“It was then developed and deepened by Professor Edgar Cahn, the Washington civil rights lawyer, who has written the foreword NEF’s manifesto for growing the core economy. He used it to explain how important neighbourhood level support systems are – families and communities – and how they can be rebuilt. Cahn recognised that this is economic activity, but in the broadest sense.
As far back as Aristotle, philosophers have understood that these critical family and community relationships were a second economy, originally called oekonomika. Economists have since demoted it by calling it the non-market economy. The environmental economist Neva Goodwin reversed the hierarchy by calling it the ‘core economy’. Co-production points to ways in which we can rebuild and reinvigorate this core economy and realise its potential.” – New Economics Foundation
Social infrastructure and social economy fuel market economies which often reap the lion’s share of the gain and pour little back into the commons from which they bloom shifting this social energy according to the second law of thermodynamics from the location where that energy is most abundant (community) to the space which has no intrinsic heat or fuel source of its own (market).
How might we go about employing that 2nd permaculture principle to “catch and store energy” before the community has exhausted its tremendous social capital? Download this important publication from the New Economics Foundation at the link below to find out.