Podcast appearances and mentions of brixton pound

Charlie Waterhouse is a co-founder of the Art Group and Media team at Extinction Rebellion based in London. He's Creative director of This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll, and a director of the Brixton Pound.In this episode, we talk about the origins of Extinction Rebellion, a global movement using non-violent direct action to persuade governments to take action on climate, and inspire public consciousness to the cause.We explore how design and art played a part in its formation. And direct actions such as the recent protest at the House Of Commons in the UK, in which activists glued themselves to each other around the speaker's chair.We also talk about learnings that may be taken from web3 and DAOs, and lines drawn between 60s counterculture, punk and current day social movements.__SPONSORSZerion combines every corner of web3 in a simple and intuitive app for self-custodial humans. Discover the hottest NFT collections, track your DeFi rewards, and vote in DAOs across 10+ chains.  Get started at zerion.io/~Lens Protocol is the open-source tech stack for building decentralized social media applications. With Lens, your followers go with you to whatever application you want to use. The last social media handle you'll ever need to create.Visit lens.xyz

Brett Scott is an author, journalist, and financial hacker exploring the intersections between money systems, finance, and digital technology.  He is also a Senior Fellow of the Finance Innovation Lab, an Associate at the Institute of Social Banking, and an advisory group member of the Brixton Pound local currency. His latest book is titled Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets.

