In this interview, Michael Albert — co-founder of Znet — reflects on the vision of participatory economics, and how it could take us beyond capitalism.
when living locally becomes a revolutionary act. putting ideas into action, one neighbourhood at a time, for social and environmental alternatives.
April 21, 2012
There is an alternative: participatory economics
March 8, 2012
OCCUPY NYC: BEN ZOLNO “End of Growth” Street Seminar
Ben Zolno went to find out more about #occupywallstreet and deliver some copies of Richard Heinberg’s The End of Growth for us. Here in 3 parts is his 10/11/2011 street seminar on “The End of Growth” in his own words. Well done Ben!
February 23, 2012
What If Corporations Couldn't Use Our Commons For Free?
There’s been much discussion of late about how to save America’s declining middle class. The answer politicians of both parties give is always the same: jobs, jobs, jobs. The parties differ on how the jobs will be created — Republicans say the market will do it if we cut taxes and regulation, Democrats say government can help by investing in infrastructure and education. Either way, it still comes down to jobs with decent wages and benefits.
It’s understandable that politicians say this: it was America’s experience in the past. In the years following World War II, we built a solid middle class on the foundation of high-paying, mostly unionized jobs in the manufacturing sector. But those days are history. Today, automation and computers have eliminated millions of jobs, and private-sector unions have been crushed. On top of that, in a globalized economy where capital can hire the cheapest labor anywhere, it’s no longer credible to believe that America’s middle class can prosper from labor income alone.
So why don’t we pay everyone some non-labor income — you know, the kind of money that flows disproportionally to the rich? I’m not talking about redistribution here, I’m talking about paying dividends to equity owners in good old capitalist fashion. Except that the equity owners in question aren’t owners of private wealth, they’re owners of common wealth. Which is to say, all of us.
February 17, 2012
Put planet and its people at the core of sustainable development, urges report
Social and environmental costs need to be integrated into measurement of economic activity, a new UN report said on Monday as it urged world leaders to focus on the long-term resilience of the planet and its people.
The report from the high-level panel on global sustainability calls for a set of sustainable development indicators that go beyond the traditional approach of gross domestic product. It recommends that governments develop and apply a set of sustainable development goals that can mobilise global action.
At the report’s launch during the AU summit, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, made it plain that sustainable development is a top priority for his second term of office.
“We need to chart a new, more sustainable course for the future, one that strengthens equality and economic growth while protecting our planet,” he said.
Ban established a 22-member panel in August 2010, co-chaired by Finland’s president Tarja Halonen and Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa. The group was tasked with producing a blueprint for sustainable development and low-carbon prosperity.
The panel’s final report, Resilient People, Resilient Planet: a Future Worth Choosing, contains 56 recommendations to put sustainable development into practice and to mainstream it into economic policy as quickly as possible.
February 2, 2012
Clinging to economic growth suffocates the imagination
Listen to the news today and you would think that economic growth was the only answer to all our problems. But 40 years ago The Limits to Growth, written by a group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and published by The Club of Rome, broke a modern taboo: it suggested that growth itself might be the problem.
It wasn’t the first time someone had suggested that an economy endlessly expanding in scale was neither possible nor necessarily desirable. As long ago as 1821, David Ricardo wrote of the ultimate equilibrium to which economic development led. And, in his Principles of Political Economy, 1848, John Stuart Mill raised and answered the question like this:
“Towards what ultimate point is society tending by its industrial progress? When the progress ceases, in what condition are we to expect that it will leave mankind? It must always have been seen, more or less distinctly, by political economists, that the increase of wealth is not boundless: that at the end of what they term the progressive state lies the stationary state, that all progress in wealth is but a postponement of this.”Why, then, did The Limits to Growth shock in 1972, and why does questioning growth today still provoke incredulity and anger? The report itself became something of an albatross for the green movement. The view entered folklore that it contained predictions about resource use that were alarmist and plain wrong. But, as New Scientist magazine reported recently, it was the critics of the book who turned out to be mistaken.
January 30, 2012
Less Work, More Living
Here’s a perfect article for the back-to-work-week doldrums:
Millions of Americans have lost control over the basic rhythm of their daily lives. They work too much, eat too quickly, socialize too little, drive and sit in traffic for too many hours, don’t get enough sleep, and feel harried too much of the time. It’s a way of life that undermines basic sources of wealth and well-being—such as strong family and community ties, a deep sense of meaning, and physical health.
