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Jukka Peltokoski

Book of the Day: Funding an Economy of Civic Spaces in the Cooperative City through Com... - 0 views

blog.p2pfoundation.net/...27

kuntapolitiikka kapinakunta jukkap2p finance kapinakaupunki kansalaisyhteiskunta funding rahoitus municipalism yhteisötalous Cooperative City

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 20 Aug 17 - No Cached
  • Funding the Cooperative City focuses on the post-welfare transition of today’s European societies: with austerity measures and the financialisation of real estate stocks and urban services, the gradual withdrawal of the state and municipal administrations from providing certain facilities and maintaining certain spaces have prompted citizen initiatives and professional groups to organise their own services and venues.
  • The self-organisation of new spaces of work, culture and social welfare was made possible by various socio-economic circumstances: unemployment, solidarity networks, changing real estate prices and ownership patters created opportunities for stepping out of the regular dynamisms of real estate development.
  • cooperative ownership
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • new types of investors, operating along principles of ethics or sustainability, or working on moving properties off the market.
  • inventing new ways to enable, finance and govern community-run spaces.
  • European municipalities responded to this challenge in a variety of ways.
  • The question if community capital can really cure the voids left behind by the welfare state has generated fierce debates in the past years.
  • crowdfunded urban infrastructures.
  • in the course of the economic crisis, many European cities witnessed the emergence of a parallel welfare infrastructure:
  • This collection brings together protagonists from various cities to help shaping a new European culture of urban development based on community-driven initiatives, civic economic models and cooperative ownership
  • participatory budgeting,
  • crowdfunding
  • community organisations
  • invest
  • pre-financed
  • some cities chose to support local economy and create more resilient neighbourhoods with self-sustaining social services through grant systems
  • priority neighbourhoods
  • The granted projects, chosen through an open call, have to prove their economic sustainability and have to spend the full amount in one year.
  • the public sector plays an important role in strengthening civil society in some European cities, many others witnessed the emergence of new welfare services provided by the civic economy completely outside or without any help by the public sector
  • n some occasions, community contribution appears in the form of philanthropist donation to support the construction, renovation or acquisition of playgrounds, parks, stores, pubs or community spaces. In others, community members act as creditors or investors in an initiative that needs capital, in exchange for interest, shares or the community ownership of local assets
  • Besides aggregating resources from individuals to support particular cases, community infrastructure projects are also helped by ethical investors.
  • Creating community ownership over local assets and keeping profits benefit local residents and services is a crucial component of resilient neighbourhoods.
  • complementary currencies
  • The fact that many of the hundreds of projects supported by civic crowdfunding platforms are community spaces, underlines two phenomena: the void left behind by a state that gradually withdrew from certain community services, and the urban impact of community capital created through the aggregation of individual resources.
Jukka Peltokoski

Fearless Cities: the new urban movements | Red Pepper - 0 views

www.redpepper.org.uk/cities-the-new-urban-movements

city kaupunki kapinakaupunki Fearless Cities jukkap2p vasemmisto kunta kuntapolitiikka yhteisötalous commons

