 Your new post is loading...
The Cambridge Journal of Economics (probably the leading journal of Post-Keynesian economics) has published an entire special issue on “Cranks and brave heretics: Rethinking money and banking after the Great Financial Crisis”, inviting a range of academics to comment on proposals to stop banks creating money (amongst other ideas for monetary reform).
A solid majority, 71 percent of Americans, believe the country “should do whatever it takes to protect the environment,” according to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center.
This strong public interest in our environment extends to urban living, prompting NerdWallet’s curiosity: Even though we al
The New Grand Strategy describes a business plan for America, born at the Pentagon, that embeds sustainability as a strategic national imperative.
Voters in one Oregon county last week approved a ban on commercial bottled water production, stopping a years-long effort by Swiss transnational Nestle to sell over 100 million gallons of water a year from the Columbia River Gorge.
"The 'sharing economy' wasn't supposed to be this way," write Stefanie Ehmsen and Albert Scharenberg in their preface to Trebor Scholz's "Platform Cooperativism: Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy," published in January 2016 by Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung's New York Office. The more or less authentically expressed motivations behind the sharing economy (the maximization of underutilized resources, more rewarding peer connections, etc.) sound good, Ehmsen, Scharenberg, and Scholz agree, but the actual result of the rise of mobile-based sharing platforms has been something else altogether. "This new economy is not really about sharing at all," write Ehmsen and Scharenberg. "Rather, as Trebor Scholz argues in this study, it is an on-demand service economy that it spreading market relations deeper into our lives."
There are bonkers theories about a new American Civil War: there are predictions of it, even computer games based on it - and then there is reality. But reality in...
A niche group of political scientists may have uncovered what's driving Donald Trump's ascent. What they found has implications that go well beyond 2016.
pliRepublicans may have a lock on Congress and the nation’s statehouses—and could well win the presidency—but the liberal era ushered in by Barack Obama is only just beginning.
We'd like to be optimistic. But Democrats' demographic dream is just that. We'll need a nightmare for real change
Diagnosing the problem as fascist leads to the question of a solution. What becomes the utility of knowing Trump is fascist? For the historian of the 1930s, the answer seems clear: either the forces that could coalesce against it remain divided, vowing to eternal enmity, as happened in Germany on the eve of Hitler’s ascent to power; or they create a united front, however unwieldy, as happened with the Popular Front in France a few years later. In the former case, the left accused the center of being scarcely better than the right. In the latter case, a coalition of center and left, long at odds with each other over questions of ideology and strategy, looked at results in Germany as a salutary lesson to be avoided. They bridged their considerable differences and succeeded in staving off a domestic French fascism. Should the right in this country fail to coalesce around Trump, and he runs as an independent, then a victory for the Democratic candidate – even should that candidate be Bernie Sanders – becomes very likely. But should Trump win the GOP presidential nomination and rally the party around him, it will be incumbent upon those on the left, however “centrist” or “socialist,” to put aside their differences and once more defeat the forces of fascism.
For activists committed to building a more democratic, open, and sustainable world, one question looms larger than all others: How do we create social change? Broadly speaking, there are two answers to this query. The first argues that a holistic attack on the status quo is the best—or perhaps the only—way to address the problems inherent to a political, economic, and social system that privileges the haves over the have-nots.
As the sharing economy explodes in growth, with new startups emerging regularly, many city officials are left scratching their heads wondering how to deal with this industry. From Uber and Airbnb, which have become what Shareable co-founder Neal Gorenflo describes as “death star platforms," to local sharing projects, much of the sharing economy remains in grey areas.
Last week, the White House strengthened its support for Open Educational Resources (OER) and committed to expanding access to them through open licenses and technology.
|
How high-tech manufacturing could make it hard for poor countries to get rich.
Photo courtesy of Co-operatives UK: Debbie Harley, a worker and director of Delta-T Devices, a thriving environmental science instruments worker co-operative, checks in on an installation. Worker co-operatives tend to be smaller than conventional businesses and struggle to find investment, right? Well, not necessarily, according to new research into worker co-ops.c
Earlier this month, Shareable posted a short article about the Little Free Pantry in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Created by Jessica McClard, the Pantry is an easy way for people to share surplus food and household goods, and access items they may need.
Two recent articles describe America’s entitled (and doomed) upper middle class: the top 5% of households with incomes above $206,500…
Sunset in Greenville, South Carolina. Photo: Call me Lee via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA.
As his candidancy falters, where can that rapturous energy be channelled? Into building an economy that serves ordinary people, and excludes the 1%
CBRE Hotels’ Americas Research compiled select information from STR, Inc. and Airdna, a company that provides data on Airbnb, for hundreds of U.S. markets to assess the relevancy of this sharing platform to the traditional hotel industry.
Nervous chatter in many different languages filled the hallways outside Hearing Room A in downtown Denver last week, where the Public Utilities Commission heard testimony to decide whether incumbents like Metro Taxi will have to face a bold new player in the Denver metro transportation marketplace.
I've given up on fixing the economy. The economy is not broken. It's simply unjust. There's a difference. We have to stop looking at our economy as a broken system, but one that is working absolutely true to its original design. It's time to be progressive -- and this means initiating systemic changes.
Community wealth building is a way of strengthening communities by supporting democratic ownership and control of local businesses. This means more opportunity, inclusion and prosperity for the many, not just the few. This is aligned with Shareable's vision for Sharing Cities and cooperative economies.
By Valerie Brown and Elizabeth Grossman Scientists are trained to express themselves rationally. They avoid personal attacks when they disagree. But some
There’s been a lot of talk lately about whether the big on-demand companies, such as TaskRabbit, Lyft and Uber, should classify their workers as employees instead of 1099 contractors, providing the benefits and protections that come with employee status. It makes sense. Freelance and on-demand workers are on their own when it comes to health insurance, retirement, disability insurance, expenses, emergency time off, and vacation pay.
|
Scoop.it!
