Dave Darby

Dave Darby of Lowimpact.org and Stroud Commons in conversation with Sonia Bussu, Associate Professor in Public Policy at the University of Birmingham and project lead for INSPIRE (looking at democratic innovations and their limitations – particularly around marginalised people), about participatory democracy and its role in helping build the commons economy.

It’s essential that we stabilise the global economy. More people understand this every year, but corporations and governments don’t, and so we continue to destroy nature for profit. They’ve built up a bank of myths around the necessity of perpetual growth. Here are 12 common ones, and how to respond to them.

Humans have been and are still very resourceful and imaginative when it comes to working out how to live together in peace, democracy and abundance. I believe that commons ideas can deliver those things.

I want to convince you that a commons system is a better system, and it’s achievable – a combination of new commons economy and commons governance ideas. I think a commons system will produce much better leaders in terms of integrity, compassion and intelligence than capitalism and liberal democracy.

Dave Darby of Stroud Commons and Lowimpact.org talks with Rosie Bristow and Nick Evans of Fantasy Fibre Mill, working to resurrect the flax / linen industry in the UK, as a commons.

It’s an economy in which the essentials of life – housing, energy, land, food, water, transport, social care, the means of exchange etc. are owned in common, in communities, rather than by absentee landlords, corporations or the state.