Just saw this. It is now possible to obtain micro-loans in Denmark.
The article is here (but is in Danish): http://www.urban.dk/article/20080317/danmark/703190004/
Basically it says that homeless people can start their own business on the basis of micro loans. And interest for this initiative has already been surprisingly large.
Ah, easter. A welcome opportunity to continue work on the paper… or so I thought. I spent a couple of days in my parents summer house NOT getting very far, but today I managed to get a little reading done.
Today I read about the “Appropriate Economy” which is part of a greater movement, which started in the 70’s as far as I can gather, sometimes referred to as “Solidarity Economy” or “People’s Economy”.
Appropriate Economics sees economic relations fundamentally as social relations. I deals with the attempt to embed ethics and values into an economic network
An appropriate economy builds on local assets, ressources and culture. It builds on the culture of the local community, which is why it can be difficult to transfer a system to another community. It is not an “off-the-shelf” solution.
http://www.appropriate-economics.org/introduction.html
They mention something which they call “Steady-State Economy” which is something I must look into. I think it sounds way incompatible with my wishes for an alternate economic system. This system tries to keep consumption down by imposing a lot of limits (on income, expenditure, number of chidren born, etc.). Sounds to me like a step in the wrong direction, but I have to look more into it.
Can anyone (if there’s anyone out there) point me to some good litterature about the human psyke and money? I mean something which argues why money has been such an “ideal” mechanism for us? I’m particularly interested in something that talks about how we use money as punishment, which we can do as long as money is a scarce ressource.
Oh, and I also bought a book called “Short Circuit: Strengthening Local Economies for Security in an Unstable World” by Richard Douthwaite (yes for REAL money) and printed a free book called “Poor Because of Money”. And because it’s good friday and I couldn’t stay completely focused all afternoon I also bought a new toy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYXVs7yu3U
22 hours
I finished Margrit Kennedy’s book and it was great! Well, if bad news can be considered great, THEN it’s great. Actually Margrit mentions Michael Lintons experiment with the LETSystem in her book, and says that one should support all initiatives towards alternative economic systems.
Another book I read was Tor Nørretranders’es “Civilization 2.0″ which I thought was brillant. It’s very easy to read I think, and does come up with some interesting points and thoughts which I’m very much inspired by (as will become evident in the coming weeks and months). Especially the whole idea about flow and links.
20 hours spent at this time.