Hello Interactors,The first year of Interplace is nearly complete. I want to thank everyone who supported me through 2021 by subscribing, reading, listening, commenting, and sharing. I also want to thank the London Writers’ Salon and all faithful writers who showed up on Zoom with me every morning at 8:00 Pacific time. It brought companionship, accountability, and miles of smiles.Evolutionary biologists call interactors the individual traits that are so uniquely beneficial that they lead to natural selection. You are my interactors ­– special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. Thanks to you, that journey will continue through 2022. I’m keeping to the same structure, but may summon the courage to do occasional interviews as well.A year ago I kicked off Interplace. In the winter I wrote about human behavior, then moved to cartography in the spring, physical geography and the environment in the summer, and economic geography this fall. This is post number 50 and the last of 2021. Should Interplace 2021 be a book, it would be comprised of four sections, 50 chapters, nearly 740 pages, and over 130,000 words. To celebrate, I thought I’d share excepts from the most read posts from each of the four seasons. I also included titles and links to all 50 pieces at the end.But before I start, I thought I’d share a quote from the legendary leader the city of Seattle was named after, Chief Si'ahl (siʔaɫ). These words appeared in my first newsletter and continue to serve as an inspiration for Interplace today. They’re worth sharing again as we reflect and contemplate the constellation of interactions with people and place we all had throughout 2021 and imagine what’s ahead in 2022.“Humankind has not woven the web of life.We are but one thread within it.Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.All things are bound together.All things connect.”And now, excerpts from the top four most read Interplace posts of 2021.WINTER: BEHAVIORTake Your Head for a WalkYour brain makes maps on your behalf. But if you want a good one, take a hike. Your brain will love you for it, and your future self will too.It turns out walking and cognitive mapping are mutually dependent systems that are only optimized when done together. Driving or riding as a passenger are poor substitutes for enhancing our interactions with place. In the words of neuroscientist, Shane O’Mara,“The brain’s navigational and mapping and memory systems are so intertwined as to be almost one and the same. Walking to somewhere depends on the brain’s navigational system, and in turn walking provides a vast amount of ongoing information to the brain’s mapping and navigation systems. These are mutually enriching and reinforcing systems.”Our cities don’t make it easy to walk. A century of car culture has kept people from interacting with place. We can deduce from the research I’ve cited, that this is a bad thing. Not only do we have a biased and hazy image built in our minds of the environment in which we live, sitting in a car or a chair does not facilitate happy thoughts.We all succumb to what these two Iowa State researchers referred to as the ‘dread effect’. The thought of expending more energy than necessary can make one dread walking. It’s all too easy to tap a destination on Google maps, hit the ‘walking distance’ tab, shutter at the time and effort it would take to walk, and then grab the keys and drive there. But since Covid hit, I instead grab my headphones, take a step, and feel the cells in my brain come alive. I am interacting with place, with a smile on my face, as a cranial cellular symphony traces a map of the space.SPRING: CARTOGRAPHYYou Are What You MapHow triangles, topology, quadrangles, and cartography yield maps that can skew both messages and timeThe Renaissance accelerated the field of cartography. This was an era of discovering new knowledge, instrumentation, and the measuring and quantification of the natural world. Mercator’s projection stemmed from the invention of perspective; a word derived from the Latin word perspicere – “to see through.” European colonial maps were drawn mostly to navigate, control, and dominate land – and its human occupants. We have all been controlled by these maps in one way or other and we still are. Our knowledge of the world largely stems from the same perspective Mercator was offering up centuries ago. The entire world sees the world through the eyes of Western explorers, conquerors, and cartographers. That includes elements of maps as simple as place names.Take place names in Africa, as an example. The country occupied by France until 1960, Niger, comes from the Latin word for “shining black”. Its derogatory adaptation by the British added another ‘g’ making a word we now call the n-word. But niger was not the most popular Latin word used to describe people of Africa, it was an ancient Greek derivative; Aethiops – which means “burn face”. If you replace the ‘s’ at the end with the ‘a’ from the beginning, you see where the name Ethiopia comes from.There’s another Westernized place name just west of where the Dakota and Lakota people thrived called Gannett Peak. It’s the tallest mountain in the state of Wyoming and is part of the Bridger-Teton range. I’m sure you’ve heard of the more popular neighboring range, the Grand Teton’s; another notable (and sexist) French place name which means – ‘Big Boobs’. Gannett Peak is named after Henry Gannett – the father of American mapmaking.He was one of many geographers throughout the history of western colonization. Sure he was more influential than most, but they were all tasked with the same thing. Whether it was triangulating British territories in India, finessing French regions in Africa, or delineating Dutch districts in Brazil they were all measuring, mapping, and manipulating how others should see the world. It’s the paradox of mapmaking. No matter your intent, whatever line you draw will reflect the bias you bring.Mercator was biased by perspective because that’s what the culture of his time led him to do. Gannett mapped natural occurring features of the land because the mapping of minerals and other natural resources was in high demand. Iowa was named Iowa because that’s the word they knew. Even attempts to counter-map the dominance of cartesian colonial cartography can’t escape its own bias. Nobody can. But we live on a melting planet, so our days remain a few. If we’re going to survive this calamity, we must see that our thoughts are skewed. So the next you look at a map, consider its point of view. If we all do this together, we can invent a world anew.SUMMER: ENVIRONMENTCalamity in KlamathMukluks suffer over water for suckersCalifornia’s fires have claimed two million acres. Ten percent of the sequoia population was taken by a single fire; trees that have been on this planet for thousands of years – gone. It’s so dry in southern Oregon’s Klamath valley that wells are drying up. Homeowners are having to drive for their water. The county has ordered cisterns from as far away as Oklahoma, but are running up against shortages of rain barrels due to choked supply chains and increased demand.The Klamath valley has seen its fair share of emergencies, but every generation seems surprised. And sometimes apathetic. The first occupants of this area were the Klamath Tribes: the Klamath, the Modoc and the Yahooskin-Paiute people. They were sometimes referred to as mukluks or numu – the people. People, while differentiated by name, are still animals. And like our multi-legged, finned, scaled, and winged companions, we are an integral part of the environment. This was, and remains, a pan-Indigenous concept that deserves reminding. The Klamath Tribes embraced this belief in a shared communal slogan, “naanok ?ans naat sat’waYa naat ciiwapk diceew’a “We help each other; We will live good”By the 1950s the Klamath Tribes became one of the most prosperous tribes in America. In keeping with their traditional ways, they owned, managed, and sustained the largest stand of Ponderosa Pine in the West. Driven by a self-sufficient determinism millennia old, they were the only tribe to make enough money to pay the United States Government for the services their people utilized. But their success made them a target. The Klamath Tribes stood out. Having demonstrated just how profitable their land could be, it was time the United States took even more than they had a century prior.On August 1, 1953, House Concurrent Resolution 108 was issued by the United States Congress announcing the official federal policy of termination. The resolution called for the immediate termination of the Klamath Tribes. Included were the Flathead, Menominee, Potawatomi, and Turtle Mountain Chippewa, along with all tribes in the states of California, New York, Florida, and Texas.Between 1945 and 1960 Congress terminated more than one hundred tribes and small bands, 11,500 Indigenous people lost their native legal status, and over one million acres of land lost its trust status. Not a single tribe has improved economically since, while corporations have profited handsomely.I’m convinced that a combination of traditional knowledge and new science, technology, and invention will yield the best path forward for managing our global climatic conundrums. But we can’t just tech our way out of this. We’re going to have to change our food habits, reduce extractions, eliminate commercial and consumer waste, and overhaul the global food system.The dam has been cracked, but it needs to be broken wide open. All living organisms depend on water. They depend on us. Let’s listen to the ancient words of the Klamath people: When we help each other, we will all live well.FALL: ECONOMICSCryptocurrency, Euro-insurgency, and Economic UrgencyUntangling economic supremacy through heresy while offering an alternative destinyCryptocurrency was invented to circumvent the juggernaut that banks, governments, and credit card companies hold on the currency market. But the more it gets legitimized as an alternative currency, the more interested these traditional institutions become. For example, one form of cryptocurrency rising in popularity are stablecoins. It’s a digital currency that can be converted into ‘real’ money and is issued by the very institutions the inventors were hoping to circumvent. It seems there is no escaping Western economic dominance.The truth is, alternative currencies and economies exist all around us and have for centuries. For example, in a district of central London call Brixton, where David Bowie once lived, shops no longer accept the British Pound. Instead they take an alternative currency called the Brixton Pound that features a picture of Bowie on a paper bill that is as nicely designed and proportioned as Bowie himself.Many schemes like this exist outside of the Western world too – and they’re often not tied to the dominant currency system. For example, there’s a settlement on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya called Bangladesh. Not to be confused with the country of Bangladesh. It was named after an early settler who unexpectedly packed up and moved to Bangladesh never to return. The area was hence called Bangladesh. It’s a poor informal settlement made of self-made homes and little to no infrastructure, yet is home to over 20,000 people. They work at nearby industries at the fringe of Nairobi doing odd jobs regularly paid workers refuse to do.Many are well educated, but work is intermittent and there are more qualified workers than there are jobs. It leads to extreme poverty, apathy, and strife. One local teacher in the Peace Corps, Will Ruddick, became frustrated that he was graduating kids with no where to go. He said many of whom were more skilled academically than many he’d witnessed at Stanford. Ruddick happens to also have a PhD in econophysics – a branch of economics that draws inspiration from the field of physics. He began wondering how he could devise a way for residents in areas like Bangladesh to earn consistent wages doing meaningful work in their community. He wanted ways for them to create and share in their abundance, take charge of their own livelihoods, and build a self-sustaining economic future.American economic geography professor, Eric Sheppard, from UCLA offers that because Western style capitalism relies on “uneven and asymmetric connectivities” that end up “driving uneven geographical development”, we’ve arrived at a place where the dominant global economic scheme of globalization has failed “at scales ranging from the globe to the neighbourhood.”Instead of propagating or placating a dominant global economy, what if we acknowledge, embrace, fertilize, understand, celebrate, and experience alternative economies embedded within or on the fringe of the establishment, like those Ruddick has pioneered. After all, these are economies that have been forged through the interaction of people and place whose shared histories have, as Sheppard says, “found them encountering, rather than propagating, Capitalist economic development.”Following is an index of all the pieces I’ve written over the last year. Thanks, again, for the support. I’ll see you all next week and next year. FULL LIST OF INTERPLACE 2021WINTER: BEHAVIORTHE INTERACTION OF PEOPLE AND PLACE My First Subscribers Raccoons Destroyed My LawnWhat the World Needs Now is LoveThe Lone Star Is in a Frozen StateWASPs and Weeds Gone WildA Computer on Every Desk and a Car in Every GarageBill and Brad's Excellent AdventureTake Your Head for a WalkSPRING: CARTOGRAPHYI'd Rather Be Spinning LogosA Groma from Rome Finds a New HomeA Nation SquaredMiami Priced, Ohio DicedGuns, God, and GoldMake Your Own Survey in Under a DayYou Are What You MapThe U.S. Census: Mapping a Sense of UsBoomtown MapsWinning Over the Windy City with WatercolorsMaps as Logos; Atlases that ImposeSpring 2021 Cartography ReviewCul-de-sacs, Caucasians, and the Kansas Garden CitySUMMER: ENVIRONMENTThe Obscene ManA New Chapter to Behold as the Network of Life UnfoldsRuckelshaus and Hickel Get us Out of a PickleBig Science Meets Big Ecology under the Big SkyMuggy Conditions, Buggy Coalitions, and Collegiate AmbitionsNature, Nurture, Math, Art and VirtueAn Olympic Sized MetabolismAn Ancestor's GardenSolar Powered Imperialist AddictionsCharlie Watts and the Strange AttractorCalamity in KlamathDitches, Wells, and Dams. Riches, Cartels, and Scams.Lay Dung; Feng ShuiFALL: ECONOMICSThe Wealth of GenerationsSpace Cadets and the Earthy CrunchiesOnly a Nobody Walks in L.A.From a Shoe Lust Hit, to 'Just Do It'.Harder, Better, Faster, StrongerHitler and the Capitalist's FixSupply Chain Pains as China GainsBond, Bezos, Gates, and MuskBlack Friday and the Christmas Creep: Part 1Black Friday and the Christmas Creep: Part 2The ‘One Click Buy’ Empire Needs an UmpireHoops, Groups, and Feedback LoopsCryptocurrency, Euro-insurgency, and Economic UrgencyWINTER: BEHAVIOROh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree, Your Story Has Many Branches Subscribe at interplace.io