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 25 Aug 17 - No Cached
  • ‘Fearless Cities’, a gathering of over 700 people, representing dozens of experiments in taking power at city level, to empower citizens’ movements worldwide. More than a coming together of a series of local experiments, it marked the ‘coming out’ party for a new global social movement.
  • A wave of new municipalist movements has been experimenting with how to take – and transform – power in cities large and small.
  • it became necessary to change who the movement made demands of.
  • ...33 more annotations...
  • the housing rights activist and feminist Ada Colau – took control of the Catalan capital
  • citizens started to wonder what would happen if the movement tried to occupy the institutions too
  • From the beginning, this was not a simple return to electoral politics but an experiment in transforming local institutions. It was to use municipal institutions not instead of movement organising but to support, expand and generalise the movement.
  • it’s about the blossoming of examples around the world where citizens are successfully winning their cities.
  • internationalist
  • the list of radical civic platforms standing up to entrenched political interests continues to grow.
  • there are a number of principles and practices that the new municipalist movements share
  • The political theorist Margaret Kohn once defined municipalism as ‘a politics of everyday life concerned with the issues that immediately affect citizens, including education, policing, jobs, culture and services. Municipalism is a political approach to community.’
  • The role of the municipality was to foster associations that challenge concentrations of power in the hands of a small elite. Capturing the city hall was never an end in itself but rather one method in expanding the scope of experiments in popular participation.
  • the continued erosion of basic living standards and increasing inequality driven by the myth that there is ‘no alternative’ has increased awareness that revolutionary change extends beyond ‘economics’ to every aspect of our lived experiences.
  • the new municipal citizens’ movements have arisen out of the failure of national political parties or street-based organising to deliver transformative change
  • This new municipalism may be picking-up where the alter-globalisation movement left off, retaining and reinvigorating the concepts of prefiguration, experimenting with ‘diagonal’ methods for dispersing power, and fuelling the expansion of non‑state, non-market ways of organising our societies.
  • This provides fertile ground for the development of a progressive post-capitalist politics that can win.
  • Women are at the forefront of many of these citizens’ movements
  • The feminisation of politics means encouraging a political style that openly expresses doubts and contradictions – backed by a values-based politics that emphasizes the role of community and ‘the commons’.
  • open spirit is at the centre of the new political culture
  • The commons is much broader than an economic strategy for resource management; it’s about building forms of autonomy and social solidarity as the substance of our day-to-day lives.
  • the Commons Lab
  • Department of the Commons
  • These are not occupied but liberated spaces.
  • social centres
  • ‘citizen patrimony’, which would formalise and expand a network of spaces across the city where the municipality provides greater resources and public infrastructure for self-managed common use.
  • The collaboration between citizens’ groups, cooperatives and municipalities is also at the heart of many of the attempts to return public services to public ownership.
  • There are many reasons why cities and regions want to take services back under public ownership, but reducing cost (especially for poor people), improving the quality of services, and increasing financial transparency are recurrent themes. Efforts to create better conditions for workers are another key driver. In the energy sector, which accounts for around a third of the cases where services have been returned to public ownership, the shift is often driven by efforts to tackle climate change.
  • Taking control of the energy supply also means that the council can better coordinate efforts to reduce energy use.
  • A number of French municipalities have taken back control of school meals from corporations to protect local agriculture and improve the quality of meals.
  • Increasing citizens’ control is not just about taking over existing institutions, but building new democratic processes that involve citizens in the day-to-day decision making of their cities.
  • it involves changing how citizens interact with the city government.
  • participatory budgeting
  • These municipalist projects are beginning to define new ways for progressive movements to organise, challenging and moving beyond dichotomies that have traditionally haunted the left.
  • The objective is to use municipal institutions as part of a project of autonomy – to expand the commons, to build non-state institutions and to empower citizens (not their representatives) to control the collective conditions in which they live their lives.
  • The new municipalism isn’t about winning elections; it’s about building, transforming and distributing power.
  • We must do it ourselves. It’s time to win back our cities.
Jukka Peltokoski

Incubator.coop: an Incubator for Platform Cooperatives | P2P Foundation - 0 views

blog.p2pfoundation.net/...13

Incubator.coop kiihdyttämö start up osuuskunta cooperative yhteiskunnallinenyritys rahoitus yhteisörahoitus Unioni alustaosuuskunta

