Already awesome when I met her at last year’s OuiShare Fest –as the founder of Zipcar, which revolutionized the way we conceive of and achieve mobility for city-dwellers, and then Veniam, the technology behind a massive ‘network of moving things’ that can connect any vehicle, like a city bus or a garbage truck, to the internet,… Read More One I Watch: Robin Chase
…there were certain benefits to organizing as a cooperative. The Spanish government normally exacts a hefty self-employment tax for independent workers—on the order of about $315 per month, plus a percentage of income—but if one can claim one’s work as taking place within a cooperative, the tax doesn’t apply. Amid the cascading crisis, people were… Read More One I Watch: Spain’s Robin Hood, Enric Duran
My favorite bit: We need to think bigger. Poo envisions a network she calls the “Care Grid,” a metaphor drawn from transformative infrastructure projects like the interstate highway system. The grid would unite “public, private and non-profit resources” to build “a comprehensive coordinated system in which elders can age with dignity and their caregivers, both… Read More Another review of The Age of Dignity in In These Times
When Annie Leonard and I were working on the Story of Stuff book, we had an insight that Annie is actually not “anti-stuff”at all– she is actually devotional about stuff: choosy about which stuff to bring into her life, appreciative of the resources and craft or skill that birthed the stuff, and dedicated enough to… Read More Stuff with Stories
By Adam Parsons on open democracy.net The business community may be enthusing about the immense market size and profitability of the big corporate players that espouse sharing as part of their brand identity, but not everyone is convinced that the sharing economy is living up to its visionary rhetoric and aspirations. Far from promoting communitarian values, providing… Read More Nuanced examination of Sharing
On the fight for the soul of the “sharing economy”…
READ the full piece from Share the World’s Resources HERE. Some of my favorite bits, below: Many “see the sharing economy as a path towards achieving widespread prosperity within the earth’s natural limits, and an essential first step on the road to more localised economies and egalitarian societies. But far from everyone perceives that participating in… Read More *Excellent* analysis of the Sharing Economy
On the potential for the sharing movement– a collaborative model of economics and politics– to transform how we treat each other.
The Peer Economy Will Transform Work, by Denise Cheng in the Harvard Business Review Part of a longer, much-needed conversation about making sure micro-entrepreneurship inside the Sharing Economy (or Peer Economy, or Collaborative Economy– we really must settle on a name!) works for workers. Part of the discussion about the Future of Work, a conversation… Read More Labor Issues in the Sharing Economy
From SWITZERLAND’S PROPOSAL TO PAY PEOPLE FOR BEING ALIVE by Annie Lowrey, Nov. 12, 2013 … certain wonks on the libertarian right and liberal left have come to a strange convergence around the idea — some prefer an unconditional “basic” income that would go out to everyone, no strings attached; others a means-tested “minimum” income… Read More Paying People for Being Alive
