Michael Brooks interviews Heather C McGhee on the Stacked Deck that confirms how the outsize influence of money misaligns decisions that would favor what the majority of the population supports. Very good conversation:
Biological Evolution of Friendliness as Possible Basis for Networked Economy
The story from Science Daily is reprinted from materials provided by ETH Zürich, via AlphaGalileo. * Thomas Grund, Christian Waloszek, Dirk Helbing. How Natural Selection Can Create Both Self- and Other-Regarding Preferences, and Networked Minds. Scientific Reports, 2013; 3 DOI: 10.1038/srep01480 1. Context “Economics has a beautiful body of theory. But does it describe real… Continue reading
Three Commercial Difficulties for P2P Marketplaces
Excerpted from Connor McEwen: 1. Behaviour Change “For many of the early adopters in the sharing economy, the experience of a peer to peer interaction is significantly better due to their unique characteristics. They like meeting a new person, or the fact that they’re reducing their environmental footprint, and therefore are willing to use a… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Commons as a Model for Managing Natural Resources
* Book(let): Commons a Model for Managing Natural Resources. Ed. by Silke Helfrich. Coredem, 2012. Co-editor Silke Helfrich explains the theme: “Over the course of history, societies have developed specific ways to manage natural resources collectively, so as to ensure their prosperity and continuity. This most often took place on a local scale. These are… Continue reading
Questions on Building the Commons for the 2nd Making Worlds conference
Questions prepared for the 2nd Making Worlds in NYC, focused on the theme of Building the Commons, from Stephen Collis and the Future of Occupy newsletter; (which links to the source material): * “How do communities identify with and participate in the process of commoning?”. We live in a time when competitive individualism is emphasized,… Continue reading
The fallacy of the dream of Decentralized (P2P) Trade Economies
Trade can’t solve the inequality issues, what we need instead is an approval economy, argues Heather Marsh. See the next installment on April 6 for the description of the logic of an approval economy. Excerpted from Georgie BC: “Peer-to-peer trading is being increasingly explored as a method to cut out corporate control of the trade… Continue reading
Digitally Enabled Collective Action in Areas of Limited Statehood: can ‘weak states’ be good for Peer Production?
Republished from Mayo Fuster Morell: “I recently met Steven Livingston (Professor School of Media and Public Affairs; The George Washington University) and his work brought me to think common-based peer production (CBPP) from a perspective that I found interesting. Steven Livingston addressed the question of Digitally Enabled Collective Action in Areas of Limited Statehood. One… Continue reading
Launching the First Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam in NYC!
“The power of open source hardware lies in the ability to build upon others’ work and good documentation is the key to making this happen.” Help bring Open Source Hardware to the next stage in New York City at ITP-NYU – April 26-28, 2013 !! Via Simone Cicero: More information here: “The growth of the… Continue reading
Working hours, energy expenditures and climate change: towards a cap and trade for working hours
There is a very strong correlation between hours of work and GHG emission — stronger than the correlation between population, labor force or GDP and emissions. Excerpted from Tom Walker: “A few years ago, the Sandwichman started wondering why nobody paid attention to the energy intensity of employment. People talk about “decoupling” GDP from energy… Continue reading
Proposals for creative art+science, participatory, and open environmental education in Gulf of Finland / Baltic Sea Region
Via Andrew Paterson: Six proposals are introduced below for creative art+science, participatory and open approaches to environmental education and awareness in the Gulf of Finland Year 2014- / Baltic Sea region. They were first presented by Andrew Gryf Paterson at the Gulf of Finland Year Trilateral Environmental Education seminar, Tallinn, 28.2.2013, and are part of… Continue reading