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 13 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • 1. Conventional Incubators are not viable in themselves.  Instead they act as a business development tool for “side-car” investors trying to pick winners.  We think you need an incubator that exists to serve its incubatees.2. Conventional Incubators look for a 1-in-1000 unicorn to repay their many wrong bets.  We think you need an incubator that creates businesses of value that go the distance.3. Conventional Incubators looks for exceptional talent.  We think you need an incubator for collective endeavours4. Conventional Incubators function with a top-down approach.  We think you need an incubator that harnesses the wisdom of the crowd.5. Conventional Incubators promote returns for the 1%.  We think you need an incubator where 1 Member = 1 Vote6. Conventional Incubators run for 6-months.  We think you need an incubator that supports the whole period of development from formation through to operation.
  • We help any type of Cooperative to ‘Form, Organise, Fund and Operate‘.  The exciting areas of new CoOp formation include:– Community Owned Enterprises – anything from a pub to a post-office, school to satellite, house to hospital– Platform or Online CoOperatives – these are being created by online communities in place of Venture Capital backed 2-sided marketplaces
  • Collaborative ventures employ a variety of tools (web apps, social media, wikis etc.) and strategies (regular group meetings, webinars etc.) to make working as a group functional.There are some challenges with working as a group that aren’t solved by todays technology and they include1. Reaching a timely and productive consensus that in turn creates “collaboration paralysis“.  2. Groups try to be decentralised, but often most have a bottleneck around finance related decisions.3. Collectives need a way to track and incentivise efforts with non-financial and / or financial rewards and4. Groups need a way to create agreement contingent on future outcomes on the blockchain to improve trust within commerce
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  • The extent of the tools we can offer comes down to the success of this crowdfunding campaign.If we get the money to develop the technology, then projects going through incubation can offer supporters black chain agreements and in turn offer payment contingent of future events.  This is a big deal.
Jukka Peltokoski

Spain's Crisis is Europe's Opportunity by Yanis Varoufakis - Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...ty-by-yanis-varoufakis-2017-10

Katalonia municipalism munisipalismi Espanja jukkap2p Varoufakis talouskriisi eurooppa kaupunki EU kuntapolitiikka

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 28 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • The Catalonia crisis is a strong hint from history that Europe needs to develop a new type of sovereignty, one that strengthens cities and regions, dissolves national particularism, and upholds democratic norms.
  • Spanish state may be just what the doctor ordered. A constitutional crisis in a major European Union member state creates a golden opportunity to reconfigure the democratic governance of regional, national, and European institutions, thereby delivering a defensible, and thus sustainable, EU
  • Barcelona, Catalonia’s exquisite capital, is a rich city running a budget surplus. Yet many of its citizens recently faced eviction by Spanish banks that had been bailed out by their taxes. The result was the formation of a civic movement that in June 2015 succeeded in electing Ada Colau as Barcelona’s mayor.
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  • Among Colau’s commitments to the people of Barcelona was a local tax cut for small businesses and households, assistance to the poor, and the construction of housing for 15,000 refugees
  • All of this could be achieved while keeping the city’s books in the black, simply by reducing the municipal budget surplus.
  • Spain’s central government, citing the state’s obligations to the EU’s austerity directives, had enacted legislation effectively banning any municipality from reducing its surplus.
  • At the same time, the central government barred entry to the 15,000 refugees for whom Colau had built excellent housing facilities.
  • In any systemic crisis, the combination of austerity for the many, socialism for bankers, and strangulation of local democracy creates the hopelessness and discontent that are nationalism’s oxygen
  • To this day, the budget surplus prevails, the services and local tax cuts promised have not been delivered, and the social housing for refugees remains empty. The path from this sorry state of affairs to the reinvigoration of Catalan separatism could not be clearer.
  • Progressive, anti-nationalist Catalans, like Colau, find themselves squeezed from both sides: the state’s authoritarian establishment, which uses the EU’s directives as a cover for its behavior, and a renaissance of radical parochialism, isolationism, and atavistic nativism. Both reflect the failure to fulfill the promise of shared, pan-European prosperity.3
  • The duty of progressive Europeans is to reject both: the deep establishment at the EU level and the competing nationalisms ravaging solidarity and common sense in member states like Spain.
  • The EU treaties could be amended to enshrine the right of regional governments and city councils, like Catalonia’s and Barcelona’s, to fiscal autonomy and even to their own fiscal money
  • They could also be allowed to implement their own policies on refugees and migration.
  • EU could invoke a code of conduct for secession
  • As for the new state, it should be obligated to maintain at least the same level of fiscal transfers as before.
  • the new state should be prohibited from erecting new borders and be compelled to guarantee its residents the right to triple citizenship (new state, old state, and European).
  • Europe needs to develop a new type of sovereignty
Jukka Peltokoski

