Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We live where we do, and we become what we are through that lived environment, organically. If there is a consequence to it, it might be best, at the very least, that it not be one already determined by a planning board, because however well-meaning, their logic is likely not to be wholly their own.
Temporal inequality is a little noticed feature of our society. Poor people wait for things – the well-off are waited on. Temporal inequality is crucial to understanding people’s time choices.
Extreme inequality of wealth, income, and opportunity is warping everything we care about. It takes away the sense that we’re all in the same boat. It screws up communities.
Many people think that technological development follows a path directed by quasi-natural laws that head into one and only one direction – called “progress” – which is: to use more technology, more complex technology, more expensive technology, more powerful technology.
In choosing to live in community—sharing not just a house, but their lives with each other—they’ve defined a new American Dream. They hope others will follow their model, if not by making the same choice, then by being willing to look beyond traditional boundaries.
Peer to peer is a relational dynamic which allows every individual to connect ‘permissionlessly’ to any other individual. You could call it ‘networking freedom’ if you like.
Despite the legitimate concerns surrounding a guaranteed income, there is at least one self-evident ethical reason a guaranteed, non-labor income of no less than equivalent to a living wage (today about $15 per hour) should pay every American: most today suffer a state of forced labor.
The private sector is held up as better, more efficient, the way to modernize… Yet worldwide, hundreds of services are being brought back into public ownership, which suggests that people aren’t buying the hype around greater private sector efficiency.
Just as Thatcher asserted there was ‘no such thing as society’, it’s common to find economics commentators asserting that there is ‘no such thing as neoliberalism’ – that it’s simply a meaningless insult bandied about by the left, devoid of analytical content.
Looking into this has made me even more convinced that tackling global poverty has to be done in tandem with tackling climate change. They are intricately connected. I think it’s important that we remember climate change is a historical injustice: the poorest countries suffer the worst impacts yet have done least to cause it and have the least capacity to address it.
Previous studies on “post-growth economics” have tended to search for an elusive sweet spot where the economy would be steady and robust enough to cope with all shocks. But theorising along those lines fails to address the question of whether an end to growth would, in general, make an economy more or less stable.
Steward-ownership is relatively new as a term, but the underlying concept is almost as old as limited liability corporations, the structure adopted by most modern companies. The original steward-ownership model was invented by Ernst Abbe, co-owner of the successful German optics manufacturing company ZEISS, founded in 1846.
