Spanish economist Susana Martin Belmonte’s work is nothing less than groundbreaking. Among other things, she deals with the emergence of the pro-sumer class, P2P production and distribution, the Commons, and the potential of social and alternative currencies at the macro-scale and State level — not just in isolated pockets. Unfortunately, her work is not widely available in English and she’s not very well known outside Spain. To change that, here’s an interview I conducted with her for our “100 Women Co-creating P2P Society” series. Please read and comment. I will try to get Susana to join the Loomio group. (BTW, this group has evolved into being very gender imbalanced).

Susana Martín Belmonte on de-commodification, abundance and capital for the commons

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

“Abundance is a new economic frame in which scarcity cannot be preserved. Economics used to be about managing scarce resources, but scarcity has turned out to be not a condition to overcome, but the Holy Grail to access monetary wealth for some. Meanwhile, it overlooks other types of scarcity, like our capacity to pollute the air without destroying the planet.

There is no economic value without scarcity. But scarcity is dying in the highest levels of innovation, in the very heart of the digital revolution. For the first time, the evolution of the economic system is not leading to higher productivity or sales, but just the opposite.”

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