Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We should reorient the rules governing taxes and charity to discourage the concentration of power and decision-making. Taxpayers should not subsidize private fortresses of wealth and power that will exist for generations, controlled by the same families and their professional advisers.
As eviction moratoriums around the United States come to an end, it is expected that landlords will begin evicting nonpaying tenants en masse. Barring new moratoriums on eviction, one estimate suggests 23 million people will be subject to eviction by the end of September … I believe that there is yet great turmoil ahead. We are unlikely to return to the system of finance capitalism which is crumbling before our eyes.
Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land and power that has circumscribed black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S.
Trade ought to be a simple thing. I give you something, you give me something else in return, and we’re both better off. But our capitalism-on-steroids society has converted the simple idea of exchange into an overly exploitative monster
But as capitalism teeters under the weight of its own contradictions, leading to such existential crises as climate breakdown, economic inequality, and violent nationalism, an obvious question on the lips of most people is, how can the Commonsverse grow larger and transform the political economy and culture?
The ongoing environmental damage is predicted to make humans vulnerable to further plagues. When biodiversity is on the wane, viruses have one particular species to live on – humans.
Under capitalism the wealth, goods and services of a country are very unevenly distributed. Capitalists, banks and multinationals hold the lion’s share, while the vast majority of salaried, unemployed and marginalized people (including indigenous and black communities in Latin America) are left with the crumbs.
Today is the launch of Creating City Portraits – a methodological guide for downscaling the Doughnut to the city and turning it into a tool for transformative action.
For years, financial institutions and governments have been focused on the idea of ‘decoupling’ GDP growth from resource use. This has been driven by the recognition that to stay within the ‘safe limit’ of 2 degrees Celsius, we have to dramatically reduce our material consumption.
Municipalist syndicalism broadly means democratizing unions as a means to democratizing local and regional public power. This is done through advancing an anti-racist dual power agenda for the labor movement by building and acting with communities of color on issues beyond the job.
Critique has been the subject of volumes of philosophical and scholarly work, so my purpose here is to consider some aspects of a critique that is congruent with the philosophy and practice of Enough, and putting care at the centre of all our decision-making.
We can end poverty, right now, without any additional aggregate economic growth at all. The key here is to recognize that we don’t live in a poor world. On the contrary, we live in an incredibly rich world. Global poverty is a product not of any actual scarcity, but rather of the systematic creation of artificial scarcity.
