03 Economy – Page 83 – Public Intelligence Blog

2014/08/282014/08/28

Stephen E. Arnold: Free Law Textbooks — and the Fight to Liberate Intellectual Property Law from Entrenched Corporations with Armed with Lobbyists

Free Law Textbooks Challenge Copyright Maximalism

August 28, 2014

The article titled Duke Professor Looking To Make Legal Texts Affordable; Kicking Off With Intellectual Property Law on Techdirt refers to the work of James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins. Both work in the Center of the Study of Public Domain at Duke Law School and hoped to mitigate the prices of textbooks for college students. They have already released their Intellectual Property Statutory Supplement (free to download, about $10 to print). They are quoted in the article,

“We are motivated in part by the outrageously steep cost of legal teaching materials, (and the increasing restrictions on those materials — such as the removal of the right of first sale). This book is intended for use with our forthcoming Intellectual Property casebook (coming in the Fall) but can also be used as a free or low cost supplement for basic Intellectual Property courses — at the college, law school or graduate school levels.”

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Free Law Textbooks — and the Fight to Liberate Intellectual Property Law from Entrenched Corporations with Armed with Lobbyists”

2014/08/25

Eagle: Misery Index 2.0 – Real Unemployment, Real Income, Labor Share, Money Velocity (Charles Hugh Smith)

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

The New Misery Index

Charles Hugh Smith

The Status Quo is desperate to mask the declining fortunes of those who earn income from work, and the Misery Index 2.0 strips away the phony facade of bogus unemployment and inflation numbers.

The classic Misery Index is the sum of unemployment and inflation, though later variations have added interest rates and the relative shortfall or surplus of GDP growth.

Since the Status Quo figured out how to game unemployment and inflation to the point that these metrics are meaningless except as a meta-measure of centralized perception management, the Misery Index has lost its meaning as well.

I propose a Misery Index 2.0 of four less easily manipulated (and therefore more meaningful) metrics:

Continue reading “Eagle: Misery Index 2.0 – Real Unemployment, Real Income, Labor Share, Money Velocity (Charles Hugh Smith)”

2014/08/24

Jean Lievens: Isabelle Stengers on on user movements and systems of horizontal apprenticeship

03 Economy, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics

Isabelle Stengers on on user movements and systems of horizontal apprenticeship

Andre Ling introduces the importance of the the Belgian philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers:

“She is a truly remarkable philosopher and currently one of my favourites. While she has written some very solid books on the philosophy of science (such as The Power of Invention, Cosmopolitics, and others), her more recent books are shorter, highly accessible and powerful. The titles of her two most recent books that I especially want to share with you are:

* Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell

* Au temps des catastrophes: Resister a la barbarie qui vient (currently only available in French, but due to be translated, I am told, in open access format in English)

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Isabelle Stengers on on user movements and systems of horizontal apprenticeship”

2014/08/182014/08/17

Jean Lievens: Sharing Economy Precariat — Brokering Labor to the Bone — While Neglecting True Costs and Redesign

03 Economy, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce

Check App. Accept Job. Repeat.

In the Sharing Economy, Workers Find Both Freedom and Uncertainty

EXTRACT

Ms. Guidry, 35, earns money by using her own car to ferry around strangers for Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, ride services that let people summon drivers on demand via apps. She also assembles furniture and tends gardens for clients who find her on TaskRabbit, an online marketplace for chores.

Her goal is to earn at least $25 an hour, on average. Raising three children with her longtime partner, Jeffrey Bradbury, she depends on the income to help cover her family’s food and rent. That has become more unpredictable of late. Uber and Lyft, her driving mainstays, recently cut certain passenger fares. Last month, TaskRabbit overhauled the way its users select their helpers; immediately after the change, Ms. Guidry’s stream of new clients dried up.

“You don’t know day to day,” she said. “It’s very up in the air.”

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: Anything less than a dollar a mile (50 cents for wear and gas, 50 cents for labor, home base door and return) is a losing proposition — to clear $25 an hour one must drive at least 50 billable miles in that hour. To make the $50,000 a year that $25 an hour would normally add up, one must have eight full revenue hours. Very few people achieve this, dog walkers being a possible exception. There are two sharing economies — perhaps many more. The first leverages existing assets and created variable income increases. The second leverages labor, and appears to be a losing proposition for most. What we see is a dearth of analytic models and a dearth of data — we see a desperate need for the rethinking and redesign of entire communities and cities to achieve cost of living reductions on the order of 50%, while optimizing the time-energy composition of the constituent individuals in any given community.

2014/08/172014/08/16

Jean Lievens: Millenial Economy Scrubbing Redundancy and Waste Out of Vampire Capitalism

03 Economy

Millennials Are Renting Instead Of Buying And The Retail Industry Is Freaking Out

“Never mind buying a second home when you can rent a chateau in France on Airbnb for $200. Why hire a chauffeur when they don’t come with an app that tracks their relative location to yours, like Uber?” she says. “Even owning the latest album of your favorite band feels a lot less appealing when you can stream it immediately on and offline with a Spotify pro membership, without taking up any space on your hard drive.”

2014/08/152014/08/14

SchwartzReport: 25% of Adults World-Wide Enjoy Full Employment

03 Economy, 11 Society, Commercial Intelligence

This very important trend is virtually invisible. It's not that the data is unavailable, as this report shows. It is that it is not discussed. But if only 25 per cent of the adults in the world are employed full-time that means three quarters aren't. A major predictor of social ! unrest. Click through to see the important charts.

Only 1.3 Billion Worldwide Employed Full Time for Employer
Jon Clifton and Ben Ryan – The Gallup Organization

WASHINGTON, D.C. — About one in four adults worldwide — or roughly 1.3 billion people — worked full time for an employer in 2013. Gallup's Payroll to Population (P2P) rate, which reports the percentage of the total adult population that works at least 30 hours per week for an employer, has not grown since 2012.

2014/08/112014/08/09

Jean Lievens: P2P on Cooperativa Integral Catalana

03 Economy, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Liberation Technology

Enric Duran of the Catalan Integrated Cooperative has taken the time to comment on Michel Bauwens’ recent article on Open Coops, contrasting Bauwens’ proposals with the practical realities already under way in the CIC’s own forward thinking cooperativist environment.

Bauwens’ summary of these proposals include four key proposals which Duran addresses below. To give some context, the four proposals are:

That coops need to be statutorily (internally) oriented towards the common good
That coops need to have governance models including all stakeholders
That coops need to actively co-produce the creation of immaterial and material commons
That coops need to be organized socially and politically on a global basis, even as they produce locally.

Here are Duran’s comments to each proposal.

Read full post.