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The Theory of Change

Aug 30, 2018 / by

Nina Thüllen and Karin Küblböck introduced us to an approach to develop change projects. Nina and Karin who have decades of experience of NGO engagement guided us together through an interactive process, embedded in sharing their knowledge. The focus was on on ways to challenge the harsh situation in the fashion industry while bearing in…

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Changing the system by changing system thinking: Reflections on the Overshoot Day

Aug 21, 2018 / by

On Wednesday we went to the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg. While the setting with the Castle of Laxenburg was already quite spectacular, Arnulf Gruebler and Brian Faith provided us with two presentations that let us gain insight in unconventional interdisciplinary research approaches about global environmental, economic, technological, and social change….

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Money – the inconspicuous designer of our lives?

Aug 21, 2018 / by

“Money and moral” was the title of Bernd Villhauer’s lecture and one question immediately came to our mind: is money even related to moral? Does it have its own morality? Or is it rather a neutral medium of exchange facilitating our everyday life? Before Bernd Villhauer could turn to talk about the morality of money,…

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Crypto Coins – Money without banks?

Aug 21, 2018 / by

Dr. Beat Weber’s started his lecture with describing crypto currencies by defining crypto coins and their creating process with the example of Bitcoin. Bitcoin and similar crypto coins are digital currencies with a  limited supply. Miners keep track of all the transactions which are made within the anonymous users. The first miner that finds the…

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Alternative Food Networks for an agro-ecological evolution

Aug 21, 2018 / by

Our current way of feeding the world is not sustainable. Most of us still have a romantic picture of agriculture; a picture of healthy animals on a wide fertile landscape; a lovely farmer who’s best friend is a little piglet. Unfortunately, however, this image only exists in the advertisement and does not reflect the reality…

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Rules for a “deadly weapon”

Aug 10, 2018 / by

Money is considered a goal in our current financial system. The mechanisms of the “free” financial market make it easy for banks to accumulate a lot of it, due to the absence of an international supervisory authority, no size for the limit of banks, the free movement of capital as well as private money creation….

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IIASA day trip

Aug 10, 2018 / by

Our AEMS class on August 1st(at a IIASA institute in Laxenburg) included two lectures on sustainable development, in addition to a world climate change simulation game. All of our activities throughout the day were about providing insights into how to achieve valuable socio-economic goals in an environmentally sustainable way. Valuable background information is needed to…

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Searching for the Common Good

Aug 8, 2018 / by

Most citizens long for an alternative to the current economic system. Next to the many options such as Circular Economy, Community Economies and many more, one of them is the Economy for the Common Good. The current system disregards societal values such as human rights, trust, dignity but also prioritizes efficiency, money and egoism. With…

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Banking – Field of Application for new types of democracy

Aug 8, 2018 / by

What was the session about? Christian Felber presented the flaws and challenges that the political and especially financial system experience in terms of being democratic. Thereafter, Oskar von Homeyer introduced the GLS bank’s views on ethical banking. Felber presented several flaws in the current democratic system. A crucial one being the binary option that is…

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Complementary and alternative currencies

Aug 8, 2018 / by

In his lecture Tobias Plettenbacher talked about complementary and alternative currencies. He understands those as really complementary, which means that they are not replacing the national currency, but exist next to it and fulfill social needs. For example, he mentioned Local Exchange and Trading Systems (LETS), Barter Exchange Circles, Time Banks and Energy or Resource…

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