The Rain on Our Yes-We-Now-Have-a-Vaccine! Parade
The headlines that trumpet coronavirus boondoggles have become, in effect, the rain on our yes-we-now-have-a-vaccine! parade. How could some be making billions off the horror that’s killing millions?
Economy featured
Two Bite-sized Reflections for Thanksgiving and the Holidays
It’s almost Thanksgiving here in the US, and the official start, globally, of the holiday shopping season. But, of course, COVID is raging, and lots will be different this season.
Marx on exploitation: an ABC for an unequal world
The world’s 2,153 billionaires currently control more wealth than the bottom 4.6 billion people (60% of the planet’s population) precisely because the worldwide exploitation of working classes has thrown up perverse patterns of maldistribution.
Report: Billionaire Wealth vs. Community Health
As of November 17, the combined wealth of 647 U.S. billionaires increased by almost $960 billion since mid-March, the beginning of the pandemic lockdown—an increase of nearly $1 trillion in less than a year
Decent Gov Now
Participatory, local democracy is the solution to our systemic issues. There is clear economic, social and political evidence that a Covid recovery plan towards a green economy is the only logical way forward.
Hacking the Law to Open Up Zones of Commoning
Can commoning be affirmatively protected via conventional state law while respecting the integrity of commoning as a post-capitalist social form?
Local and Diverse > Networked and Global
The global pandemic has revealed just how fragile our global supply chains are. This is something we’ve talked about a lot at Strong Towns, but of course the disruptions aren’t only being experienced in the United States.
“The Necessary Alternative to Growth is Degrowth”
In Europe, “degrowth” is actually a movement, while in the US it is barely mentionable in polite society. To question “growth” would be the death knell for any serious politician.
Aggregate green growth is a mirage: we need to take a more scientific approach to societal wellbeing
In other words, it is impossible, within the time constraints that we are now facing, to decouple GDP growth from environmental damage strongly and deeply enough to be able to adequately repair that damage.
There must be some way out of here: policies, politics and possibilities in the pancrisis.
Returning to the All Party Group on the Limits to Growth, and practical politics, the task is to promote enactable short-range policies that take us towards a post-growth future. These need to be transformational in effect…
Replacing rentier capitalism is one of the defining challenges of our age
In today’s somewhat bleak political landscape, we need to get serious about building strong counterweights to the power of extractive rentier capital.
Eco-productivism: Ecological transition is a political issue
No one would deny that it is possible to make capitalism greener, nor that it should be urgently done. Yet the proposal of eco-productivism remains short-sighted.
