Before I Die

This is just gorgeous...the pictures say it all.

Sourced from Candy Chang, April 2011

'Candy Chang is a public installation artist, designer, urban planner, and co-founder of Civic Center who likes to make cities more comfortable for people.

With a lot of support from old and new friends, I turned the side of an abandoned house in my neighborhood into a giant chalkboard where residents can write on the wall and remember what is important to them. Before I Die transforms neglected spaces into constructive ones where we can learn the hopes and aspirations of the people around us.'

nef’s New Economic Model selected as a Semi-Finalist for the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge

click link below for larger image

Reposted in full from the new economics foundation, 24 March 2011

'The New Economic Model led by James Meadway and Tim Jenkins at leading independent think-tank nef (the new economics foundation) has been named a 2011 Semi-Finalist in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, the prestigious annual design science competition named "Socially-Responsible Design's Highest Award" by Metropolis Magazine. The Challenge awards $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a whole systems-based solution that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.

nef will build a comprehensive new macro-economic model for the UK predicated on respect for planetary boundaries and global equity of resource use. Principally designed to catalyse the transition to a low carbon, high well-being future economy, the model will be developed through rigorous economic analysis over three years.

“We’re obviously delighted to be named a semi-finalist in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge,” said James Meadway, senior economist at nef and project lead on the New Economic Model. “Our project for a New Economic Model is a perfect synergy with Buckminster Fuller’s own approach to change. As he said: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.””

“As the world faces the challenges of climate change and energy depletion to rising inequality and financial instability, the need for a new economic model has never been greater. At nef, we believe that only systemic change will bring about a future of well-being, prosperity and ecological balance. The prize money from BFC will go a long way towards funding both the theoretical work on economic modeling and our public engagement strategy to chart the course for a better future.”

After an initial rigorous vetting process by BFI’s multi-disciplinary review team, which included an in-depth interview, the New Economic Model was chosen from a pool of hundreds of entries from over 35 countries, to be one of 21 Semi-Finalists this year. It will now be featured as a top tier project in BFI’s Idea Index and featured on their website for the remainder of the program cycle.

Semi-finalists will be reviewed and discussed by the 11 distinguished jurors, which includes Valerie Casey, founder of Design Accord; David Orr, writer and professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College; Andrew Zolli, producer of PopTech and Danielle Nierenberg, Project Director of State of World 2011; and Sim Vanderyn, visionary ecological design pioneer.

Finalists will be announced May and the winner, runner up, and honorable mention will be announced at the conferring ceremony in New York in early June.

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge is the premier international competition recognizing initiatives which take a comprehensive, anticipatory, design approach to radically advance human well being and the health of our planet’s ecosystems. The 2011 Semi-finalists are providing workable solutions to some of the world’s most significant challenges including water scarcity, food supply, health, energy consumption and shelter. The Challenge is a program of The Buckminster Fuller Institute which aims to deeply influence the ascendance of a new generation of design-science pioneers who are leading the creation of an abundant and restorative world economy that benefits all humanity.'

The Food Bubble is About to Burst

Reposted in full from the New Scientist, 10 February 2011

'We're fast draining the fresh water resources our farms rely on, warns Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute

What is a food bubble?

That's when food production is inflated through the unsustainable use of water and land. It's the water bubble we need to worry about now. The World Bank says that 15 per cent of Indians (175 million people) are fed by grain produced through overpumping - when water is pumped out of aquifers faster than they can be replenished. In China, the figure could be 130 million.

Has this bubble already burst anywhere?

Saudi Arabia made itself self-sufficient in wheat by using water from a fossil aquifer, which doesn't refill. It has harvested close to 3 million tonnes a year, but in 2008 the Saudi authorities said the aquifer was largely depleted. Next year could be the last harvest. This is extreme, but about half the world's people live in countries with falling water tables. India and China will lose grain production capacity through aquifer depletion. We don't know when or how abruptly the bubble will burst.

With population rising, a fall in grain production would spell big trouble.

Yes. Tonight at the dinner table there will be 219,000 people who weren't there last night. But that's not all: we also have maybe 3 billion people moving up the food chain, consuming more grain-intensive livestock products. Then there is the conversion of grain into ethanol for cars, mainly in the US, where last year 119 million tonnes went to distilleries out of a harvest of just over 400 million tonnes.

What will happen if we carry on as we are now?

