Big Idea: A Steady-State Economy

The growth economy is failing and we have to attempt a steady-state economy. The steady state answer is that the rich should reduce their throughput growth to free up resources and ecological space for use by the poor, while focusing their domestic efforts on development, technical and social improvements, that can be freely shared with poor countries.
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Ecological economists have offered empirical evidence that growth is already uneconomic in high-consumption countries. Since neoclassical economists are unable to demonstrate that growth, either in throughput or GDP, is currently making us better off rather than worse off, it is blind arrogance on their part to continue preaching aggregate growth as the solution to our problems. Yes, most of our problems (poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation) would be easier to solve if we were richer – that is not the issue. The issue is: Does growth in GDP any longer really make us richer? Or is it now making us poorer?

For poor countries GDP growth still increases welfare, at least if reasonably distributed. The question is, what is the best thing for rich countries to do to help poor countries? The World Bank’s answer is that the rich should continue to grow as rapidly as possible to provide markets for the poor and to accumulate capital to invest in poor countries. The steady state answer is that the rich should reduce their throughput growth to free up resources and ecological space for use by the poor, while focusing their domestic efforts on development, technical and social improvements, that can be freely shared with poor countries.

_This article is adapted from Towards a Steady-State Economy, a paper Herman Daly wrote for the UK Sustainable Development Commission in 2008. The complete text can be found at www.theoildrum.com.


http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/81/steady_state_economy.html

How to Save Your Newspaper

TIME MAGAZINE

Thursday, Feb. 05, 2009

By Walter Isaacson


During the past few months, the crisis in journalism has reached meltdown proportions. It is now possible to contemplate a time when some major cities will no longer have a newspaper and when magazines and network-news operations will employ no more than a handful of reporters.

There is, however, a striking and somewhat odd fact about this crisis. Newspapers have more readers than ever. Their content, as well as that of newsmagazines and other producers of traditional journalism, is more popular than ever — even (in fact, especially) among young people.

The problem is that fewer of these consumers are paying. Instead, news organizations are merrily giving away their news. According to a Pew Research Center study, a tipping point occurred last year: more people in the U.S. got their news online for free than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines. Who can blame them? Even an old print junkie like me has quit subscribing to the New York Times, because if it doesn't see fit to charge for its content, I'd feel like a fool paying for it.

This is not a business model that makes sense. Perhaps it appeared to when Web advertising was booming and every half-sentient publisher could pretend to be among the clan who "got it" by chanting the mantra that the ad-supported Web was "the future." But when Web advertising declined in the fourth quarter of 2008, free felt like the future of journalism only in the sense that a steep cliff is the future for a herd of lemmings. (See who got the world into this financial mess.)

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When I used to go fishing in the bayous of Louisiana as a boy, my friend Thomas would sometimes steal ice from those machines outside gas stations. He had the theory that ice should be free. We didn't reflect much on who would make the ice if it were free, but fortunately we grew out of that phase. Likewise, those who believe that all content should be free should reflect on who will open bureaus in Baghdad or be able to fly off as freelancers to report in Rwanda under such a system.

I say this not because I am "evil," which is the description my daughter slings at those who want to charge for their Web content, music or apps. Instead, I say this because my daughter is very creative, and when she gets older, I want her to get paid for producing really neat stuff rather than come to me for money or decide that it makes more sense to be an investment banker.

I say this, too, because I love journalism. I think it is valuable and should be valued by its consumers. Charging for content forces discipline on journalists: they must produce things that people actually value. I suspect we will find that this necessity is actually liberating. The need to be valued by readers — serving them first and foremost rather than relying solely on advertising revenue — will allow the media once again to set their compass true to what journalism should always be about.

Isaacson, a former managing editor of TIME, is president and CEO of the Aspen Institute and author, most recently, of Einstein: His Life and Universe.


* Find this article at:
* http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1877191,00.html

Música | Madonna

Los dilemas del estrellato pop

La aparición de Hard Candy, el nuevo disco de la cantante, sirve para reflexionar sobre el rumbo que ha tomado la cultura popular -y su correspondiente star system- en tiempos marcados por un nuevo marketing: el impuesto por el espíritu hacker que brilla en Internet. Cambios y tendencias sociales en una época en la que podría pensarse a MySpace, Fickr y You Tube como los verdaderos ídolos de los adolescentes

LANACION.com | ADN Cultura | Sábado 17 de mayo de 2008

> Ir a la nota

The Future web 2.0 Social Experience

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/future-social-web-experience.cfm

It doesn't matter how much bigger or smarter these systems get, they're limited by the fragmented web version 1.0. Google or Ask.com will never be able to know what you really want when you search for "home run". This is because the current web is still locked into reductionism. Because all these applications are just part of a disconnected world of data, they're forced to reduce everything to their basic component parts.

clipped from www.webdesignfromscratch.com The Social Future of Web2.0 / Web3.0 Ben Hunt casts an eye to the future of a more connected web and how we will experience it through new social applications. This vision features insights into new search engines, an online marketplace, and solutions for phishing and spam. Ben also predicts that Yahoo will be the dominant online brand for the next 5 years

Promoting your Blog

Social Media Optimization: An Easy Guide to Marketing and Promoting Your Blog

From: rohitbhargava, 1 year ago

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This presentation, originally given at the SixApart Business Blogging Seminar in November, 2006 offers ideas for using the emerging concept of SMO to market and promote your blog.


SlideShare Link

The press becomes the press-sphere

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/04/14/the-press-becomes-the-press-sphere/

clipped from www.buzzmachine.com One problem I’ve had with much discussion about the future of news lately is that it’s too press-centric. It focuses on the press as if it were at the center of the world, as if it owned news, as if news depended on it, as if solving the press’ problems solves news. That’s not the ecosystem of news now. There’s a fundamentally new structure to media and there are many different ways to look at it. And until we realize that, I don’t think we’ll begin to create successful new models for news. So pardon my simplistic drawings, but here’s an attempt to begin to illustrate that new ecosystem of news and media.

Community

http://edbrenegar.typepad.com/leading_questions/2008/03/a-counter-intui.html

clipped from edbrenegar.typepad.com Community clipped from edbrenegar.typepad.com A Counter-intuitive Paradoxical Social Being There are some paradoxical notions that float around about networks and community. One of those notions is the more diverse your network the better. The other is is having a tight network of close associates is better. The problem comes from thinking too superficially about networks and community building. A closed network like the one on the left is filled with people who know one another well, who think alike, who share similar values, aims, ambitions and approaches. An open, diverse network serves a different function. It provides access to information and influence that your close group of buddies cannot provide. It would be nice if it is just so simple to have both. This is more difficult that it may seem. The solution is not making a choice between open or closed networks, but rather how you function within both.