Economics/True Cost – Page 6 – Public Intelligence Blog

Open Education, efficiency, collaboration and management

Ben Janssen [has] made an interesting remark, as Ben often does. In his view, Open Education is not only a public good, but can also be used as a communication channel. As he stated:

“in my work as an external consultant I often find that departments within an organization are working on the same projects, starting the same pilots and the same programs”.

Even over organizations he sees the same phenomena: organizations who work on the same projects without knowing what happens a stone throw away.

Continue reading “Frank de Langen: Open Education & Open Business”

2015/05/152015/05/14

Jean Lievens: Open Business Models by Creative Commons – Call for Participation

Design, Economics/True Cost

Creative Commons Launches Program to Identify, Share Open Business Models

Creative Commons is developing an “open business models initiative” aimed at showing how Creative Commons licenses are being used by businesses, not-for-profits, and governments. According to Paul Stacey, Creative Commons’ associate director of global learning, one of the most asked questions by entrepreneurs to the Creative Commons organization is, “How do I earn a living, pay the bills, and keep the lights on if I openly license my work and give it away for free?” The project is intended to identify and share examples of businesses that are doing just that.

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Open Business Models by Creative Commons – Call for Participation”

2015/05/142015/05/12

SchwartzReport: Iceland to End Bank Money Creation?

03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Economics/True Cost, Ethics, Government

I follow Iceland because like the Scandanavian countries it is one of the nations where the new wellness oriented policies are developing. This one is very dramatic and will change the world's economy as it is more widely adopted. I don't think it will happen in America because the banks have so many liegemen in the Congress, as Paul Krugman points out.

Iceland looks at ending boom and bust with radical money plan

Icelandic government suggests removing the power of commercial banks to create money and handing it to the central bank

2015/05/132015/05/13

Worth a Look: Open Source Ecology

Access, Architecture, Crowd-Sourcing, Design, Economics/True Cost, Hardware, Innovation, Knowledge, Manufacturing, Resilience, Science

Open Source Ecology is accelerating the growth of the next economy – the Open Source Economy – an economy that optimizes both production and distribution – while promoting environmental regeneration and social justice. We are building the Global Village Construction Set. This is a high-performance, modular, do-it-yourself, low-cost platform – that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different industrial machines that it takes – to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.

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2015/05/112015/05/10

Jean Lievens: European Open Science Cloud

Access, Architecture, Cloud, Data, Design, Economics/True Cost, Innovation, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Resilience, Science, Security, Software, Sources (Info/Intel), Spectrum

Towards the European Open Science Cloud

CERN has recently published a paper which outlines the establishment of the European Open Science Cloud that will enable digital science by introducing IT as a Service to the public research sector in Europe.

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: European Open Science Cloud”

2015/05/102015/05/10

Jean Lievens: Can Analytics Save The Earth?

Access, Architecture, Data, Design, Economics/True Cost, Governance, Innovation, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Resilience, Science, Security, Software

This Earth Day, Let's Start Using Analytics To Conserve Energy

The success of new energy projects relies on one crucial skill: the ability to derive insights from massive amounts of rapidly changing data. That’s why utilities and energy companies are adopting analytics to meet the rising demand for renewable energy from more sophisticated customers.

Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Can Analytics Save The Earth?”

2015/04/232015/04/22

Jean Lievens: Karl Polanyi – New Economic Thinking — Land is Not a Commodity….

Economics/True Cost

Tip of the Hat to Svend Aage Christensen

Learning from Karl Polanyi

EXTRACT

So what is the explanation for this disjuncture between theory and empirical results? Krugman's answer is “that workers are not, in fact, commodities.” Unlike soybeans or other commodities, employees know and care about their price, and when they are paid better, they tend to work harder, stay in their jobs longer, and improve the employer's bottom line. Krugman suggests that viewing workers as commodities leads directly to the aggressive attack on wage and benefits that has been dominant in the U.S. for the last forty years. But as soon as we reject the idea of workers as commodities, the road is open to alternative policies that could address skyrocketing income and wealth inequalities. Read full article.