Money - United Diversity

What if... Co-operatives UK had £70 million a year?

This article was originally written for Issue 14 of STIR, the magazine for the new economy and was also published online at Co-operatives UK What if…? blog that fed into the UK National Co-operative Development Strategy. I recently noticed that blog has since gone offline and so have re-posted the

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97% Owned - documentary about money and economics

Back in May 2003 we started a wiki to ‘discuss monetary reform and democracy [https://web.archive.org/web/20030613112808/https://wiki.uniteddiversity.com/uniteddiversity] ‘, and I just posted Positive Money’s Banking 101 video course [https://uniteddiversity.coop/2013/08/01/banking-101-how-money-and-banking-actually-works/] , probably the best introduction to how money

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Banking 101 - How money and banking actually works

This great little collection of videos is the clearest and most authoritative introduction to exactly how the monetary and banking system in the UK actually works. It is based on the excellent book ‘Where Does Money Come From [https://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/where-does-money-come-from]?’ published by the Positive Money

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Money and Life - a new documentary about money

Have you seen Money and Life [https://moneyandlifemovie.com] yet? It is a great new film all about money that is well worth watching. I’m pleased to say that I helped fund the production of the film by contributing to their crowdfunding campaign. It is not too late to

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Time to replicate WIR Bank?

The WIR Bank [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIR_Bank] in Switzerland has been successfully running for over 60 years. It was started in the 1930s in response to the great economic crises of the time. Studies have shown [https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Money_and_Economics/Community_Currencies/WIR] that

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Financial co-operatives: A safe bet in a crisis

The Co-opreative News [https://www.thenews.coop/] has reported [https://www.thenews.coop/article/financial-co-operatives-safe-bet-crisis] news about a study by the International Labour Organization [https://www.ilo.org/] calledResilience in a downturn: The power of financial cooperatives [https://www.ilo.org/empent/Publications/WCMS_207768/lang--en/index.htm]. You can

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Top 40 Platforms for Crowdfunding Social Change

I published this on the P2P Foundation blog [https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/top-40-platforms-for-crowdfunding-social-change/2012/11/14] last week, but posting here too for good measure 🙂 Crowdfunding is a new word [https://www.technology-digital.com/web20/-oed-to-consider-adding-this-years-trending-tech-word] for an old idea. The Oxford English dictionary defines [https://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/

Banking

Inside Job (with Spanish subtitles, again)

This is a must see film. We’ve posted it a couple [https://uniteddiversity.com/inside-job/] of times [https://uniteddiversity.com/must-see-film-inside-job-with-spanish-subtitles/] before, but those videos have since been removed. Here is is again, again with Spanish subtitles:

1%

Inside Job

The last version of this film we posted [/must-see-film-inside-job-with-spanish-subtitles/] has since been removed so here it is again (this time with Greek subtitles). It is an important film well worth watching. You can also watch (and download) it on vimeo [https://vimeo.com/23086688], or download it via bittorrent [https:

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RIP Richard Douthwaite

Saddened to hear the news that Richard Douthwaite just passed away after a period of illness. Richard was a tremendous pioneer and thought leader who championed economies that functioned in balance with and of the ecology. Please, if you do nothing else, read at least these two of his books

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The Money Fix

The Money Fix [https://www.themoneyfix.org/], another must see documentary about money and the banking system. > “Money is at the intersection of nearly every aspect of modern life. Most of us take the monetary system for granted, but it has a profound and largely misunderstood influence on our

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Must See Film: Inside Job (with Spanish Subtitles)

Inside Job is a really good film that deserves your attention. I just stumbled across an online copy and thought I should post it so as many people get to see it as possible. If this copy disappears you can download it using bittorrent here [https://www.kat.ph/search/

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GOOD Magazine: Oil Addiction Presentation

This is a nice presentation from Good Magazine [https://www.good.is/]. “If we’re addicted to oil, our twelve-step program should begin with admitting that we have a problem. As the price of oil creeps higher, finding new energy sources is more important than ever. But the search for

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Peak Oil - Visually Explained

