Trade & Exchange

Local Money Creates Local Wealth Outside The Bubble

Ethan — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 03:50:34 -0500

Local currencies generally develop for one of two reasons — the desire for local economic control (for a variety of reasons, from democracy to sustainability to social justice,) and a scarcity of national currency. In the current situation, both reasons weigh heavy.

Mondragon Diaries: Day Five

michaeljohnson — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 12:34:35 -0400

Our first stop is another component allied with Mongragon University called SAIOLAN. It's an incubator project for helping to launch new coops and high-tech businesses as well as training new entrepreneurs.

Mondragon Diaries: Day Four

michaeljohnson — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 10:28:07 -0400

Most new small businesses fail. That's a fact, whether they are in the Basque Country or in the U.S. Or anywhere else. Yet the Mondragon Coops, which all started as small worker-owned businesses, have hardly ever failed. Why? The key is in Father Jose Maria Arizmendi's original founding conception of cooperatives as the interlocking of school, factory and credit union.

Mondragon Diaries: Day Three

michaeljohnson — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:49:07 -0400

Our topic this morning is the wider range of the cooperative movement, both in the Basque Country and Spain. Mondragon is a part of the Basque Cooperative Confederation. There are currently 755 cooperatives in the Basque Country, and only 80 of them are the worker-owned MCC coops. There are a total of 537,000 members of all the coops, but only 54,919 are worker members, and 37,860 of these are the MCC worker-owners.

Mondragon Diaries: Day Two

michaeljohnson — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:18:04 -0400

...As we left, many in our group were debating the pros and cons of global economic justice. I shared their concerns, but I also saw something else. Here was the beginnings of some of the most advanced productive forces in the world, the means of both economies of abundance and the means of clean and safe renewable energies and far lighter ecological footprints.

Mondragon Diaries: Carl Davidson's Five Days Studying Cutting-Edge People and Tools for Change

michaeljohnson — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 21:16:22 -0400

I'm with a group of 25 social activists on a study tour organized by the Praxis Peace Project. Our focus is the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, a 50-year-old network of nearly 120 factories and agencies, involving nearly 100,000 workers in one way or another, and centered in the Basque Country but now spanning the globe. We're here to study the history of these unique worker-owned factories, how they work, why they have been successful, and how they might be expanded in various ways as instruments of social change.

David Roach's Mo' Better Food - Building Healthy Economics newsletter

ajowa — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 10:24:14 -0400

David Roach is doing incredibly important work in Oakland with Mo' Better Food, schools, intergenerational learning, farmer's markets, and other things. He was our incredible improvisational tour guide of Oakland.

Worker Education at Equal Exchange

jim — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:44:08 -0400

Permanent link to this article: http://geo.coop/node/442

Slow Money for a New Economy

Ethan — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:16:24 -0500

What if money wasn't so fast and slippery?

When Money Isn't Flowing, Invent Your Own

Ethan — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:51:29 -0400

Alternative currencies can keep an economy afloat