Tag: Society

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Sustainability & Capitalism

Game Over. Capitalism is over if you want it.

tl,dr: Sustainability and capitalism have complex interactions. While capitalism emphasizes accumulation and expansion, sustainability requires long-term dynamic balance for all life.

Can sustainability can be reconciled with the logic of capitalism? I’ll try to sort both terms and will also talk about post-growth and degrowth. And if we’re at it, we just might want to also talk about post-capitalism and if such a thing exists.

Sustainability. A huge word, a non-word, both under- and over-complex.… Read more

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Regeneration as a New Economic Policy Paradigm

Regenerative Economy

tl;dr: Regeneration is a forward-looking paradigm focused on increasing  the evolutionary ability of social-ecological systems by including everyone and everything that matters for a viable society

In 2022, Earth Overshoot Day for North America came in March, for Europe mostly in May. The unsustainability of the dominant growth- and exploitation-oriented political-economic system is out in the open, for everyone to see. At the same time, we celebrate some anniversaries this year: 50 years of the first UN conference on the natural environment in Stockholm, 50 years since the publication of “Limits go Growth”, 35 years since the publication of “Our Common Future”, and 30 years since the Earth Summit in Rio.… Read more

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How We Win To Save The Climate

tl;dr: Covid-19 shows us that we can change. Now let’s make it work for saving the climate.

We all make new experiences these days. And that “we” is an estimated 1.7 billion strong, around 20 percent of the global population. We spatially distance ourselves and adapt our everyday practices in a grand social experiment on a scale unimaginable only a month ago. Some of these changes might revert back once the Covid-19 pandemic is over, depending on how long it lasts and how long we have to participate in this experiment.… Read more

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Publication on Digital Sustainability

tl;dr: The digital economy needs Sustainability as a normative reference frame

My recent article has been published (in German) in the Yearbook on “Sustainable Economics”. In it I am reconstructing digitalization as a social phenomenon while applying social practice theory, while at the same time focusing on the material underbelly of digital technologies. My main argument: the digital economy is not a pathway to a more sustainable economy unless Sustainability is set as a clear normative reference frame.… Read more

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Data, Karl Marx and the End of Money

tl;dr: Data will succeed money as the lifeblood of the economy thus making money irrelevant.

What is going to be the lubricant of the Next Economy? The go-to answer most likely is “data”.  My interest here is not so much on the more technical aspects of data gathering, mining, artificial intelligence and what other buzzwords might be up in the air. I am more curious about larger scale transformations in the fabric of the economy, especially when it comes to the role of data and money. … Read more