Hello Interactors,This is the last full week of fall and so the last episode on economic geography. Happy early winter solstice everyone. Soon we in the North start tilting toward the sun. I’ve learned a ton this season and hope you have too. Today I conclude with a summarization of the history and effects of capitalism as we know it today and offer a glimpse at alternatives. We like easy answers to hard problems, but I’m here to tell you it’s messy and complex. And that’s just the good stuff.As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let’s go…THE URGENCY OF CRYPTOCURRENCYCryptocurrency was trending as a topic again this fall. It spiked in October. I still see residual evidence of this in my social media feeds where debates rage on over whether it’s a legitimate form of currency or just a speculator’s delight.Cryptocurrency was invented to circumvent the juggernaut that banks, governments, and credit card companies hold on the currency market. But the more it gets legitimized as an alternative currency, the more interested these traditional institutions become. For example, one form of cryptocurrency rising in popularity are stablecoins. It’s a digital currency that can be converted into ‘real’ money and is issued by the very institutions the inventors were hoping to circumvent. It seems there is no escaping Western economic dominance.Money in the U.S. is commonly believed to come from the government, but most greenbacks issued today come from banks. They order currency from the Federal Reserve based on public demand which is then put into general circulation – which is growing worldwide. In fact, there are more U.S. dollars circulating outside of the U.S. than in it. Much of which is used by people struggling financially around the globe.Meanwhile, those not struggling are using cash less and less. Recently, some New York retailers even attempted to go cashless. It prompted the city to pass a law requiring food establishments to accept cash or face a $1,000 fine.Still, increasingly we see people paying for items with their phone. In this digital, post-cash society it’s easy to imagine an alternative virtual currency sneaking in. If our democracy can be challenged, why not our currency? A recent New York Times article by Peter Coy on the slipping grip of cash notes that “Some economists believe there is a risk that we’ll someday find ourselves with nothing that is universally accepted as a medium of exchange.” He goes on to remind us that is was Socrates who “originated the concept of a noble lie, which is a myth that elites propagate for what they view as the good of the public.” He then quotes Michael Dorf of the Cornell Law School who believes “the solidity of money is one such lie.”The truth is, alternative currencies and economies exist all around us and have for centuries. For example, in a district of central London call Brixton, where David Bowie once lived, shops no longer accept the British Pound. Instead they take an alternative currency called the Brixton Pound that features a picture of Bowie on a paper bill that is as nicely designed and proportioned as Bowie himself.It’s been in circulation since 2009 and 250 area shops accept it. Workers in Brixton also get paid with it and you can even settle your utility bills with it. It’s a hyper-local monetary scheme that incentivizes local residents to shop local, buy local, and live local. The Brixton Pound has inspired cities across the UK to do the same and now Bristol, Cardiff, Hull, Liverpool, and Plymouth all have their own alternative local currencies.Many schemes like this exist outside of the Western world too – and they’re often not tied to the dominant currency system. For example, there’s a settlement on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya called Bangladesh. Not to be confused with the country of Bangladesh. It was named after an early settler who unexpectedly packed up and moved to Bangladesh never to return. The area was hence called Bangladesh. It’s a poor informal settlement made of self-made homes and little to no infrastructure, yet is home to over 20,000 people. They work at nearby industries at the fringe of Nairobi doing odd jobs regularly paid workers refuse to do.Many are well educated, but work is intermittent and there are more qualified workers than there are jobs. It leads to extreme poverty, apathy, and strife. One local teacher in the Peace Corps, Will Ruddick, became frustrated that he was graduating kids with no where to go. He said many of whom were more skilled academically than many he’d witnessed at Stanford. Ruddick happens to also have a PhD in econophysics – a branch of economics that draws inspiration from the field of physics. He began wondering how he could devise a way for residents in areas like Bangladesh to earn consistent wages doing meaningful work in their community. He wanted ways for them to create and share in their abundance, take charge of their own livelihoods, and build a self-sustaining economic future.So in 2010 he launched an alternative local currency experiment called Eco-Pesa in three informal settlements in Kenya. That experiment became permanent in Bangladesh with the creation of their own currency; the Bangla-Pesa. Unlike the Brixton Pound, this alternative currency can’t be exchanged for the national Kenyan currency. It’s a closed system of money creation that serves one purpose: support a shared willingness among community members to accept and trade money in exchange for goods and services.It has over 2000 members and 220 businesses and has helped fill the settlement with money, eliminate market instability brought on by outside nationalistic forces, provide opportunities for investment, and grow Bangladesh businesses that generate jobs.  He went on to found Grass Roots Economics which is a resource and platform that supports and inspires experiments like his. The platform has launched seven different forms of local currency in poverty stricken informal settlements across Africa, including two in South Africa and one in Congo. Last year the Red Cross leveraged the organization to establish more local currencies during Covid helping to grow the number of registered users of local currencies to over 50,000 people. Ruddick sees no reason why it can’t continue to scale regionally and even nationally. Maybe even across the second largest continent in the world. And he has the track record and models to substantiate his claim.GREAT DIVIDE; WHITE PRIDEThe primary obstacle to such schemes taking hold too pervasively is the default global capitalocentric economic system of the West; a scheme that relies on places like Bangladesh to perpetuate its dominance. It’s a form of power and control that has existed since the spread of European colonialism starting in the 1400s.Europe had yet to be introduced to capitalism. Which means, contrary to popular belief, they didn’t invent it. There’s now ample research pointing to evidence of capitalist trade and profit already occurring across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Folks like Christopher Columbus would have tripped over these capitalist trade routes as he stumbled his way upon their shores. In fact, it’s more likely European colonial scouts like Columbus were in the untenable position of trying to convince these well established economies that they should allow lowly Europeans to even participate in their capitalistic schemes.The Ming dynasty in China and the Mughal Empire of South Asia would have been two of the more established world centers of economics at the time. Medieval Europe, in comparison, would have looked primitive and backwards by their standards. But over the course of centuries, the Europeans managed to disrupt (often violently) existing capital structures creating what has been called the Great Divergence – a socioeconomic shift in balance to the West.Just how ‘great’ it was is a matter of perspective, of course. To Amer-Europeans it was great. I certainly grew up learning that. I was taught Europeans were fortunate geographically, gifted intellectually, and superior culturally. Their ‘enlightened’ selves rose above the paltry ills of feudal medievalism to erase an embarrassing historical stain. Their inventiveness gave rise to free and fair democracy and capitalism that eventually spread from America’s sea to shining sea. Not so fast.A new book by Anthropologists David Graeber and David Wengrow show compelling evidence that it was actually a visit from the Native American (Huron-Wendat) statesman, Kandiaronk, who planted the seeds of ‘enlightenment’ with European philosophers in his eloquent and observant criticism of European ways. Here is a fragment of a speech he delivered to a group of French philosophers and statesmen in 1703:“I have spent six years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that’s not inhuman, and I genuinely think this can only be the case, as long as you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’. I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils; the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one could preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity, – of all the world’s worst behaviour. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all because of money. In the light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right in refusing to touch, or so much as to look at silver?”The heart of Kondiaronk’s critique is what fueled the ‘great divergence.’ Their ‘slaughterhouse of the living’ is what disrupted existing Asian economic dominance. It wasn’t ‘enlightenment’ but well documented, practiced, and executed forms of slavery, racism, and war-instigated establishment of European controlled capitalism. They re-centered economic activity around themselves through force, but convinced themselves, and others to this day, that their actions were justified. The British and American economic geography professor, Eric Sheppard, from UCLA puts it like this:“The stories Europeans told themselves, and imposed on others, amounted to a self justification of their role as a uniquely civilizing force, marginalizing the colonized (from Ireland to India and the Belgian Congo) as less-than-civilized, in order to justify their less than-human treatment by self-described liberals.”In the late 1800s, after the U.S. slaughtered 3,000 Filipinos as part of an overnight raid in the colonization of their land, America’s favorite poet at the time, Rudyard Kipling, wrote a poem that emblemizes the racist, violent, and self-justified imperialistic sentiment of the time:Take up the White Man’s burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness,On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.It was published in the New York Tribune, New York Sun, and San Francisco Examiner. It was also loved by President Theodore Roosevelt who sent a copy of it to his close friend and Massachusetts politician, Henry Lodge, with a note that read:“Rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.”Capitalism is rooted in racism and its emergence was tied to the colonization of captured territories over seas through militaristic invasions. By the time Roosevelt was putting it in practice in the U.S., it was a centuries old well-oiled machine. The rights of European territories to claim sovereignty and organize captured territories first emerged in Europe after the signing of the Treaty of Westfalia in 1648. After 80 years of European territorial and religious wars, this peace treaty forced the Holy Roman Empire to divvy out sovereign states (countries) across Europe and allowed them to also choose their own official religions.This event coincided with the emergence of political economists in Scotland, England, and France who had been debating and writing socioeconomic theories for years. Especially after the visit from Kondiaronk. They seized the opportunity to imbue their concepts with a secular vision that allowed capitalism to thrive between diverse European countries, and religions, for their mutual benefit. One such economic theory to eventually emerge was Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand.’With a European model of economic abstraction established, it was then tied to government controlled nation-state territories. It was a no-brainer to replicate this model for any remote territory conquered, bartered, and stolen overseas. And just like that, global colonization had taken hold. The emergence of the great divergence.It is from this confluence of events that the Western educated world has come to believe capitalism as conceived in the minds of Enlightened European thinkers. And because they self-justified themselves as intellectually and spiritually superior to other races and religions, including Kondiaronk, they believed, and we’ve been taught, that the European colonial and capitalistic expansion was for the good of humanity.But let’s be honest, this is fantasy. And it’s dangerous to abstract away capitalism from the real and documented horrors of racism, slavery, rape, persecution, theft, exploitation, and extermination that allows it to flourish to this day. It shouldn’t be sanitized as a ‘great divergence.’ It should be chastised as a hate insurgence.With the rise of Trumpism we are witnessing the sheen of capitalist oriented racism shining through decades of opaque but fading layers of failed attempts and promises of liberty and justice for all. And it’s in the spirit of domineering nationalists taking up Kipling’s distant, but misguided, call to accept the ‘White Man’s burden.’ And how much better is the Biden administration when kids captured at the border under Trump still remain in cages like ‘new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child.’ In the words of Kondiaronk, “the world’s worst behaviour.”Both the left and the right, who are still smarting from Covid supply chain woes and wringing their hands over increasing inflation, are both viewing the global economic juggernaut their parties helped to construct with suspect for the first time. They’re not alone. Every country in the world is scrambling to reconsider their local economy as it relates to Western capitalistic global domination. No wonder the world is suffering a collective anxiety attack.DON’T CRINGE AT THE FRINGEWe are witnessing an array of identity crisis across the socio-political spectrum. From far right nationalistic white-supremacy authoritarianism to the far left hopes of reconstituting socialist theories of idealized utopias. Both of which are different forms of top-down autocratic attempts at organizing social order and economies – one through neoliberal capitalistic oligarchies and the other through socialistic governmental central control. And because our poor human brains are attracted to binary polars, seek simple answers, and loath the messy middle, we suffer.Meanwhile, fringe experiments in alternative economic schemes continue to flourish as they always have. But some encroach on the establishment more than others. And one in particular operates at a scale big enough to challenge the West’s strangle hold on global economics – China. China’s global Belt and Road Initiative, while China-centric, is also undeniably globally inclusive.They have been dispersing their investments in infrastructure and commodity creation and extraction in a myriad of countries – big and small, rich and poor – around the world since 2013. At home they operate a hybrid Socialist and Capitalist government that then orchestrates attempts at controlling a global economy. If a hybridist socioeconomic experiment is seriously challenging the default world economy of the last 50-60 years, shouldn’t the U.S. and Europe consider conducting experiments of their own? Or has hubris and denial taken too strong of a hold? Only history will tell.It’s safe to say that the days of claiming Western style capitalism and U.S. exceptionalism have been exposed and debunked. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” has come into the light and it’s empty. And the neoliberal free market economy is anything but free and has financially imprisoned millions for decades. Also gone are the Eurocentric interpretations of history. It’s time we stop insisting that the capitalistic scheme dominating the world today, while not perfect, is the least-bad option and therefore every country must adopt it. It’s rhetoric like this that the global North uses to twist the arms of the poorer global South to align them with their socio-political and economic agenda.  Our beloved binary brains, again, are attracted to global North versus global South battles of theories and victories. The same can be said of East versus West. But most countries caught in this polarization have their own theories, some invented, and some borrowed or influenced – good or bad – by centuries of globalization, education, and financing from the global North. It’s no fun, but we need to wrestle with the messy middle.We in the West are so trained to assess and judge other geographies, cultures, and economies from our ivory towers of exceptionalism – as if surveying a globe from a godly perch – labeling, cataloging, and objectifying human and non-human entities, that we forget the interaction of people and place. As the late great economist, Herb Simon, says, (as illustrated on my about page)Those folks in Kenya stand at the fringe of a global economic system that either ignores them, exploits them, or starves them to death. It’s what it means to be marginalized. But with the help of a friend, they are discovering their plight is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which they find themselves. They have found a way to stand up, recognize and accept the apparent complexity, and act out of respect for each other’s position relative to one another…and the selfish globalized economic apparatus that put them there.Professor Sheppard concludes that he and his Western educated colleagues, “suffer from a particular set of geographical blinders.” He says, “they look at our world in ways that normalize the European perspective on how development happens.” It’s a perspective he’s critical of because it’s a model of economic geography that “fails to deliver on its promise of development for all, everywhere.”He goes on to offer that because Western style capitalism relies on “uneven and asymmetric connectivities” that end up “driving uneven geographical development”, we’ve arrived at a place where the dominant global economic scheme of globalization has failed “at scales ranging from the globe to the neighbourhood.”To help combat his own implicit bias, he planted himself in Jakarta to do his research. “Thinking through Jakarta”, he says, “the raggedy fringes that matter are the hybridity of Indonesia’s political economy, informality and biophysical processes.” Instead of hypothesizing over concepts or proselytizing projects from the canons of capitalism, he’s asking that we recognize, as those in Bangladesh and Brixton did, that “relations with Capitalism are crucial to understanding how” emerging alternative economies embedded on the insides of dominant systems “coevolves with its outsides.”Instead of propagating or placating a dominant global economy, what if we acknowledge, embrace, fertilize, understand, celebrate, and experience alternative economies embedded within or on the fringe of the establishment. After all, these are economies that have been forged through the interaction of people and place whose shared histories have, as Sheppard says, “found them encountering, rather than propagating, Capitalist economic development.”Cryptocurrency is likely to trend again. Our anxiety has us looking for easy answers and social media likes shiny technocratic objects. Meanwhile, I’m rooting for Will Ruddick and his grass roots economies. A humane form of reciprocity that even the brilliant, eloquent, and enlightened Kondiaronk would recognize. And maybe even support. Subscribe at interplace.io

