Most bankers, economists and investors after a couple of drinks, will admit that money is not wealth. Money is a metric, like inches and centimeters, for tracking real wealth: human ingenuity and technological productivity interacting with natural resources and biodiversity undergirding all human societies along with the daily free photons from our Sun, as described in… Continue reading
In the spring of 2016, Elon Musk and his company Tesla stopped enforcing their patents, and Google, Facebook, Microsoft and IBM are all going open source with various robotics, artificial intelligence and phone projects. A trend is emerging: Is future manufacturing open source? Christian Villum: Giants such as Google and IBM have lately been followed by… Continue reading
Levente Polyák: Goteo is a platform for civic crowdfunding founded by Platoniq, a Catalan association of culture producers and software developers. Goteo helps citizen initiatives as well as social, cultural and technological projects that produce open source results and community benefits, with crowdfunding and crowdsourcing resources. Since its launch in 2011, Goteo’s crowdfunding campaigns have mobilised more than… Continue reading
The Mutual Aid Network(s) has always been a great source of inspiration for the P2P Foundation. A living, thriving example of what we term as a meta-economic network, MAN was also recently featured as a case study in our Commons Transition Primer. To see what they have been up in the last year, read this… Continue reading
This recent poll – conducted by the New Economics Foundation – shows that 82% of Uber customers would be likely to use an alternative service with better rights for drivers. New Economics Foundation: Four-fifths of Uber customers would use an ethical alternative – and over half would pay a higher fare to do so App-based companies like Uber… Continue reading
I will be participating as keynote speaker and panelist in a very important and I think rather unique symposium whereby various movements will think about converging their strategies. Thursday, 21 June, 2018 – 18:00 to Saturday, 23 June, 2018 – 13:00 The 4th International Transition Design Symposium 6.00pm Thursday 21st June – 1:00pm, Saturday 23rd June 2018… Continue reading
This is one of the most dynamic and illuminating films (39 min.) I have seen for quite a while. It follows the lives and struggles to save seeds – families, small farmers, communities, nations. It brilliantly facilitates deepening our understanding on several fronts – the predatory core and corruption of global capitalism in the seed… Continue reading
By James Gien Wong and Jose Ramos The city of Cape Town is confronting an unprecedented water crisis. Because of a complex number of factors, including a prolonged drought, the city is facing a complete shutdown of its municipal water distribution. The city has already established a “Day Zero”, the day when all taps will… Continue reading
Who doesn’t want an Urban Commons cookbook? Help support this project by pitching to their Kickstarter page. The following was written by Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse, founding member of the Urban Research Group and co-editor of the Urban Commons Cookbook. Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse: Dear friends of the urban commons, As some of you already know, a few members… Continue reading
Continuing the conversation on Basic Income, which has been widely covered in this blog, we now turn to something more akin to Dmytri Kleiner’s concept of Basic Outcome, where essential services (and rights) are provided outside of the market sphere. It would, however, be wise to combine Universal Basic Services described by ULC/IGP with our proposals for… Continue reading
Our colleague, P2P Foundation founder Michel Bauwens was recently interviewed in Chiang Mai, his city of residence, by Pim Kemasingki. This article was originally published in City life Chiang Mai. Pim Kemasingki: The past couple of years have been rather unsettling for many of us who look out at a world we hardly recognise and certainly… Continue reading
In this video, Holo/Holochain co-founders Eric Harris-Braun and Arthur Brock and ICO Project Lead Jean Russell explain what Holo and Holochain are and why it matters. Additionally Jamie Klinger explains the finer dimensions of Holochain in the post below: Holochain : The Blockchain picks up a Dimension Jamie Klinger: Bitcoin’s central mechanism — the Blockchain — is a monumental achievement in… Continue reading
Alex Steffen addresses a crucial issue in the context of the changes and transitioning we need to make our societes and economies environmentally acceptable and compatible with climate change requirements. Sure, we can all see change, but we can also see that the change is not nearly fast enough to avoid clear catastrophes. One of… Continue reading
This two-part, semi-gothic literary essay seeks a provisional definition of “benevolent capital” and a working description of types of artistic and scholarly work that have no value for Capital as such. The paradox observed is that such works may actually appeal to a certain aspect of Capital, insofar as present-day capitalism has within it forms… Continue reading
Rok Kranjc: Many of today’s proposals for and experiments with Universal Basic Income (UBI) in so-called developed countries seem to be congruent with, and indeed in some instances explicitly catered towards maintaining the dominant political economic architecture and status quo imaginary. Some of the more salient narratives regarding UBI present it as a silver bullet… Continue reading
Trump’s erratic presidency is a manifestation, not the cause, of democratic decay. The unfolding political crisis will outlast him. So must the resistance. Jerome Roos: It’s been a year since Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States of America — and we’re already exhausted. Exhausted by the endless stream of sexist and… Continue reading