Given the focus of my work over the last two years, I’ve been thinking a lot about how people relate to each other through the exchange of things. Not those […]
Finance and Economy - Making Money - Social and Self-Help
Why Buying Nothing Is Suddenly Cool Again
I’ve been watching this whole buy-nothing trend slip into the mainstream lately. It’s funny, in a way. We’ve somehow managed to make being broke fashionable. LOL. You can almost hear […]
Finance and Economy - Making Money - Social and Self-Help
Going Far Together
Someone once said: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others. I really love this saying. It has encapsulated, in a […]
Finance and Economy - Social and Self-Help
The Lanterns
There’s a little neighborhood not too far from where I live, the sort of place you miss if you blink or if your car radio is turned up too loud. […]
Finance and Economy - Health and Wellness - Making Money - Social and Self-Help
Remember When?
Remember when neighbors used to borrow cups of sugar? Not just when they were desperately out, but because borrowing and lending was just what people did. It was a way […]
Finance and Economy - Social and Self-Help
Making a Place, Not Just a Space
There’s a corner in every town that everyone drives past but no one really sees. Maybe it’s an empty lot, maybe it’s an old building with boarded windows, maybe it’s […]
Finance and Economy - Making Money - Social and Self-Help
The Commons Economy: A New Blueprint for Human-Centered Prosperity
The idea of a “commons economy” sounds a bit quaint, like something out of a Jane Austin novel; like an echo of old village greens and shared pastures where people […]
Finance and Economy - Making Money - Social and Self-Help
The Quiet Power of Associational Life
If you really want to understand what makes a community strong, you have to look between the cracks. Not at the institutions or the official programs or the polished strategic […]
Finance and Economy - Making Money - Social and Self-Help
The Garden and the Machine
For most of modern history, our financial systems have behaved like machines; cold, efficient, and designed for extraction. They take from the earth, from labor, from communities, and call the […]
Finance and Economy - Making Money - Social and Self-Help
The Beauty of Natural Systems (and the Tragedy of Human Ones)
Nature has a knack for doing things in a beautifully simple way; and it makes human invention look almost comical. A tree, for example, doesn’t hold a committee meeting to […]