Why Small Gifts Matter More Than Big Systems
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…
Finance and Economy
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…