I have not had time to read eGaia but I have read the review and it’s not exactly glowing; while it is acknowledged that there is some useful food for thought in the book, Parkins is unimpressed with much of it.

Basic premise of eGaia, is that Gaia needs Man as its nervous system, hence eGaia.

What does it mean for the Earth to function with the coherence of an organism with humanity analogous to its nervous system?

At best this is arrogance.

Gaia functioned without Man, Gaia will continue to function without Man. The best Man can do is act as Custodian of Gaian feedback loops, to claim more is arrogance, the same arrogance that led Man to believe he was Master of Nature.

Man evolved as part of the natural world, was part of nature the downfall of Man was when he became apart from Nature. We need to rewild our natural world, but we also need to rewild ourselves, even if it a a walk barefoot along the seashore, in and out of the water.

He adds his own thoughts on many of the points the book raises. Sometimes the value of a particular work is allowing us to crystallise exactly why we think it is dead wrong.

You can judge for yourself as eGaia is available for free download from here.

The post Review of “eGaia” appeared first on P2P Foundation.

A short summary by Keith Parkins of the basic economic structure proposed in the book:

“In eGaia, three interlocking economies described

– local co-operative
– regional
– global

Within the local economy, everything is on a sharing basis, no money, people are expected to keep in balance,and contribute their fair share. It goes one stage further than granting a Basic Income.

For what the local economy cannot supply, will source from either regional or global economy, for which a financial exchange takes place, using a digital currency, there being a regional and global currency.

If one of the businesses operating within the local economy requires money, it goes to the regional bank. Free money is created (ie interest free), when paid back, the money self-destroys. The economy is not built on drbt.

Additional accounts are kept of ecological footprint of every transaction.

Businesses innovate to offer a better service, not to gain a competitive advantage as not in competition, and will share their innovation.

All carried out by means of smart phone apps.”

There is an interesting interview with Gary here at medium.com on his background and how he came to write the book.

There is a review of the book here at the Open University website (the organisation for which Gary Alexander used to work).

Keith Parkins has commented that although the basic structure of his proposal, that of self-organising autonomous networks, seems solid, there are in his opinion some naive assumptions and misunderstanding of economics in the book. Probably the best thing to do is to read it yourself and form your own opinion as there seems to be enough good ideas in it to form the basis of discussion – you can obtain the book (buy printed copy or free ebook) from Gary Alexander’s ‘Earth Connected’ website here.

The post Book of the Day: eGaia by Gary Alexander appeared first on P2P Foundation.