Category: Economics

Economics, Politics & Culture

Morality & the Meaning of Money

Dreams of individual accomplishment and desires to contribute to the common good become firmly attached to waged work, where they can be hijacked to rather different ends: to produce neither individual riches nor social wealth, but privately appropriately surplus value. Kathi Weeks, “The Problem with Work” Capitalism lures us onward like the mechanical hare before the greyhounds, insisting that the economy is infinite and sharing … Continue reading Morality & the Meaning of Money

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Economics, Modern Money Theory, Politics & Culture

Does the Debt Ceiling Matter? Yes and No (and probably not the way you’re thinking)

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones. John Maynard Keynes New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been engaged in talks with the White House over the past couple weeks, in an effort to prevent the US government from ‘defaulting’ on its debt later this year. As has happened many times over the last few decades, the … Continue reading Does the Debt Ceiling Matter? Yes and No (and probably not the way you’re thinking)

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Ecological Collapse, Economics, Intentional Communities, Politics & Culture

The Great Interregnum

To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment….would result in the demolition of society. Karl Polanyi The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying but the new cannot be born. In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. Antonio Gramsci As the planet flounders and fails under … Continue reading The Great Interregnum

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Coronavirus, Ecological Collapse, Economics, Intentional Communities, Politics & Culture, Uncategorized

Rescuing the Future – Part 1

What if this ongoing fear of ‘collapse’ … is a narrative designed to quell a worse fear: that things might not collapse, but continue like this? That the Earth’s final wild frontiers may be tamed and diluted, ravaged and destroyed, and that we would not care much because we were too busy following the logic of our narrative to its endpoint, becoming our machines – … Continue reading Rescuing the Future – Part 1

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Ecological Collapse, Economics, Intentional Communities, Politics & Culture, Universal Basic Income

BHB: Bigger Home Bases – Reasons why we need to start living in larger groups now

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at. Oscar Wilde For so many of us, the couple form and the job wind up bearing the weight of all of our hopes and dreams and need for human contact, and they were never meant to bear that weight. We need human relationships that extend beyond the romantic or … Continue reading BHB: Bigger Home Bases – Reasons why we need to start living in larger groups now

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Coronavirus, Ecological Collapse, Economics, Politics & Culture, Uncategorized, Universal Basic Income

Utopia Now! Model communities & UBI: our last off-ramps to a sane, realistic future

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Albert Einstein We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are. Talmudic Proverb Many thinkers…have argued that studying philosophy is learning how to die. If that’s true, then we have entered humanity’s most philosophical age — for this is precisely the problem of the Anthropocene. … Continue reading Utopia Now! Model communities & UBI: our last off-ramps to a sane, realistic future

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Ecological Collapse, Economics, Politics & Culture, Universal Basic Income

After Trump: Is there any common ground?

Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman As I write this (Jan 2nd), there are … Continue reading After Trump: Is there any common ground?

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Coronavirus, Economics, Politics & Culture

Narrowing Options

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller The galloping, microscopic horseman of Covid has quickly exposed the fatal flaws in the American system, and the mixed messaging that we’re getting from our leaders cannot obscure the basic facts, which are not too complicated but profoundly terrifying nonetheless. The … Continue reading Narrowing Options

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Coronavirus, Economics, Politics & Culture

The Last Fiction – Part 3

History is not repeating itself, we are unfolding a new page in national life. The past has gone forever. There is no abiding present, it flies while we name it, and as it flies it is our duty to provide for the thick coming future. . . . We are to shape the future. We cannot escape the duty. — William D. “Pig Iron” Kelley … Continue reading The Last Fiction – Part 3

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Coronavirus, Economics, Politics & Culture

The Last Fiction – Part 2

The order which has been taken for granted suddenly appears queer and contingent. There is an appearance of the contingency of order. This is the main value of utopias. At a time when everything is blocked by systems which have failed but which cannot be beaten…utopia is our resource….The utopia seems to say something plausible, but it also says something that is crazy. By saying something … Continue reading The Last Fiction – Part 2

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