Life Without Money in Detroit’s Survival Economy

Written on January 16th, 2017 in comment, politics Comments Off

How the city’s neglected poor rely on time banking, skill-sharing, and giveaways to get – Published on Bloomberg, by Valerie Vande Panne, January 12, 2017.

When her car broke down, Halima Cassells didn’t have $400 to fix it. But she had logged hours in her Detroit neighborhood time bank by babysitting, and that time yielded a repair. When she was pregnant in 2012, she couldn’t afford baby clothes, a stroller, or a car seat. But she could throw a potluck barbecue, and her friends could afford to bring their old baby supplies. “When people come together to share, it’s not transactional,” says Cassells. “Everyone assumes an amount of responsibility with everybody. It’s a different way of knowing your needs are being met.”  

Detroiters like Cassells, after years of privation, have turned to what experts call a gift economy to survive. Theirs is an alternative economy based on time banking, skill-sharing, and giveaways—home-grown vegetables, a roof repair, spare keys to a shared car—in which neighbors give as they can and take as they need … //

… “It’s an economy based on trust. If someone gets hurt, shot, slips and falls, whatever, you jump in” … //

… A local woman carrying a baby into the room overhears as Howard explains, and she chimes in: “People have restaurants and businesses out of their homes. You’re gonna put Buffalo Wild Wings on top of that?”

There is a lesson to be learned from community-based sharing economies like Detroit’s, Howard says. And cities and their schools would do well to study and work to bolster them, especially by integrating them into city services.

“What if you could pay your city taxes with community benefits? What if neighbors helping neighbors could offset taxes? ‘Well, that doesn’t work,’ they’ll say,” he says. “Well, traditional economics isn’t working here, either.”

(full text).

(my comment: we must begin changes BEFORE all is crashed – Heidi).

Links:

Published on World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2017:
- Overview, 17.-20. Jan 2017;
- The solitary genius is a myth. We need to work together, by Gavin Patterson;
- Five leadership priorities for 2017; (my comment: I do never agree with the author’s five points, these guys insist to continue eternally the old capitalist’s error … no longer wait, we have to make the changes by ourselves – Heidi);

Is Cash Aid to the Poor Wasted on Tobacco and Alcohol? on Inter Press Service IPS.net, by Baher Kamal, Jan 14, 2017 (more on Yahoo-search); (my comment: no, it’s not wasted, if you give the money directly into the hands of the Women of the village/the city - Heidi);

Corbyn backs cap on private NHS contractor bosses’ pay, on Left Foot Forward, Jan 12,, 2017: deny firms NHS contracts if boss earns 20 times junior worker, says Labour leader;

When Your Healers Become Your Killers, on Inter Press Service IPS.net, by Baher Kamal, Jan 11, 2017;

Protein profiling reveals consequences of lifestyle choices on predicted biological aging, on NATURE, by Stefan Enroth, Sofia Bosdotter Enroth, Åsa Johansson and Ulf Gyllensten, Dec 1, 2015;

Find on Weitzenegger.de/ – spoken in french, subtitled in english, collected at the World Social Forum, Tunis, March 2015:

  • Learning Transformation – Voices for Another Education, 26.44 min, (with many other videos on this page) … what role does the current education system plays in maintaining the destructive economic and social system ruling our world? What kind of education would we need to facilitate a global transformation towards social justice and sustainability? The film is about re-imagining education beyond the factory like school systems that spreads colonialism and the western monoculture of education around the globe; (also on YouTube);

again: #67 – Dirk Messner, on Theory Talk, Jan 30, 2015: Dirk Messner on the dynamics of global change and the significance of international science and technology cooperation in the post-Western world;

Foundation Training, uploaded by Foundation Training,  … would you like a quick and simple movement you can do right now to help relieve your pain? Back pain, knee pain, muscle pain, joint pain, headaches and more happen – in large part – because of how we live and work, but it doesn’t have to be like that … (full text):

Die Rede, die John F. Kennedy 1963 das Leben kostete, 6.09 min, von Toni All am 19. Okt 2012 auf YouTube hochgeladen;

… and this:

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