One of the big, unanswered questions in our political economy today is “what constitutes value?” Conventional economics sees value as arising from market exchange and expressed as prices. A very simple, crude definition of value. But how, then, to account for the many kinds of value that are intangible, social or ecological in nature, and… Continue reading
The “idea and practice of organizing shared interests in cooperatives” (the German word genossenschaftsidee) has been added to UNESCO’s representative list of Intangible Cultural Heritage after being submitted by Germany. Originally posted by Rebecca Harvey at Co-operative News. Co-operation is one of 16 new elements inscribed on the list following decisions by the Intergovernmental Committee for… Continue reading
This is a strongly recommended video, about ten minutes, illustrating the main findings of Jeremy Rifkin’s research into our empathic nature, and what it potentially means for our next form of civilization: From the notes to the video: Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and… Continue reading
How Relocalising Production With Not-For-Profit Business Models Helps Build Resilient and Prosperous Societies This Commons Transition Special Report was written by Sharon Ede, a sustainability ideas transmitter, writer and activist working in Adelaide, Australia. Ede is also a co-founder of the Post-Growth Institute, one of Commons Transition’s most esteemed Partner Projects. We feel that the Post-Growth Institute’s… Continue reading
Bejamin Tincq: The Fab City, a locally self-sufficient and globally connected city, invites us to explore how digital manufacturing could relocate food, energy and industrial production in an urban setting. It was the central subject of an evening organized by OuiShare on November 10 as part of the Disruptive Innovation Festival and our exploration of the… Continue reading
Brianna Wettlaufer is the CEO and Co-founder of Stocksy, a platform co-op which offers a highly curated collection of royalty-free stock photography and video footage. In the run-up to OPEN 2017, where Brianna will be speaking, Oliver Sylvester-Bradley explores her experiences of setting up and running a platform business as a co-op. OSB: Why did… Continue reading
A very meaty issue of the British magazine STIR looks at a wide variety of projects based on Solidarity Economics. Produced in collaboration with the Institute for Solidarity Economics at Oxford, England, the Winter 2017 issue explores everything from municipal energy in London to cooperatively owned digital platforms, and from childcare coops to the robust… Continue reading
By Marcela Olivera: Autonomy and horizontality are distinct characteristics of traditional forms of organization in Bolivia. They support an everyday, practical, tangible understanding of what “public” means as well as how to shape a participatory democracy that can exist even without the state and the government. The water committees in the south of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s fourth-largest… Continue reading
John Boik, in the first of three articles on his recent work, absolutely nails . Our excerpt: “No matter how promising the design of a new system might be, it would be unreasonable to expect that a nation would abruptly drop an existing system in favor of a new one. Nevertheless, a viable, even attractive… Continue reading
This post by Jordan Greenhall was originally published on Medium. I was recently challenged by a friend around my model of abundance and put together this set of axioms that drive my thinking. I have no doubt that there are many other paths to thinking about abundance, but this is mine. I. Some portion of… Continue reading
President Donald Trump has promised to rebuild America’s airports, bridges, tunnels, roads and other infrastructure, something both Democrats and Republicans agree should be done. The country needs a full $3 trillion in infrastructure over the next decade. The $1 trillion plan revealed by Trump’s economic advisers relies heavily on public-private partnerships, and private equity firms… Continue reading
“How do you rip the algorithmic heart of our Uber and then embed your own values instead?” This is the question that lies at the heart of scholar & activist Trebor Scholz’s work on Platform Cooperativism, a concept that describes “a way of joining the peer-to-peer and co-op movements with online labor markets while insisting on communal… Continue reading
This is a time of great confusion, fear and political disarray. People around the world, including Americans afflicted by a Trump presidency, are looking for new types of democratic strategies for social justice and basic effectiveness. The imploding neoliberal system with its veneer of democratic values is clearly inadequate in an age of globalized capital…. Continue reading
Ivor Stodolsky & Marita Muukkonen: The absurdity of our times is palpable. Climate change is like a slow-motion atomic bomb whose red release-button we are gradually pushing deeper and deeper. While fully aware of the havoc we wreak, we subsidize this trigger-pushing on the order of trillions of euros a year.[1]Mass extinction of life on earth… Continue reading
The P2P Foundation is serializing video highlights from last year’s Platform Cooperativism conference. Click here to see all conference videos. (14 mins) Darren Sharp – Australia is in the midst of a transition from an extractive economy led by the mining and agricultural sectors, towards a knowledge-based service economy. While digital innovation and startups are… Continue reading
Solving the Energy Commons with Micro-Solar Swarms Complex Systems and the Energy Commons In this article, we look at the future of the Energy Commons, and how using a complex adaptive systems lens can lead to effective solutions. As an example, I’m going to demonstrate how this method can lead us to a solution I… Continue reading