Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The “peer to peer” and commons-oriented vision for a new type of civilization and economic system starts from an analysis of what is fundamentally wrong with the current economic system.
Ellen Friedman and the good folks at CommonSpark website (“a collective of commons activators”) are in the early stages of assembling a new sort of resource guide for the commons, “The Commons Atlas”.
It can be the air we breathe, or the water we drink. It can be the absence of something we hate, like noise. It can be Wikipedia. It can be an ocean beach. The commons is a realm that lies outside conventional market economics, but that nonetheless creates wealth.
Nowadays media feeds are everywhere — on building facades, billboards, hotel lobbies, restaurants, elevators and even gas pumps.
Deforestation and forest degradation are key sources of carbon dioxide, but only recently did these issues enter international climate change negotiations.
These tools are too powerful for governments not to use.
For newcomers to the commons wishing to acquaint themselves with Elinor Ostrom’s work, it can be a hard slog.
Financial speculation in food commodities has become one of the main drivers of food price volatility…the disruptive influence of financial speculation on food markets is only a preview of future crises…
While the impending new wave of financialization is a serious threat, it also opens new opportunities to bridge civil society struggles…
Is there indeed “abundance” in the commons, especially ones based on natural resources? Or do such ideas amount to a denial of nature’s finite limits?
Despite the recent crackdown on squatting in the UK and Europe, across the Global North we are now witnessing the slow emergence of an alternative politics of housing that seeks to challenge the pieties of neoliberal restructuring, and re-think ways of inhabiting cities.
But I feel as though we are at a different time now in human history, with a majority of people on the planet vibrating toward a commons sensibility.
The first week of massive protests that are shaking Turkey to its core is coming to an end, but the protests are anything but ending.
