John Boik: It’s not often that a scientist gets to use the words love, creativity, and wisdom in a paper, especially when writing about economics. Perhaps that’s because economics, the dismal science, is obsessed with dismal systems — make that abysmal systems, relative to need.

To be clear, I’m not speaking of the specific policies of the US, the EU, China, the World Bank or others. I’m speaking of dominant economic systems as wholes — especially their underlying conceptual models (macro and micro) and the world views upon which they are based.

A human has only so many minutes in life. Time is the bedrock scarcity. If a person isn’t doing something meaningful in a given moment, he’s doing something less than meaningful. He’s wasting at least some of his potential. By meaningful, I don’t mean productive, in an economic sense. I mean important to the person, to her own wellbeing. The Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef identifies nine categories of human need: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity, and freedom. Others might make a slightly different list, but the important concept is that meaning stems from addressing real human needs.

It’s not that we should be doing something meaningful with our time, it’s that we want to. We want to express and receive affection, for example, and to fulfill the other eight needs. We want to, that is, unless external pressures so exhaust, distract, distort, or confuse us that we lose touch with who we are.

Current economic systems are dismal-abysmal because they waste our precious time. As a case in point, only 13 percent of workers worldwide are engaged in their jobs. This means, in effect, that 87 percent of workers feel more or less forced to go to work. Short of force, why would someone spend half their waking hours (or more), day after day, doing something that didn’t engage them?

Except for receiving a paycheck, it appears that most workers don’t really care about their jobs. That’s not surprising. Work doesn’t count as a real human need. It’s only a vehicle by which some needs can be (but for most people aren’t) met. Work doesn’t meet our needs because economic systems, as they exist, didn’t evolve to fulfill the real needs of ordinary people. They evolved largely under pressures exerted by powerful people and groups who wanted to maintain and expand their own privileges.

Suppose that we pause to reevaluate. Using insights from psychology, environmental sciences, public health, complex systems science, sociology, and other fields — that is, using as clear and scientifically sound a picture as we can muster of what humans and natural environments actually need in order to thrive — we can ask ourselves the following question: What economic system designs, out of all conceivable ones, might be among the best at helping us meet real needs?

Strange as it might sound, this question is rarely asked in academia, the science and technology sector, or elsewhere. Or if it is asked, the investigation usually lacks imagination. Surely we can move beyond a discussion of capitalism vs. socialism, as if these were the only two possibilities. A wide-open, largely unexplored space of interesting, potentially viable systems exists.

In my recent paper, “Optimality of Social Choice Systems: Complexity, Wisdom, and Wellbeing Centrality,” I call on the academic community, and science and technology sector, to begin a broad exploration in partnership with other segments of society into what optimality means with respect to economic and political system design. I term this nascent program wellbeing centrality, due to the central role that the elevation of wellbeing would play in systems that help us to fulfill real needs.

Viewed abstractly, economic and political systems are problem-solving systems. One could call them technologies of a sort. As such, they are subject to scientific inquiry and engineering innovation aimed at discovering new designs that improve problem-solving capacity. Further, if we seek ideas for new designs, we don’t have to look far. Nature provides a blueprint.

From a complex systems science perspective, the environment is replete with successful problem-solving systems (cells, organisms, immune systems, ecologies, and so on). Although all look different physically, successful systems tend to exhibit similar underlying mathematical properties. That is, nature has hit upon a good problem-solving approach, and repeats it widely. If we wish our problem-solving systems to be successful, to be as good as they can be, we might want to pay close attention to what nature does.

Moreover, we can view the eight needs Max-Neef identifies as gifts of nature, stemming from eons of evolution over countless ancestral species, to help us focus on and solve problems that matter. Our need to express and receive affection, for example, is also responsible, in part, for our tendency to seek cooperation in solving difficult problems.

Engage global, test local, spread viral

In short, “good” economic systems would produce economies of meaning that help us to help one another live meaningful lives — to meet real needs and solve problems that matter.

