Peers.org is a new platform designed to support the sharing economy in a variety of ways, including influencing policy-making. Given its funding by sharing companies and venture capital, some people, like Andrew Leonard of Salon.com below, are asking questions about the nature of the organisation. My intuition is that this is indeed a top-down campaign… Continue reading
On Matthew Slater and the new monetary alchemy
1. “Local currencies such as the Brixton Pound are about localising, whereas digital currencies such as Bitcoin are about decentralising and internationalising. Meanwhile, so-called demurrage currencies — deliberately engineered to lose value over time — are about energising the volume of transactions, as people have no incentive to hoard them. (Freicoin, for example, is an… Continue reading
Selected Citations on Open Hardware and Distributed Manufacturing
For the sources of the citations, go here: * On the Guaranteed Income and Manufacturing Consentives, 1966 “The guaranteed income will, in fact, lead to the revival of “private enterprise.” Once the guaranteed income is available, we can anticipate the organization of what I have called “consentives”: productive groups formed by individuals who will come… Continue reading
Mapping the Commons in Rio de Janeiro – Event from 17 to 26 October
Bernardo Gutierrez from Brazil writes: I write to inform you that the project ‘Mapping the commons’ is going to happen in Rio de Janeiro, in October, and we are looking for partnership. As most of you know, Mapping the commons is a project developed by Pablo de Soto (Hackitecktura). He developed this theoretical and practical… Continue reading
The Slow Tools Project: Open Source Hardware Comes to the Farm
The cheaper and more distributed the means of production, the more particular communities of producers will also become design communities developing tools suited to their own needs. One promising example of this is the Slow Tools project, created under the auspices of the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture.
Robohand: Crowdfunding 3D Printed Prosthetics
Robohand are into the last few days of their crowdfunding campaign. Please contribute what you can to this very worthwhile P2P project. http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sustaining-robohand Robohand was established in 2011 when Richard van As had a woodworking accident and lost 4 fingers on his right hand. He is right handed. During his very short time in the… Continue reading
The Demonetization Agenda – replacing transactions with social relations
Republished from Stefan Meretz: “The question of how we deal with and act within the given monetary environment is crucial for the commons movement, since the monetary logic and the commons logic are opposites. Contrary to the claims of mainstream economics, money is not neutral or simply an informational means for mediating transactions. Thus, replacing… Continue reading
Independent seed farming re-legalized in Indonesia
Via GRAIN: Farmers using their own seeds and imagination for farmers will no longer be prosecuted after a recent Supreme Court ruling in Indonesia: “The Plant Cultivation System Law, adopted in 1992, was meant to improve and expand diversification of crops to meet the needs for food, clothing, housing and health, as well as to… Continue reading
How the sharing economy could adversely affect consumer capitalism
Excerpted from MATTHEW BOESLER, who discusses a ConvergEx broker report: “The potential impacts of renting/leasing as a long-term trend, though, are worrisome: Renting and sharing could lead to lower home sales (and, subsequently lower home values and net worths), as well as lower auto and retail sales,” write the strategists. “The ripple effects could also… Continue reading
Permaculture and the myth of future food scarcity
Excerpted from Charles Eisenstein: (don’t miss the very rich comments) “In Sacred Economics I cite research showing that when it is done properly, organic growing methods can deliver two to three times the yield of conventional methods. (Studies showing the opposite are poorly constructed. Of course if you take two fields and plant each with… Continue reading