Name: Sacred Economics
ISBN: 9781583943977

Sacred Economics

"Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme--but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being. This book is about how the money system will have to change--and is already changing--to embody this transition. A broadly integrated synthesis of theory, policy, and practice, Sacred Economics explores avant-garde concepts of the New Economics, including negative-interest currencies, local currencies, resource-based economics, gift economies, and the restoration of the commons. Author Charles Eisenstein also considers the personal dimensions of this transition, speaking to those concerned with "right livelihood" and how to live according to their ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money. Tapping into a rich lineage of conventional and unconventional economic thought, Sacred Economics presents a vision that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen"

What Hacker News says

thelastinuitAug 2023

- A Path through The Jungle, Steve Peters - Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein

thread

mikepurvisAug 2022

Great book. Another good one is Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein, which covers some of the same ground, in terms of understanding the dynamics that tie together people and communities, ensuring fairness and an appropriate level of redistribution, but with needing a formal money system or taxation. (Potlatching, for example...)

thread

mikepurvisMar 2019

There's some really good work out there by people looking at how to think about and value these things. I particularly enjoyed these two titles:

https://www.amazon.ca/Sacred-Economics-Money-Society-Transit...

https://www.amazon.ca/Wealth-Nature-Economics-Survival-Matte...

The first one is (fittingly) available for free online, though my local library also had a copy: http://sacred-economics.com/read-online/

thread

jchrisaAug 2018

If you are interested in this sort of thing, and have already read Debt, the First 5000 Years, learning about gift economies is worth it.

And Graeber's Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value The False Coin of Our Own Dreams is worth reading for a mechanical account of how gift economies function, and the status of heirlooms and other valuable objects.

Charles Eisenstein can read as cloyingly new-age but if you get past that the message is legit: http://sacred-economics.com/sacred-economics-chapter-18-rele...

thread

mikepurvisOct 2013

For more along these lines, see Sacred Economics: http://sacred-economics.com/

The entirety of the book's text is available on the website.

thread

yesbabyyesJan 2013

First, I think the environment is the world - at least, the physical realm. There are a number of aspects of what we call "the environment" that are commons:

The land, the soil, the fisheries, the ability of the atmosphere, sea and more to absorb and process our waste, the aquifers, the top soil, the forests, etc.

Apart from that, our cultural heritage, our science and inventions, the electromagnetic spectrum. I'm sure you can think of more.

Sadly, today we live in the belief that we need to convert all of this, or rather more and more of it, into goods that can be monetized.

For a great book on the subject, I warmly recommend Sacred Economics. You can read it online, download or order on http://sacred-economics.com/.

thread