While economics and technology make us miserable
While economics and technology make us miserable: how Korean and Swiss public-commons partnerships can inspire us is a presentation done on June 13 as part of the First Swiss-Korean symposium on participative environmental and respiratory health research.
Programme
Social challenge: perpetuating misery
Our humanity today is at stake.
- Destruction of biodiversity → increase of diseases
- Reductionism, pseudo-rationalism, polarization of beliefs → loss of belonging, ignorance of systemics, rise of autocracies
- Multiplication of dis-ease (poverty, zoonoses,[1] COPD) + rise of autocracies
The wealth of the world’s 10 richest men has doubled since the pandemic began. The incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off because of COVID-19. [...] “economic violence” is perpetrated when structural policy choices are made for the richest and most powerful people. This causes direct harm to us all, and to the poorest people, women and girls, and racialized groups most. Inequality contributes to the death of at least one person every four seconds.[2]
Authoritarian regimes have become more effective at co-opting or circumventing the norms and institutions meant to support basic liberties, and at providing aid to others who wish to do the same. In countries with long-established democracies, internal forces have exploited the shortcomings in their systems, distorting national politics to promote hatred, violence, and unbridled power. [...] A total of 60 countries suffered declines over the past year, while only 25 improved. As of today, some 38 percent of the global population live in Not Free countries, the highest proportion since 1997. Only about 20 percent now live in Free countries.[3]
Shift
- technology solutionism → social bound / collective capacity
- myth of job creation → commoning
Public-commons partnerships
Elinor Ostrom, Nobel in Economics, showed that a community is better able to preserve natural resources than the market or the state.
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- ↑ Robin MM. English Trailer - Making Pandemics. 2021. https://vimeo.com/689874934
- ↑ Oxfam. Inequality kills The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-19. 2021. https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/inequality-kills
- ↑ Freedom house. Freedom in the world 2022: The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule. 2022. https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/FIW_2022_PDF_Booklet_Digital_Final_Web.pdf
- ↑ Haller et al. Balancing the Commons in Switzerland: Institutional Transformations and Sustainable Innovations. 2021. https://www.routledge.com/Balancing-the-Commons-in-Switzerland-Institutional-Transformations-and/Haller-Liechti-Stuber-Viallon-Wunderli/p/book/9780367488734
- ↑ Choe et al. Commons Perspectives in South Korea: Context, Fields, and Alternatives. 2022. https://www.routledge.com/Commons-Perspectives-in-South-Korea-Context-Fields-and-Alternatives/Choe-Kim-Jang-Yoon-Park/p/book/9781032123844
- ↑ Balli et al. Open-source respiratory health commons. 15 projects communities can adapt, repair, reproduce for low cost medical care. 2021. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5515632