Drew Little — Producism: Is This Capitalism 4.0?

With the urgent need for alternative economic systems, a tech social entrepreneur steps up to the challenge. 

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Producism: Is This Capitalism 4.0?
Drew Little

Many anti-capitalists proclaim Socialism as the answer. Unfortunately, many people don't understand that in our current economic system and in Socialism, there is onlyone monopolized currency that can be accepted for taxes, which is created out of compound interest debt, and is the root cause of our unsustainable economic system; currently, the private sector has a monopoly on legal tender like the government does with Socialism. So, by instituting Socialism, we might change the "driver" of the "car," but the root problem still exists so constant "repairs" or corporate bailouts are always going to be needed.

Many anti-capitalists also feel a bloody revolution is needed. But let's get real, the U.S. government has too many resources at its disposal; spending more on the military than all other developed nations combined. So that's not an intelligent decision. Many well meaning citizens feel change can be made within Washington. Unfortunately, as history shows that isn't going to happen either. What is there left to do? What if we agreed to play a new game instead? One that doesn't break any laws, is opt-in, and fills in the gaps left by the old game. It wouldn't require a revolution that sheds blood, but the shedding of economic ignorance...Essentially, it requires a revolution of the mind.

Little is out of paradigm, but I've read some the book, and he is a good example of what's going on with America's youth. Definitely high aspirations and high energy, willing to experiment in alternatives and aware that the world is digital. In addition, Little is non-white, and that adds another dimension to the story.

Scott Smith — Bitcoin is just the poster currency for a growing movement of alternative tender

It's not really about Bitcoin. Mentions The Platinum Coin, too.

Like the trillion-dollar platinum coin several months ago, Bitcoin has jumped from a technical curiosity to “mainstream” financial news. It has become an object of economic escapism—but the kind you can’t escape from. Whether it continues to grow as a phenomenon has yet to be seen, but the underlying curiosity tells us that there is growing skepticism about global financial systems’ long-term viability, and a correlated grassroots interest in returning to smaller scale, offline, more locally-focused systems of exchange.

Economic anthropologist Keith Hart, who gave us the phrase “informal sector,” maintains that the previously bold dividing line between “legitimate” formal economies (with their megabanks, registered brokers, middlemen, and recognized currencies) is blurring quickly due to worldwide economic stresses. In a talk last year in Barcelona, Hart pointed out that in ailing countries, such as Spain and Greece, the informal practices that have been in place all along have re-emerged as a new kind of “formal informal” market, recognized by many citizens as a valid option for work, earning and exchange. This formal-informal connection is being accelerated by simple uses of technology says Ken Banks, founder of a global initiative to promote economic self-sufficiency Means of Exchange. A much broader potential user base, with web and mobile access, can coordinate simple economic activities, such as time banking, bartering, and local economic action that brings buyers and sellers, or workers and employers, together simply—more like Craigslist, less like Amazon.

Bitcoin may be the digital canary in the coal mine at the moment, seen as a test case for “new money” by both economists and tech enthusiasts, but its not the only game in town. At the moment, these simpler systems of payment and exchange get far less press and attention from money bloggers, but if we’re lucky, they will succeed without this attention—perhaps precisely because no one is looking.

Quartz
Bitcoin is just the poster currency for a growing movement of alternative tender
Scott Smith

Marjorie Kelly — The Economy: Under New Ownership

Here’s the problem: The very aim of maximum financial extraction is built into the foundational social architecture of our capitalist economy—that is, the concept of ownership.
If the root of government is sovereignty (the question of who controls the state), the root construct of every economy is property (the question of who controls the infrastructure of wealth creation).

Many of the great social struggles in history have come down to the issue of who will control land, water, and the essentials of life.

Ownership has been at the center of the most profound changes in civilization—from ending slavery to patenting the genome of life.

Throughout the Industrial Age, the global economy has increasingly come to be dominated by a single form of ownership: the publicly traded corporation, where shares are bought and sold in stock markets. The systemic crises we face today are deeply entwined with this design, which forms the foundation of what we might call the extractive economy, intent on maximum physical and financial extraction.

The concept of extractive ownership traces its lineage to Anglo-Saxon legal tradition. The 18th century British legal theorist William Blackstone described ownership as the right to “sole and despotic dominion.” This view—the right to control one’s world in order to extract maximum benefit for oneself—is a core legitimating concept for a civilization in which white, property-owning males have claimed dominion over women, other races, laborers, and the earth itself. 
In the 20th century, we were schooled to believe there were essentially two economic systems: capitalism (private ownership) and socialism/communism (public ownership). Yet both tended, in practice, to support the concentration of economic power in the hands of the few.

Emerging in our time—in largely disconnected experiments across the globe—are the seeds of a different kind of economy. It, too, is built on a foundation of ownership, but of a unique type. The cooperative economy is a large piece of it. But this economy doesn’t rely on a monoculture of design, the way capitalism does. It’s as rich in diversity as a rainforest is in its plethora of species—with commons ownership, municipal ownership, employee ownership, and others. You could even include open-source models like Wikipedia, owned by no one and managed collectively.

These varieties of alternative ownership have yet to be recognized as a single family, in part because they’ve yet to unite under a common name. We might call them generative, for their aim is to generate conditions where our common life can flourish. Generative design isn’t about dominion. It’s about belonging—a sense of belonging to a common whole.

AlterNet
The Economy: Under New Ownership
Marjorie Kelly | YES! Magazine | fellow with the Tellus Institute and is director of ownership strategy with Cutting Edge Capital consulting firm. She is author of the new book, Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution. She was co-founder and for 20 years president of Ethics magazine.