We don’t have much time to make a transition from current systems to better ones. Mass extinction and other global catastrophes loom on the horizon. We face the unthinkable, not so much because a few CEOs, companies, or politicians have acted greedily (some have), but rather because today’s problem-solving systems didn’t evolve to help us meet real needs. They waste our precious time, as mentioned, rather than focusing our talents and natural drives on things that do matter, such as caring for others and the planet.

But how do we get from here to there? No matter how promising the design of a new system might be, it would be unreasonable to expect that a nation would abruptly drop an existing system in favor of a new one. Nevertheless, a viable, even attractive strategy exists by which new systems could be successfully researched, developed, tested, and implemented. I call it engage global, test local, spread viral.

Engage global means to engage the global academic community and technical sector, in partnership with other segments of society, in a well-defined R&D program aimed at computer simulation and scientific field testing of new systems and benchmarking of results. In this way, the most profound insights of science can be brought into play.

Test local means to scientifically test new designs at the local (e.g., city or community) level, using volunteers (individuals, businesses, non-profits, etc.) organized as civic clubs. This approach allows testing by relatively small teams, at relatively low cost and risk, in coexistence with existing systems, and without legislative action.

Spread viral means that if a system shows clear benefits in one location (elimination of poverty, for example, more meaningful jobs, or less crime) it would likely spread horizontally, even virally, to other local areas. This approach would create a global network of communities and cities that cooperate in trade, education, the setup of new systems, and other matters. Over time, its impact on all segments of society would grow.

Cities, big and small, are the legs upon which all national systems rest. Already cities and their communities are hubs for innovation. With some further encouragement and support, and the right tools and programs, they could become more resilient and robust, and bigger heroes in the coming great transition.

By John Boik, PhD. To learn more about the wellbeing centrality R&D program, the LEDDA economic democracy framework, or to download (free) Economic Direct Democracy: A Framework to End Poverty and Maximize Well-Being (2014), visit http://www.PrincipledSocietiesProject.org.

Please share and republish. Originally published at www.principledsocietiesproject.org.

Photo by unconventional_paint

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Neal Gorenflo: When I began writing about the sharing economy in 2009, the eclectic array of struggling, communitarian-minded tech start-ups in San Francisco, California, were just one small part of a vast number of sharing innovations that made up what we at Shareable saw as an era-defining transformation in how people create value. This included open-source software, all the open X movements inspired by open source, Creative Commons, the resurgence of an economy based on solidarity, the rise of carsharing, bikesharing, coworking, cohousing, open government, participatory budgeting, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, hackerspaces, and more. We were in the midst of a sharing transformation.

Soon, however, money began to pour into a handful of these tech start-ups, most notably Airbnb, Lyft, and Uber. The media quickly shifted its attention to them, and they became synonymous with the sharing economy. However, as the money rolled in, the communitarian element rolled out. Exploiting peer providers, purposely breaking regulations, strong-arming local governments, and unethical competitive tactics became the norm. The very thing that earned these start-ups traction in the first place — how they recast relationships between strangers in radically constructive terms — was sacrificed to growth. Instead, they became a particularly aggressive extension of business as usual.

Despite this, the real sharing economy did not disappear. We at Shareable helped catalyse two related movements to help draw resources to this real sharing economy. In 2011, we hosted Share San Francisco, the first event framing cities as platforms for sharing. The city of San Francisco incorporated our thinking into their Sharing Economy Working Group, which then inspired a former social justice activist and human rights lawyer, Mayor Park Won-soon of Seoul, South Korea, to launch Sharing Cities Seoul in 2012. Sharing City Seoul’s comprehensive package of regulations and programmes supported a localized version of the sharing economy where the commons, government, and market work together to promote sharing and the common good. Many cities have followed suit, including Amsterdam, London, Milan, Lisbon, Warsaw, five cities in Japan, and at least six other cities in South Korea. Last year, Mayor Park won the Gothenburg Award for Sustainable Development for his sharing cities work.