Civilisation as we know it can't withstand the stresses of continuing with business as usual. We've got to move, almost on a war footing, to cut carbon emissions, eradicate poverty, stabilise population. We must also restore the economy's natural support systems: forests and aquifers and soils. No civilisation ever survived that kind of destruction; nor will ours. We haven't gone over the edge, but we're much closer than most people think. If the heatwave that hit Moscow in 2010 had been centred on Chicago instead, we would be in deep trouble. The Russians lost 40 per cent of their 100-million-tonne grain crop, but we would have lost 40 per cent of our 400-million-tonne crop - a massive global setback.

How can we avert a disaster like this?

In many countries, irrigation water is free or comes at a low price, so it's treated as an abundant resource. In fact it's scarce and should be priced accordingly. We must also redefine what we mean by "security". The real threats are not some armed superpower but water or food shortages, climate change and the rising number of failed states.

Can individuals make a difference?

The question I get asked most is "What can I do?" People expect me to say change your light bulbs, recycle newspaper, but I say we must restructure the world economy, especially in energy. It's about becoming politically active. If there's a coal-fired power station near you, organise to close it down.'

The Gen Y Guide to Collaborative Consumption

Many of these links are to US sharing sites, however the concepts are universal - and there may be a local equivalent in your country (eg. Pozible in Australia in lieu of Kickstarter).

Reposted in full from Shareable, 8 March 2011

'When our parents graduated from college, the bachelor’s degree was a coveted badge of honor. It gave applicants instant cred (and usually a larger paycheck) no matter what the job. Now, having a bachelor’s degree does nothing to make an applicant stand out from the masses. And if you’re applying for a job well below your skill level because you’re desperate for a paycheck, that B.S. degree will probably get your carefully crafted resume tossed in the trash.

American youth are slowly realizing that the old system is broken, and no longer holds the answer to all their dreams and desires. We’re discovering that stable, satisfying careers can be found outside the offices and factories around which our parents and grandparents built their lives. We’re acknowledging that the pursuit of bigger, better, and faster things have plunged our country into a time of despair and difficulty. We're convinced that business as usual isn’t an option any longer - but what's the alternative?

Together, we’re learning that instead of waiting for politicians and corporations to fix the system, it’s possible to create a better one of our own, right under their noses. A new way of living, in which access is valued over ownership, experience is valued over material possessions, and "mine" becomes “ours” so everyone's needs are met without waste.

If these ideas get your blood pumping, there’s good news: young people all over the world are already making them a reality. It’s called collaborative consumption, (or the sharing economy) and it’s changing the way we work, play, and interact with each other. It’s fueled by the instant connection and communication of the internet, yet it’s manifesting itself in interesting ways offline too.

If you’re ready to connect with people who can help you save money, pursue your passions, and reduce waste, here's a quick-start guide to your sharing experience:

1. Remove all items from the box and assess

Sit down with yourself (or some friends) and talk about what you’ve got, what you need, and what you could live without. Take stock of what you’d be willing to share, rent, or give away. Write down all the things you really need to be productive/happy/connected. Then, cross out all the things that you want just to have them, and highlight all the things that involve a valuable experience. Now you have a list you can tackle through sharing.

2. Connect to the power source

The collaborative consumption movement empowers people to thrive despite economic climate. Instead of looking to the government or corporations to tell us what we want or create a solution for our problems, we take action to meet our own needs in a creative fashion. This is our power source. Start looking for ways to share at school, on community billboards, by asking friends, or use the resources below:

Housing

• Roomates.com - A roomate finder and roomates search service which covers thousands of cities nationwide.

• How to Start a Housing Co-op - one of the best affordable housing options around, and shared food expenses and cooking can increase your savings.

• Guide to Sharing a House - buying a home by yourself may be out of reach in high cost areas, but shared ownership might be the ticket.

• Cohousing Directory - Cohousing is homeownership in a neighborhood that shares.

• Craigslist - find almost anything including a house or housemate on Craigslist.

Social Food

• Eat With Me and Grubly are the Airbnb for meals. Use them to find or host a meal in your neighborhood. Never eat alone!

• MamaBake - Large batch group cooking saves time and money, not to mention it's fun!

• Local Harvest - A massive directory that helps you find farmers' markets, CSA's, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area.

• Neighborhood Fruit - find and offer free fruit to your neighbors with this site and iPhone app.

• How to Share a Vegetable Garden

• How to Start A Farmers' Market

• Host a Baby Food Swap

Personal Finance

• Lending Club - An online financial community that brings together creditworthy borrowers and savvy investors so that both can benefit financially.

• Zopa - Where people get together to lend and borrow money directly with each other, sidestepping the banks for a better deal.