Barcelona embraces the Doughnut | DEAL - 0 views

doughnuteconomics.org/33

donitsitalous Barselona kaupunki Fearless Cities commons yhteisötalous

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 03 Aug 21 - No Cached
  • The City of Barcelona in Spain has announced that it is embracing the tools and concepts of Doughnut Economics to guide actions to address the climate emergency and the city's ecological transition.
  • Jukka Peltokoski on 03 Aug 21
     
    "The City of Barcelona in Spain has announced that it is embracing the tools and concepts of Doughnut Economics to guide actions to address the climate emergency and the city's ecological transition."
Jukka Peltokoski

From the theory of peer production to the production of peer production theor... - 0 views

peerproduction.net/...tion-of-peer-production-theory

commons.fi p2p commons commons-teoria kleiner benkler oekonux caffentzis commons-politiikka

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 15 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • The object of this article is to give an interpretation of the ideological positioning of various movements and intellectual groupings and individuals within the ‘left field’ of peer to peer theory production.
  • What we understand under the concept of “the Production of Peer Production Theory” are the various attempts to make sense of peer production, both in terms of its place in the current dominant economic system of capitalism, and in terms of its future potential.
  • 1. Yochai Benkler: peer production as an adjunct to the market
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  • we aim for a fair synthesis
  • Our main counter-argument is this: under capitalist conditions, peer production is not capable of self-reproduction and therefore not a full mode of production or value creation. We make an important distinction between the self-reproduction capability of a peer production project as a whole, and the social reproduction at the individual level. The reason is that there is no real universal possiblity for the reproduction of the human life of peer producers under capitalist conditions.
  • We would characterize Yochai Benkler’s vision as a reformist or meliorist approach, seeking to improve and balance some of the negative aspects of capitalism through increased peer production dynamics.
  • 2. Oekonux: free software as a germ form that is prefigurative of a peer production society
  • free software production is a full mode of production that is born within capitalism but destined to supersede it, based on a understanding of germ form theory.
  • The description of Meretz considers free software as a full mode of production, prefigurative of a wider transformation of the current capitalist mode of production.
  • We would characterize the main argument as stating that the deep lowering of transaction/coordination/communication costs, creates the possibility for a new mode of production next to the market and the firm, which produces value through ‘social allocation’.However, for Benkler, the new modality exists ‘in addition’ and in complementary with market dynamics.
  • On the collective level, we can see that peer production occurs when a pool of voluntary contributors can create commons-oriented value, under conditions of participatory governance, i.e. through the social, and not market or hierarchical, allocation of productive resources. This can occur on a collective level, but only if we abstract from the need for the social reproduction of the individuals who contribute.
  • there is no autonomous social reproduction within the commons itself
  • 3. Dmytri Kleiner’s Venture Communism
  • For Kleiner, peer production can only occur if commoners also own the common stock of production.
  • Kleiner proposes that peer producers would create common stock cooperatives, and use a specific licence, the Peer Production or Copyfarleft license, to protect their shared innovation commons from private appropriation by capitalist forces.
  • Like with the P2P Foundation’s approach, Kleiner also recognizes the continuation of the politics of class, as long as we live in a class-based society.
  • Our contrasting peer production IS a proto-mode of production, which means that indeed value is created in a radically different way in peer production, but that it’s lack of self-reproduction capabilities makes it dependent on capitalism.
  • Kleiner’s strategy is exactly what can make it independent and capable of self-reproduction since its combination with common-stock physical production entities, would guarantee the self-reproduction capability of individuals and collectives contributing to the commons.
  • creating a real counter-economy
  • 4. George Caffentzis and the Anti-capitalist commons
  • two kinds of commons, i.e. anti-capitalist commons which exist to produce value in a different way, and which function against capitalism, and commons which are used by capital for its own self-reproduction and act in favour of capitalism
  • Politically, pro-capitalist commons are represented by the neo-Hardinian school of Elinor Ostrom
  • while the basic premise of the existence of capitalism-compatible commons is correct, the making of a radical dichotomy, based on the necessity to struggle against capitalist commons, is absolutely counter-productive.
  • Our approach stresses that it is more productive to focus on the post-capitalist potentialities of peer production, and make them real and concrete, than to fight against commons that are compatible with capitalism.
  • it makes only sense to undertake efforts to make the commons more autonomous from profit-maximizing entities and the system as a whole. This can be done through strategies such as those proposed by Kleiner and the P2P Foundation.
  • In the interpretation of the P2P Foundation, social change occurs because proto-modes of production, which are initially embedded in a dominant economic system, and benefit that system, become gradually more efficient, and capable of self-reproduction, and therefore create the conditions for a phase transition to occur, in which the new emergent mode of production, achieves its independence over the formerly dominant model.
  • For the P2P Foundation, an integration needs to occur between the new prototype model, i.e. the field of peer production proper, as it emerges in multiple social fields and attempts to become more autonomous; the social mobilization of progressive social forces (i.e. politics and even ‘revolution’ are crucial remaining aspects of social evolution), and political/policy oriented movements that are capable of creating new institutions.
  • Politically, § we differ from the Benklerite approach because we believe peer production has the potential to succeed capitalism as the core value and organisational model of a post-capitalist society § we differ from Oekonux by stressing the lack of autonomy of peer production under current conditions § we differ from the Telekommunisten approach by stressing it a proto-mode of production § we differ from the Caffentzis approach by stressing a post-capitalist approach centered on the autonomy and self-reproduction needs of peer producers, rather than guided by a core hostility to capitalism
  • P2P Foundation also has an integrative and integral approach, this means that despite differences, we seek commonality around aspects of our friends and allies that we may differ from in other aspects.
  • § we agree with Benkler and similar approaches that peer production improves on the current conditions of capitalism, i.e. we generally support the spread of commons and p2p-oriented practices § we agree with Oekonux that peer production carries within itself the seeds of a post-capitalist value system § we agree with Kleiner’s proposal for a peer-based counter-economy § we agree with Caffentzis that we need a preferential treatment towards autonomous commons approaches that create a counter-logic within the present system
Jukka Peltokoski

