Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Life on this planet, as we know it, is a result of fragile environmental conditions that the contemporary predominant neoliberal system has already began to alter. Capitalism and its doctrine of unlimited economic growth seems to completely neglect this dependency and continues to violently exploit nature for the benefit of tiny elites, thus increasing their already enormous power.
In this country there is a common sentiment that a person should go forth and set the trend, then others join it. In a culture where Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson are elevated as role models, we are trained to think big or not at all. No one in fourth grade says they want to be a social worker or a farmer or a good cooperator—that’s not sexy enough. I become a bold leader and they join me.
Why have I begun talking about ownership? It isn’t the usual language of making democracies work, except in that vague and dishonest usage where we are encouraged to ‘feel ownership’ of decisions made by others. It feels like we have not had a thorough, open-minded discussion about ownership for a long time. Doing so might begin to reveal how new institutions can move us beyond the current system failures.
More than 100 representatives voted for the People’s Budget earlier this month, which limits investment in the military and pumps money into jobs, education, health care and climate resiliency. Of course, the resolution was not binding and was voted down by the House. Nevertheless, the ideas in the People’s Budget provide a clear, concise plan for mobilizing the significant resources of the United States in the service of its people — which is kind of how it is supposed to be, right?
One of the persistent criticisms of the Universal Basic Income is that it would either entice people to purchase addictive substances, such as alcohol, or enable existing addictions through the added cash benefit. Dr. Katarzyna Gajewska, an independent scholar researching the UBI, has studied this question in the past. Her unique insights deserve further exploration.
Eticom is a member of mésOpcions, an “intercooperation” project that bundles together the goods and services offered by a number of cooperatives – in addition to Eticom, including Som Energia and Fiare – and which, according to its coordinator, Jordi Rojas, “seeks to provide access to social market services. For just six euros a year, you can access the services of all the projects without having to become a member of each one of them.”
As a result of my participation in an organizational context whose mandate is the promotion of worker cooperatives, I have realized the great unease of some worker-cooperators with the notion of entrepreneurship. This reaction is shortsighted and represents a failure to be fully cognizant of the business environment in which worker cooperatives must operate.
The drive toward a basic income isn’t new. It’s a 100-year-old movement that has gotten stronger each time inequality has returned to the public discussion. Support for unconditional basic income (UBI) has grown so rapidly over the past few years that some might think the idea appeared out of nowhere. In fact, activists have been floating the plan – and other forms of a basic income guarantee (BIG) – for over a century.
The next economy will have to balance the needs of Earth’s expanding population with the shrinking level of resources which are available to everyone. This dynamic equilibrium is called carrying capacity.
We are currently facing the most severe migration crisis in history. But this is only one dimension of a broader civilizational crisis. Thus, anti-racist movements should not focus solely on issues of human mobility rights, but also build new paths of solidarity with societies in the geopolitical Global South.
In this moment of massive wealth inequality, we urgently need to develop a new model for society to deliver both social and economic equity. The answer may be in the concept of Universal Basic Assets (UBA), which in my definition is a core, basic set of resources that every person is entitled to, from housing and healthcare to education and financial security.
Below, I argue that the commons paradigm offers a refreshing and practical lens for re-imagining politics, governance and law. The commons, briefly put, is about self-organized social systems for managing shared wealth. Far from a “tragedy,” the commons as a system for mutualizing responsibilities and benefits is highly generative.
