Consumerism, Sustainability, and Happiness: How to Build a World Where Everyone has Enough

Forthcoming Spring 2023 What would it take to have a world where everyone had enough? How can we eliminate poverty, leave enough for non-human nature, and increase wellbeing? This book explores ways the reader can live their life, engage with cultural change, and engage with policy making, to build that world. We are presently on … Continue reading Consumerism, Sustainability, and Happiness: How to Build a World Where Everyone has Enough

A Just Transition to a Fair and Sustainable Society or Healthy Green Growth?

The main goal of Norwegian economist Per Espen Stoknes’ new book, Tomorrow's Economy: A Guide to Creating Healthy Green Growth, is to offer the concept of healthy green growth as an alternative to simple GDP growth. Stoknes teaches in a business school, and the economic tools he creates around this concept will probably be very … Continue reading A Just Transition to a Fair and Sustainable Society or Healthy Green Growth?

Solidarity Forever: Essential Workers, Public Goods, and How We Are in This Together

One opportunity for positive change opened by the terrible crisis we are in with COVID-19 is that people are beginning to question some fundamental beliefs about how society works. There is a chance we can shatter some of the toxic narratives that justify, and lend support to, the brutal systems of inequality, racism, and environmental … Continue reading Solidarity Forever: Essential Workers, Public Goods, and How We Are in This Together

Alternatives to Killing People for the Economy

As the U.S. begins to reopen after being shut down to protect us from spreading Covid-19, many people are beginning to talk about a choice between what is good for the economy and what will keep us healthy. Much pain and suffering has come as people have lost their livelihoods and their homes, and so … Continue reading Alternatives to Killing People for the Economy

The Fortress World of Capitalism vs. the Beautiful Possibilities of Cooperation

Our beloved world is entering an increasingly unstable period, full of dangers and also full of possibilities. In many countries, old political parties are crumbling faster and anyone thought imaginable. Old geopolitical alliances have come unglued as the US comes to exercise its role as world hegemon in new and unpredictable ways. The development of … Continue reading The Fortress World of Capitalism vs. the Beautiful Possibilities of Cooperation

Making beautiful things where everyone gains and no one profits

My friend Annette Aylward is trying to make a living as a crafts person. She makes beautiful handmade linen towels. She believes in craft. She loves to make these things. To make a living making handmade things woven out of linen she needs to charge a lot of money for them. And she is successful … Continue reading Making beautiful things where everyone gains and no one profits

Breaking Our Dependency on the Old Economy as We Build the New

People all around the world are working to build solidarity economies, based on worker-owned collectives, the creation of local currencies, and making one’s own things and sharing them. Advocates of a solidarity economy claim that, as we build more of these kinds of economic relations, we will also build more satisfying lives and have a … Continue reading Breaking Our Dependency on the Old Economy as We Build the New