Communisation theory and the question of fascism - Cherry Angioma | libcom.org - 0 views

libcom.org/...uestion-fascism-cherry-angioma

kommunisaatio kommunismi libcom fasismi antifasismi

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 29 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • A critical look at some assumptions of communisation theorists - considering that their often determinist historical predictions are not the only possible outcomes.
  • In the search for new road maps to navigate crisis and the possibilities of life beyond capitalism, the concept of ‘communisation’ has become an increasing focus of discussion.
  • The word itself has been around since the early days of the communist movement. The English utopian Goodwyn Barmby, credited with the being the first person to use the term communist in the English language, wrote a text as early as 1841 entitled ‘The Outlines of Communism, Associality and Communisation’
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  • The Barmbys’ use of the term to describe the process of the creation of a communist society is not a million miles away from its current usage, but it has acquired a more specific set of meanings since the early 1970s when elements of the French ‘ultra-left’ began deploying it as a way of critiquing traditional conceptions of revolution. Communism has often been conceived of by both Marxists and anarchists as a future state of society to be achieved in the distant future long after the messy business of revolution has been sorted out. For advocates of communisation on the other hand, capitalism can only be abolished by the immediate creation of different relations between people, such as the free distribution of goods and the creation of ‘communal, moneyless, profitless, Stateless, forms of life.
  • There is what might be termed a ‘voluntarist’ conception of communisation
  • It is voluntarist because there is an emphasis on people choosing to take sides and fleeing capitalist society
  • What I would term the ‘structuralist’ inflexion of communisation is particularly associated with the French language journal Theorie Communiste (TC). More recently its ideas have been elaborated and extended in discussions with like-minded groups including the English language Endnotes and the Swedish journal Riff Raff. Together these collectives have recently collaborated to produce ‘Sic – an international journal of communisation’ (issue number one was published in 2011). I term this approach as ‘structuralist’ because there is much more emphasis on how the possibility of communisation arises from the structural contradictions of a particular stage of capitalism.
  • Unfortunately the historic ultra left does not offer many useful tools for understanding fascism and similar movements. By the ‘ultra left’ I mean those currents that trace their origins to the various groups that broke with the mainstream Communist International in the 1920s, including the ‘council communists’ and ‘left communists’ in Germany, Italy and elsewhere. In the 1960s and 70s newer groups emerged that combined ideas from these currents with elements derived from the Situationist International, Socialisme ou Barbarie and others.
  • In response to the crisis of profitability in the 1970s, capitalism has restructured itself. The old notion of a ‘job for life’ has been scrapped. For many, access to a ‘living wage’ is sporadic and precarious.
  • In shifting the focus from communism as a distant future ideal state to immediate practical activity, the notion of communisation can help us to think about what could happen in the event of such a scenario.
  • The problem with much communisation theory though is that it often seems to assume that under pressure of events, large scale efforts at communisation are inevitable even if their success is not guaranteed.
  • Communisation must remain a hypothesis, but surely so must the possibility of other outcomes in the heat of crisis – including a rise in populist nationalism, racism and/or religious fundamentalism, incorporating elements of a reactionary ‘anti-capitalism’.
  • Communisation resulting in a classless society is only one of the possibilities on the horizon, and those who advocate it need to reflect more on some of the other potential outcomes and how to avoid them.
  • At the heart of this contradiction is the fact that capitalism is increasingly unable to guarantee social reproduction, unlike in the past when it largely did so through the wage.
  • Interestingly it was in this very milieu that the current notion of communisation first emerged: ‘It is not sure who first used the word… To the best of our knowledge, it was Dominique Blanc: orally in the years 1972-74… Whoever coined the word, the idea was being circulated at the time in the small milieu round the bookshop La Vieille Taupe (‘Old Mole”, 1965-72). Since the May 68 events, the bookseller, Pierre Guillaume, ex-Socialisme ou Barbarie and ex-Pouvoir Ouvrier member, but also for a while close to G. Debord (who himself was a member of S. ou B. in 1960-61), had been consistently putting forward the idea of revolution as a communising process’
