Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The most important benefit of the equality effect may be that it leads us to behave in ways that are less environmentally damaging. The evidence for this is only emerging now. We can track the effect across a range of indicators by looking at the 25 richest countries in the world, which have varying levels of inequality.
I sincerely believe we – humanity – are at a critical juncture in determining our chances of having a flourishing planet on which we all can thrive this century. And the economic worldview that we use will significantly shape that. So there is much to be gained by engaging respectfully with those who disagree with us.
The process by which capitalist investment seeks to reengineer and privatize nature, government, social life and even genes and physical matter is at once breathtakingly ambitious, subtle and insidious. The great contribution of Dr Peter Doran’s A Political Economy of Attention, Mindfulness and Consumerism is to show how this process is also aimed, with systemic zeal, at human consciousness itself.
In only a few months, a small encampment of a few Lakota people dedicated to protecting the Missouri River from the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) became the center of international attention, swelled to house up to 14,000 people at its peak in early December 2016, and was supported entirely by volunteers and countless donations of both money and goods.
In other words, the modern consumer culture was born – not as a response to innate human greed or customer demand, but to the needs of industrial capital.
Sixteen months ago, the coal-fired Huntley Generating Station, which sits on the banks of the Niagara River, stopped producing power for first time since World War I. Erie County lost its largest air and water polluter. But the town of Tonawanda, a working class Buffalo suburb 13 miles downstream of America’s most storied waterfalls, also lost its biggest taxpayer.
For decades the “Philadelphia Story” was about steady economic decline. That story is being rewritten today as many Americans rediscover the advantages of cities—inviting public spaces, rich cultural diversity and a creative environment that fertilizes start-ups and attracts talent.
In growth-based societies, the cessation of growth means prolonged economic recessions, an explosion in poverty, an intensification of productivist or extractivist activities and setbacks in democracy. But social progress, prosperity and living well are possible without economic growth; in fact, they require a shift towards post-growth or degrowth societies.
All of the above form a strategy for a multi-modal commons-centric transition, offering a positive way out of the current crisis and a way to respond to the new demands of the commons-influenced generations. The Commons and the prefigurative forms of a new value regime already exist. The commoners are already here, and they’re already commoning; in other words, the Commons transition has begun.
Van Bo Le-Mentzel has invented all kinds of useful things, among others, do-it-yourself blueprints for furniture and tiny houses. He has become known for social DIY projects such as “Hartz IV1 Möbel,” the Unreal Estate House,2 and the One-Square-Meter House.3 He is now transferring the concept of these projects – unconditional freedom to use something for one’s own purposes – to his own life and that of his family with a campaign called #dScholarship that he started in 2014.
We’re aware that we can’t look to anyone but ourselves to start generating forms of political activity that both overcome the unwelcome return of nationalism, and that genuinely increase the prospects for just, ecologically sound and equitable ways of organising our societies. These will necessarily be aimed at the end of capitalism and the nation-state, and towards democratically organized societies held in common.
How can technology lead to more participation in democratic processes? Who should own and control city data? Can cities embrace a model that socializes data and encourages new forms of cooperativism and democratic innovation?
