Adam Simpson

Adam Simpson joined The Democracy Collaborative as a Program Associate with the Next System Project in October 2016 where he works on financial and monetary policy as well as an upcoming project on universal basic income. Adam is also the co-host of the Future Left podcast, which focuses on a wide variety of progressive issues but most notably technological impacts on society.

Participatory budgeting

Participatory Budgeting: When Government Really is by the People

In terms of broader systems change, participatory budgeting, when adopted, marks a real change in the way that folks do business, a real change in the way that government operates. For me, and for many folks, this is a beginning of a larger participatory democratic wave…

March 29, 2019

“Resist & Build”: Discussing the Solidarity Economy

So solidarity economy is a relatively recent term. It is a number of things. It is a global movement to build an economy that works for people and planet and it is an alternative to capitalism. It is also a set or practices that align with solidarity economy principles.

March 15, 2018

Social Transformation Through ‘The Commons’ (w/ David Bollier)

I realized that the commons had great potential as an alternative political vision that is not some unified movement or ideology, like in the past, but something that is locally distributed and grounded in things that people love and want to protect. So, the commons is about sharing those things that belong to all of us that we want to protect in our ability to manage them for our purposes.

March 6, 2018

Kate Raworth on Doughnut Economics

So sometimes you meet people who say, “Oh, I’m involved in a local cooperative and we’re developing open source software,” or “we’re setting up a complementary currency in our neighbor.” It can all sound a bit small and marginal and kind of niche activity. I often think it gets dismissed as that, hooky stuff around the edges of the economy. What I wanted to do with that quote is say, actually, this is the creation space of a new future.

August 30, 2017