On this week’s episode is designer and activist Charlie Waterhouse. Charlie has done fantastic work for both the Brixton Pound and Extinction Rebellion, and we had a fascinating discussion around alternative currencies and the power of communities before delving into how to design a movement.Watch the episode here: https://www.satellite.earth/pub/@rachel:designing-rebellionYou can also listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Charlie’s website: https://www.thisaintrocknroll.com/Platform is a newsletter and podcast for people pissed off with capitalism. Subscribe to get episodes like this delivered to your inbox every week. Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe

In this episode of #TheNewAbnormal, I interview Charlie Waterhouse, Creative Director of This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll (with an ethos based on identity + activism for culture + causes) whose clients include those such as Amnesty International, English Heritage, Médecins Sans Frontières, National Gallery, and UNICEF. He's also co-founder of the Art Group and Media & Messaging team at Extinction Rebellion ('the most successful start-up in history'), and is a Fellow of the RSA. His day job is split between This Ain’t Rock’n’Roll (who are currently working with the Unitarians and legal activists Foxglove) and community organisation The Brixton Project. After hours he’s also a director of the Brixton Pound, and is part of the team planning '81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance' a celebration of 1981’s Brixton Uprising. So we discuss all of the above, starting with XR's international rebellion against the criminal inaction on the climate and ecological crisis . Charlie also outlines his viewpoints on issues such as the future of cities, work he's doing with David Graeber’s widow, the modern crisis of spirituality, and how to build a utopian business model. Finally, we debate an activist manifesto based around a belief that 'when hope dies, action begins'.