In late 2014, we published a feature story by Nathan Schneider, “Owning is the New Sharing,” which reported on an emerging trend — tech start-ups organizing themselves as cooperatives. This, together with a conference about platform cooperatives, proved the stimulus for a new movement. One of the cornerstone examples of this movement is Stocksy United, a growing online stock photo marketplace where the photographers own and control the business. In other words, Stocksy is a 21st-century worker cooperative. Another example is Fairmondo, a German eBay-like site for ethical products owned and controlled by sellers. It’s expanding by recruiting cooperatives in other countries to a federation of cooperatives that, together, will maintain local control of each country’s market through a single technology platform. Fairmondo exemplifies an approach to impact that philanthropists ignore because, too often, they are as obsessed with scale as any Silicon Valley venture capitalist and don’t see the virtue of impact through replication instead.

In this regard, philanthropists today should follow the instructive example of Edward Filene. Filene played a leading role in developing an institution that allowed ordinary people to build their own wealth — credit unions, a high-impact model that could be and has been replicated. Philanthropists should use their resources to help do the same across a whole range of new institutions including sharing cities, platform cooperatives, and much more. This will help ordinary people build and access wealth, reduce resource consumption, and reweave the social fabric. Now, that’s what I’d call a real sharing economy.

This piece was originally published on Alliance Magazine.

Photo by Avariel Falcon

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Paris, 9 December 2016 — As France is hosting the Open Government Partnership Global Summit, a number of Civil Society Organizations point out the inconsistencies of the French government. Some have decided not to attend.

The report on “open government” in France is co-signed by the following Civil Society Organizations (CSO): ANTICOR, April, BLOOM, DemocracyOS France, Fais ta loi, Framasoft, La Quadrature du Net, Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, Regards Citoyens, République citoyenne, SavoirsCom1.

While showcasing a “dialogue with civil society”, France is far from being an exemplary democracy

Open government is a new way to collaborate between public actors and civil society, to find mutual answers to the important challenges democracies are facing: human rights, preservation of the environment, fighting corruption, universal access to knowledge, etc.

To this end, seventy countries joined the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Each state is required to co-create and implement a “National Action Plan” together with civil society.

France joined the Open Government Partnership in April 2014, and published its first National Action Plan in July 2015.Since October 2016 the French government co-chairs the OGP with WRI (World Resource Institute), a US-based civil society organization. As such, France will host the OGP Global Summit, in Paris, from December 7th to December 9th, 2016, announced as the “COP 21 for democracy”.

As the “Country of Human Rights”, co-chair and host of the OGP Global Summit, France should be exemplary regarding open government.

Unfortunately, actions do not match the promises, including in the three areas identified as “core priorities” by the French government itself (1. climate change and sustainable development ; 2. transparency, integrity and anti-corruption ; 3. building digital commons), despite the Government’s self-satisfaction.Worse, some decisions, incompatible with democratic progress as promoted by the Open Government Partnership, are leading France on a dangerous path.

The Civil Society Organizations who co-sign this statement, publish their critical analysis of Open Government in France and ask the French Government and Representatives to reevaluate some choices that are widely inconsistent with general interest and OGP’s principles, and to finally bring coherence between speeches and actions.

