Society is shifting from a production modus based on value created in a market system (through labor and capital) to one which recognizes broader value streams. These streams are experienced as ‘contributions’ to structures based on the co-construction of shared resources, also known as ‘commons’. Show Notes: Michel Bauwens: Four Scenarios for the Collaborative Economy… Continue reading
Date archives "March 2017"
Commoning Governance: A Shift in the Value Regime
The following text is a transcript of a talk given by Michel Bauwens for the “We Are the Time Machines Commoning Forum Series”. Reposted from OnlineOpen.org Last year, on 28 February 2016, Michel Bauwens gave a talk at Casco – Office for Art, Design & Theory for Commoning Governance, the third instalment of the We… Continue reading
Patterns of Commoning: Twelve Design Principles of Permaculture
Permaculture is a type of sustainable agriculture and ecological design and engineering that self-consciously attempts to work in constructive alignment with natural dynamics. At once a philosophy and set of social practices, techniques and ethical norms, permaculture seeks to ensure that all life systems can remain healthy and flourish. This goal can only be met… Continue reading
Felix Weth on Fairmondo and Open Multi-Stakeholder Coops
The P2P Foundation is serializing video highlights from last year’s Platform Cooperativism conference. Click here to see all conference videos. (16 mins) Felix Weth — Fairmondo is an online marketplace owned by its users. It is open to professional as well as private sellers, with no general restrictions on what products and services can be… Continue reading
Cypherpolitical Enterprises: Programmatic Assessments
The following whitepaper was sent through our contact email. What do you think of the proposal? Let us know in the comments. The following are the assessments for a cypherpolitics, its conditions, drives and intentions. The colour grey indexes the chromatics of the cypherpolitical position: a politics of obfuscation and exit, accumulating in tonal obscurity… Continue reading
Manifesto For Utopias Are Over: Cities Are Living Systems
At the heart of this unfolding transformation is a new story of place. Cities have a crucial role to play as catalysts of the system change we need. 1: Change and innovation are no longer about finely crafted ‘visions’ of some future place and time. Positive change happens when people reconnect – with each other, and… Continue reading
Memory, Fire and Hope: Five Lessons from Standing Rock
Standing Rock may have been evicted but the movement hasn’t lost. Here are five lessons activists around the world can learn from the water protectors. “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Alnoor Ladha: Last week, on February 22, 2017, water protectors at… Continue reading
Cooperativism in the digital era, or how to form a global counter-economy
The aim is to go beyond the classical corporate paradigm, and its extractive profit-maximizing practices, toward the establishment of open cooperatives that cultivate a commons-oriented economy. Can we transform the renting economy of Uber and AirBnB into a genuine sharing one? Platform cooperatives must become open and commons-oriented. Text by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis: If… Continue reading
What Would a Community-Owned Food System Look Like?
In 2012, the Sustainable Economies Law Center along with numerous active partners successfully advocated for the passage of the California Homemade Food Act (AB 1616, Gatto), also commonly known as California’s “cottage food law.” Thousands of small food businesses formed under the law during just its first year of implementation. However, the Homemade Food Act only allows… Continue reading
Let’s Make Our World Whole!
I’m not a scholarly man and I have no vision to come up with any new theories, what I hope is to get a glimpse of the understanding of the world held by many greater thinkers. But why is it so important for me to get this understanding when I’m just a simple man? It… Continue reading
10 Policy Ideas to Make Food a Shared Resource in Europe
Cross-posted from Shareable. Cat Johnson: The commons are generally thought of as shared resources — these include everything from the public spaces we share to the air we breathe. A new movement hopes to redefine food as a commons. As agricultural engineer Jose Luis Vivero-Pol explains in a new proposal to create a food commons in Europe, food should be… Continue reading
Solidarity Economy Showcase: CASA Manchester
The P2P Foundation is serializing videos on the Solidarity Economy produced by the SUSY (Sustainable and Solidarity Economy) Project. See all videos here. Care and Share Associates (CASA), a care provider owned by its employees, was chosen as the focus for the film highlighting the solidarity economy in the North West of England. The film-makers… Continue reading
In defence of degrowth: 27 Essays and Thoughts on Degrowth
A collection of essays, blogposts and newspaper articles authored by Giorgos Kallis and edited by Aaron Vansintjan: The idea of degrowth is contentious, often misunderstood, and (perhaps paradoxically) growing in popularity. In this book, Giorgos Kallis, one of the movement’s leading thinkers, presents an accessible, inspiring, and enjoyable defense. The book’s chapters—a compilation of his opinion essays,… Continue reading
Patterns of Commoning: The System of Rice Intensification and Its International Community of Practice
Erika Styger: When the rainy season came early to the highlands of Madagascar in 1983, the rice seedlings in the nursery were still too young for transplanting, and French Jesuit priest Henri de Laulanié had to make a decision: either to wait another two to four weeks to transplant (which would obviously result in a… Continue reading
Cut the bullshit: organizations with no hierarchy don’t exist
This post by Francesca Pick originally appeared on Medium.com Do completely horizontal organizations truly exist? Fueled by growing excitement about self-management, bossless leadership and new governance models such as Holacracy, I increasingly hear large claims about the potential of “flat organizations”, which are being used as synonymous to “having no hierarchy”. I often wonder whether… Continue reading
Mike Lewis on The Resilience Imperative – Synergia Summer Institute
“Transition to Co-operative Commonwealth: Pathways to a new political economy” This July 10 – 21, 2017 the Synergia Institute will gather in Tuscany, Italy for an intensive program exploring practical pathways to social change. The first course of it’s kind developed by Synergia offers a unique opportunity bringing together tutors to share their experience in implementing… Continue reading