Co-op Structure Provides Economic Recovery. Nouriel Roubini, the economist from New York University’s Stern School of Business who earned the nickname “Dr.
Doom” when his predictions of an economic meltdoom came true in the 2008 recession, sees co-operatives as part of the solution. Speaking at the International Summit of Co-operatives in Quebec City’s convention centre Tuesday, Roubini said he has known about co-operatives, “since I was a child.”
CONSUMER COOPERATIVES. WORKER OWNED COOPERATIVES. Owner of Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods Gives His Company To His 209 Employees. OPEN SOURCE & P2P. Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins. Paul Harrison, Chris Kantola, and Jesse Angle, scrounging for bitcoins outside a public library in Pensacola, Florida.
Photo: Michael Spooneybarger/WIRED Jesse Angle is homeless, living on the streets of Pensacola, Florida. Sometimes he spends the night at a local church. Other nights, he sleeps behind a building in the heart of the city, underneath a carport that protects him from the rain. Each morning, he wakes up, grabs some food, and makes his way to Martin Luther King Plaza, a downtown park built where the trolley tracks used to run. The park offers free wireless access, and with his laptop, Angle watches YouTube videos in exchange for bitcoins, the world’s most popular digital currency. ‘Bitcoin beats the shit out of regular money. . — Jason King For every video he watches, Angle gets 0.00004 bitcoins, or about half a cent, thanks to a service, called BitcoinGet, that shamelessly drives artificial traffic to certain online clips.
Jesse Angle isn’t your average homeless person.
Can Trust Systems Build a New Economy From Ruin? In 1956, Bill Fair and Earl Isaac created the credit scoring system popularly known as FICO, for Fair Isaac Corporation.
Fair and Isaac’s automated scoring system enabled credit card issuers to safely extend consumer credit to the masses. Consumer credit reached global scale with the consolidation of numerous international issuers into VISA in 1975. In 1995, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began to require that mortgage lenders include FICO scores, cementing the metric’s authority. FICO, VISA, subprime mortgages, and other consumer credit innovations fueled unprecedented levels of household consumption and debt in the US and beyond. Never in human history have so many consumed so much in so little time. Fast forward to today. "Boom/Bust" art by thecitizen-dv via DeviantArt. We've gone deeply into environmental debt too. The consumer economy has arguably peaked. Image by VenomSpartan via DeviantArt. The case for reputation systems Art by Ape Lad via Flickr. New Paradigm Economics. We’ve been enculturated to think of economics as a cold, boring, academic subject devoid of connection to humanity’s heart and soul.
In fact it is intimately connected and potentially one of the most juicy, alive, rich ways of understanding and evolving our humanity, our purpose and our future. Economics is one of the most essential fields of agreements on how we hold our collective self-image, how we develop our collective self esteem. It is how we agree to take care of each other – how we hold every other human being on the planet in relationship. It holds the promise of manifesting a system of intrinsic love, social justice and caring into society.
And it can embody a way of right relationship with the Earth. To start to understand a new paradigm for economics, money and value and how we interact with the world, I invite you to “spend” some time with these videos. Many more to come soon! First Charles Eisenstein captures the essence of new paradigm economics in this 12 minute video:
The Money Fix - A Documentary for Monetary Reform. Gar Alperovitz - America Beyond Capitalism [Web] : Pirate TV Seattle. The Guardian on Facebook. The Future of Money. The local currency rush: 'In the U.S. we don't trust' - Jan. 18. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It may seem like Monopoly money to outsiders, but a growing number of communities across the U.S. are using homegrown local currencies to stimulate their economies and protect themselves from the nation's broader economic woes.
While there were only about 20 active community currencies in the United States in 2009, there has been a recent resurgence, with at least a dozen communities developing their own currencies in the past couple of years, estimates Loren Gatch, a professor of political science at the University of Central Oklahoma who researches these alternative currencies. In addition, currencies that have been around for years have seen a spike in interest, with membership doubling in some cases. "Economic instability is on peoples' minds," said Gatch. Now, even state governments are exploring the option.
Funny money? Local boost: Many alternative currencies were created in an effort to keep wealth within communities and to support local businesses. Alternative currencies, monetary systems.
TIME BANKING. Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) Index of /REconomy_Resource_Pack/Community_Money_and_Banking. Index of /REconomy_Resource_Pack/Community_Money_and_Banking/Community_Currencies. Economics & Finance.