• ANTICOR is a non-profit organisation founded in 2002 by Eric Halpen and Severine Tessier to fight corruption and bring ethics back into politics.
• April is the main French advocacy association devoted to promoting and protecting Free/Libre Software. The involvement of its volunteers and staff enables it to carry out many and diverse actions to promote digital freedoms.
• BLOOMis a non-profit organization founded in 2005 by Claire Nouvian that works to preserve the marine environment and species from unnecessary destruction and to increase social benefits in the fishing sector.
• DemocracyOS France is a non-profit organization promoting the use of an open source web platform that allows transparent and collective decision making.
• Fais Ta Loiis a collective that aims at helping people furthest from the democratic debate to make their voice heard in Parliament.
• Framasoft is a network dedicated to the promotion of free culture, in general, and free software in particular.
• Ligue des Droits de l’Homme acts for the defence of the rights and liberties of all. It is in interested in social citizenship and proposes measures for a strong and vibrant democracy, in France and in Europe.
• La Quadrature du Net is a non-profit association that defends the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet.
• Regards Citoyensis a French organization of citizens volunteering from all regions to work together on providing a better understanding of the French democratic institutions by levering public information in new and creative ways. Regards Citoyens has advocated for public Open Data in France since 2009. Their most prominent initiatives are parliamentary monitoring websites including notably: NosDeputes.fr; NosSenateurs.fr and LaFabriqueDeLaLoi.fr.
• République citoyenne is a French CSO, created in 2013, that aims at stimulating citizens’ critical thinking on democratic issues and on open government, in particular.
• SavoirsCom1 is a collective dedicated to promote Knowledge Commons in public policies.

Photo by lovestruck.

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As bills come to a vote, it is not uncommon for amendments to be added.  Sometimes the proposed changes seem to completely unrelated to the bill. Often a single sentence can impact the public dramatically.  We cobble together an analysis and fire it over to our administration, who then lobby the legislature for or against the proposed language in the bill.

Bill tracking software is a niche business. To me, it seems symbolic that proprietary software allows private sector business groups to monitor and influence public sector legislation.

However, there open source apps available to ordinary citizens for tracking legislation.  Even better, there are communities working together to make the legislative process more transparent.

One such community is the Sunlight Foundation.  In addition to developers, the Sunlight Foundation offers non-tech opportunities to shine a light on bills, influence, and elections.

Extracted from http://sunlightfoundation.com/about/

OUR MISSION

The Sunlight Foundation is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that uses the tools of civic tech, open data, policy analysis and journalism to make our government and politics more accountable and transparent to all. Our vision is to use technology to enable more complete, equitable and effective democratic participation. Our overarching goal is to achieve changes in the law to require real-time, online transparency for all government information, with a special focus on the political money flow and who tries to influence government and how government responds. And, while our work began in 2006 with only a focus on the U.S. Congress, our open government work now takes place at the local, state, federal and international levels.

We believe that information is power, or, to put it more finely, disproportionate access to information is power. We are committed to improving access to government information by making it available online, indeed redefining “public” information as meaning “online.”

We approach our work in a number of ways. We work with thousands of software developers, local transparency activists, bloggers, on and off-line active citizens and journalists, involving them in distributed research projects, hackathons and training. Sunlight’s Policy team pushes for improved transparency policy through NGO efforts like OpeningParliament.org, and by working directly with governments at all levels. Our reporters cover political influence stories both through reporting and through close collaboration with technical staff, leveraging computer-assisted reporting and data visualization techniques. And in Sunlight Labs, our team of technologists and designers create apps and websites to bring information directly to citizens, as well as building and maintaining APIs—Application Programming Interfaces—that power the applications and work of others.

Extracted from http://sunlightfoundation.com/api/community/

Welcome to the Sunlight Developer Community! On this page you’ll find a sampling of projects to get you started on contributing to an OpenGov project. There are three categories for projects:

• Needs tech help, for projects that need a software developer’s touch
• Needs non-tech help, for projects that rely on a community of volunteers to help analyze government data
• Projects to inspire, for projects that aren’t actively seeking contributions, but are open source projects, ready to be deployed in your home jurisdiction.
  

  Foreign Influence Project

  Sunlight Foundation Help track how foreign governments and entities try to influence U.S. policy by helping us comb through amazingly detailed records on file at the Department of Justice. These records provide the most detailed information available on how Washington’s influence industry work. Help us to turn it into a searchable, sortable database that developers, journalists and citizens can use.

  Needs Non-Tech Help

  United States Glossary

  Sunlight Foundation A collection of pleasant, readable definitions of terms and processes in the United States. Designed for integration in various user-facing applications. Ease of understanding is the #1 priority. Precision and completeness are #2.

