AEWCH 110: JOHN BLOOM & CONOR MCCABE or REINVENTING MONEY & ECONOMY
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Friends!
As we emerge from our global crisis, there is a tremendous opportunity to reinvent the economy. Why? Because it’s been plainly revealed to be sick and unable to be there for us. I wanted to address what we should do, what questions we should be asking, and where we should be turning our attention.
John is organizational leader of RSF Social Finance, which seeks to transform our relationship to money on individual, communal, and global levels. He’s the author of two books, Inhabiting Interdependence: Being in the Next Economy and The Genius of Money: Essays and Interviews Reimagining the Financial World. And he’s the General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society of America. He’s also the only guest who’s ever said “Holy Toledo!” on my show.
Conor is an Irish economic historian and activist; and he appeared on AEWCH 76 to talk about what money was, anyway. Money and Sins of the Father: Tracing the Decisions that Shaped the Irish Economy .
Rather than talking about money as the root of all evil, we talk about money as a creative tool, a brilliant spiritual technology. Then we get a bit darker, of course, as the times demand.
And rather than luxuriating in thoughts of cryptocurrencies – which merely move us deeper into tech systems and don’t help us radically reevaluate our situation – we talk about economy in challenging ways and on many levels. We talk about it in spiritual ways, political ways, historical ways, and more; all with the aim of freeing it from its current tangle.
This is a deep conversation that is much needed, especially now. I’m not just happy to share it with you, I’m hopeful for what can grow out of it.
ON THIS EPISODE
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How capitalism has commodified money
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The different kinds of money (purchase, lending, gifting) and how they relate to different psychic states and types of time
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How our changing senses of time and space in the crisis are changing our relationship to money
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Economic activity from the head vs economic activity from the heart
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Sex work as pre- or post-economy, and why that threatens capitalism
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Taking the state and culture out of economics to purify it
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Why we can’t actually pay anyone for their labor
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The invention of insurance
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“Capitalism expands by enclosure”
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The dangers of universal basic income
SHOW NOTES
• For more on John, you can read some of his articles on the Anthroposophical Society’s website.
• The GoFundMe for Navajo& Hopi people is still going on, and you can still contribute. And here’s a little story on it.
• Here’s a good summary story of the Bewley’s closure in Dublin.
• It is perhaps not surprising that I can’t find a ton of articles on Bill Gross being crazy, but there are at least some articles on his stamp collection troubles.
• If you’d like to know more about the “spheres” I was talking about, you can start here.
• “Austerity is the gold standard,” is one of Conor’s many great quips.
Interestingly, the initial structure of CSAs was developed by Rudolf Steiner.
Conner Habib 
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