Economy featured

The Good Life or the Ballot? Both you Say? I Say the Good Life First, the Ballot Second.

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But there is hope. It is (as it has always been) in living the good life. Though such a course may fail, until it does so, it remains a source of happiness. It is now the only productive course we have to mitigate the worst of climate change. By all means speak to the powers – you never know – and this writer is frequently wrong – but without rapid and then hopefully fashionable personal change, there’s not a realistic hope in hell…

Ethical Disconnection and Re-connection – Corporations as “People” and NGOs

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There is a great irony that Adam Smith, a professor of Moral Philosophy, should become the apostle of an economic order that degraded people’s inclination to take moral decisions in their economic arrangements. Further, an economic order which has helped “externalities” to multiply until the point where we have a veritable social and ecological crisis.

Countering the Fabrication Divide

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In order to make the future that we want, we have to openly confront the stark problems already at the heart of the Third Digital Revolution, and there are several glaring problems already in plain sight. Despite great efforts toward democratizing the Third Digital Revolution by making much of the technology “open source”, historically oppressed and disenfranchised communities remain excluded.

Modern Monetary Theory and Strong Towns

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My skepticism aside, my goal here is not to convince the passionate supporters of endless federal money printing that this is a bad idea – you’ve got your thing and you really believe it and I don’t want to quarrel over it in this piece – but to point out to you, and especially those sympathetic to the ends if not the means of what you advocate for, that Modern Monetary Theory is not going to solve the problems we are trying to address at Strong Towns.

The Commons Transition Primer Demystifies and Delights

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You are not likely to encounter a more welcoming set of texts and infographics to introduce the commons and peer production than the Commons Transition Primer website. The new site features four types of materials suited different levels of interest: short Q&A-style articles with illustrations; longer, in-depth articles for the more serious reader; a library of downloaded PDF versions of research publications by the P2P Foundation; and a collection of videos, audio interviews and links to other content. 

The Unbearable Cheapness of Capitalism

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Patel and Moore present a provocative and highly readable guide to the early centuries of capitalism, showing how its then radically new way of relating to Nature remains at the root of world political economy today. As for a guide to the future, however, the authors do little beyond posing a few big questions.

The City Taking the Commons to Heart

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By organising globally, the power of the business sector has grown far above and beyond both that of the nation-state and of self-organising citizens. If the new wave of citizen movements is to acquire real power, then it will have to organise itself translocally from the beginning, whereby coalitions of cities with clear political and economic objectives take the lead.

Hawaii’s existential choice: Tourism, food and survival

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Global trade has brought about unparalleled specialization. As a result many countries and jurisdictions are currently unable to grow the food they need to feed their populations. While some like Hawaii still prosper, others face growing food insecurity. By gradually abandoning agriculture, have Hawaiians entered into a Faustian bargain that they will come to regret?

Moeda: The Cooperative Cryptocurrency That Aims to Advance Financial Inclusion

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Can the boom in cryptocurrencies help achieve inclusive, cooperative growth? That’s what Moeda, a cooperative crypto-credit banking platform seeks to accomplish. The group’s well on its way. It recently concluded an initial coin offering in August of this year that raised $20 million dollars.

Systems that Suck Less

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Last week’s post on political economy attracted plenty of disagreement. Now of course this came as no surprise, and it was also not exactly surprising that most of the disagreement took the shape of strident claims that I’d used the wrong definition of socialism. That’s actually worth addressing here, because it will help clear the ground for this week’s discussion.