[french ]Vers un capitalisme cognitif ? > L'économie de la pollinisation | Nouveaux paradigmes New Currency Frontiers Toward a Spiritual Economics Many people think that capitalism and market economics grew out of materialist philosophy that classical physics has given us. But this is myopic thinking of people who have missed the evolution of consciousness in the affairs of the manifest world. First notice that during the period that capitalism developed in the hands of such luminaries as Adam Smith, it was Cartesian dualism under the modernist umbrella that was the influential metaphysic, not materialism. In modernism, mind and meaning are valued. Second, notice that capitalism replaced feudalism and the mercantile economy (Adam Smith's term for the economy prevalent in England in his time), in which the pursuit of meaning is highly limited and vast numbers of people are denied it. Third, notice that the only serious challenge to capitalism after the demise of feudalism/mercantile economy has been Marxist economics. Second, the free market does not seem to be free any more. Consciousness is the ground of all being.
Art Brock / Prezis [FR] Pour une économie "hybride" En novembre, la 4e édition nationale du Mois de l'économie sociale et solidaire va donner lieu à 1500 événements dans tout le pays. Une occasion pour les 217 000 associations, coopératives, mutuelles, fondations (2 millions de salariés) de gagner en visibilité. D'ampleur, cette initiative ne provoquera pas pour autant de changement systémique. Or, à l'heure où le modèle capitaliste montre ses limites, "il faut inventer une économie hybride, impliquant le secteur social, le monde du business et les pouvoirs publics dans des projets d'envergure, capables de résoudre les problèmes de la société. Et de citer l'exemple de Danone, qui, en collaboration avec la Grameen Bank de Muhammad Yunus, héraut du microcrédit, fabrique et commercialise des yaourts survitaminés au Bangladesh à l'intention des plus pauvres. (1) Fondé en Inde par Bill Drayton, Ashoka vise à favoriser l'essor d'un secteur de l'entrepreneuriat social innovant.
Caught in Our Own Words System diagram of the vicious cycle of the Industrial Economy (red, top) and the virtuous cycle of the Natural Economy (green, bottom) Jeff Clearwater and Ferananda Ibarra* led a presentation on (Charles Eisenstein et al’s) Sacred Economics and Sharing Economies the other day while I was in Eugene OR (thanks to fellow communitarian and alternative economies enthusiast Tree Bressen twisting their arms to add Eugene to their current West Coast speaking tour). One of the ideas they presented that I found particularly inspiring was this: Much of what we believe, and much of what we are trying to change, is rooted in the terminology, the language we use to discuss it. This idea is consistent with George Lakoff’s idea of “reframing” conversations, because as long as you are talking with someone who has a different frame or worldview about a subject, you will never achieve an understanding or appreciation of the other person’s perspectives and beliefs, or what underlies them.
It's Time for Entrepreneurs to Shift and Reset It’s time for more entrepreneurs to reset their focus, and shift their thinking to completely different ways of doing things. Everyone talks about innovation, but the majority of business plans I see still reflect linear thinking – one more social network with improved usability, one more wind-farm energy generator with a few more blades, or one more dating site with a new dimension of compatibility. Serious changes and great successes don’t come from linear thinking. In searching for ways to get this message out, I came across a no excuse, no apology, new book by Brian Reich, called “Shift and Reset,” which makes some excellent points on ways to increase the range of change in a person’s thinking, or an organization’s results. Here are some key principles that he espouses and I support: Force and expect change. Reich makes the point that everyone has a role to play in solving major issues, and driving greater innovation.
Metacurrency: a wealth system After Sibos, Q4 is usually the period of the year when I try to re-boot, to refresh my sources, to be a sponge and take-in new knowledge. It’s when I start painting for the next year. When the themes and trends for next year start emerging. I wanted to get a much better feel for what this world of alternative and complementary currencies was all about, and decided to join a week-end “Collabathon” organized by Art Brock (@artbrock) and Eric Harris-Braun (@zippy314), the founders of The Metacurrency Project. In the slipstream of the Contact Summit, they wanted to gather the minds to work on NextNet ideas and tools. From their site: What is the NextNet? It was a small group of people – about 50 or so- gathering that Friday evening. Friday evening was intro-day. The weekend had something “sacred”. Some of you may remember that Art was one of our “igniters” for the New Economies session at Innotribe at Sibos Toronto, but there we only had a couple of minutes. Metacurrency comes in two parts:
How Can Business-to-Business Trade Networks Build Local Resilience Over the past year, I’ve been exploring the many examples out there of communities forming peer-to-peer networks in order to rebuild local economies, resilience and trust. These range from gift economies to barter groups, from loyalty programs to mutual credit systems. The latter, mutual credit systems, is the focus of this post. The oldest mutual credit system still in operation today (of which I am aware) is the WIR, based in Switzerland, which was created in 1934 due to currency shortages after the stock market crash of 1929. The WIR is managed by the WIR-bank, a cooperative owned by the businesses using it. It’s essentially just a bookkeeping system that enables transactions to happen, and is generated directly among the businesses. I reached out to its founder, Amy Kirschner, to find out more about how it works. How did you get the VBSR Marketplace off the ground? It’s been a long and winding road. The Marketplace was launched in January 2010. I have not yet run into this problem.
The New Industrial Revolution We like to think that the value of an idea is unlimited. From Watt’s steam engine to Darwin’s natural selection to Einstein’s relativity, ideas have changed the world. But that’s not the whole story. Watt, Darwin and even, to a certain extent, Einstein came from a privileged class and that matters. Most ideas go unnoticed because they require investment capital and distribution to make their way into the physical world. While your ability to start a successful business still depends greatly on the place and situation of your birth (if you live in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, you’re probably out of luck), many of the barriers to getting ideas to market are disappearing. The Industrial Economy The chart above tells the story of what happened next. It was, above all, an economy of atoms. The Information Economy The information age began in 1948 with the creation of the transistor and information theory, but didn’t really get going until personal computers arrived in the 80’s.