by jessecohn
This is a fascinating Slide Essay which applies anarchist ideas to urban planning of all sorts.
How would the world appear if the rule of thge capitalist market were to end?
How would your barrio change if people’s power were to replace top down exploitation?
This Slide Show gives us a glimpse into a less insane world.
Continue reading “Which Way to Utopia?: Anarchist Spatial Theory”
by Julie Liardet.. GENEVA – People strolling, music, smiles, bursts of laughter. Customers walk between clothes and trinkets, homegrown zucchini and children’s games, spread on tables or on the ground. A neighbor has brought his electric razor; another has just found a book by French sociologist Marcel Mauss.
This kind of flea-market-with-veggies could be coming to your neighborhood soon. With a twist: here everything is 100% free.
The gratiferia (free fair) concept originally comes from Argentina and then expanded to neighboring countries and all of Latin America. The idea was quickly taken up in the U.S. and Canada, and this year, it has arrived in the Old World. Sales and swaps are completely forbidden at gratiferias. Everything must be in good condition, and of course, a bit of civic sense is required. Do not show up with a van and load up everything in sight. This free fair aims at “liberation from materialism,” with the goal of leaving behind “the oppression of the economic system.”
Ariel Rodriguez Bosio, the brains behind the gratiferia, has posted a YouTube video entitled “gratiferia, una economia de la nueva era” (“gratiferia, an economy for the new age”). In the video, where he appears as a sort of philosophical/spiritual guru of the no-growth movement, the Argentinian explains that he started the first market of its kind in his apartment at the beginning of 2010.
Continue reading “Living Without Money- The Markets Where Everything Is Free.. post 1:”
Barcelona — Psychologist Angels Corcoles recently taught a seminar about self-empowerment for women, and when she finished she got a check with her fee. The amount was in hours, not euros.
But Corcoles didn’t mind. Through a citywide credit network that allows people to trade services without money, the 10 hours Corcoles earned could be used to pay for a haircut, yoga classes or even carpentry work.
At a time when the future of the euro is in doubt and millions are unemployed or underemployed with little cash to spare, a parallel economy is springing up in parts of Spain, allowing people to live outside the single currency.
In the city of Malaga… Continue reading “Money-free haircuts, shops and veggy gardens”
The Free 