• Prosper - A peer-to-peer lending site that allows people to invest in each other in a way that is financially and socially rewarding.

• SmartyPig - social savings bank that enables you to save for specific goals and engage friends and family to contribute.

• How To Save Money Through Sharing

Entrepreneurship / Work

• Kickstarter - A crowd-funding site powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.

• Profounder - A site that makes it easy for your community to contribute financially to your business, so they're literally invested in your success.

• BetterMeans - Use open-source decision-making rules, and self-organizing principles to run your real-world projects.

• Task Rabbit - A service that enables you to outsource your tasks and deliveries (Boston and San Francisco Bay area only...for now).

• Use the coworking wiki, Loosecubes or Liquidspace to find a friendly place to cowork. Coworking is a flexible and community-oriented workspace option for business travelers, independent workers, and entrepreneurs.

• How to Find a Job Using Social Media

• The Shareable Job Search Search

• How to Start a Coworking Space

• A Guide to Casual Coworking - Why not cowork anywhere? Here's the definitive guide.

• How to Create Your Own Green Job

• How to Make A Franchise Shareable

Travel

• CouchSurfing - An international non-profit network that connects travelers with locals in over 230 countries and territories around the world.

• AirBnB - Connects people who have space to spare with those who are looking for a place to stay, all over the world.

• iStopOver - Homeowners worldwide rent out space in their homes to travelers looking for unique accommodations.

• Park at myHouse - Provides affordable and fine-free parking by enabling property-owners to rent out their empty driveways, garages, car parks etc. to drivers needing somewhere to park.

• Roomorama - An online marketplace for short term rentals all over the world.

• Tripping - Tripping enables you to connect safely with locals who will introduce you to their towns, their cultures, their lives and their friends.

• How To Swap Cities - a guide on how to swap offices with someone from another city inspired by SwapYourShop.

Land / Gardening

• HyperLocavore - Share yards, seeds, tools and good times growing food!

• Shared Earth - Get free access to land and grow what you love, share some of the produce with the land owner and keep the rest.

• Tool libraries - check out this handy directory of tool libraries.

• Landshare - UK-based service that connects those who have land to share with those who need land for cultivating food.

• How to Create Your Own Seed-Lending Library

• How to start a Crop Mob - Crop mobs allow you to get and give gardening help.

• How to Share a Vegetable Garden

Transportation

• Carsharing directory - find carsharing service providers in your area with this international list.

• Zimride, GoLoco, eRideShare - Find a ride or offer a ride on these top ridesharing platforms.

• ZipCar - the largest fleet-based carsharing service in the world.

• RelayRides, Getaround, and Spride - Rent cars to or from neighbors using the leaders of the peer to peer carsharing movement.

• Weeels - order cabs and share rides with this smartphone app.

• Avego - Avego matches drivers and riders in real time as they travel.

• Taxi2 - Matches travelers who are going from the airport to the same or nearby final destination.

• How To Share a Car With A Stranger

• How To Be a Carfree Family

Media (Books, Movies, Games, Music)

• BookMooch - Lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want.

• Swap.com - An online swap marketplace for books, movies, music and games.

• Goozex - A unique trading platform for video games and movies.

• SwapaDVD - Trade DVDs for free.

• Paperback Swap - Trade paperback books for free.

• SwapaCD - Trade CDs for free.

Clothing

• Check The S.W.A.P. Team, ClothingSwap.com, Swap for Good, and The Swapaholics for clothing swaps near you.

• Or host your own swap using this guide, How to Throw a Community Swap Meet.

• Use Wear Today Gone Tomorrow or Renttherunway to rent authentic designer clothing for up to 90 percent off retail prices.

• Swapstyle.com - An interactive fashion website where members can swap, rather than buy, unlimited designer clothes with each other.

• Try Bag Borrow & Steal and Fashionhire - to rent designer handbags and accessories at affordable prices.

• And when the time comes to start a family, use ThredUp to swap children's clothing and toys with other parents.

Redistribution Sites (where uneeded stuff finds a loving home)

• Freecycle - The original grassroots organization for giving and getting free stuff in your town.

• craigslist - The ultimate free classifieds site with categories for free stuff, barters, and shares.

• eBay - International online auction that allows you to buy from and sell to other individuals.

• ecoSharing - The first sharing website that lets us share what we own with people we know and trust: our friends on facebook.

• SpiltStuff - A new site that organizes local communities to buy in bulk and "split" the goods and the cost, thus reducing waste and unnecessary consumerism.

