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The reward for a lifetime of work, retirement is not always what it’s cracked up to be. Once the initial wave of freedom has been ridden, some retirees feel bored, restless, or even worthless as they have no place to go and a dwindling social circle. The Men’s Shed movement disrupts this pattern for men. Created in Australia in the mid-1990s, Men’s Sheds are gathering places for men to work on projects, socialize, support each other, do community service and more.
On Friday, 140 San Franciscans gathered to brainstorm affordable housing solutions at Hack the Housing Crisis, a one-day event hosted by the San Francisco Public Press and Shareable. The gathering of housing professionals, public officials, attorneys, activists and citizens challenged common assumptions about housing, connected people and organizations, and brought innovative solutions to the table.
Something extraordinary is happening on Chicago’s West Side. CivicLab, a coworking space dedicated to collaboration, education and innovation for civic engagement, is building community around citizen participation in government. Featuring a number of social change, policy and organizing projects, CivicLab also builds and deploys tools for government accountability and civic involvement.
On May 13-14, Transition US staff participated in the first annual SHARE Conference, joining 500+ entrepreneurs, investors, techies, government officials, and nonprofit leaders. SHARE, which took place in San Francisco was dedicated to exploring the sharing economy, and highlighted both the innovation and challenges within this field.
OuiShare Fest 2014 brought together 1,000 sharers from 31 countries under the big tent of the Cabaret Sauvage in Paris. On May 5, 6, and 7, we met in the middle of Parc de la Villette, by the scenic Ourcq Canal.
With panel discussions on “the monetization of everything”, “dismantling global finance”, “beyond Bitcoin”, “a critique of crowdfunding” and “designing alternatives”, the organizers of the conference set the tone right: in a world dominated by finance, a thoroughly indebted world in which money has effectively assumed the function of a universal signifier under which all aspects of social and natural life are rapidly becoming subsumed, we desperately need to start exploring radical alternatives to the capitalist money-form — not because alternative currencies are somehow a panacea, but because the state and the banks clearly aren’t going to do it for us. Despite major technological advances made in recent years, right-libertarian innovations like Bitcoin just won’t cut it. And so there is an urgent need to dissect, discuss and discover new ways of valuing work, time, nature, community and the fruits of our collective labor.
For people who care about socially engaged, commons-minded tech innovation, there are few institutions in the world as bold and courageous as Medialab Prado, in Madrid. For the past 10 years, it has been a technology lab, an interdisciplinary forum, a space that welcomes public participation, a hub for citizen activism, and a host of provocative workshops and conferences. And, yes, the Medialab Prado has also been deeply engaged with the commons paradigm as an important way of shaping a better, more socially constructive future.
This article is a selection from On the Commons' new e-book, Sharing Revolution: The essential economics of the commons, which highlights how the commons amplifies the burgeoning economic revolution now widely known as the sharing economy. Click here to download your free copy.
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When public dollars fund a project, shouldn’t the public then have access it? It seems like a no-brainer, yet this is oftentimes not the case as data, educational tools, media and more get squirreled away in the caverns of bureaucracy or, worse yet, sold back to a public that has already paid for the resource.
If the sharing economy movement is to play a role in shifting society away from the dominant economic paradigm, it will have to get political. And this means guarding against the co-optation of sharing by the corporate sector, while joining forces with a much larger body of activists that have long been calling - either explicitly or implicitly - for more transformative and fundamental forms of economic sharing across the world.
Mayor Park (directly in front of the sculpture) and Seoul citizens hear the call for a sharing city. Citizens the world over are rallying around the sharing economy as a solution to the pressing challenges they face. Cities, which are perfectly positioned to enact big changes on a human scale, have the potential to lead this movement.
Ever wish you could live at your CSA? Or move to a neighborhood where everyone is as excited about fresh, healthy food as you are?
Sharing has taken root and the #SharingSpring is in bloom. Around the world, people who understand the transformational power of sharing are gathering to collaborate, participate, rethink, swap, celebrate and create. Inspired by the Occupy movement, Arab Spring and M15, the #SharingSpring is about ordinary people gathering to create solutions to pressing issues in their communities.
Robust participation in a sharing economy requires connection—to share, people must be able to interact with one another to identify resources and ways to move goods and services.
Ah, tax season—that time of year when we dig out boxes of receipts, add up business mileage and, if we’re active in the sharing economy, wonder how on earth to handle taxes when it comes to room rentals, rideshares, crowdfunding donations and all that other good sharing stuff. In several aspects of the sharing economy, legislation lags behind what’s happening on the streets, in our neighborhoods, and in our homes, as we trying to apply dated rules to a new economy. Taxes are no different.
In this interview, Neal Gorenflo (founder, Shareable), Michel Bauwens (founder, P2P Foundation), and John Restakis(author, “Humanizing the Economy”) speak with Enric Duran. Duran is a Catalan anti-capitalist activist, perhaps best known for his well-publicized act of “financial civil disobedience” announced on September 17, 2008, in which he described his having attained roughly half a million Euros in bank loans and subsequently distributing these funds to support anti-capitalist activist movements. As it was never his intention to pay these debts but instead to stir debate about the unfair legal advantages afforded to the powerful financial elite, he was soon labeled “Robin Banks”, and faced with a lengthy prison sentence.
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Scoop.it!