  • The strength of the historic ultra-left in all its forms has been its refusal to support capitalist currents of any kind – no ‘critical support’ for social democratic politicians , no defending Stalinist police states, no cheerleading for national liberation dictatorships in waiting. It has correctly argued that misery, exploitation and war continue under the guise of ‘socialism’, anti-fascism and democracy as well under fascism and military rule.
  • There is though a permanent danger with this position of seeing all forms of capitalist rule as identical, and of misunderstanding everything that happens under capitalism as simply determined by the logic of accumulation without reference to any other historical or political factors.
  • the issue isn’t just how the state and capital might respond under threat, but how the very dynamic of social antagonism and crisis might give rise to fascism or some 21st century version from below. If it is true that capitalism’s inability to guarantee social reproduction can only prompt various kinds of collective attempts to secure a life worth living, there is no immediate reason why these attempts should take an expansive, internationalist direction. The historical experience would suggest that it is just likely that many people could fall back on some kind of limited national, religious, racial or extended family/clan identity and seek to secure the survival and reproduction of their self-defined group – if necessary at the expense of others.
  • One possible outcome of crisis is a kind of plunder-state in which capital effectively throws one part of the population to the wolves to ensure its survival, suspending the normal rules of property to enable the looting of the resources and personal effects of marginalised communities.
  • many German people, including proletarians, were able to materially benefit from the plunder of the Jews and other minorities.
  • Another possibility is an extension beyond a state-managed plunder towards localised insurrectionary movements with a racist dimension.
  • If more modern revolutionary movements have generally avoided this, mass participation in ethnically-based massacres in the past 25 years in the ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda suggests that this is always a possibility.
  • Even a racialized partial communisation is conceivable, in which one part of the community establishes internal relations of equality and sharing of resources while simultaneously ‘ethnically cleansing’ people defined as outsiders. Such a vision is, for instance, promulgated by the thankfully marginal ‘National Anarchist’ scene with its call for racially pure village communities to replace capitalism and the state.
  • In 1960 the French Bordigist journal Programme Communiste published the notorious article ‘Auschwitz, or the Great Alibi’ which suggested that the mass murder of Jews was not the result of anti-Semitism but simply a moment in the eradication of the petit-bourgeoisie as a result of the ‘irresistible advance of the concentration of capital’.
  • It may be true that no localized racist or nationalist ‘anti-capitalism’ could create a lasting alternative to capitalism – social reproduction today cannot retreat from a global human society. Astarian is not alone among the pro-communisers in assuming that any such contradictions can only be temporary diversions on the road to a better future: ‘When the counterrevolutionary proletarian alternatives have demonstrated their ineffectiveness by failing to deliver the economic salvation of the proletariat, communisation will bring about the leap towards the non-economy’
  • But the last hundred years, and indeed much of human history, suggests that in times of crisis the road forward can be terminally blocked by desperate inter-communal violence and the spiral of massacres and reprisals – or when one group is particularly marginalized, massacres without even the fear of reprisals.
  • Countering this possibility does not mean signing up to some state/media/celebrity ‘anti fascist’ popular front, but it does mean being permanently aware of the potential for even apparently radical, insurgent movements to take a terrible direction. It also means challenging potential manifestations of this at every turn within the real movements around us, whether it be the emergence of nationalist anti-migrant sentiments in workplace struggles (e.g. ‘British jobs for British workers’) or rebranded anti-Semitic notions of saving the ‘real economy’ from ‘cosmopolitan’ money lenders (e.g. the dubious ‘moneyless’ notions of the ‘Zeitgeist Movement’ on the fringes of the Occupy actions).
Jukka Peltokoski

