmentalist #92 we first… Continue reading
Sharing Value & Ownership for the Common Good: Building the Commons Economy
“The Commons Transition Coalition presents: ‘Sharing Value & Ownership for the Common Good: Building the Commons Economy’, featuring special guest Nathan Schneider (USA) Venue: Church of All Nations (CAN), 180 Palmerston St, Carlton. Date: Friday 10th June 2-5pm Cost: $15 Full / $10 Concession/Student/Unwaged NOTE: Attendees of the Platform Cooperativism – How to make the… Continue reading
How the emergence of distributed farm machinery may undo the centralisation of agriculture
“For decades, farm machinery has targeted industrial-sized farmers, underpinning the “get big or get out” ag model of consolidation. Now, the miniaturization of farm machinery may be the ag-tech counter-trend that actually encourages smaller, more diverse farms.” Excerpted from Brian Halweil: “When we think about the future in ten years, we’re going to see smaller… Continue reading
Ethan Zuckerman on the morals and ethics of a P2P society and economics
The aspirational vs the real of ‘peer to peer’ ideals! Martijn Arets of Crowd Expedition interviews Ethan Zuckerman, at The Next Web Europe in Amsterdam. He is the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media and the author most recently of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection”. Question: why are we talking… Continue reading
Women’s co-operatives in Rojava
In this piece (originally published on the Cooperative Economy site), Rahila Gupta, freelance journalist and author of “Enslaved: The New British Slavery”, investigates the importance and impact of womens’ cooperatives in Rojava. Women’s co-operatives: Qamişlo, Rojava The following article is based on my trip to Rojava in March 2016 where I interviewed Delal Afrin, Head… Continue reading