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1. Housing 2. Universal Basic Services 3. Citizens' Assemblies 4. EcoVillages
1. Housing
There is a shortage of affordable housing. Building more “affordable” housing for people of the lowest income is not enough. There is little recourse for people of middle income. Many pay more than they can afford for rent or are over their heads with mortgages. A common sense approach would deal with the main cause of homelessness – plenty of housing for the rich, while most people are not able to find rents and housing they can afford¹⁴.
To be fair, some landlords take good care of tenants living in the same buildings, and some tenants care little about maintaining the condition of their dwellings. However, corporate landlords and developers mostly care about getting the highest possible rents or sale prices, and have no qualms about raising rents or converting rental units to condos and evicting tenants.
Much of the problem could be eliminated by banning corporate for-profit home ownership and the ownership of more than two private family homes, stabilizing rents and/or rent control, stabilizing housing markets and mortgage rates, and providing relief from unfair evictions and foreclosures. Vacant units, including luxury units, could be made available to everyone based on their needs and preferences, at prices or rental rates based on their income.
Given that some homeowners depend on rising home prices for their financial security, we need to provide that security in other ways, primarily through universal free education, healthcare, childcare and eldercare.
More cities and states need to implement better insulation standards for new buildings. They also need to require solar panels on new multi-unit and commercial buildings. Conversion from fossil fuel heating to electrical heating must be accompanied by more renewable energy in the grid and greater reliability.
2. Universal Basic Services
According to Wikipedia: “Universal Basic Services (UBS)... in which all citizens or residents of a community, region, or country receive unconditional access to a range of free, basic, public services, funded by taxes and provided by a government or public institution... Universal Basic Services are provided on the basis that they are necessary to sustain and enable each citizen's material safety, opportunity to contribute, or participate in the decision-making processes of their community, region or country, even if they lack any financial income.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_services
These are services that everyone depends on to survive or to a decent quality of life for themselves or their offspring.
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Economic growth in richer countries (historically at the expense of colonized countries, enslaved peoples and the environment) has had little to do with improvements in well-being, good health, longevity and infant survival rates. It was actually the creation of institutions such as public sanitation, public education and labor unions that improved people’s lives. These were all resisted by the wealthy. Despite continued economic growth, these “good life indicators” have actually been in decline in recent decades in the US. Public sanitation, access to universal health care and education (especially the education of women) are far more effective in improving living standards than income. These indicators are actually higher in countries with far less income that the US, but with better social services. (See “Less is More” by Jason Hickel, 2020 Penguin Random House UK, p171-184).
Europe is well ahead of the U.S. in UBS, yet even there, there’s room for improvement. Here’s what SocialEurope says about UBS:
“Too many of our democratic leaders put growth before human or planetary wellbeing. Prosperity depends on the sustainable use of natural resources and a healthy, well-educated, cared-for population whose basic needs are met.
The concept of universal basic services (UBS) combines both factors —the aim is to meet everyone’s needs within planetary boundaries. There is broad agreement on what those needs are: a home to live in, nourishing food, education, people to care for us when we cannot look after ourselves, healthcare, clean air, water and energy, transport, digital access and quality employment.”
https://www.socialeurope.eu/universal-basic-services-road-to-a-just-transition
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UBS may include some or all of the following:
- Free Health Care, including Emergency, Preventive & Prenatal care, Family Planning
- Free Education, including Graduate Level Education
- Housing that is adequate, convenient and affordable
- Affordable Electricity, Heating and Cooling
- Affordable Basic Nutrition
- Adequate Free Clean Water
- Public Transportation that is sufficient, convenient, accessible and affordable
- Affordable Childcare at Home or in the Workplace
- Affordable, Compassionate Eldercare at Home or Institution
- Affordable Access to Information and Communication: Telephone, Internet and Library
- Affordable Family Legal Services and Public Defender Services
- Input to Decision Making at All Levels, such as the Workplace and Government
- Free Community Safety and Fire Fighting
- Guaranteed Employment
- Universal Basic Income
The alternative to UBS is everyone for themselves – Those who earn, inherit or otherwise obtain enough income can afford these services as well non-basic goods and services, while most others are left to die, live in poverty or work exorbitant hours.
UBS does NOT include private jets, yachts, travel for marketing, private art collections and the like.