This week we talked about interest and some of the other financial mechanisms that keep the rich rich and the poor poor. Try Donegood https://donegood.app Get Michael’s Apps https://goodtohear.co.ukRestaurants Brighton: https://restaurantsbrighton.co.uk---- This Week's Links ----[1] Michael’s Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eex-iLuUdiw [2] Create Digital Music Post about Michael’s Video - https://cdm.link/2020/11/how-to-get-started-hacking-mutable-instruments-modules-in-a-video-guide/?fbclid=IwAR09KLEmd6dyiQGzvc9l9AdSrNXZ3MkC9c_ScSeKwFMSy7JuWCKsgY3IIdc [3] Michael's brother doing live things - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBwVjWpFPIs [4] Jacob Collier Moon River - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPLCk-FTVvw [5] Jacob Collier Tiny Desk Lockdown Concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJR6XSSKi-g [6] Yellow Vests Protest: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cpzg2d6re0lt/france-yellow-vest-protests [7] Brixton Pound: https://brixtonpound.org/ [8] Naomi Klein: https://naomiklein.org/ [9] Michael’s approach to business: https://goodtohear.co.uk/changes/modal/social_enterprise [10] Stock buybacks video - Robert Reich - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QWjFiFdeDU [11] Love Is Not Enough - https://amzn.to/3mY8KpI ---- Credits ----Talking is by Ivanka Majic and Michael ForrestMusic and editing by http://michaelforrestmusic.comMusic available on Apple Music | Spotify | Amazon | Google Play | Bandcamp---- Support Us ----On Patreon and Join Our Slack: https://patreon.com/grandpodcastBuy our mug: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/672419524/grand-podcast-mugPaypal Donation: https://paypal.me/grandpodcastRestaurants Brighton Jobs: https://restaurantsbrighton.co.uk/jobs Get Michael’s Apps: https://goodtohear.co.uk ---- Follow us on Twitter ----https://twitter.com/ivankahttps://twitter.com/michaelforresthttps://twitter.com/PodcastGrand---- Grand Podcast Library ----Find links to everything we've mentioned on the podcast at http://grandpodcast.com/library See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to episode 73 of The Bitcoin Game, sponsored by eToro. When I started paying attention to Bitcoin Twitter in 2013, I noticed a guy named Tim Pastoor, who seemed pretty well-respected by the Bitcoin Twitter community. He and I eventually became good friends on Twitter, so much so that we hung out for a long afternoon when I visited Amsterdam a few years ago. Tim has been focused on peer-to-peer identity and reputation systems for the past five years, supporting Martti Malmi's work in the space (Martti was the first coder to work with Satoshi on Bitcoin). Twitter's Jack Dorsey recently garnered a ton of attention promoting the goal of decentralized social media, and P2P identity may well be the base layer for such projects. Hope you enjoy our talk! Oh, and a correction Tim gave me after our interview - Microsoft's Distributed ID project is now called Ion. EPISODE LINKS Tim Pastoor on Twitter https://twitter.com/timpastoor Jack Dorsey's Tweet about Decentralized Social Media https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106 Complementary Currencies (LETS, Brixton Pound, etc.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_currency Peer-to-Peer (P2P) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer Martti Malmi (article) https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/10/8751933/the-shy-college-student-who-helped-build-bitcoin-into-a-global Identifi (now Iris) https://identifi.github.io/ Microsoft Decentralized Identity https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/technology/own-your-identity W3C Decentralized Identifiers https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core Carsten Keutmann's Digital Trust Protocol https://medium.com/@carstenkeutmann_96497/digital-trust-protocol-c37e17eeca20 Sovrin https://sovrin.org Urbit ID https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/urbit-id Sockpuppet Account https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet) Sybil Swarm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack Six Degrees of Separation Principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation Metcalfe's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law Network Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect Microsoft's Ion (Decentralized Identity) https://github.com/decentralized-identity/ion Anchoring into the Blockchain https://medium.com/@edhonour/how-anchors-help-ensure-authenticity-on-the-blockchain-3359051a181 TJ Miller on The Adam Carolla Show (see part two) https://adamcarolla.com/tj-miller-and-mark-geragos Switchboard Operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switchboard_operator Bell Labs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs Iris GitHub https://github.com/irislib Iris Proof-of-Concept https://iris.to THE BITCOIN GAME IS SPONSORED BY Are you interested in getting into the cryptocurrency markets but don't know where to start building your portfolio? eToro has the answer for you. It's called CopyTrader. With CopyTrader, you can automatically copy every trade of eToro's top crypto traders at the exact price in real time. No need to study up on markets or develop your own strategies. Simply sign up and copy the trader of your choice. Any profits they make, you do too (proportional to your investment). With eToro, you get access to the world's most popular cryptocurrencies, with transparent trading fees, all in one easy-to-use app. Join now at b.tc/etorogame. While much of a Bitcoiner's time is spent in the world of digital assets, sometimes it's nice to own a physical representation of the virtual things you care about. For just the price of a cup of coffee or two (at Starbucks), you can own the world-famous Bitcoin Keychain. As Seen On The Guardian • TechCrunch • Engadget • Ars Technica • Popular Mechanics Infowars • Maxim • Inc. • Vice • RT • Bitcoin Magazine • VentureBeat PRI • CoinDesk • Washington Post • Forbes • Fast Company Bitcoin Keychains - BTCKeychain.com CREDITS All music in this episode was created by me, or is from a jam with me, Mike Coleman and Steve Lunn. The Bitcoin Game box art was created from an illustration by Rock Barcellos. Bitcoin (SegWit) tipping address: 3AYvXZseExRn3Dum8z9tFUk9jtQK6KMU4g Lightning Network tipping: https://tippin.me/@TheBTCGame Note: We've migrated our RSS feed (and primary content host) from SoundCloud to Libsyn. So if you noticed the SoundCloud numbers aren't nearly as high as they used to be, that's the reason.

