Continuing the discussion from Notes from the sci-fi economics residency, Nadia's group:
Hi, Alberto-
A lot here – seems mostly excellent to me. A few comments:
-it would be good if you had literature resources immediately available to those who want to use them – this literature is essential but no -mainstream. So like a references page or something.
-a main entry would of course be Henry George’s 1879 Progress and Poverty. Fundamental.
-But also people would need to understand the ways in which George is not relevant to modern economies (like Marx, but that’s a whole other conversation), and ways in which he is still highly relevant – in other words, a modern recontextualization
-Here is a pretty useful blog on that topic, seems to me – you may find others.: Progress and Poverty: Towards A New Georgist Dialogue
-then there is Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mutualism – harder to make coherent, but fundamental. First, obviously, is his 1840 book “What is Property?”.
-Here is a pretty good modern recontextualization of Proudhonian Mutualism: Mutualism | The Anarchist Library.
-Then you need to look at Proudhon’s “Bank of the People” – here is a discussion: Proudhon's Bank of the People
That’s all for now, except… I have a lot of African students and follow a lot of Africans’ blogs and vlogs etc, and so when I see the line that says the refugees come from “Largely West Africa” I instinctively cringe. I tell people over and over and over that Africa is the world’s most diverse continent by far, and is second only to Asia in size. It is the land of the future, and it has 54 countries. Name them. Name them individually.
A review of West African countries in Google maps suggests to me (a White American dude) that, say, Niger, Cote D’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and, say the Democratic Republic of the Congo could be the source of many of these immigrants. Their inhabitants are from a bewildering but fascinating and in each instance culturally and linguistically unique mosaic of ethnicities and societies – far more than Europe, for example, contains. Respect them. Please. And of course confirmation of all this should be provided by someone who really knows the area, not an outside commentator.