capitalism

Get Apocalyptic: Why Radical is the New Normal

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Feeling anxious about life in a broken-down society on a stressed-out planet? That’s hardly surprising: Life as we know it is almost over. While the dominant culture encourages dysfunctional denial—pop a pill, go shopping, find your bliss—there’s a more sensible approach: Accept the anxiety, embrace the deeper anguish—and then get apocalyptic.

The future of business: what are the alternatives to capitalism?

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Evidence shows its very clear we have reached the safe limits to growth in terms of the most pressing threat to human civilisation – that of a stable atmosphere. Therefore, until we can find a way to decouple growth from carbon emissions and reach that mythical “dematerialised” economy, restarting global economic growth seems a dangerous folly. But what might the implications of this be for capitalism?

Before the fall? Terminal Capitalism: Part 2

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In the first part of this series about "terminal capitalism," we saw a collection of evidence that the global system of capitalism, the organized basis for most world trade, is in deep trouble. The situation has become so serious and the problems so self-evident that the polls show many average American citizens are questioning the viability of capitalism itself.

How to make disaster pay

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In 2007, a financial firestorm ravaged Wall Street and the rest of the country. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy obliterated a substantial chunk of the Atlantic seaboard. We think of the first as a man-made calamity, the second as the malignant innocence of nature. But neither the notion of a man-made nor natural disaster quite captures how the power of a few and the vulnerability of the many determine what is really going on at ground level. Causes and consequences, who gets blamed and who leaves the scene permanently scarred, who goes down and who emerges better positioned than before: these are matters often predetermined by the structures of power and wealth, racial and ethnic hierarchies, and despised and favored forms of work, as well as moral and social prejudices in place before disaster strikes.

The Structural Communality of the Commons

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The commons are as varied as life itself, and yet everyone involved with them shares common convictions. If we wish to understand these convictions, we must realize what commons mean in a practical sense, what their function is and always has been. That in turn includes that we concern ourselves with people. After all, commons or common goods are precisely not merely “goods,” but a social practice that generates, uses and preserves common resources and products. In other words, it is about the practice of commons, or commoning, and therefore also about us. The debate about the commons is also a debate about images of humanity. So let us take a step back and begin with the general question about living conditions.

Terminal Capitalism: Part 1

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But the doubts about the viability of capitalism as a system now extend far beyond its traditional critics. The U.S. economy has been in bad shape since about 2007 and the signs of recovery have not improved much since then. To give one example, Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute notes that the total economic growth in the United States is approximately equal to the annual government deficit. In other words, if the U.S. Treasury were not issuing bond debt, printing fiat currency in cooperation with the private Federal Reserve, which is in de facto control of the U.S. economy through creating new money and setting the prime interest rate, there would actually be negative U.S. economic growth and a severe recession:

How to Enjoy a Free, Movable Feast of Weeds

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Weeds have been given a bad reputation, but they are a spectacular movable feast. By weeds, I am not referring to pot, but the regular herbaceous plants that grow everywhere, where no one planted them… your aunt’s backyard, by the sidewalk, parking lots, park, etc. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, weeds are plants that are not valued for their use, or beauty. Plants that grow wild and strong. So wild and strong that they can take over the growth of what some call ‘superior vegetation’ — meaning those you buy at garden stores and supermarkets.

Cut off from society, sports become junk

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Forget about the nobility of the Olympic spirit or old time sportsmanship. Today, professional sports is just Bread and Circuses for the Great Recession. If junk food contains little nutrition without the benefits of real food, then junk sports provide only empty entertainment without the benefits of real sports.

What could “resilience” mean for economies, people, and places? – Mar 19

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•The Decline of Communities Could Explain America’s Health Problems
•Understanding Resilience
•We’re Hooked on ‘Growth,’ But It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way
•Social democracy in the age of austerity: the radical potential of democratising capital