Economy featured

Greece: Alternative Economies & Community Currencies Pt. 1

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While capitalism and consumerism dominate the culture of the United States of America and the Western world, community currencies are creating a buzz elsewhere. The radical need for alternative economies and community currencies is becoming more commonplace among societies across the globalized world dealing with the crisis of mass poverty and inequality. In part one of our three part series shining a light on some of these alternatives, we look at the Athens Integral Cooperative.

Big Finance Goes to COP23

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Each year at the UN climate negotiations, we UK youth bring our determination for climate justice to the discussion. We don’t come to the talks with high expectations. But this year the UK has gone above and beyond to surprise us with their lack of leadership. From advertising Barclays at their UN pavilion, to dismissing questions on crucial climate related policies such as fracking, or advocating for fossil fuel companies to be involved in the negotiations, they didn’t miss an opportunity to disappoint.

Capitalism Is Not the Only Choice

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To escape this “capitalocentrism,” we need to broaden the definition of economy beyond capitalism. What if, instead, economy is all the ways that we meet our material needs and care for each other? And what if it’s not a singular thing? Then we would see that beneath the official capitalist economy are all sorts of thriving non-capitalist economies, where there may not be a profit motive or market exchange.

In Defense of Somewhere

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Somewhere — the gravel road I grew up on, the wharf I fished from, the woods at the end of the road where we roamed, the edge of the bayou where we fought off pirates to keep them from landing — is no longer. It is now an anywhere of pavement, sidewalks, Walmarts, hotels, casinos, and housing developments. Anywhere is nowhere.

The History of the World in 10½ Blog Posts – 8. Of Reconstituted Peasantries and Alternate Modernities

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The 19th century ended as it began with many of the world’s people working primarily as small-scale, self-providing cultivators under the weaker or stronger suzerainty of large empires whose rise predated capitalism. But things weren’t the same at century’s end as at the beginning – a globalising capitalist economy had thoroughly penetrated the existing order and dominated it politically through direct or indirect colonial rule.

Why You’ve Never Heard of a Charter That’s as Important as the Magna Carta

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The Charter of the Forest was the first environmental charter forced on any government. It was the first to assert the rights of the property-less, of the commoners, and of the commons. It also made a modest advance for feminism, as it coincided with recognition of the rights of widows to have access to means of subsistence and to refuse to be remarried.

Post-Capitalist Entrepreneurship: B Corps and Beyond

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Post-capitalist entrepreneurship (PCE) instead is about changing the underlying logic of entrepreneurial organizing, governance models, legal structures, approach to intellectual property, perception of consumption and production and of course the ultimate objectives and metrics of success.

Overview of Current Basic Income Related Experiments (October 2017)

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It seems that 2017 has been a watershed year for the global basic income movement, as multiple governments and private research groups have independently conceived and launched experimental trials of basic income (and closely related policies). Several new experiments in North America and Europe represent the first such experiments in the developed world since the 1970s (when a negative income tax was tested in several cities in the United States and Canada), and the largest basic income trial ever designed is about to take place in Kenya.

Degrowth as an Aesthetics of Existence: Part 1

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The purpose of this scoping paper, however, is neither to review the existing literature nor offer another ecological critique of growth, but to extend and deepen the understanding of degrowth by examining the concept and the movement from a perspective that has yet to receive any sustained attention—namely, aesthetics. More about raising questions than offering answers, my aim is to open up the dialogue not close it down, which is to acknowledge that large theoretical territories are traversed without being able to map them all in the detail they deserve. Consider this, then, an invitation to discuss.

Policy Making in a Globalized World: Is Economic Growth the Appropriate Driver?

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Surely emphasis on increasing well-being should prevail over creation of investment opportunities that bring negative externalities and few benefits to the municipality. Other worlds are possible, and responsive policy making would be a chance to shape those possibilities.