Tutkijaryhmä ennakoi biosfäärin olotilamuutosta ympäristöongelmista johtuen -... - 1 views

www.helsinki.fi/...2012state_shift_fortelius.html

fortelius olotilamuutos biosfääri ympäristö ekologia

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 12 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Torstaina 7.6.2012 ilmestyvässä Nature-tiedelehdessä 22 tutkijaa julkaisee katsauksen, jossa uusimman tiedon ja teorian valossa arvioidaan todennäköisyyttä sille, että maapallon biosfääri lähestyy olotilan muutosta. He myös esittävät ajankohtaa tällaiselle muutokselle. Nykyisen ilmaston häviämisen estämisen keskeiseksi tavoitteeksi tutkijat nostavat ihmiskunnan koon ja resurssien käytön kasvun hillitsemisen. Helsingin yliopistosta kirjoittajana on evoluutiopaleontologian professori Mikael Fortelius.
  • Ihmiskunnasta on tullut planetaarisen mittakaavan vaikuttaja, joka uhkaa jo maapallon kykyä elättää sekä meitä itseämme että muita lajeja, arvioivat luonnontieteen alan tutkijat. Ihmiskunta käyttää nyt 20-40 prosenttia maapallon perustuotannosta omiin tarpeisiinsa. Noin 43 prosenttia maapallon maa-pinta-alasta on maanviljelyskäytössä tai rakennettua aluetta, suuri osa jäljelle jäävästä on tieverkostojen läpäisemää. Joidenkin arvioiden mukaan yli 80 prosenttia viljelykelpoisesta pinta-alasta on jo käytössä.
  • Sadan vuoden kuluessa nykyinen ilmasto tulee häviämään arviolta 10-48 prosentilta maapallon pintaa ja korvautumaan jollakin, jota maapallon nykyiset lajit eivät olemassaolonsa aikana ole kohdanneet.
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  • Katsauksessa päädytään johtopäätökseen, että olotilan muutos on todennäköinen välittömässä tulevaisuudessa, muutaman vuosikymmenen tai korkeintaan muutaman vuosisadan kuluttua.
  • Katsauksessa ei esitetä toimintaohjeita, mutta siinä tunnistetaan keskeisiksi tavoitteiksi ihmiskunnan koon ja resurssien käytön kasvun hillitseminen, nopea siirtyminen muihin kuin fossiiliseen hiilen perustuviin energialähteisiin, ravinnontuotannon tehostaminen ja tehokkaampi biodiversiteetin varannoista huolehtiminen maalla ja merissä.
Jukka Peltokoski

