"FLOK Society is, at its core, a research project occurring within a university: Ecuador’s post-graduate-focused state school the IAEN. But the parameters of the project push us to seek as many partnerships with any other schools, entities, social organizations, and communities with a stake in the project. Which is to say, there is an open invitation, and there soon will be proactive attempts to court, input and collaboration from all Ecuadorians and any international group that shares the values of FLOK and is interested in the theory that by creating and empowering peer networks a country can create a new economic matrix.
California has been the source of much innovation, from agribusiness and oil to fashion and the digital world. Historically much richer than the rest of the country, it was also the birthplace, along with Levittown, of the mass-produced suburb, freeways, much of our modern entrepreneurial culture, and of course mass entertainment. For most of a century, for both better and worse, California has defined progress, not only for America but for the world.
Shareable and the Sustainable Economies Law Center have released a fantastic new report surveying the ways in which cities can adopt policies to promote “sharing” in a range of areas -- food, housing, transportation and jobs. The landmark report, “Policies for Shareable Cities: A Sharing Economy Policy Primer for Urban Leaders,” pulls together “scores of innovative, high impact policies that US city governments have put in place to help citizens share resources, co-produce, and create their own jobs.”
These developments include nonprofit community development corporations and community land trusts that develop and maintain low-income housing, as well as community development financial institutions that now invest more than $5.5 billion a year in poor communities. Employee ownership is on the rise, extending to 11,000 businesses and involving three million more workers than are members of private sector unions. A third of Americans belong to urban, agricultural and credit union cooperatives. In the public sector, local government economic development programs invest in area businesses while municipal enterprises build infrastructure and provide services, raising revenue and promoting employment and economic stability, diversifying the base of locally controlled capital. Two thousand publicly owned utilities, together with co-ops, provide a quarter of America’s electricity. Public pension assets are being channelled into job creation and community economic development. More and more US states are looking into the creation of public banking systems like the long-standing public Bank of North Dakota.
The first thing to say is that the concept of ‘Good Living’ or Sumak Kawsay (in the Quechua language) arises out of the political struggles of the people. This is important to emphasise because generally proposals come from intellectuals, academics, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean for example, but this concept comes from people’s traditions and is now enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador. Clearly it represents a fusion between a Western outlook, from an Aristotelian perspective, which merges with an indigenous perspective, the Sumak Kawsay (‘Good Living’). Ecuador is not Bolivia. Ecuador does not have such a large indigenous population, it contains a larger mestizo population, but it coexists within a plurinational state, which contains about 14 indigenous communities. We believe that the world does not need development alternatives but alternatives to development. It is necessary to create a completely different world.
Peer-to-Peer networks, such as the collaboration of thousands of free producers, have recently emerged as one of the most innovative forces in the traditional business world and in the political world. These free producers, or peer producers as they are also called, work together, unpaid, outside of normal work and business structures to create new designs, learning content, reports, encyclopedias, evaluate patents, and much more.
Here’s a development that could have enormous global implications for the search for a new commons-based economic paradigm. Working with an academic partner, the Government of Ecuador has launched a major strategic research project to “fundamentally re-imagine Ecuador” based on the principles of open networks, peer production and commoning.
'a commons regime takes steps to protect the "resource" that the commons jointly manages/owns/cares for. More specifically the words "protecting the resource" means setting an absolute scale limit on its use. The commoners will set a scale of use for grazing a commons, or fishing a river, or taking water from an irrigation system. That is to say they set a maximum physically measured use - so many cows over the summer, so many gallons or water, so many fish per season. (NOT, so much $ worth of milk etc)
There seems to be a prevalent trend in media and political commentary about the Canadian province of New Brunswick where I live and am from; that the province is falling behind, in decline.
These new policy initiatives, innovations, social movements, and lifestyle shifts are rarely covered, but with all that's at stake, these responses deserve to be front-page news. We need this sort of reporting to seek out the many solutions, investigate which ones are working, and tell the stories through the media now available. Out of those many stories and many solutions, the answers can emerge. If these answers spread, are replicated, and inspire others, we have a shot at preserving a healthy planet and our own future.
Two technology stories have filled the airwaves in recent days: the impending Twitter IPO, which is predicted to raise more than $1 billion; and the Obamacare online roll-out, which has crashed in a welter of locked-out applicants and frozen exchanges
Ajit Balakrishnan, founder of Rediff.com, talks about his new book, why he wishes he had done some things in life differently, and he why believes financial bubbles have their uses
Having previously defined a good society as a sustainable society with a high level of development, significant provision of meaningful jobs, and low levels of inequality and social ills, Toward a Good Society in the Twenty-first Century provides a wide range of principles and policies that would be necessary if we are to achieve a good society.
The first thing to say is that the concept of ‘Good Living’ or Sumak Kawsay (in the Quechua language) arises out of the political struggles of the people. This is important to emphasise because generally proposals come from intellectuals, academics, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean for example, but this concept comes from people’s traditions and is now enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador. Clearly it represents a fusion between a Western outlook, from an Aristotelian perspective, which merges with an indigenous perspective, the Sumak Kawsay (‘Good Living’). Ecuador is not Bolivia. Ecuador does not have such a large indigenous population, it contains a larger mestizo population, but it coexists within a plurinational state, which contains about 14 indigenous communities. We believe that the world does not need development alternatives but alternatives to development. It is necessary to create a completely different world.
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