Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The future of economic growth is one of the decisive challenges of the twenty-first century. Though beginning at different times in different places, during the last two centuries, overall global economic growth has profoundly transformed life of humans and of the rest of nature.
The broad challenge before us then is to create an environmentally and socially sustainable future that provides decent, meaningful work for all. Such meaningful work is about more than just economic sufficiency; to be truly meaningful, work must enable people to unite their heads, their hands, and their hearts.
Within the sharing economy, people must have choices to be able to decide how and on what terms they are able to share things with each other. Communities need to be able to make strong, evidence-based policy that maximizes the public good.
The Federal Reserve would like to raise target interest rates because of inflation concerns and concern that asset bubbles are forming. It seems to me that raising interest rates at this time is very ill advised.
What is “value” and how shall we protect it? It’s a simple question for which we don’t have a satisfactory answer. For conventional economists and politicians, the answer is simple: value is essentially the same as price.
Of course, the ongoing struggle will not go down in the flames at Oceti Sakowin. We should take this opportunity to remember the enduring lessons of this movement, and prepare ourselves for what is to come next.
In a recently published article in Nature Climate Change, Jeroen van den Bergh argues that neither degrowth nor green-growth strategies might lead to sufficient climate action and hence makes the case for a third option which he calls “agrowth”.
In 2013, three young people opened the doors of their Valparaíso, Chile home to their entire community. It started as a coworking experience, but ended up being a great deal more: a self-sustaining space based on generous cross-collaboration.
With a broader understanding of the solidarity economy in Brazil in mind, testimonials from participating entrepreneurs themselves show the real advantages of this kind of work, from circumventing market exclusion to creating new kinds of spaces where women are reimagining the divide between domestic and productive spheres.
In a year chock full of surprises, contradictions, warning signs, and increasingly vocal calls for systemic change, it is easy to overlook the many ways that new economic paradigms and practices are cropping up in everyday awareness as an essential vector of the immense transitions underway.
Since the left cannot necessarily advance its larger agenda of social justice, fairness and human rights through the state – subservient as it is to neoliberal circuits of global power – it should entertain how the commons might open up some new solution-sets.
As technology develops, fears increase. Who will we work for in the future? Will AI and robots just expel us from the market? Will they pay for our health system or keep the retirement bucket up and running?