The cooperative economy—and the broader family of generative ownership models—is helping to reawaken an ancient wisdom about living together in community, something largely lost in the spread of capitalism. Economic historian Karl Polanyi describes this in his 1944 work, The Great Transformation, tracing the crises of capitalism to the fact that it “disembedded” economic activity from community. Throughout history, he noted, economic activity had been part of a larger social order that included religion, government, families, and the natural world. The Industrial Revolution upended this. It turned labor and land into commodities to be “bought and sold, used and destroyed, as if they were simply merchandise,” Polanyi wrote. But these were fictitious commodities. They were none other than human beings and the earth itself.

Generative design decommodifies land and labor, putting them again under the control of the community....

The generative economy finds fertile soil for its growth within the human heart. The ownership revolution is part of the “metaphysical reconstruction” that E.F. Schumacher said would be needed to transform our economy. When economic relations are designed in a generative way, they’re no longer about sole and despotic dominion. Economic activity is no longer about squeezing every penny from something we imagine that we own. It’s about being interwoven with the world around us. It’s about a shift from dominion to community. 

This is really the crux of it. 

Why Small-Scale Alternatives Won’t Change The World: Review

Key thesis: The localist form of citizenship may empower us, but it cannot confront capitalism. Against a global network of power must emerge globalised forms of struggle.

P2P Foundation
Why Small-Scale Alternatives Won’t Change The World: Review
Michel Bauwens

Richard Wolff — Yes, there is an alternative to capitalism

There is no alternative ("Tina") to capitalism.

Really? We are to believe, with Margaret Thatcher, that an economic system with endlessly repeated cycles, costly bailouts for financiers and now austerity for most people is the best human beings can do? Capitalism's recurring tendencies toward extreme and deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power require resignation and acceptance – because there is no alternative?

I understand why such a system's leaders would like us to believe in Tina. But why would others?

Of course, alternatives exist; they always do. Every society chooses – consciously or not, democratically or not – among alternative ways to organize the production and distribution of the goods and services that make individual and social life possible....

Capitalism thus entails and reproduces a highly undemocratic organization of production inside enterprises. Tina believers insist that no alternatives to such capitalist organizations of production exist or could work nearly so well, in terms of outputs, efficiency, and labor processes. The falsity of that claim is easily shown. Indeed, I was shown it a few weeks ago and would like to sketch it for you here.

Read the rest at The Guardian (UK)

Yes, there is an alternative to capitalism
by Richard Wolff

In short, MC worker-members collectively choose, hire and fire the directors, whereas in capitalist enterprises the reverse occurs.

Interestingly, a very similar distinction is manifest in religious denominations — between "low" churches that are congregational and "high" churches that are hierarchical. In the congregational modle the congregation chooses the minister, and in the hierarchical model, authority is centralized and imposed from the top, with parishioners required to be subservient and to conform.

A New Economic Paradigm: An Interview With Gar Alperovitz

Gar Alperovitz is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative. He is the author of numerous books, including Unjust Deserts, Making a Place For Community, Rebuilding America, Atomic Diplomacy, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, and America Beyond Capitalism.

Read it at link to video at Truthout
A New Economic Paradigm: An Interview With Gar Alperovitz

By David Barsamian, Alternative Radio | Interview & Video

Video of intervew and transcript.

In Transition 2.0 — printing your own money, growing food, localising economies, and setting up community power stations

To mark the release of In Transition 2.0 — an inspirational film about communities printing their own money, growing food, localising their economies and setting up community power stations — I spoke to Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Network and Transition Totnes, about energy ownership, cooperative finance strategies, and how storytelling can change our expectations of ourselves and our communities.

Read it at Energy Bulletin
In Transition 2.0 — printing your own money, growing food, localising economies, and setting up community power stations
by Jonny Gordon-Farleigh

Panera tests pay what you want

Panera Bread is opening at least two more pay-what-you-want cafes as part of its effort to help feed the hungry in a dignified way.

Panera spokeswoman Kate Antonacci said Thursday that locations will be announced this spring. One cafe could open by summer, another in the fall and possibly a third later this year.The concept is simple: Panera lists a suggested price for food, but customers pay what they want.

Read it at The Huffington Post

Panera Bread To Open At Least Two More Pay-What-You-Want Cafes
by Jim Salter

Burning Man a victim of its own success as word spreads

Since its inception in 1986, Burning Man has grown from a small gathering of friends on San Francisco's Baker Beach to a year-round international subculture that culminates in the summertime festival. The main event draws some 50,000 "Burners" to Nevada's remote Black Rock Desert for a week of, to borrow a favorite phrase from founder Larry Harvey, "radical self-expression."

For seven days, an otherwise hostile stretch of desert transforms into Black Rock City, a bustling community surrounding a massive central area dubbed the playa. The playa economy relies solely on "gifting," or the friendly exchange of goods and services, to sustain itself. Buying and selling is strictly condemned (except for, say, ice from the general store).

Participants spend mind-boggling amounts of time, money and energy building the art installations, planning the infrastructure and organizing the "theme camps" that make the festival thrive -- and then they burn it all. The camps, many of which return year after year, take on a variety of shapes and sizes, from 200-person villages that serve elaborate breakfasts to smaller entities that offer one-off performances or group meditation ceremonies.

 Read it The Huffington Post | San Francisco
When Burning Man Went Viral: How A Festival-Turned-Subculture Struggles With Scarcity

by Carly Schwartz

Ecuador Creating Alternative to Neo-Liberal Model