Category: Money
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Being a part of … nothing
I started this video in a tech-mindset. I had already known about most of what is displayed in it, but the conclusions drawn in the last seconds gave me chills. Yes feeling a part of something, community, sharing, etc … are precious experiences that we are drawn to. But does it not matter what underlies…
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Revisiting Trust in Bitcoin and Blockchain
I have mentioned before that I do not believe in bitcoin and blockchain technologies because of their attempt to circumvent trust. I believe in using technology to nourish trust relationships. This article (via the P2PFoundation) does a good job of demonsrating the issue of trust and how it has already manifested and challenged ongoing blockchain…
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On Demurrage (negative interest) – Reply to Albert Wenger
This post is a long comment on Albert Wenger’s post about Money as Commons (and if both our sites were powered with IndieWeb abilities then I would have been able to comment on his site and have the comment automatically posted in my own site). Demurrage in Nature – Decay If I was a grain…
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Has the IMF realized austerity doesn’t work?
“Sometimes an ideology is so brilliantly propagated that observers might not even notice it’s an ideology. In the corridors of power and in mainstream discussion, it ceases to be questioned. Then it goes catastrophically wrong. And it begins to seen again for the ideology it is. It becomes questioned again. And, if they are smart,…
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Portugal National Participatory Budget
“Portugal has announced the world’s first participatory budget on a national scale. The project will let people submit ideas for what the government should spend its money on, and then vote on which ideas are adopted. … Proposals can be made in the areas of science, culture, agriculture and lifelong learning, and there will be…
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On Choice and Constraint
An excerpt from Off Our Butts “Now, in 2016, cigarette smoking in North America is indeed more common among people living in poverty. They smoke because they do not have the time or money to eat properly, because other, more respectable mind-altering drugs are not available to them, because it is something to enjoy. They…
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Douglas Rushkoff at SXSW 2016
I have been following Douglas Rushkoff since his launch of the TeamHuman podcast. I recommend it very much. This talk is a good introduction to his work. The main thing I like about him is that he builds a good bridge between two worlds that in my existence seem separate. The people in my life…
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The American Dream!?
This powerful piece about the Unnecessariat describing an out-of-view America and explaining how Trump happened. I was surprised, given that I come from a different background and reality to find that I resonated with this part: “To know that nothing more is expected of you, or your children, or of your children’s children, than to…
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Economy for the Common Good
Economy for the Common Good … being applued in companies, universities, municipalities … using familiar tools of measuring and accounting but applying them to different indicators and goals that are directly (instead of indirect indicators such as GDP) related to well being: “GDP is not valued in itself but because it is associated with positive…
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Trust Disrupted: Bitcoin and the Blockchain
A good overview of some of the fascinating issues that the bitcoin and blockchain spaces are experiencing. An underlying assumption in this field, that is not explicitly mentioned, is that technology and mathematics can be used to generate trust where people (for different reasons) cannot. That is one of the main reasons I am a…
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Basecamp Company Spinoff
A beautiful example that business CAN be made simple and sweet: “But first, there are a million ways to spin-off a company. And most of them are fucking complicated. Complicated stuff is anathema to us at Basecamp, so anything messy, extensively lawyer-y, protracted, knotty, or otherwise elaborate was off the table. So what was simple?…
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Failed Attempts at Negative Interest
First I came across this article about negative interest spotted in the wild. I was surprised to see this manifest so soon. Things seem to be moving faster. But then I came across this even more interesting article about negative interest backfiring. Basically a person who just manages to get by from a monthly income…
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Paul Romer: The Trouble With Macroeconomics
“… Macroeconomics, he argues, is like a science that has not only stalled for three decades, but has actually gone backwards in its ability to understand reality. In the late 1970s, as the old certainties of Keynesianism collapsed, a new generation of economists moved the discipline on to the terrain of super-abstract equations. Their assumption…
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IMF admits disastrous love affair with the euro
Reading this wasn’t too surprising … a more worrying thought that came to me though was that isn’t this how most of our systems government, business, etc .. are run? The list of systemic failures is so typical … and yet here we are. “The International Monetary Fund’s top staff misled their own board, made…
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David Graeber on Creating Each Other
imagining economies in which we primarily create each other … and along the way some “things”:
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Poor Decisions
Scarcity impinges on your mind. People behave differently when they perceive a thing to be scarce. … Scarcity narrows your focus to your immediate lack, to the meeting that’s starting in five minutes or the bills that need to be paid tomorrow. The long-term perspective goes out the window. … Compare it to a new…
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Christopher Alexander on Green Materials
“We need new types of materials and techniques which have the following two functionally necessary attributes fo the construction process: We need to be able to shape materials rapidly and carefully so that the process of shaping … easily creates living centers … … We also need the the process of shaping and forming centers…
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Bitcoin experiment crashes into the cliffs of human nature
One of the core developers of Bitcoin has left the project and written extensively about how it has unfolded (via Matt Mullenweg). I felt relief when I read this. I am uncomfortable with Bitcoin. I have done some inquiry into its nature and I believe it is in some ways an interesting experiment. But I…