“A Quick 3 minute video visually explaining Peak Oil, what oil is used for, and what the future may hold with regards to Peak Oil. “This is the culmination of my year-long thesis project looking at how Graphic Design can help communicate a complex topic such as Peak Oil.” https:

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Email to Toby Hemenway re: Piracy

NOTE: I’ve had a series [https://uniteddiversity.com/email-to-toby-hemenway-re-piracy/#comment-2996] of increasingly [https://uniteddiversity.com/email-to-toby-hemenway-re-piracy/#comment-3007] great [https://uniteddiversity.com/email-to-toby-hemenway-re-piracy/#comment-3030] responses [https://uniteddiversity.com/email-to-toby-hemenway-re-piracy/#comment-3033] from Toby – please see the comments Toby Hemenway [https://patternliteracy.com/], a leading permaculture author sent me a message w

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Local Currency Council’s First Interactive Online Conference.

https://localcurrencycouncil.org/Participants will be joining us through web cam feeds & phone/Skype access. You can call in and speak with our presenters, join the discussion, and contribute using the live chat. If you’d like to present or have topics you’d like to see covered please

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We can accomplish more by sharing

This is the first in a series exploring the things I have learned from the open source way during my time at Red Hat. About 9 years ago I joined Red Hat and my life changed forever. As for my background, currently I'm the Senior Vice President of

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Will The Brixton Pound Buy A Brighter Future?

by Leo Hickman Tomorrow the Transition Town movement launches a currency designed to boost local trade and bring communities closer together A Brixton market stallholder . . . ‘It’s Monopoly money,’ says one. ‘I won’t be having anything to do with it’. Photograph: Graeme Robertson It has all the makings of

Activism

Supporting a local economy….some observations

Last night I attended a gathering of merchants, service providers and others who support local independent businesses in our town. It was a festive affair of about three dozen featuring a pot luck dinner, good conversation, and a few announcements about the emerging organization. From both a personal and professional

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A French Twist On GDP

Sarkozy proposes measuring happiness. I’m starting to think that French President Sarkozy is a Sightline fan. Last week it was a killer carbon tax [https://www.worldchanging.com/resolveuid/c02e6bca6e3a3ec7631b2bb1214b8f48] proposal; now it’s something else near and dear to our hearts: a national measure of happiness [https://www.

3D

MakeHuman Makes Open Source More Human

One of the canards about open source is that it only produces hardcore hacker programs – dev tools, infrastructural stuff etc. – that have little to offer the general, non-technical, *normal* user. While that may have been true ten years ago, things have moved on. For example, here’s MakeHuman [https://www.

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The Diagonal Economy 2: The Impact of Energy Descent

I’ve wondered how to best explain the advantages of the Diagonal Economy in confronting energy descent. I think that reference to an old post addressing “ anti-economies [https://www.jeffvail.net/2005/10/anti-economies.htm]” is perhaps the best framework.There, I discussed the classical sources of economic efficiency: economy

Activism

City Repair LA

[https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OOlW-1cKA6k/Sq0uYsA6GoI/AAAAAAAACkg/uz-B0ftFvdg/s1600-h/mark.jpg] Mark Lakeman stares down the new Bimini Street salamander [https://monsters.monstrous.com/salamander.htm]. Portland architect and activist Mark Lakeman, founder of the City Repair [https://http//cityrepair.org/] movement, is in Los Angeles for a week

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so when you say collapse…

[https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_UBjXcgfboak/SqkRN-RiKYI/AAAAAAAABjQ/o0zEKbkAX34/s1600-h/collapse.jpg] This funny thing used to happen when my friend Todd and I discussed peak oil and energy descent back when we were just coming to grips with all of that. One of us would begin to explain a

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Jeff Vail on the Diagonal Economy and the Rhizome Organisation

Jeff Vail is starting [https://www.jeffvail.net/2009/08/diagonal-economy-1-overview.html] his long-awaited series on the next step for our post-meltdown political economies (see ToC [https://www.jeffvail.net/2009/08/rise-of-diagonal-economy-and-transition.html] for full project description): An excerpt on how this change may come about in the core