Strengthen the Commons - Now! - Democracy - Heinrich Böll Foundation - 0 views

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  • By Yochai Benkler “Commons are institutional spaces in which we are free.” Yochai Benkler
  • How the crisis reveals the fabric of our Commons
  • Over the last two hundred years, the explosion of knowledge, technology, and productivity has enabled an unprecedented increase of private wealth. This has improved our quality of life in numerous ways. At the same time, however, we have permitted the depletion of resources and the dwindling of societal wealth. This is brought to our attention by current, interrelated crises in finance, the economy, nutrition, energy, and in the fundamental ecological systems of life.
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  • These crises are sharpening our awareness of the existence and importance of the commons. Natural commons are necessary for our survival, while social commons ensure social cohesion, and cultural commons enable us to evolve as individuals.
  • A reduction in the GDP does not necessarily signal a reduction in the real wealth of a society. Recognizing this fact widens our perspective and opens doors for new types of solutions.
  • The commons can help us overcome the crisis, but it requires systematic advocacy.
  • What are the commons and why are they are significant?
  • Commons
  • include knowledge and water, seeds and software, cultural works and the atmosphere. Commons are not just „things,” however. They are living, dynamic systems of life. They form the social fabric of a free society.
  • Commons do not belong to anyone individually nor do they belong to no one. Different communities, from the family to global society, always create, maintain, cultivate, and redefine commons
  • We have to constantly revitalize our commons, because everything we produce relies upon the knowledge we inherit, the natural resources that the Earth gives us, and cooperation with our fellow citizens. The activity known as „the economy” is embedded in our social fabric.
  • There‘s something new afoot – a movement to reclaim the commons!
  • Commons are being rediscovered and defended.
  • Commons are newly created and built upon. Countless people are creating new things for all and meaningful social and physical spaces for themselves.
  • Taken together, scientists and activists, citizens and politicians are developing a robust and innovative commons sphere – everywhere.
  • Commons are based on communities that set their own rules and cultivate their skills and values. Based on these always-evolving, conflict-ridden processes, communities integrate themselves into the bigger picture. In a culture of commons, inclusion is more important than exclusion, cooperation more important than competition, autonomy more important than control.
  • Neither no man‘s land nor boundless Property
  • The commons is not only about the legal forms of ownership. What matters most is whether and how community-based rights to the commons are enforced and secured.
  • The usage rights of fellow commoners are the stop signs for individual usage rights.
  • Absolute and exclusive private property rights in the commons therefore cannot be allowed.
  • Each use must ensure that the common pool resources are not destroyed or over-consumed.
  • No one may be excluded who is entitled to access and use the shared resource or who depends on it for basic needs.
  • What is public or publicly funded must remain publicly accessible.
  • The commons helps us re-conceptualize the prevailing concept of property rights.
  • Our shared quality of life is also limited by knowledge that is excessively commercialized and made artificially scarce. In this manner, our cultural heritage becomes an inventory of lifeless commodities and advertising dominates our public spaces.
  • We all need commons to survive and thrive. This is a key principle, and it establishes why commoners‘ usage rights should always be given a higher priority than corporations‘ property rights. Here the state has a duty to protect the commons, a duty which it cannot abandon. However, this does not mean that the state is necessarily the best steward for the commoners‘ interests. The challenge is for the commoners themselves to develop complementary institutions and organizational forms, as well as innovative access and usage rules, to protect the commons. The commoners must create their own commons sector, beyond the realm of market and state, to serve the public good in their own distinctive manner.
  • For a society in which the commons may thrive
  • The rules and ethics of each commons arise from the needs and processes of the commoners directly involved. Whoever is directly connected to a commons must participate in the debate and implementation of its rules.
  • Commons are driven by a specific ethos, as well as by the desire to acquire and transfer a myriad of skills. Our society therefore needs to honor the special skills and values that enable the commons to work well. A culture of the commons publicly recognizes any initiative or project that enhances the commons, and it provides active financial and institutional support to enhance the commons sector.
  • This challenge requires a lot of work, but it is also a great source of personal satisfaction and enrichment.
  • Our society needs a great debate and a worldwide movement for the commons.
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