Saturday, 26 October 2019
Join the new co-operative movement - follow up to Oct.24 TorontotheBetter "Introduction to Platform Co-ops" screening
There is an alternative to corporate ownership of the Internet. It is the Internet as a commons. For those who were unable to attend our movie screening - we heard from a few of you - you can listen to founder Trebor Scholz's exciting explanation of platform co-operativism in the YouTube video "How Platform Cooperatives Can Unleash the Network" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkSTgAucRqE&t=30s
TorontotheBetter [www.TorontotheBetter.net], a programme of worker co-op Libra Knowledge and Information Services, Toronto's original non-profit multi-sector social economy centre, is in the process of becoming a multi-stakeholder cooperative to lend its support to the movement. An online membership form will soon be available. If you are interested in becoming a member of the TorontotheBetter co-op send an email to postmaster@torontothebetter.net.
TorontotheBetter - working for a better economy for all, in Toronto and beyond.
TorontotheBetter [www.TorontotheBetter.net], a programme of worker co-op Libra Knowledge and Information Services, Toronto's original non-profit multi-sector social economy centre, is in the process of becoming a multi-stakeholder cooperative to lend its support to the movement. An online membership form will soon be available. If you are interested in becoming a member of the TorontotheBetter co-op send an email to postmaster@torontothebetter.net.
TorontotheBetter - working for a better economy for all, in Toronto and beyond.
Friday, 25 October 2019
Faceboook and the Internet wild west: 2019 book "Zucked" challenges social entreprise and national governments.
Roger McNamee, the author of the unfortunately titled but important 2019 book "Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe " is in as good a position as anyone to know why it's time to end the wild west that the Internet soon became. following its now naively, albeit understandably, aspirational "nerd"-beginnings. In Zucked he nails the adolescent techy dreams that propelled Facebook founder and colleague Mark Zuckerberg and other privileged young entrepreneurs to metaphorically surf their way to massive fortunes by exploiting the regulatory vacuum that online enterprise long enjoyed. Privileged personal data was sold or used for market validation tasks. Beyond insider details about foreign election interference and privacy violation that were undoubtedly what made this book a must-publish item for major publisher Penguin, McNamee offers serious proposals for what to do about the problems he exposes. It is for this reason that he has been invited to provide give expert testimony to both Canadian and US governments. In some sense for governments the challenge is easy in that they must clearly impose greater constraints, both financial and structural on online development ne enterprises like Google, Twitter and, of course Facebook.
But for social enterprise, the challenge emerging from the Facebook "catastrophe" is more complex. This is because 21st century social enterprise has been the beneficiary of the same unregulated online space that facilitated the rise of Facebook - low/no start-up costs and little case-history, let alome law, about what is socially acceptable and what is not. Social enterprise must preserve its space for innovation that fills gaps in our still "neo-liberally" dominated political culture, while supporting the need to curb predatory license. The best current option, since governments are usually slow and reluctant actors is to promote alternatives to corporate entrepreneurialism. One such is that of the platform coop movement championed by Trebor Scholz, described elsewhere in this blog. Towards the end of McNamee provides useful suggestions of existing utilities like non-tracking search engine DuckDuckGo to facilitate readers' benevolent instincts.
This is a key book for Internet and available from this blog's founder, Libra (libra@web.ca)
for a non--Amazon status boost. Stay tuned to this blog for more about the challenges of social enterprise in a time of neoliberal cynicism.
But for social enterprise, the challenge emerging from the Facebook "catastrophe" is more complex. This is because 21st century social enterprise has been the beneficiary of the same unregulated online space that facilitated the rise of Facebook - low/no start-up costs and little case-history, let alome law, about what is socially acceptable and what is not. Social enterprise must preserve its space for innovation that fills gaps in our still "neo-liberally" dominated political culture, while supporting the need to curb predatory license. The best current option, since governments are usually slow and reluctant actors is to promote alternatives to corporate entrepreneurialism. One such is that of the platform coop movement championed by Trebor Scholz, described elsewhere in this blog. Towards the end of McNamee provides useful suggestions of existing utilities like non-tracking search engine DuckDuckGo to facilitate readers' benevolent instincts.
This is a key book for Internet and available from this blog's founder, Libra (libra@web.ca)
for a non--Amazon status boost. Stay tuned to this blog for more about the challenges of social enterprise in a time of neoliberal cynicism.
Tuesday, 22 October 2019
Election results reject anti-social economics
Even if the Canadian federal election results were mixed according to region an demographics, so muting support for a wall to wall social economy it's clear that neoliberalism and social conservatism were rejected in favour of social investment, climate action and inclusion, though to different degrees and in different ways. For TorontotheBetter and other social economy supporters our challenge must be to make "nice to haves" into "must haves" as happened in the past with pensions, education and, most famously, medicare. Rights to clean air, clean water, healthy food, and free transit must be the next progressive regulatory agenda, and more and more, particularly the young, are demanding them. Originally private organizations brought many of these issues to pubic prominence but to make their benefits available to all, not just a well-off few will require government action in the form of regulation.
