When governments speculate: Orange County, British gold and Bitcoin reserves
All the recent talk about government Bitcoin reserves has gotten me thinking about what happens when governments speculate.
Economy featured
Convivial Economics
I’ve no desire to make strong claims about what is achieved by serving mince pies to neighbours and strangers, but I will say that, from these humble, stumbling experiments in convivial economics, I am learning things that I would not have caught sight of, had I tried to do all my thinking through books and screens and the kind of conversations that come with footnotes
Beyond Growth: The promise of a wellbeing economy
In a “wellbeing economy”, government policies, business activities, and citizens’ behaviour are aimed at meeting our physical, social, and spiritual needs within planetary boundaries. It doesn’t mean we’re anti-growth; we’re just more selective about it.
Ricardo’s Dream: Excerpt
Economists in the mainstream have typically looked down on the heretical ideas of these ecological economists and promoted a solution that leaves their core theories as little changed as possible: externalities.
Yuria Celidwen on Applying Indigenous Wisdom Traditions to Modern Challenges
So while ancient and modern commoners may share a disdain for capitalism, ancient wisdom traditions bring much more gravitas and insight to the challenges we face than, say, politicians and political parties.
The Dumb and Dumber Economy
If critical masses of people could recognise this fully, and join forces to finally say ‘enough!’ to this misleading belief about ‘making it’, perhaps there would be a real chance that something better could arise in its place.
Time for Truthful Narratives on Immigration
The “migrant crisis” was manufactured and is the fault of both Trump and Biden. We need to understand that the U.S. needs immigrants more than immigrants need the U.S.
CDRCs: A proposal concerning work, resilience, and the repopulation of the countryside
The proposed model, Community Development and Resilience Cooperatives (CDRCs[1]), relies on three fundamental pillars to articulate its strategy: direct democracy, cooperativism, and agroecology.
U.S.-China trade war: Is the latest battle really tit for tat?
Somebody needs to buy U.S. trade policymakers a periodic table of elements. China last week banned export of the key high-tech metals antimony, gallium and germanium to the United States. In this case, China has the upper hand.
Credit guidance: How we achieve degrowth
So, forget imposing resource caps as such. We need to set targets for reduced resource use, yes. And then use credit guidance to adjust investment flows accordingly, until the targets are achieved.
Updates to my book The Divide
Recent research has found that we have more than enough productive capacity to end poverty forever and ensure good lives for all 8 billion people on this planet – with even less resources and energy than we presently use, thus also achieving our ecological goals – if production was organized around human needs rather than capital accumulation.
Inflation through the Lens of the Trophic Theory of Money
We can choose to stop the economic growth machine and keep it idling in a steady state, preserving the little environmental integrity that remains, before the machine is forced to a halt. This will require thinking outside the box and using monetary policy tools unconventionally.