For most of human history, the powerful have found new ways to stay powerful. Feudalism, as a system, never really ended—it just changed costumes. The medieval model of landowners controlling serfs gave way to industrial magnates overseeing factory workers. Now, we find ourselves in a new iteration: a digital aristocracy,…
Author: KoinBlog
Can We Really Pay-It-Forward or is It Just a Nice Idea?
If one were to pause, just once a day, to extend an act of kindness with no expectation of return, what might change? The idea is so simple that it is often dismissed outright—too quaint, too idealistic, too fragile for the weight of reality. Yet, it is precisely its simplicity…
The Meaning Economy: What Does it Mean?
For most of modern history, people worked to survive. If they were lucky, they worked to get ahead. In recent decades, the promise of capitalism—at least in its idealized form—was that hard work led to stability, security, and, if things went really well, a decent life. That promise is breaking….
The Business of Less
If you want to understand how the modern economy works, forget supply and demand. Forget competition, efficiency, or the invisible hand. The real engine of capitalism—the thing that keeps profits high and the wealthy wealthier—is something far simpler: withholding. Manufactured scarcity is the defining strategy of corporate power. It is…
A System Worth Its Salt: Economic Justice Meets Solidarity Economies
We are a species with a peculiar gift for dreaming. For centuries, we have imagined utopias, built castles in the air, and scribbled blueprints for worlds where fairness reigns supreme. Yet, the world has a way of humbling dreamers. The stark machinery of greed and power grinds down idealism into…
“The New Industrial State” by John Kenneth Galbraith – a review
Few economists have wielded prose as deftly as John Kenneth Galbraith, whose writing—sharp, erudite, and tinged with dry wit—made macroeconomics palatable for the lay reader. In The New Industrial State (1967), Galbraith turns his attention to the machinery of modern capitalism, arguing that America’s economy is not, as classical economists…
The Paradox of Need and Opportunity: Why Time Banking Struggles to Reach Those Who Need It Most
The concept of time banking should, in theory, be a lifeline for the economically disadvantaged. It provides a way for people to exchange skills and services without the constraints of money, effectively creating a parallel system where effort is the only currency. And yet, the very people who would benefit…
The Last Days of Humanity: a very short story
There is something wrong with the sky. It’s not an obvious thing, not a burning sun or a bruised and swollen moon. The sky is still blue in the day, black at night, but something about the way it stretches overhead, the way it presses down, feels too immense, too…
Exploring the Rise of Techno-feudalism and the Cloudalists by Yanis Varoufakis
Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister and prolific economist, has been vocal about the emergence of a new ruling class he terms “Cloudalists,” who preside over what he describes as a techno-feudal order. In his lecture titled “Cloudalists: The New Ruling Class & how can we confront its techno-feudal…
The Coming Reckoning: Creativity, Complacency, and Collapse
In parts of the world where every meal must be earned through ingenuity, where a broken appliance isn’t replaced but repurposed, and where money is scarce but resourcefulness is abundant, necessity does what it always has—it forces invention. In countries with struggling economies, people do not have the luxury of…