Renting and sharing of general goods where you live

• Rentalic, Neighborgoods, and SnapGoods are leading peer to peer rental and sharing marketplaces.

Campus

• Chegg - Rent expensive textbooks on the cheap.

• Better World Books - Save big on used textbooks.

• Textbookflix, - A system that lets you rent text books in the same way that you rent movies from Netflix.

• Students for Free Culture - An international, chapter-based student organization that promotes the public interest in intellectual property and telecommunications policy.

• Bloomsbury College - Crowdsorced learning for the entrepreneurial student.

• CafeScribe - A new service that lets you download electronic copies of your textbook, add friends, and share your notes.

• Notely - A collection of online tools (including a Facebook app) designed to help busy students organize their hectic lives.

• Class Notes - A Facebook app that enables students to share handwritten or printed notes from class.

• Free Technology Academy - free college classes on open source technology and standards.

• Open Courseware - free college course materials offered by scores of top universities from around the world.

If you don't see the sharing solution you need, check out our huge list of how to share guides on Shareable. Or add resources you know about in comments.

3. Press the power button

Once you discover local opportunities for sharing and collaborating, it’s time to add the power: you. Get involved. Create a profile on sharing/renting/bartering site and actually list some stuff you could trade. Contact the moderator of a local offline sharing group and offer up your goods or services. Collaborative consumption requires a venture into a social world, even if it's only online; you need to get out there.

4. Sync with other devices and enjoy

Ideas like eBay, Netflix, and GameFly are pretty well-known examples of sharing, but it's important to remember that options exist offline as well. Sure, the internet makes it safe for us to share with strangers, but that doesn't mean you should forget about the satisfaction of sharing face-to-face. Coworking brings collaboration into your professional life; a local food co-op brings sharing into your pantry, and skill-sharing communities bring comraderie to your weekend hobbies.

Don't be afraid to let sharing/bartering/collaborating go viral in other areas of your life as well. You'll discover, as Rachel Botsman does in What's Mine is Yours, that "over time, these experiences create a deep shift in consumer mindset. Consumption is no longer an asymmetrical activity of endless acquisition but a dynamic push and pull of giving and collaborating in order to get what you want. Along the way, the acts of collaboration and giving become an end in itself."

GDP No Real Guide to Wealth or Welfare

Reposted in full from The Australian, 31 March 2011

'After the tsunami slammed the Japanese coast, economists rushed to update their forecasts for Japan's GDP. A major investment bank cut its 2011 growth rate from 1.5 per cent to 1.4 per cent, but ratcheted up its 2012 forecast from 2.1 per cent to 2.5 per cent.

If that forecast turns out to be correct, by 2012 Japan's economy will be bigger than it would have been without the disaster. Sure, the tsunami would retard factory output in the short-term owing to power shortages and crippled infrastructure, but vast rebuilding efforts would stimulate demand for machines and workers, wrenching Japan from its economic slump.

Australia's floods and New Zealand's earthquake have prompted similar expectations.

If disasters like these spur the economy, why not have a more systematic program of destruction, without the human cost? One day each year could be set aside for GDP Day. With citizens out of harm's way, local governments could carefully blow up a bridge or flatten a building. Families could break a household appliance.

GDP Day would create jobs, bolster construction, and promote retail sales. Economic benefits seemingly abound.Clearly this is ridiculous. Yet attributing economic silver linings to disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes is no less so.

The confusion about what makes a country prosper arises from our fixation with GDP, which is a misleading metric of economic performance.

GDP is the estimated total value of final expenditures in a given period. It is gross because it takes no account of depreciation of machines and infrastructure. If a country suddenly loses $200 billion worth of public goods in a day or two, as the Japanese painfully have, GDP is not reduced. The loss of wealth is ignored, but the cost of reconstruction boosts GDP.

Moreover, because GDP adds up the values of expenditures without considering their rationale, it encourages belief in the broken window fallacy - that destruction of goods can stimulate commerce.

As Frederic Bastiat pointed out in the mid 19th century, smashed windows might be good news for glaziers, but they are bad news for the window's owner and everyone else. The owner could have spent his money on a new suit, invested the money in his own businesses, or put it in a bank for another business to use. Likewise, businesses in Japan, Australia and New Zealand that benefit from reconstruction are absorbing funds that would have been directed elsewhere.

Followers of GDP are often considered to be hard-headed free-marketeers, derisive of soppy happiness indices and the like. Yet the national accounts, from which GDP is calculated, were developed to facilitate government control of the economy.