Sean Roy Parker pops up from London to tell us about the Brixton Pound Café and other social eating projects in the capital. Check out his podcast here: https://www.mixcloud.com/brixtonpound/b-episode-1/?fbclid=IwAR0RgxQVcOAmSUiG4NhCVT-MjvgbYmsZWtPgdpkuvj-jMvxISHbSnUw3jE. Music from filmmusic.io: - "Club Seamus" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licence: CC BY (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

This week, we're talking urban economics – or why people who support the Bristol Pound might as well be voting for Donald Trump.I'm joined, via a mildly crackly Skype connection, by Paul Swinney, mackem and head of policy at the Centre for Cities. He explains why local currencies like the Brixton Pound, which have been popping up of late, are basically just protectionism – and why the Preston Model of local procurement is no better.From that we move on to what cities actually need to do to boost their economies – and why so much of it comes down to skills.Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We met up with one of our lovely listeners to discuss her life, upbringing and ventures in a project she calls 'Roadgals LDN'. Make sure to follow: https://twitter.com/abondance_ https://twitter.com/KaisleGrai Road Girls LDN have two events coming up. 1. 7th July at Brixton Pound (10am - 5pm) This is a oneday takeover of exhibitions and workshops. 2. 12th August at Richmix: Pirate Live Show https://www.richmix.org.uk/events/music/pirates-live-show