Earn less, spend less, emit and degrade less. That’s the formula. The more time a person has, the better his or her quality of life, and the easier it is to live sustainably.Imagining a world in which jobs take up much less of our time may seem utopian, especially now, when a scarcity mentality dominates the economic conversation. People who are employed often find it difficult to scale back their jobs. Costs of medical care, education, and child care are rising. It may be hard to find new sources of income when U.S. companies have been laying people off at a dizzying rate.
But fewer work hours for people with jobs is a key step toward solving the unemployment crisis—while giving Americans healthier lives. Fewer hours means more jobs are available to people who need them. Living on less pay usually means consuming less, making more of the things one needs at home, and living lighter, whether by design or by accident.
January 28, 2012
A “Living” Built Environment
For three years, “Living Buildings”—buildings that generate their own energy from renewable resources, capture and treat all the water they use, reclaim pre-developed sites, and fulfill a host of other requirements—have set the standard for green building.
But like other green building certification programs, the first iteration of the Living Building Challenge focused on individual buildings. The Cascadia Region Green Building Council—in conjunction with the International Living Building Institute—just announced the newest version of the Living Building Challenge with an even bigger goal: to fundamentally change the built environment.
Living Building Challenge 2.0 is both more comprehensive and more expansive, applying 20 “imperatives”—such as urban agriculture, limits to growth, ecological water flow, and net zero energy—to everything from small in-home remodels to community- and campus-wide initiatives, as well as infrastructure projects like bridges, roads, and parks.
January 26, 2012
Local Economies for a Global Future
This article is about a simple, singular idea, yet the significance of the idea to modern society is profound and far-reaching. Here it is: In the near future anything heavy will become intensely local while at the same time the limits to things that are ‘light’, ideas, philosophies, information will travel even further than today—literally and figuratively. This is a new paradigm for humanity and it has huge implications for the complete reordering of society.
Environmentalists, economists, and sociologists agree: we are in an incredible state of flux, and this is simply the beginning. The planet is undergoing massive change and critical resources are diminishing, conditions to which the human race must respond. Population growth, resource scarcity and climate change will propel us, whether we like it or not, toward a new energy, food and resource paradigm. The world’s economies, based on cheap plentiful energy and the exploitation of people and the environment are starting to crumble. We are beginning an era in which the cozy assumptions of the last half-century are turned upside down, a time when the institutions and technologies that run our civilization are re-engineered. To understand how radical this new paradigm will be, let’s explore similar re-orderings in the past.
January 19, 2012
Peak Oil, Climate Change and Community — Transition Houston
If you’re coming from the same place as us – overwhelmed by the destructive potential of global problems like climate change and peak oil, then the Transition Movement is just the medicine you need! Started in the UK in 2005, the Transition Movement responds to threats and danger with a resounding: Yes please!
January 18, 2012
Book review: Hessel & Morin — The Road to Hope
You may remember Stéphane Hessel, the 94-year old French resistance hero, from his various notable efforts in the name of humanity. His latest contributions are mainly delivered in writing, in the form of books or pamphlets, such as Indignez-Vous. Hessel’s call for indignation and taking action was heard beyond the French boarders and inspired the name of the Spanish indignados movement, that rapidly spread throughout Europe and to the United States.
Now that the feeling of indignation has ignited all around the globe (from North Africa to Spain, and from Greece to India), content must be given to those movements. In a more opinionated piece entitled Le Chemin de l’Espérance (the Road to Hope), Hessel, along with Edgar Morin, tries to present his constructive ideas to the global problems humanity is facing…
What are the solutions?
1) Globalize and de-globalize
One of the solutions presented is to globalize and to de-globalize at the same time. We must maintain the globalization of what gives us humans the feeling of community in destiny, of facing life-threatening concerns together — in other words, we must globalize consciousness. But we must de-globalize the economy at the same time, to make room for a social economy and an economy of solidarity, to safeguard local autonomy.
To transform, we must substitute the unilateral imperative of growth with a complex imperative, identifying what should grow and what should not. Sectors that could grow include green energy, public transport, social work, education, culture and arts, and sustainable infrastructure aimed at the humanization of large urban centers.
In parallel, we must decrease industrialized agriculture, fossil fuel and the use of nuclear energy, reduce our dependence on intermediary parasites (such as large distribution companies), war industries, advertising and consumer intoxication, superfluous consumption and wasteful lifestyles. Instead of arguing for growth or against, it seems more coherent to make a list of what should grow and what should not.
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