The world wars, the growing welfare state and the arrival of Keynesian economics massively expanded the size and scope of government in the early to mid 20th century. Governments craved a statistical dashboard that they believed would enable them to manage and monitor their economies.

The intellectual justification for government intervention in the economy waned in the 1980s, but the system of national accounts has thrived as a source for economic commentators.

Perhaps its popularity should be no surprise. GDP provides a free, quick and simplistic summary of economic performance. Thousands of bureaucrats, academic researchers and economists rely on it to sustain their jobs.

GDP is not only causing smart people to misdiagnose the economic impact of disasters and fanning fallacies. It has become so entrenched as barometer of growth that policy is being judged not by its effect on prosperity but its ability to boost GDP.

Take the Building the Education Revolution . This entailed borrowing about $16bn and building school halls no-one had asked for in a short space of time. A wasteful use of money, but it increased the almighty GDP.'

What's Happiness Got to Do With It?

Reposted from Sustainable Seattle, February 2011

'

Sustainability is a big word. At its core, it’s about people. It’s about whether you and I and our grandchildren’s grandchildren will be able to live on this planet and enjoy life now and forever.

We often confuse sustainability with the environmental movement. We say it’s all about preserving a tract of land or restoring habitat for another species. Or we say it’s all about local economies and local food systems. Or we say it’s all about human rights and fair labor. Really, its all about all of this. It’s about everything. That’s because we need a healthy just and equitable environment, society and economy. We need it all now and forever so we can live – and enjoy life.

So what’s happiness got to do with it? Happiness is just a word, right? Just a feeling. No, it’s not. At least not when we are talking about sustainability, and sustainability indicators. And it’s with the indicators that we get somewhere. That’s because no matter who or where you are, you get what you measure. In other words, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Sustainable Seattle was the first to create a set of regional sustainability measures – or indicators. These indicators inherently asked people to make decisions and take actions so the measurements would change. Hundreds of cities and regions followed suit, and the field of sustainability indicators was born.

But before Sustainable Seattle came along, the country of Bhutan started measuring happiness. They decided to do this instead of measuring gross national product. Now, they included a measure much like GNP in measuring happiness, but they say GNP as just one part of happiness. They decided the happiness of their country was based on 9 domains. These domains are:

Psychological Well-Being: Assesses the degree of satisfaction and optimism in individual life. The indicators analyze self-esteem, sense of competence, stress, spiritual activities and prevalence of positive and negative emotions.

Health: Measures the effectiveness of health policies, with criteria such as self-rated health, disability, patterns of risk behavior, exercise, sleep, nutrition, etc.

Time Balance: The use of time is one of the most significant factors in quality of life, especially time for recreation and socializing with family and friends. A balanced management of time is evaluated, including time spent in traffic jams, at work, in educational activities, etc.

Community Vitality: Focuses on relationships and interactions in communities. Examines the level of confidence, the sense of belonging, the vitality of affectionate relationships, safety at home and in the community, and the practice of giving and volunteering.

Education: Takes into account several factors such as participation in formal and informal education, development of skills and capabilities, involvement in children’s education, values education, environmental education, etc.

Cultural Vitality: Evaluates local traditions, festival, core values, participation in cultural events, opportunities to develop artistic skills and discrimination due to religion, race or gender.

Environmental Quality: Measures the perception of citizens about the quality of their water, air, soil, forest cover, biodiversity, etc. The indicators include access to green areas, system of waste management, etc.

Governance: Assesses how the population views the government, the media, the judiciary, the electoral system, and the police, in terms of responsibility, honesty and transparency. It also measures involvement of citizens in community decisions and political processes.

Material Well-Being: Evaluates individual and family income, financial security, the level of debt, employment security, the quality of housing, etc.

Measuring these nine domains means we make decisions and take actions to improve them. It means we care about our psychological health as much as our economy; about our culture as much as our environment; our community as much as our government. It means we see our own happiness as inextricably tied to our community, environment, and economy. It means happiness is sustainability.'

Growing Concerns as Food Imports Soar

Reposted in full from The Australian, 18 March 2011

'Australia now imports more than a third of its fruit supply and almost 20 per cent of its vegetables, amid warnings of increasing threats to future food supply from population and land-use pressures.

The proportion of imports has alarmed some Australian growers, who yesterday released a report into food security issues and called for a return to 1970s-level funding of agricultural research and development.

Growcom chief executive Alex Livingstone said Australians should snap out of their "complacency", warning that food imports could be threatened by the burgeoning world population - tipped to grow to nine billion by 2050.

