Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
“I ask the groups that hire me to pay me what feels good and right and fair to them, an amount they can afford, and that they can give joyfully… I basically trust them. And it works out really well.” Freelance group facilitator Tree Bressen has made her livelihood in the sharing economy for over a decade. She has also participated in a neighborhood Gift Circle and an online version called Kindista.
Greenbelt is not the only city where these ideas are taking off, but its “new” economy is unique in one way: It’s in fact quite old, going back 80 years. During the Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt set up three “Greenbelt Towns”: Greenhills, Ohio; Greendale, Wis.; and Greenbelt, Md., a tree-lined city 13 miles northeast of Washington, D.C.
There’s really no shortage of ways that people can pool resources. But there’s a huge difference in the goals between for-profit sharing economy companies like Uber and Airbnb and nonprofit groups like tool libraries, time banks, and makerspaces. Juliet Schor, professor at the sociology department at Boston College, explores this tension between for-profit and nonprofit sharing groups.
The Toronto Tool Library in Ontario, Canada, is a model tool lending program. With four locations and a variety of workshops and community events, it is a pioneer of the lending and sharing movement.
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.
Information goods and technology, already thriving in the practices of the so-called “sharing economy,” are the building blocks of Mason’s vision of postcapitalism.
The ‘sharing economy’ concept first appeared around 2010, launched on a sea of optimism about technology’s ability to transform the world for the better.
In this episode of Next Economy Now, Erin Axelrod, a Partner at LIFT Economy, interviews Janelle Orsi, founder of The Sustainable Economies Law Center.
In Argentina, people with damaged or broken items meet to repair them at the Repair Club….Clothes, home appliances, toys, books, bicycles: even the most hopeless items can be fixed according to the Club de Reparadores (Repairers’ Club)…
All around the world, local communities are exploring fresh new ideas beyond the traditional white elephant sales and thrift shops for stretching resources, cutting down on waste, and making social connections.
Sustainability 4.0 implies the empowered co-creation of prosumers in order to re-shape economy and society towards social inclusiveness and ecological soundness.
Today there are compelling echos drawing social, environmental and spiritual movements into shared fields of understanding and activism.