3. Citizens' Assemblies
Citizens Assemblies and Citizens Juries are a little like plebiscites but different in a few ways:
They don’t involve the full voting public but instead are a random selection of documented individuals selected as in jury duty
Everyone is given the same information and can request additional information which is also shared
They involve a facilitated discussion between all the selected individuals
The concept of Citizens Assemblies varies from place to place depending on who funds the effort and then how much the local government(s) are willing to consider the recommendations. It seems that places like Ireland are in the forefront.
See: https://citizensassembly.ie/
"Public authorities from all levels of government increasingly turn to Citizens' Assemblies, Juries, Panels and other representative deliberative processes to tackle complex policy problems ranging from climate change to infrastructure investment decisions.
They convene groups of people representing a wide cross-section of society for at least one full day – and often much longer – to learn, deliberate, and develop collective recommendations that consider the complexities and compromises required for solving multifaceted public issues.
This "deliberative wave" has been building since the 1980s, gaining momentum since around 2010.
This report has gathered close to 300 representative deliberative practices to explore trends in such processes, identify different models, and analyse the trade-offs among different design choices as well as the benefits and limits of public deliberation.
It includes Good Practice Principles for Deliberative Processes for Public Decision Making, based on comparative empirical evidence gathered by the OECD and in collaboration with leading practitioners from government, civil society, and academics.
Finally, the report explores the reasons and routes for embedding deliberative activities into public institutions to give citizens a more permanent and meaningful role in shaping the policies affecting their lives."
On Citizens Juries From https://participedia.net/method/155:
Problems and Purpose
A Citizens’ Jury is a form of deliberative mini-public where a small group of citizens are randomly selected to deliberate on a given policy issue and provide recommendations to the organizing entity. The jury are usually given a specific question to answer or a clearly defined scope, and provide a report at the end of the process detailing their recommendations.
The purpose of a Citizens’ Jury is to bring deliberation and public participation into public policy decisions. A CJ is a small enough group to help ensure genuine and effective deliberation can take place, and utilizes a random or stratified sample of the community to try and ensure that the group is sufficiently diverse and representative of the broader affected public.
Proponents of the CJ model suggest that decisions made by a representative group of citizens are more likely to be accepted and viewed as legitimate by the broader public, because the jury making the recommendation are everyday citizens as well
Citizens’ Juries are usually used in an advisory capacity, tasked with producing a collective recommendation or verdict.
In many cases, decision makers may give some prior commitment as to how they might respond to recommendations from a jury. For example, in South Australia the state government usually commits to presenting all jury recommendations directly to parliament.
In some cases, the decision-making authority will agree in advance to accepting and implementing the jury’s recommendations.
See Also:
National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation Citizen Jury at: https://www.ncdd.org/
Bussu, S.Article on Taylor & Francis Journals at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19460171.2022.2053179#abstract
newDemocracy Foundation (2016) What is a Citizens’ Jury? Available at: https://www.newdemocracy.com.au/library/what-is-a-citizens-jury
United States Environmental Protection Agency (2017) Public Participation Guide: Citizen Juries. Available at: https://www.epa.gov/international-cooperation/public-participation-guide-citizen-juries
Journal of Deliberative Democracy Announcement at: https://delibdemjournal.org/news/27/
4. EcoVillages
As partial or full alternatives to the corporate growth economy, many people are using cooperative enterprises, community supported agriculture, cooperative banks such as credit unions, sharing or reuse websites such as FreeCycle and NextDoor and local currencies. While there is no precise definition for an ecovillage, there are websites that list such villages (see below) as well as intentional communities and cohousing (sharing resources and values, but not necessarily ecologically focused). There are also indigenous communities that are more or less fully “off the grid”.
Andrew Millison journeys to Hawaii to investigate the ecological and cultural restoration work of the Independent Sovereign Nation of Hawaii, an aboriginal organization who are actively rebuilding the traditional Ahupua'a watershed-scale agricultural system on the Island of Oahu.
This video looks into the history of the Nation of Hawaii and their village in Pu'uhonua O Waimanalo, and the pieces of the Ahupua'a they are restoring from the tops of the mountains above the clouds to the traditional fishponds built below the estuaries into the ocean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7q8friw1p8
Worker cooperatives can reduce inequality and ecological footprint. The famous Mondragon Corporation in Spain includes a network of several enterprises, fully owned and controlled by its workers, a university and a resident-owned town. see https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondrag%C3%B3n
Intentional Communities and EcoVillages:
Findhorn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcfcgeJfoMY
Auroville: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCxCSLOO5jo
and/or: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByRE62_vq30
Intentional Communities by location: https://www.ic.org/directory/intentional-communities-by-country/
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