He said although exports remained high - about 60 per cent of production - the figures were skewed by Australia's high exports of meats and grains.

"There is also a need to look at how much of the food we eat is imported and consider whether in future imported products will continue to be cheap or even available in the face of forecast burgeoning world populations," Mr Livingstone said.The Gillard government was planning to release an issues paper on the development of the National Food Plan "in the near future", Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig said recently.

Senator Ludwig said he was still assessing the call for increased research funds, given a Productivity Commission recommendation to halve funding over the coming decade, and emphasised imports were largely highly processed foods, beverages and processed fruit and vegetables.

The Food Security Report, released by Growcom in Brisbane yesterday, found increasing population, urbanisation, land and water degradation, speculative trading of commodities, the clash of resources and agriculture and the growing demand for high-protein foods in developing countries could all contribute to a reduction in future food security.

The report highlighted the anticipated squeeze on horticultural farming land close to Sydney, and Melbourne and in southeast Queensland.

Imports of fruit and vegetables, mostly processed, have steadily increased while the fresh-produce balance of trade is diminishing. Much of the imported produce is seasonal, but also includes cheaper tinned products from Asia or Italy.'

On the Origin of Corporations: From Privateers to Profiteers

'As with the buccaneers and privateers of days past, Wall Street’s major players find it more profitable to expropriate the wealth of others than to find honest jobs producing goods and services beneficial to their communities.'

Reposted in full from YES! Magazine, 7 March 2011

'Like many Americans, I grew up believing that conservative values were about local control and personal responsibility for family, community, and nature. It seemed curious to me that the political alliance that drove a rollback of the Roosevelt-era policies that created the American middle class called itself conservative and dismissed its liberal opponents as un-American.

Eventually, however, I discovered that the term conservative harkens back to a day when conservatives were monarchists who considered democracy a threat to social order and the seas were ruled by buccaneers and privateers. That was a clarifying moment.

Buccaneer is a colorful name for the pirates of old who pursued personal fortune with rules of their own making. They were, in their time, an iconic expression of “free market” capitalism.

Privateers were buccaneers to whom a king granted legal immunity and safe harbor in return for a share of the booty. Their charge was to extract physical wealth from foreign lands and peoples by whatever means—including the execution of rulers and the slaughter and enslavement of native inhabitants.

Hernán Cortés claimed the Mexican empire of Montezuma for Spain. Hernando de Soto made his initial mark trading slaves in Central America and later allied with Francisco Pizarro to take control of the Inca empire based in Peru.

Some privateers operated powerful naval forces. In 1671, Sir Henry Morgan (yes, appreciative British kings granted favored privateers with titles of nobility in recognition of their service) launched an assault on Panama City with thirty-six ships and nearly two thousand brigands, defeating a large Spanish force and looting the city as it burned to the ground.

Eventually, the ruling monarchs turned from swashbuckling adventurers and chartered pirates to chartered corporations as their favored instruments of colonial expansion, administration, and pillage. The sale of public shares enabled a single firm to amass virtually unlimited financial capital and assured the continuity of the enterprise beyond the death of its founders. Limited liability absolved the owners of personal liability for the firm’s losses or misdeeds.

Corporations chartered by the British Crown established several of the earliest colonial settlements in what later became the United States and populated them with bonded laborers—many involuntarily transported from England—to work their properties. The importation of slaves from Africa followed.

The East India Company (chartered in 1600) was the primary instrument of Britain’s colonization of India, a country the company ruled until 1784 much as if it were a private estate. In the early 1800s, the East India Company established a thriving business exporting tea from China, paying for its purchases with illegal opium.

The Dutch East India Company (chartered in 1602) established its sovereignty over what is now Indonesia and reduced the local people to poverty by displacing them from their lands to grow spices for sale in Europe.

It is no exaggeration to characterize these forerunners of contemporary publicly traded limited liability corporations as, in effect, legally sanctioned and protected crime syndicates with private armies and navies backed by a mandate from their home governments to extort tribute, expropriate land and other wealth, monopolize markets, trade slaves, deal drugs, and profit from financial scams.

Wall Street hedge fund managers, day traders, currency traders, and other unlicensed phantom-wealth speculators are the independent, unlicensed buccaneers of our day. Wall Street banks are modern day commissioned privateers who ply a similar trade with state backing and safe harbor. The economy is their ocean. Publicly traded corporations serve as their favored vessels of plunder, financial leverage is their favored weapon, and the state is their servant-guardian.

