Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This year, the US Worker Cooperative National Conference is being held in Los Angeles, California, but it will not be the first time cooperators have converged in the state. As cooperative historian John Curl documents below, California has a long history of cooperatives and collective action of all kinds.
The central premise of this informative, stimulating and flawed book is that the European Union made a terrible mistake by launching the euro without simultaneously taking political action to balance trade within the Eurozone.
Whether you consider yourself an economic veteran or novice, now is the time to uncover the economic graffiti that lingers in all of our minds and, if you don’t like what you find, scrub it out; or, better still, paint it over with new images that far better serve our needs and times.
Adopting an economic policy proposal known as the job guarantee could ensure full employment while our society transitions towards an economy that no longer grows. All this, without sacrificing the goods and services needed for just and sustainable prosperity.
The latest episode of the Upstream podcast takes a deep dive into the worker cooperatives movement: a broad selection of organizations, activists, and cooperatively-structured workplaces that advocate for and embody workplace and economic democracy.
Platform cooperatives that are member owned and democratically controlled – allowing everyone that is affected by the business, be they customers, suppliers, workers or investors, a say in how the business is run and managed.
When we find ourselves in a world fully immersed in blockchain, we will find that it is a permanently transformed one — one where cooperatives, schools, and neighborhood groups have many of the same technological advantages as governments and multinational corporations.
Many people think that technological development follows a path directed by quasi-natural laws that head into one and only one direction – called “progress” – which is: to use more technology, more complex technology, more expensive technology, more powerful technology.
Peer to peer is a relational dynamic which allows every individual to connect ‘permissionlessly’ to any other individual. You could call it ‘networking freedom’ if you like.
Despite the legitimate concerns surrounding a guaranteed income, there is at least one self-evident ethical reason a guaranteed, non-labor income of no less than equivalent to a living wage (today about $15 per hour) should pay every American: most today suffer a state of forced labor.
It’s time to reclaim the mantle of “Progress” for progressives. By falsely tethering the concept of progress to free market economics and centrist values, Steven Pinker has tried to appropriate a great idea for which he has no rightful claim.
Buen vivir comes from Indigenous movements in Latin America and implies “right living” or life in balance with communities, natural systems and future generations. Our grassroots partners, financial investors, and adviser allies—all leaders in alternative economic practices—had joined the gathering because of relationships built up over time with my organization, Thousand Currents.
