Me and a friend just launched a new medium publication called Exponential Altruism. Where we’re exploring the current situation of the planet and what we can do about it.
Hello @julyandavey, welcome. I am Alberto, one of the old timers here, and read your post with interest.
As you write, this stuff is already happening. Building hubs for it is another matter. People who are very busy on the ground building their stuff tend to have little time for engaging with aggregators and hubs, unless there is something very concrete in it for them. Trust me, we know. We have been trying to get people to communicate about their projects, so that we can all be within line of sight of each other. But it’s hard: doers agree this would be a cool thing to have, but it’s just not worth engaging with, as the activity of blogging, debating, engaging etc. competes with many more activities that they give a higher priority to.
In Edgeryders, all projects are participatory. And in every single one of them we need to address what we call “the what’s-in-it-for-me question”. Not because people are not altruistic: they are! But because being altruistic is hard work, it can get very demanding and risks burning out on people. So, any aggregation initiative we try is aware of the costs of aggregation to the doers on the ground, and we always give back as much as we can (normally by hiring people for meaningful, paid gigs or involving their organizations as partners in paid gigs).
Thanks so much for taking the time to read our article and to give us lots of ideas!
I guess we’re trying to find some way in which we can contribute to this space.
Do you see a need for a hub which feeds people from the profit-motive economy into the social economy? A course / meetup type thing to get normal people starting projects or joining already existing ones?
We’d love to hear your thoughts on what the social economy needs right now, to unite the movement and increase the number of people working in it.
Also if you know any edgeryders in Berlin we could get in touch with that would be great too!
Not sure what you mean. It seems to me that a big contribution is finding some kind of byproduct from “planet-improving activities” that can be sold on the market. Making the world a better place has a terrible business model, because, by definition, the world is a public good, and you cannot sell it. We try to take a really hard look at the stuff people in our community do, and ask “who might want to pay for some of this?”. If you can answer this, you are doing them a real service, and they will want to engage with you.