As with the buccaneers and privateers of days past, Wall Street’s major players find it more profitable to expropriate the wealth of others than to find honest jobs producing goods and services beneficial to their communities. They walk away with their fees, commissions, and bonus packages and leave it to others to pick up the costs of federal bailouts, gyrating economic cycles, collapsing environmental systems, broken families, shattered communities, and the export of jobs along with the manufacturing, technology, and research capacities that go with them.

They seek self-enrichment by plundering wealth they had no part in creating, enjoy substantial legal immunity, and acknowledge no duty or accountability other than to themselves. Legal or not, taking the property of another through deception, fraud, and expropriation is theft. Only tyrannies guarantee the liberty of the few to plunder the wealth of the many.'

Wicked Problems And How To Stop Them Turning Horrid

Reposted in full from OnLine Opinion, 17 March 2011

'Climate change and global warming are what are known in policy circles as 'wicked problems'. Because of their complexity, 'wicked problems' are unlike problems policy makers are used to dealing with. By way of contrast, eradicating smallpox was a simple problem because once an antidote was discovered, a public immunisation program resolved the issue.

Wicked problems or complex problems are much more difficult to tackle. They often have many causes, many interests are involved, they often require social change and are unlikely to have a final or definitive solution. In addition, it is recognised any 'solution' to a wicked problem will have unknown consequences. This daunting list of characteristics of wicked problems – such as climate change and there are many others – raises the obvious question of what to do, since by their very nature wicked problems defy resolution and old methods and approaches are not appropriate.

Valerie Brown, an Emeritus Professor at University of Western Sydney, has developed an approach to tackling wicked problems, focussed on collaboration. Professor Brown argues that each of the different interests affected by and implicated in a 'wicked problem' have their own kind of knowledge. Brown has identified five different kinds of knowledges or disciplines in her work on the Murray-Darling Basin.

These are: individual knowledge, local knowledge, specialist knowledge, strategic knowledge and holistic knowledge.

Brown argues that all these different knowledges need to be brought to bear on the problem in a collaborative enterprise she terms 'the trans-disciplinary imagination'.

Professor Brown is aware that more typically these different kinds of knowledge compete with each other, talk past each other or dismiss each other. We are all familiar with the disparaging critiques of each form of knowledge: individual knowledge is often dismissed as biased; local knowledge as anecdotal; specialist knowledge as jargon; strategic knowledge as self-serving and holistic knowledge as airy-fairy.

The challenge is to orchestrate the different knowledges into a common goal or outcome. Not an easy task, but a necessary one, according to Professor Brown if we are to make any headway on wicked problems. The take-home message is that we have to learn to collaborate with each other and with other interests and knowledges if we are to survive.

This is a profound cultural shift since we have long been taught that competition breeds success, and that we live in a dog-eat-dog world of survival of the fittest. Knowledge production is itself a competitive business. Specialist or expert knowledge has always been at the top of the knowledge tree and thought of as superior to other forms of knowledge. Experts have to fight to become experts (becoming an academic is no push over these days) and so are unlikely to relinquish their status easily. The point is, expert knowledge is still important and necessary, but it's no longer the only or the ultimate form of knowledge helpful to humankind, if it ever was.

Professor Brown's concept of an 'ecology of practice' – different kinds of knowledges working collaboratively towards some kind of accord – is exciting because it provides a legitimate space and role for other kinds of knowledge besides expert knowledge. Local knowledge is important and legitimate, and individual experience and knowledge is too. Holistic knowledge can help keep sight of the bigger questions and issues of how we are going to live and what sort of world we want. The trans-disciplinary imagination is a more genuinely democratic process and procedure than one where experts dispense and impose knowledge on to those with different kinds of knowledge and attachments to the issue. As well as being unequal and hierarchical, in the expert-led arrangement, one party is active and the other parties passive.

Professor Brown's 'trans-disciplinary imagination' which has arisen from her practical work in a number of contexts, has a parallel in the 'collective impact' movement, recently reported on by David Bornstein in the New York Times. 'Collective impact' is really another term for multi-disciplinary collaboration across a range of organisations to address a social problem, such as improving education, rather than tackling it piecemeal. Once we recognise a problem as complex or 'wicked', innovative and daring approaches are needed, if only because technical or expert solutions are ineffectual on their own.

In Professor Brown's schema, all interests concerned with and affected by a wicked problem are co-creating and engaged in working towards an accord, which is as it should be, since all of us have a stake in making sure our world is habitable, sustainable and flourishing.

