About a year ago, we at Edgeryders decided to try and get some serious intellectual firepower behind dreaming up one or more completely different economic systems. By “completely different” I mean completely different: not just another mix of market-capitalism-with-state-corrections, but something with different goals and different ways. By “economic systems” I mean something that could be debugged with intellectual rigor, and hopefully come to be intellectually consistent and achievable, at least in principle.
We think that this work is urgent. The foundations of the present economic system are stuck in the 1850s. Economists won’t do it, because they are too invested in academic orthodoxy (with exceptions).
But someone is willing to do it: (some) science fiction authors.
So, here’s the news: with the support of EIT Climate-KIC, we are organizing a “blue sky” seminar bringing together some of these authors; some professional economists willing to play ball; and some entrepreneurs who are experimenting with enterprise-scale economic models. Our proximate goal is the pleasure of having an interesting conversation with interesting people. Our ultimate goal is doing a reality check on “candidate utopias” like fully automated luxury communism, solarpunk societies and commons-based peer production. This all happens in Brussels, probably on or around November 11th.
We plan to have:
A public discussion for about 200 people, probably in a theater or something like that. We are negotiating with really exciting speakers, so stay tuned.
One or more economics seminars for about 5-10 people each, with the goal of sketching out future papers that would support or critique fully alternative economic systems.
A workshop on turning yourself into an utopian activist, hopefully in collaboration with our friends at Extinction Rebellion.
A party. Because, well, what kind of utopia would it be if we could not dance?
All this is of course way too rushed, but what the hell. We have decided we are going to sprint for the climate, so we must make peace with moving fast, even if the risks of failing go up.
We need:
Venues in Brussels.
Contacts and partnerships with science fiction fans, utopian activist groups and academics unafraid of stepping out of the marked path – especially economists. In Belgium, but also the Netherlands, France, Germany, the UK.
Help in spreading the word (as soon as we confirm the logistics).
@ireinga is going to be the contact point in Brussels; @ilaria is project managing. Watch this space for updates.
Attached is my Economics 3.0 presentation at Strathclyde University on Energy Fintech and Community Fintech.
My approach is to base a ‘reality-based’ economics upon three sources of value or actors of production: 3D Space (Location); Energy (Material & Immaterial/Static & Dynamic) and Intellect (subjective - dies with us; and objective/IP).
In doing so I apply innovative (but time-honoured) - complementary risk/cost/surplus shariing agreements and instruments. When we take this combination of law & accountancy and take the transactions online the outcome is financial technology
Timo Arnall, James Bridle, Simon Critchley, Adam Greenfield, Johan Grimonprez, Ben Hammersley, Thomas Hirschhorn, Xander Karskens, Metahaven, China Miéville, Kevin Slavin, Superflux, Juha van ‘t Zelfde
Hi guys, here is the checklist for organisers who want to have their event promoted as part of the Festival. This is advisable to do if you want more reach as it is basically plugging what you are doing into the running machinery. If you have questions, feel free to post them in a comment.
CHECKLIST FOR EVENT ORGANISERS
Update your event description above with the following:
Add a question that you want to answer through the session
Add an Faq Section (you can copy paste the one on my workshop description)
Add a description of the format. if you can make it a bit interactive or identify a specific methodology you will be using that’s great. Feel free to ask if you need help with this
Make it easy for us to promote it:
Give @MariaEuler photos/visuals + statements/quotes she can use to customise design for a flyer and for a header for this event (as part of the festival)
See what you think of this approach to one on one outreach for getting good input to help you develop the session, and the broader discussion you wish to build around the topics of your fellowship:
You send emails with to people you think can contribute to this discussion with personalised invitation using content from the one I forwarded you as a template/model
If they agree you can forward them to a member of Edgeryders staff (@inge for now) who then does the interview & transcribes content, and helps them to get on platform. You would need to agree with her on what questions you would like to ask…
Read the articles posted by the contributers and write a summary. Perhaps you can also draw help from the data analysis team to make visualisations that can help you synthesise what is there and share it back with a nice visual graph. If this is something you want to explore, the person to talk to is @amelia.
Not sure what you mean. SF-ECON has two sources of funding: it is a ER project in its own right, with a client who pays most of it, and it has a crowdfunding campaign out.
ok, that means that it also wont be able to use the same flyer? here is a link a folder with the facebook flyer with Doctorow without logos, since i do not know which one should go on it for this event. If the flyers for this event are taken care of from a different side that’s great. Wont do anything more on that until that’s cleared up :))
