By David Andersson
Gift economies could be very potent and effective organizing tools for creating value. We have many examples of gift economies in our world today, such as community gardens or free/open software, where no money is paid for the creation and maintenance of this resource but instead people contribute time and talent and get recognition and respect as well as shared access to the resources. Other examples include the Time Dollar community, where people give their time in exchange for services or goods, and the donation system (such as blood donations). It sometimes confounds economists who think that rational self interest in a cash economy is the only way to create value, but it is clear to see in the internet that sharing is happening all the time: Wikipedia, social networking communities, collaborative websites and archives like the Internet ...
When we speak about Wall Street, what comes to mind most often are its greed, the big fat bonuses for its executives, its addiction to more and still more… This is known territory, with known defenders and detractors. Today, we take a detour, and focus instead on the irrationality and speculation that are at the very root of our financial system.
A few weeks ago, Apple Inc. (previously Apple Computers) announced financial results for the first quarter of 2013. With $13.1 billion profit on $54.5 billion revenue, this was the best quarterly results ever in the company’s history. By any rational, objective measure, the company’s performance was spectacular, especially in a context of an ongoing global economic downturn. However, as Charles Moore from technologytell.com says, this performance was “not good enough for Wall Street”. So, Wall Street “punished Apple with a further ...
The news about what’s happening in the North, in these cold lands that we call Canada, came like hot hurricane winds: the hunger strike of our sister Theresa Spence. For us, this strike represents the hunger for justice of thousands of indigenous men, women, children, youth and elders in many parts of the world, mainly in our America, territories with so-called indigenous and/or popular governments.
Since 2000, since Kollasuyo, since Cochabamba, we rise up against forgetting and for the recovery of our Voice and our Capacity to Decide our present and future and even after 12 years *, we rise and keep coming. Daily we overcome indifference, contempt, imposition, the arrogance and looting to which our governments eternally subject us; the governments’ partners, those grand trans nationals that are destroying our lands. They will never beat us and for that, from ...
