Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Lebanon’s recession shows outlines that could heal the metabolic rift between economy and ecology. It calls for new ways of living, manufacturing, growing food, transportation, and every other aspect of our existence. This is the prosperous way forward.
Beyond Money: A Postcapitalist Strategy urges twenty-first century social and environmental movements to seriously consider a non-monetary vision and strategies to achieve socio-political and economic equality and ecological sustainability.
If we are honest, it’s not the term “degrowth” that people don’t like, it’s what it means: we must reduce our material footprint so that we are no longer living as though we have two, three, four or five planet earths.
We need new measures, both pre-distributive and re-distributive, that reflect the new inequalities that have emerged from the pandemic and that allow us to tackle the great challenge ahead: climate change. Tackling climate change demands the redistribution of resources and power.
Based on principles and practices of resource use reduction, sharing, conviviality, solidarity, and mutual aid, the Brisbane Tool Library can be considered a small-scale laboratory for a reorientation of society towards degrowth.
Tami Simon hosts the popular Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge, which has been downloaded more than 20 million times. With its guiding principle “to disseminate spiritual wisdom”, Sounds True has grown into a multimedia publisher that has produced over 6,000 titles. She addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”
The desire that Túmin be used to help build a social fabric that favours barter and interest-free loans, especially in the face of the growth of electronic banking that came with the pandemic, is central to its creators.
We should never forget that the point of our movement is to place economic power into the hands of those who do not currently possess it, which necessarily entails taking power away from those who have it now.
Please accept the invitation made by The Commoner’s Catalog and apply your talents and imagination to the challenges of commoning. We have much to learn from each other and a new world to build!
Character-based lending is the practice of issuing loans based primarily on the borrower’s character—their involvement in and ties to the community, or their reputation and track record therein—relegating financial criteria to a smaller role in decision-making.
Properly understood and practiced, solidarity economy offers, and I would even say promises and guarantees, great satisfactions. Nothing less than a fuller life, with greater creativity, autonomy, and solidarity.
It remains to be seen whether we will be able to effectively tackle the major challenges of nature and the environment in time. But the opportunities to do so will undoubtedly increase significantly.