If we are to make any headway on climate change and have the whole of society engaged, perhaps we need multi-knowledge climate change committees, rather than a multi-party climate change committee and committees of climate change experts.'

Playspent: Understanding the Economics of Poverty

Sourced from Sociological Images, 26 February 2011

'Dolores R., Kelly, and Elyse all sent links to a new website, PlaySpent, designed to help people understand the challenges and trade-offs faced by low-income people with insecure employment. The “game” begins when you’ve been unemployed, have only $1,000 left in your bank account, and need to get a low wage job...

...The site would be an excellent internet field trip for students in sociology classes or anyone who wants to better understand the many trade-offs that poor people are forced to make and the difficulty in making ends meet when you’re part of the working poor.'

Five Things Every Mayor Should Know Before Starting A Bike-Sharing Program

Reposted in full from Shareable, 15 February 2011

'Bike-sharing is a two-wheeled transit service — call it bike transit — which started in 1965 in Amsterdam and has since spread to nearly 250 communities around the world. The service allows individuals to rent a bike from one of many unattended stations, or docking points, and return it to any station. Before implementing a bike-sharing service, it’s important for public officials and staff to consider the following:

1) Be a bike-friendly community first.

Your community should be bike-friendly first with a dense network of bike facilities such as cycle tracks, bike lanes, and trails. This network of bike facilities will enable bicycle riders and your future bike-sharing customers to easily and safely travel through your community by bike. The League of American Bicyclists’ Bicycle Friendly America Yearbook offers examples of what other communities have done to become bike-friendly. Communities with bike-sharing services also have high Bicycle Friendly Community ratings and include: Arlington, VA (silver), Washington, D.C. (bronze), Minneapolis (silver), and Denver (bronze). Before implementing a bike-sharing service, a community should be at least a bronze-level Bicycle Friendly Community.

2) Bike-sharing is not cheap, so secure sufficient funding.

By implementing a bike-sharing service, you’re launching a new transit service. It may be less expensive to purchase and operate than a bus or rail service, but sufficient funding is required to make it successful. While the types of bike-sharing systems vary, costs can be up to $5,000 per bike for capital, and operating expenses can range from $100-200 per bike per year. A service with a couple hundred — or thousand — bikes is pricey. However, while implementing a service is not cheap, bike-sharing can be a cost-effective public transportation option.

3) Size and density matter.

A bus service with a solitary bus or just a couple of stops will only be accessible to a limited number of people — those living, working, or playing near the stops. The same can be said for bike-sharing, as the greater the number of bikes and the wider the network of stations translates into a more successful service. Station density should be such that a customer can find a station every couple of blocks. In fact, a bike-sharing service’s usefulness will increase exponentially with each additional station, as each station expands the reach of your service by better connecting places into this new transit system.

4) Build public-private partnerships.

Bike-sharing lends itself to public-private partnerships. Private organizations can assist the implementing agency by sponsoring the service or purchasing a station for outside their worksite. They also find bike-sharing good for providing their employees a healthy commuting option, making their location more accessible to customers, being environmentally friendly, and promoting a green service. The public benefits by having some of the costs of buying and operating a service covered by private organizations. Whether the implementing agency is a local government or non-profit, both have successfully taken advantage of sponsorship to help expand their service’s reach. Barclays Bank sponsored Barclays Cycle Hire in London to the tune of $40 million; BlueCross BlueShield of Minnesota sponsored Nice Ride Minnesota in Minneapolis with $1.75 million and has offered up to a $1.5 million match for expansion of the service. For bike-sharing implementers, private engagement can expand a service in a cost-efficient way — creating a win-win for both parties.

5) Don’t do it alone, work regionally.

Bike-sharing can produce the greatest benefits when done regionally, which is why the Paris and Washington, D.C. areas have regional services. For commuting trips, bike-sharing is ideal for the first-mile/last-mile challenge of getting folks to and from longer haul transit services. Implementing a service takes a lot of work, but sharing the workload, and expenses among multiple jurisdictions is a great deal. Additionally, it’s important that jurisdictions within a region have the same, compatible service, so riding from one jurisdiction to another is smooth and makes for a pleasant customer experience.

With the number of bike-sharing services in the U.S. and worldwide rapidly increasing each year, bike-sharing has proven effective at serving the public well for short urban trips, as well as complementing other modes of transit. However, like any other transit mode, there are pitfalls — both shared with other transit modes and unique to bike-sharing — which should be avoided to ensure a successful, well-used service. Following this advice will get your jurisdiction rolling in the right direction.'