Michael, One of my ongoing projects is a group of trifold flyers I've developed over time. These flyers have been a major portion of our effort toward economic literacy. Currently I have about forty different topics, and rated according to the difficulty of the content from basic, to intermediate, to an advanced level. Most of these flyers are posted at the Re-Imagining Economics web site. Aside from occasions through the year, I have shipped boxes of these flyers to different related conferences. Our one major local event at this point is an annual community festival which is held toward the end of June. We have two people there generally myself and a co-conspiritor Greg who focuses primarily upon commons related issues. Currently his big issue is fracking now been promoted and perpetrated through our state. I tend to be on my feet talking to people about commons based economics through a long list of topics for most of the three days I need to spend a bit of time defining the six likely topics, and will come back to you with this. On not knowing who I am,, but , but we are now facebook friends, doesn't that mean something? (smile: here*) Ok, I have twenty plus years working in and around cooperatives, doing cooperative orientations is one project that I started with. At one point I branched off into economic history toward developing a more commons and people's version of economic history, picking up on various sympathetic historians and economists. Peter Linebaugh is one of my favorites, if that name means anything for you. Mary Parker Follet is another name that is not part of the usual household vocabulary, and she made a major contribution to commoning through cooperating communities including workplace cooperation as a commons. She was re-discovered by Peter Drucker relatively early in his career. The issue of the commons within economics has multiple barriers, including the basic nature of the applied philosophy of science and related metaphysics, and the ambient set of assumptions under the divine right of capital as management. I will return to you in a day or so to provide a possible list. One big fallacy is related to a bait and switch process wherein progressive values and virtues are declared but the actual economics don't match the declared values. Another is the assumption that a small "d" democratic process, as in by majority rule, and a low economic literacy can produce a commons based economics. A similar version exploits the expectations of "community," "freedom," and other familiar iconic words with high emotional value that tend to be discredited by the actual results. As to the accessibility of this sort of of over view, that will be at least served well by engagement through a blogging process. Again, I will give you a list of six or more themes with a thumbnail synopsis for each. more as we go, Tadit Anderson On Fri, 09 Sep 2011 22:44:50 -0400, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Tadit,
the 6 examples you have could be the basis of a series and make it into a later book?
should I add you to our list of commons-oriented economist? I don't think I know who you are so far ....?
Michel
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