  Needs Non-Tech Help

• Bill Nicknames

  Sunlight Foundation Bill Nicknames is a github repository that contains a CSV with popular bill numbers matched with their (unofficial) nicknames. For instance, HR3590 is mapped to ‘obamacare’ and ‘ppaca’, and HR3101 is mapped to ‘hipaa’. This project always needs help adding new bills that are commonly referred to by their nickname instead of by their official bill title.

  Needs Non-Tech Help

Photo by jacopast

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The official definition of Biourbanism starts with the focus on “the urban organism, considering it as a hypercomplex system, according to its internal and external dynamics and their mutual interactions.”

In practice, as an almost total ignorant when it comes to architecture, urbanism, psychology and the like, I understand this to mean that Biourbanism proposes to make the places we inhabit decent places, that is places worth living in because they are:

• (self) organized, bottom-up
• taking their history and unique characteristics into account
• designed with a process which is biophilic, that is friendly to all the levels and sides of human life (family, personal relationship, emotion, work…)
• managed with little interventions, cheap and not invasive (biourban acupunture), that match the real needs and features of each place

The International Society of Biourbanism (ISB) has led, and continues to organize and propose with this spirit, several initiatives for the renaissance of italian villages and small towns, in the mountains and elsewhere, starting with Progetto Artena.

I discovered ISB by chance in the summer of 2013. Since then, we have done several things together, including the parts on education on digital matters and open technology of Progetto Leo. This cooperation has also led, among other things, to the reorganization of several courses, which I and others were already proposing, in a new package called Minimi Comuni Digitali, which is both autonomous but perfectly compatible with Biourbanism activities and educational programs. The package name, roughly translatable with “Minimal Digital Commons/Cities” hints to the possibilities, also for small towns, to benefit from knowledge and usage of appropriate, open digital technologies and communities.

Why talk of architecture, psychology and so on, on a website like Pionero (where the original article appeared), whose slogan is “Digital Innovation”? Easy: to suggesto a generic model just for digital innovation.

Italy (and many other countries, if you ask me) needs to be rebuilt from the foundations. ISB, if I got it right, proposes and practice a way to rebuild it based on the principle that, if you want a decent life, you should rebuild common spaces and services from the bottom, putting people in the first place, in the most efficient and sustainable way. They aren’t the only ones to say this, of course, but I like their approach and general vision.

Above all, since we should be talking about Digital Innovation, I like Biourbanism for a very specific reason I believe that, if you start to reboot a city the way Biourbanism does, things like Free Software, Open Data, Open Government, Fablabs, Maker Faires and so on surely enter the picture, eventually. You couldn’t avoid them even if you wanted. BUT, the point is, starting from Biourbanism those things would enter the picture in a way that is much more productive, sustainable and long lasting than all the other ways tried so far by us “digital maniacs”: only, that is, as the last thing, stealthily, in the smallest possible amounts, as an unavoidable consequences of the starting ideas, and actual needs, of local non-geeks. Stay tuned for more, but in the meantime do let me know your thoughts!

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Open Data, Open Society is a research project about openness of public data in EU local administrations by for the Laboratory of Economics and Management of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa.

The first report of the project, released in October 2010 under a Creative Commons cc-by license, can be downloaded from the website of the DIME project (PDF) or read online as one HTML file on the Sant’Anna School website (*).

The conclusions of the project, a shorter report titled “Open Data: Emerging trends, issues and best practices” and finished in June 2011, are now available online under the same license at the following locations:

• single HTML file
• PDF format, Sant’Anna school
• PDF format, DIME website

Another part of the project, the Open Data, Open Society survey has been extended until the end of 2011. Thank you in advance for announcing the survey to all the city and regional administrations of EU-15 and, if you want, to add further translations of its introduction!

Marco Fioretti

(*) if you wish to comment on individual parts of that first report, you can do it here. Thanks in advance for your feedback!

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