Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I warned in March that in response to the Trump administration’s trade war, China would likely resort to squeezing supply of critical materials it controls. Now it’s happening.
In Monroe County, a decision against expanding Bloomington would be a costly disappointment for growth advocates. However, it would align the city with the aspirations laid out in its comprehensive plan, toward a steady-state future.
Instead of the current destructive notion of beauty, we would like to usher in an ideal of beauty that is regenerative for the environment and assures well-being, happiness, security and social cohesion for people.
So why not disrupt capitalism? Creatively. By which I mean replace the consumption model with a maker model. Or rather, models, because one size doesn’t really fit all and the monoculture of capitalism needs replacing with a diverse array of making things.
When we understand ourselves as part of a web of relations, reciprocity becomes a way of life, not a checklist. It becomes less about immediate repayment, but about how we live in right relation across time, space, and power.
Therefore, a central task is to de-commodify food through multiple means, such as self-provisioning, co-producing, gifting and sharing or even just by having a stable relationship between producers and consumers.
A commons is a bounded community of shared purpose that stewards its collective wealth with self-devised rules of care, fairness, and mutual benefit. The history of humanity over millennia shows that this is a default social form.
Saito makes a compelling case this is exactly the kind of economy we need, one which will slow it down so we can deal with our multifaceted crises. In other words, to leave a world with which our children can cope. But is it the kind of economy we can have? How do we get from there to here?
In its many projects, Shareable has shown just how diverse, creative, and consequential organized sharing can be. The power of bottom-up collaboration focused on specific needs is powerful. When modest infrastructures are created to empower people to contribute their talents, some amazing things happen.
In this mess we are in today, with fascism on the rise, with the risk of war, with burnout and anxiety, there are many reasons for hope. If we fight to get rid of capitalism and transition to an economy that truly values life, I think we can win.
Proposals advocating a democratization of the economic sphere of life must therefore be central to the bioeconomy proposal. It is also crucial to recover its original definition and thus avoid its distortion into another, albeit greener, utilitarian framework.
In this episode, Nate is joined by ecologist Thomas Crowther to discuss the critical importance of biodiversity as an intricate web of life that supports all other living beings, not just through the sheer number of species, but because of the complexity of interactions within ecosystems.
