When I’ve had conversations about the commons with right-leaning people (and sometimes cynical people on the left too), a typical response might be something along the lines of: ‘don’t waste your time trying to build a more democratic, sustainable or peaceful society. It won’t work, because humans are inherently selfish, greedy and competitive’. This Darwinian…
At the Festival of Commoning (Sep 13-14, in Stroud), our Stroud Commons group has a one-hour slot on the Saturday morning (10am, Trinity Rooms). I’m going to give an overview of commons ideas, and there will be representatives of the housing, land, energy and climbing groups to talk about what’s happening in their groups. Then…
Dave Darby of Stroud Commons and Lowimpact.org talks with Tom Woodroof of Local Loop Merseyside and Mutual Credit Services about the Credit Commons – a way to federate different groups all over the world that are building the commons economy (because you can’t get everything you need from just your community) – but it does…
This is Part 2 of a two-parter, about how the housing crisis causes debt-bondage and wage-slavery, and how the housing Commons can release people from debt and give them freedom to do what they know needs to be done. Part 1: the housing crisis. Let’s look now at the Housing Commons: How the housing commons…
In the Stroud Commons, we’re looking to find ways to speed up the building of the commons – especially the housing commons, which we were talking about in terms of ‘the rock on which the commons can be built’ before we’d even formed the core group in Stroud.