Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Spread across Britain today are people and places united by a common condition: they are largely powerless. Their economies have been emptied out, their services cut to the bone, their incomes under threat.
The way forward, it is increasingly clear, will be largely determined by the outcome of a political struggle between two post-globalization camps: fascists and democratic socialists.
“We have to reduce consumption and resource use”, is a statement that is gaining some traction. Considering that all that is consumed has to be produced and vice versa it is a logical claim that we also have to reduce production, but that seems to be a lot more provocative.
Ultimately, bringing our civilization back within planetary boundaries is going to require that we liberate ourselves from our dependence on economic growth—starting with rich nations. This might sound scarier than it really is.
The solidarity economy is a global movement to build a post-capitalist world that puts people and planet front and center, rather than the pursuit of blind growth and profit maximization. It isn’t a blueprint but a framework…
Andrea Fumagalli’s new book sharply distinguishes the common, a general counter-approach to neoliberalism and capitalism based on the self-organisation of life and work, as opposed to seeing the commons are merely shared resources.
The implications of the 2008 crash are still being keenly felt by those at the bottom of the economic pile, while the wealth of those who arguably created the conditions for the crash has surged to a point where in 2017, a new billionaire was created every two days, the biggest increase in history.
Here are ten things that have changed over the past ten years, including some huge achievements, that should be cause for hope and celebration.
Many of the severest crises we’re facing at present – e.g. climate instability, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of vital resources, and the dangerous compromise of ecosystem health through the spread of waste plastic and other pollution – stem directly from economic expansion hitting against ’hard’ limits in the physical world.
Bullshit jobs are ones where the person doing them secretly believes that if the job (or even sometimes the entire industry) were to disappear, it would make no difference — or perhaps, as in the case of say telemarketers, lobbyists, or many corporate law firms, the world would be a better place.
August 1 was Earth Overshoot Day, the date when we have taken more from nature than it can renew in an entire year. Unsustainable extraction is occurring on a planetary scale: we are using natural resources 1.7 times faster in 2018 than the Earth’s ecosystems can regenerate this year.
The question we explored was simple: “how do we get to a new economy?” How exactly do we move forward with sophistication and seriousness to build the power necessary to take on the existing system? As Makani Themba, one of the conference’s plenary speakers put it, “It’s not just about how we build a new, parallel economy—it’s also about how we starve the beast which is the current one.”