Wednesday, 16 October 2019
Ontario government abolishes electronic handling fee for recycling end-of-life electronics
Few recent government acts can have been more reactionary than this in Ontario, at a time when our planet is drowning in waste materials and warming dangerously from their creation so TorontotheBetter simply refers you for information to www.recyclemyelectronics.ca and calls on you to express your feelings about this act to your local political representatives. Of course what recyclers must also do is reject the marketing and associated consumerism that promotes unnecessary acquisition of electronics, and all other materials, in the first place. There is a contradiction here that we must do our best to solve by resisting the voices that encourage wasteful purchasing even if they may also contribute to its safe final disposition.
Wednesday, 2 October 2019
Platform co-operativism: why it's here and what it can be
In the dire condition that progressive movements in the U.S. and now, it seems, increasingly around the world, found themselves, after the election of president Donald Trump cooperativism appeared to Trebor Scholz, the activist behind the platform cooperativism movement, as a welcome breath of fresh political air. And there is no doubt that a more egalitarian sharing of collective wealth will be fostered by cooperative organization, as it as been for nearly two hundred years.But a realistic appraisal of what the coop movement has done and can do is necessary before the supporters of the movement, like TorontotheBetter think that this movement alone will correct the ills of inequality and environmental collapse that growth at all costs has unleashed upon the world. Here we consider what cooperativism has done and what is needed if it is to do more.
Platform Cooperativism, led by Trebor Scholz of the Platform Cooperative Consortium is an initiative to provide an alternative to the currently dominant actors in the virtual world where all increasingly live our lives. In place of aggressively competitive and individualistic entrepreneurs hip of tech giants Google, Facebook etc. Platform coops democratic member ownership and control.
As a worker co-op from our inception Libra, Torontothebetter’s creator welcomes such a socially constructive movement In our increasingly reactionary political environment, where right wing extremists everywhere have been seizing the moment of faltering liberal democracy.
Life will not improve for the majority of the world’s peoples until the progressive banner of collective justice and liberty flies again in mainstream public discourse.
That this coop initiative shares the limitation (ultimately comfortable subordination within market economies and relative neglect of state economic intervention), as well as the strengths of modern cooperativism, does not negate the importance of the economic resistance it represents.
However, just as was vindicated by the cooperative commonwealth federation in Canada, the original successful champions of of public health care, economic action requires simultaneous political agency to realize its goals.
All those who, like TorontotheBetter, seek a world characterized by collaboration rather than dog eat dog competition must ask themselves what they can do to foster it. In a world that is now transformationally electronic as the 19th century was steam- and the 20th oil- powered, popular struggle must evolve from the streets to the airwaves.
Stay tuned to TorontotheBetter to learn more about our own platform coop initiatives. Local and global events are planned in the fall of 2019. TorontotheBetter will host a PWYC movie screening, sign-up and discussion in Toronto in September (details TBA) while the Platform Cooperative Consortium will hold a broadcast conference from New York in November. To echo a famous poet from the centre of the industrial revolution it is not too late to seek a better world.
Please send questions and comments by email to postmaster@torontothebetter.ne
Platform Cooperativism, led by Trebor Scholz of the Platform Cooperative Consortium is an initiative to provide an alternative to the currently dominant actors in the virtual world where all increasingly live our lives. In place of aggressively competitive and individualistic entrepreneurs hip of tech giants Google, Facebook etc. Platform coops democratic member ownership and control.
As a worker co-op from our inception Libra, Torontothebetter’s creator welcomes such a socially constructive movement In our increasingly reactionary political environment, where right wing extremists everywhere have been seizing the moment of faltering liberal democracy.
Life will not improve for the majority of the world’s peoples until the progressive banner of collective justice and liberty flies again in mainstream public discourse.
That this coop initiative shares the limitation (ultimately comfortable subordination within market economies and relative neglect of state economic intervention), as well as the strengths of modern cooperativism, does not negate the importance of the economic resistance it represents.
However, just as was vindicated by the cooperative commonwealth federation in Canada, the original successful champions of of public health care, economic action requires simultaneous political agency to realize its goals.
All those who, like TorontotheBetter, seek a world characterized by collaboration rather than dog eat dog competition must ask themselves what they can do to foster it. In a world that is now transformationally electronic as the 19th century was steam- and the 20th oil- powered, popular struggle must evolve from the streets to the airwaves.
Stay tuned to TorontotheBetter to learn more about our own platform coop initiatives. Local and global events are planned in the fall of 2019. TorontotheBetter will host a PWYC movie screening, sign-up and discussion in Toronto in September (details TBA) while the Platform Cooperative Consortium will hold a broadcast conference from New York in November. To echo a famous poet from the centre of the industrial revolution it is not too late to seek a better world.
Please send questions and comments by email to postmaster@torontothebetter.ne
