The democratising potential of workers’ capital has sometimes been used as a justification for privatising retirement security and the integration of workers’ interests into financial markets. This potential has been somewhat over-stated. It is true that institutional investors, especially pension funds, have rapidly increased in size and market share over recent decades. But this shift in the ownership of capital has not resulted in a shift of control. In Australia, some superannuation funds provide scope for workers, through their unions, to have an influence on investment strategy. In practice, this influence is very limited.
Dries Buytaert created Drupal, an open source content management platform, in his dorm room. He is also the co-founder and CTO at Acquia, a company providing enterprise software for websites and commerce.
Entrepreneurs say the new way of consuming is part of a growing, post-recession movement to value experiences over possessions. (Sharing Everything: Is Owning Overrated?
Inequality and poverty are suddenly hot topics, not only in the United States but also across the globe. Since the early 1980s, there has been a growing underclass in America. At the same time a much smaller class, now called the superrich, built its wealth to levels of opulence not seen since France’s Louis XVI. Despite this, the resulting inequality went mostly unnoticed. When the Great Recession of 2008 hit, and the division between the very wealthy and the rest of us came starkly into focus, various people and groups, including the Occupy movement, began insisting more publicly that we tax wealth. But still, helping the poor has been mostly a discussion on the fringes. At last, the terms of public debate have changed, because inequality and poverty now are debated regularly in the mainstream media and across the political spectrum, not solely by labor, by the left, and by others imagining a new economy.
"Never mind buying a second home when you can rent a chateau in France on Airbnb for $200. Why hire a chauffeur when they don’t come with an app that tracks their relative location to yours, like Uber?" she says. "Even owning the latest album of your favorite band feels a lot less appealing when you can stream it immediately on and offline with a Spotify pro membership, without taking up any space on your hard drive."
"Georgism is a philosophy and economic ideology that holds that everyone owns what they create, but that everything found in nature, most importantly land, belongs equally to all of humanity. The Georgist philosophy is usually associated with the idea of a single tax on the value of land. Georgists argue that a tax on land value is efficient, fair andequitable, and will generate sufficient revenue so that other taxes, which are less fair and efficient, can be reduced or eliminated." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism)
Finally, by creating meaningful traditions, we can teach our kids what truly will bring them lasting happiness during the holidays -- like starting a gratitude tradition or helping others. Those are the things that they really will remember.
The definition of ownership is changing. We are becoming less interested in owning products and accumulating wealth through long-term purchases. Instead, we crave experiences, seeking out things without much of a financial or time investment, and have a newfound appreciation of bargains and second-hand possessions (a song about thrifting is leading the Billboard charts as I am writing this). We increasingly consume products and services through renting, sharing, and purchasing subscriptions. Being “socially connected” is no longer just about having a lot of people to share your news with; these days, it’s about having a lot of people to share your stuff with--either for free or at a fraction of the market fee. It’s about collaborative consumption.
Jim Fowler, founder and CEO of Owler: If you're building a crowdsourced business, money is a bad motivator. What your crowd really wants is ownership. I’m not talking about shares of stock.
Anonymous company ownership doesn't exactly trip off the tongue does it. Nor is it a phrase that many people have heard of. But it should be. Anonymous company ownership is behind much of what is bad in the world.
On remote Deer Isle, Maine, the movement for a more just and democratic economy won a major victory this summer. More than 60 employees of three retail businesses - Burnt Cove Market, V&S Variety and Pharmacy, and The Galley - banded together to buy the stores and create the largest worker cooperative in Maine and the second largest in New England.
Dries Buytaert created Drupal, an open source content management platform, in his dorm room. He is also the co-founder and CTO at Acquia, a company providing enterprise software for websites and commerce.
They are a growing corner of the broader sharing economy, in which people rent out rooms in their homes on Airbnb or drive people in their cars with Uber or Lyft.
At the end of the first week of August 2014, two different crowdfunding pitches closed almost simultaneously. FarmDrop, based in the UK, had raised three quarters of a million pounds, which was not far from double their original goal, from 359 investors. Open Food Network, based in Australia, had raised Aus$35,877 from 398 investors. Peering through the windows opened up by these two initiatives gives a clear view of rather different trajectories of the burgeoning ‘sharing economy’.
Consider all the furious attention paid to economic inequality of late, courtesy of Thomas Piketty and Capital in the 21st Century. He argues that increasing inequality is an inevitable outcome of laissez-faire capitalism, and proposes we fix this with a global wealth tax.
Collaborative consumption is about sharing and swapping everyday objects such as books, toys and clothing. But music, homes and cars are being shared more and more often. Numerous online platforms offer differing forms of the sharing economy.
Veolia, an international water company, was sought by Mayor Slay to do business in St. Louis. Slay, who at the time was running for is 4th term, was looking for a consulting firm to advise the city on how to improve the cities water system.
Once thought of as a craze for Millennials rejecting consumerism, the sharing economy is now a recognized movement that has seized the attention of the New York Times, the Economist and NPR, among others. The sharing economy refers to a new kind of economic model where underutilized products and assets—think cars, apartment or home space and even one’s time—are shared with others, valuing access to these goods over ownership. In Madison, early traces of the sharing economy can be seen in our long history of cooperatives.
On the eve of Thanksgiving here in the US, Andro Linklater, the author of a new book,Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership (Bloomsbury), describes how the Pilgrims imposed their notions of private property on the land commons in the New World. The consequences – while perhaps inevitable, whether from them or other settlers – were nonetheless pivotal in the future development of America. Lanklater published an excerpt of his book recently on the Bloomberg News website. (Tragically, Linklater died a week before his book’s publication on November 12.)
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