Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Is it possible to imagine a new sort of synthesis or synergy between the emerging peer production and commons movement on the one hand, and growing, innovative elements of the co-operative and solidarity economy movements on the other?
The P2P Foundation recently launched a new website, the Commons Transition Platform, as a central repository for policy ideas that help promote a wide variety of commons and peer-to-peer dynamics.
One of the challenges that we have in this process is how to create distributed systems of organization that work, not only technology-based, but human-based.
Environmental disasters caused by human folly are all too familiar. But what about the environmental serendipity? The unexpected stories where nature and humans co-exist harmoniously.
Amazingly, it is sometimes a criminal act to retrieve food that has been thrown away.
As urban property becomes more unaffordable and commercialized and the commons disappear, some groups are pooling their resources for shared space, shared resources, and creative collaboration.
In industrialized societies, where so many people regard economic growth as the essence of human progress, the idea of deliberately rejecting growth is seen as insane.
The commons is not just a battlefield between corporate predators and those who resist them – it is also a source of hope for those willing to imagine a world beyond capitalism.
People are tired of seeing their communities treated like commodities, and they’re looking for ways to build platforms of their own.
Now in its fifth year, SELC is a driving force for the new economy, doing pioneering work around worker cooperatives, home-based food businesses, alternative currencies, legal guides for sharing, legal apprenticeships, accessible legal cafes, renewable energy, the commons, seed libraries and more.
The idea of Las Indias is that it is a community with cooperative businesses, not a community of cooperatives.
While the growth of cooperatives in a wide variety of industries is promising, the bar for social transformation needs to be, and has been, raised.
