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Commons Based Peer Production on the Blockchain feat. Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation
This week I spoke to Michel Bauwens, the founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property and is known for his work on The Political Economy of Peer Production. Much of his work revolves around exploring peer production as…
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One WEIRD trick: A Radical Strategy to Finance the Revolution feat. Jonathan Beller
This week I spoke to Jonathan Beller, a professor of Media Studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn NY with a forthcoming book “The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism.” He recently wrote “How We Short Capitalism – And Finance the Revolution” in CoinDesk. The article is really interesting in that it proposes we invest in…
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The dystopian future of smart cities built by LLCs and the socialists that ignore the signs
For this week’s episode I took a closer look at the company Blockchains LLC which bought the German startup Slock.it who was working on creating blockchain-enabled smart locks. Digging deeper I found out that Blockchains LLC is currently in the works of creating its own smart city “enabled by the blockchain” next to Reno, Nevada.…
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What Would Marx think about Cryptocurrency? feat. Mark Alizart, author of Cryptocommunism
This week I spoke with Mark Alizart, a philosopher and the author of The Climate Coup, Dogs, and most recently Cryptocommunism which has recently been translated into English from French and published by Polity Books. In the book, Mark argues that the significance of cryptocurrencies goes well beyond cryptoanarchism. In so far as they allow…
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Why the Left Should Care about Value Accounting feat. Dr. Sarah Grace Manski
This week I spoke with Dr. Sarah Grace Manski, she has a PhD in Global Studies from UC Santa Barbara and is now a professor at George Mason University. On one side she’s done quite a bit of work for unions and written for Jacobin and on the other side she’s the founder of the International Society…
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Art, Weed, and Blockchain feat. Chibu Ichiban of afuturemodern
This week I spoke to Chibu Ichiban, a founding member of afuturemodern, a network of coops delivering liberation tech to the masses through art, culture, and basic services. Their mission is to drive mass adoption of humanity’s most radical innovations by shaping them for society’s most marginalized and revolutionary communities. They leverage art, culture, service,…
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Giving the Power of Money to the People through Decentralized Mutual Credit Networks ft. Aleeza Howitt from Trustlines
This week I spoke to Aleeza Howitt (@aleezagroks), a contributor to the Trustlines protocol. Trustlines is a mPoS (minimal viable Proof of Stake) sidechain to Ethereum and stores transactions for a system of decentralized mutual credit. Mutual credit is an alternative medium of exchange to most money that we use today in which “money” is created through…
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Are Public Goods Always “Good” and Will Personal Tokens Just Lead to Slavery ft. Annaliese Milano
This week I sat down with PhD student at the London School of Economics under David Graeber and Laura Bear in Anthropology and occasional CoinDesk contributor, Annaliese Milano (@AnnalieseMilano). In this episode we spoke about her current research interests in public goods, or what she prefers to call public things. Her research suggests that studying…
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Screw capitalism, start a cult, and burn your money ft. Jonathan Harris aka Money Burning Guy
For this episode I spoke with Jonathan Harris (@jonone100) aka Money Burning Guy who was recently featured as a panelist at the Consensus: Distributed conference on their panel Soft Money hosted by Joon Ian Wong and Annaliese Milano and was joined by Brett Scott, who was last episode’s guest. Jonathan is the author of The…
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The War on Cash and The Coercive Nature of Money ft. Brett Scott
This week I spoke to financial activist and author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance Hacking the Future of Finance Brett Scott (@Suitpossum). His last book was written in response to the Occupy Wall Street protests and is a guide to the world of high finance and the emergent forms of alternative finance, alternative currencies and…
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What Erik Voorhees and Other Crypto-Libertarians Get Wrong
This week I decided to do something a little bit different and go solo. For this episode I wanted to analyze the mindset and beliefs in a lot of the mainstream cryptocurrency discourse. In order to do that I wanted to use someone who is a popular figure and thought leader in the space, Erik…
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Musicians of the World Unite and Decolonize the Music Industry feat. Rich Jensen from Resonate
This week I spoke with Rich Jensen (@richjensen), Co-op Executive of Resonate (@ResonateCoop). Resonate is a cooperatively owned music streaming platform aiming to give more power to artists rather than corporate record labels and VC-funded tech companies.On average their model gives a larger payout to artists as compared to other music streaming platforms like Spotify. Rich has…
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From Feudalism to Capitalism to (Hopefully) Beyond feat. Dr. Joel Garrod (Part 2)
This is Part 2 of my interview with Dr. Joel Z Garrod, a sociologist based in Canada and author of a recently published article, “On the property of blockchains: comments on an emerging literature.” The paper focuses on blockchain and property relations in connection to global property relations and the evolution of capitalism. For this…
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Property Relations on the Blockchain feat. Dr. Joel Garrod (Part 1)
This week I sat with Dr. Joel Z Garrod, a sociologist based in Canada and author of a recently published article, “On the property of blockchains: comments on an emerging literature.” The paper focuses on blockchain and property relations in connection to global property relations and the evolution of capitalism. I really enjoyed the article…
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Own the Value of your Labor with DAOs feat. Daniel Kronovet from Colony
This week I interviewed Daniel Kronovet (@kronosapiens) at Colony, “An Operating System for Organizations”. The Colony Network is a suite of smart contracts, running on Ethereum. It provides a general purpose framework for the essential functions organizations require, such as ownership, structure, authority, and financial management. Along the way, we talk about organizations and society…
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Why the Left Should Care About Blockchain Identity and Quadratic Voting feat. Paula Berman from Democracy Earth
This week I spoke with Paula Berman (@_paulaberman), researcher at the Democracy Earth Foundation (@DemocracyEarth) which is a tech non-profit that aims to create platforms for decentralized and incorruptible online governance. Their projects have largely been based on Ethereum. In the interview we discuss the identity problem for decentralized platforms like blockchain, the advantages of…
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Fighting Uber with blockchain cooperatives feat. Dardan Isufi from Eva Coop
This week I spoke with Dardan Isufi (@DardanIsufi), COO of the Eva Coop (@Eva_coop) which is a cooperative ride-sharing application based on blockchain started in Montreal and expanding to other cities. We discuss taking on Uber while trying to build a democratic and non-exploitative alternative like Eva. You can also find the podcast and future episodes on…
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Crypto Commie Circlejerk: Interview with Ben Arc (@BTCSocialist)
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak with Ben Arc (@BTCSocialist), one of the first openly leftist guy in bitcoin and significant contributor to the bitcoin FOSS space. In this episode we discuss what it was like for him to be one of the only people loudly represent the Left, and,…
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The Blockchain Socialist Podcast Introduction
That’s right. It’s the first episode and introduction of the TBS podcast. To be honest I’ve never done a podcast before so if you have tips or tricks to help make it better, let me know! The plan is to use this podcast for interviews or discussions with others in the blockchain space instead of…
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Interview with Jeff Emmett from The Commons Stack
This week I had the opportunity to sit down with Jeff Emmet, a Token Engineering Researcher for Giveth and The Commons Stack. In the interview we discuss how The Commons Stack is trying to create blockchain tools for handling the commons, political biases in crypto, and crypto-economic systems. Note this interview took part over email…