In GBA 296 we get better acquainted with Susie. She talks about financial systems, international trade, the influence of empire, Adam Smith, comedy, walking tours of capitalism, dualism, class, Simon Amstell, awkwardness and so much more. It's a fun and awkward conversation about a whole range of really big topics containing a description of meeting me where I give the most On Brand first impression ever and one of my favourite goodbye to the audience moments. Susie plugs: Walking Tour of Capitalism - Heroes: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/susie-steed-money-walks-the-unofficial-story-of-capitalism @SussStead: https://twitter.com/sussteed I plug: The Family Tree: http://thefamilytreepodcast.co.uk/ We mention: Stand Up Tragedy: http://www.standuptragedy.co.uk/ Brixton Pound: http://brixtonpound.org/ David Graeber: https://twitter.com/davidgraeber Debt: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290 Adam Smith: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith Keynes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes Churchill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill Marxism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism Militant Labour / Socialist Party: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/militant/ Quakers: https://www.quaker.org.uk/ Unitarians: https://www.unitarian.org.uk/ Lee Mack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Mack Simon Amstell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Amstell SA's Mockumentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnage_(2017_film) Eddie Izzard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Izzard The Office: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Office_(UK_TV_series) Ricky Gervais: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Gervais Simon Amstell - bbc breakfast: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-11811548/why-did-simon-amstell-quit-buzzcocks Ghandi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi Occupy Movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement Louis CK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_C.K. Susie @ SUT: https://soundcloud.com/standuptragedy/selected-tragedy-vol-9-tragicomedy 50 Shades of Grey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifty_Shades_of_Grey Citizen's Income: http://citizensincome.org/ WTF with Simon Amstell: http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_465_-_simon_amstell Marc Maron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Maron Help more people get better acquainted. If you like what you hear why not write an iTunes review? Follow @GBApodcast on Twitter. Like Getting Better Acquainted on facebook. Tell your friends. Spread the word!

There was jubilation among many who were on the winning side of last month's EU referendum. But the vote, more than any in recent memory, laid bare the UK's divisions - not only in demographics but also social attitudes. Many of the 16m people who voted Remain expressed shock, sadness and even grief after the result. Two weeks ago The Briefing Room visited Wakefield in West Yorkshire to find out about those who voted Leave. In this programme, David Aaronovitch takes the opposite tack and visits Lambeth, the south London borough that stretches from the banks of the Thames opposite the Houses of Parliament to the Capital's suburban fringes. He talks to long-standing residents and relative newcomers to find out what Remainers feel now. In in area where nearly four-fifths of those who voted backed Remain, is there a still a sense of upset over the result? And having been outvoted in one of the UK's biggest democratic experiments, what do they plan to do now?Interviewees in Lambeth include: Devon Thomas chair of the Brixton Neighbourhood Forum, local Green Party candidate Rashid Nix, Labour Party volunteer Gareth Rhys, Rosamund Urwin of the London Evening Standard, Tom Shahkli general manager of the Brixton Pound project, and Rui Reis, vice chair of the Portuguese cultural and football club in Stockwell.Studio guests: Cordelia Hay of Britain Thinks and Stian Westlake of NESTA.Producer: Mike Wendling Researcher: Kirsteen Knight.

We hear a lot about local currencies, but never from the designers of them. So we asked Rick Lawrence, designer of the Totnes Pound, Charlie Waterhouse, designer of the Brixton Pound, and Owen Davis, one of the designers of the Bristol Pound, what they consider to be the ingredients of a good bank note. https://www.transitionnetwork.org/pre-order-our-new-publication-21-stories-transition

We hear a lot about local currencies, but never from the designers of them. So we asked Rick Lawrence, designer of the Totnes Pound, Charlie Waterhouse, designer of the Brixton Pound, and Owen Davis, one of the designers of the Bristol Pound, what they bear in mind when designing a local currency note, one that captures the spirit of their place. https://www.transitionnetwork.org/pre-order-our-new-publication-21-stories-transition

We hear a lot about local currencies, but never from the designers of them. So we asked Rick Lawrence, designer of the Totnes Pound, Charlie Waterhouse, designer of the Brixton Pound, and Owen Davis, one of the designers of the Bristol Pound, for their thoughts on a recent statement by Dan Crane in the New York Times, who wrote of Transition currency notes, “it’s easy to imagine such notes being fetishized as audiophiles do vinyl”. www.transitionnetwork.org/pre-order-ou…s-transition

We hear a lot about local currencies, but never from the designers of them. So we asked Rick Lawrence (see image left), designer of the Totnes Pound, Charlie Waterhouse, designer of the Brixton Pound, and Owen Davis, one of the designers of the Bristol Pound, what advice they might give to anyone setting out to design a local currency note. www.transitionnetwork.org/pre-order-ou…s-transition

How do you go about setting up your own currency? N Quentin Woolf went to Brixton to meet Tom Shakhli and Max Wakefield, two of the people behind the Brixton Pound. Find out how to get it, spend it and even win a Brixton Bonus... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.