Fifteen years ago when I began writing books, I had high hopes that someday I would be “discovered” and that “my message” would thereby reach millions of people and change the world for the better. That ambition began to disintegrate soon after, when after years of labor The Ascent of Humanity found no takers in… Continue reading
Continuing our series covering the #FearlessCities event, this post by Sophie Gonick was originally published on Urban Democracy Lab. On the second weekend in June, hundreds of people flocked to Barcelona to discuss the idea of municipalism and radical democracy, broadly under the banner of “Fearless Cities.” This event also served to commemorate two years… Continue reading
Book: The Political Economy of Attention, Mindfulness and Consumerism. Reclaiming the Mindful Commons. By Peter Doran. Routledge, 2017 The process by which capitalist investment seeks to reengineer and privatize nature, government, social life and even genes and physical matter is at once breathtakingly ambitious, subtle and insidious. The great contribution of Dr Peter Doran’s A… Continue reading
In this episode, we spoke with Jason Hickel, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics. Originally from Swaziland, Hickel’s research has focused on development and globalization. He has written extensively on a number of topics, including capitalism, inequality, climate change, basic income, and soil regeneration. Hickel argues that we cannot begin to seriously tackle the climate crisis… Continue reading
This post by Jorge San Vicente Feduchi was originally published on La Grieta The hypnotic documentary Hypernormalization, by British director Adam Curtis, takes its name from a concept developed by Soviet writer Alexei Yurchak. In his book Everything was Forever, Until it was No More, Yurchak describes the tense social and cultural atmosphere during the… Continue reading
This post by Massimo Paolini was originally published on perspectivasanomalas.org Combining nine of the blocks proposed by Ildefons Cerdà in the 1859 plan (very different from those realised) they are meant to reduce car traffic in the streets and squares inside the superblock’s perimeter, confining it to the perimetral streets, in order to create a… Continue reading
Michel Bauwens: In our capacity as contributors to the P2P Foundation and the Commons Strategies Group, we’d like to express our strong solidarity with the resistance of Pablo Solon and his friends as he has to counter unfair pressure from the Bolivian government. At the heart of this conflict is the right to oppose the… Continue reading
Michel Bauwens: In the P2P Foundation report, ‘Value in the Commons Economy, we describe and propose ‘tranvestment‘ strategies, which is a process where capital is transferred from one mode of production, for example, private capital used for capital accumulation, is used instead for expanding the commons and creating livelihoods for commoners, on their own terms, not… Continue reading
Originally published on energycommonsblog. This articles is in two parts. This is the second part; read part one here. In Germany, there is a strong movement to claim the gas, electricity and heating networks back from private corporations. Initiated by civil organisations, they are pushing the political arena to take action towards a remunicipalisation of… Continue reading
Originally published on energycommonsblog. This articles is in two parts. This is the first part; read part two here. In Germany, there is a strong movement to claim the gas, electricity and heating networks back from private corporations. Initiated by civil organisations, they are pushing the political arena to take action towards a remunicipalisation of… Continue reading
The Bancor protocol has made a lot of noise in the environment of cryptocurrencies. If I understand it correctly, it allows these currencies to find a stable value to trade with one another. In their own words: “Bancor protocol is an initiative of the Bprotocol Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Zug, Switzerland. The Bancor… Continue reading
Cross-posted from RioOnWatch. Inextricably linked to Rio de Janeiro’s identity for more than a century, favelas today serve the essential function of providing affordable housing to nearly a quarter of the city’s residents. In recent years, however, many favelas have been subject to immense pressure in the form of both forced evictions and gentrification brought… Continue reading
Two years ago I posted a bemused article on Faircoin, which was trading between some members of Faircoop at five times the price it was available on the free market. This was a social experiment being run by Enric Duran as part of his attempts to build a new financial system. It seemed to me… Continue reading
By Corinna Burkhart, Dennis Eversberg, Matthias Schmelzer and Nina Treu; translated by Santiago Killing-Stringer. Originally published on Degrowth.de Degrowth in Movements: Strengthening Alternatives and Overcoming Growth, Competition and Profit About the authors and their positions We write this text as editors and coordinators of the project Degrowth in Movement(s) with Dennis Eversberg. We see ourselves… Continue reading
An article by Tomas Diez, originally published at Medium: “The proposal did not get through the second phase due to the ‘lack of impact and concretion’. We believe that this project needs to happen, and we will make it happen. Introduction: There is a pressing need to reimagine cities and how they operate in order… Continue reading
This post was originally published on Web of Debt. Japan has found a way to write off nearly half its national debt without creating inflation. We could do that too. Let’s face it. There is no way the US government is ever going to pay back a $20 trillion federal debt. The taxpayers will just… Continue reading