Denizen

Ethnocide is a word Barrett both coined and resurrected, referring to the destruction of a people’s culture while keeping the people. From Barrett’s point of view, Trump’s re-election is not cause for disbelief, but a glaring reminder of what America has been since its inception: a country founded by white men for the purposes of wealth accumulation, whose rhetoric of freedom and equality has always been tenuous alongside its prevalence of white supremacy and patriarchy.

In this conversation Jenny and Barrett discuss:

• Why Trump's re-election did not surprise Barrett and how it reflects something fundamental about American politics
• The bad faith and lies underlying American democracy
• The distinction between freedom from and freedom with
• The importance of language in addressing systemic oppression
• What ethnocide means and its origin
• Capitalism and ethnocide
• Existentialism and the notions of existence vs. essence
• White essence in the United States
• What identity means to Barrett
• Why the Hegelian dialectic and critical theory are essential to understand and combat ethnocide
• What culture means to Barrett
• Ethnogenesis: creating and birthing culture
• Barrett's Altars of American project: a ritual to combat ethnocide
• Eŭ-topia: a sustainable, good, nurturing place
• How we can transcend systemic oppression by cultivating Eŭ-topian spaces

Resources:

• The Crime Without A Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America
• The Sustainable Culture Lab
• Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

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This conversation investigates the fundamental challenges of a capitalism and outlines a vision for a post-growth economy that better achieves a just, sustainable society. Our guest, Donnie MacLurcan, is the founder and Executive Director of the Post Growth Institute. He's one of the most brilliant thinkers we've met on new economics.

In this episode Jenny and Donnie discuss:

• Defining post-growth economics [2:23]
• Distinction between capitalism and market economies [6:23]
• Capitalism, accumulation, and debt [7:32]
• Debt and money creation [10:04]
• Capitalism and debt accumulation [17:51]
• One planet lifestyles [20:31]
• Ecological limits, technology and Jevon's Paradox [22:23]
• Manfred Max-Neef, Maslow's heirarchy and universal needs [24:24]
• Defining a full circle economy [26:40]
• Circularity and indigenous cultures [27:43]
• Nonprofits vs. not-for profit [29:30]
• Prevalance of not-for-profit enterprise around the world [31:27]
• Industrial foundations [36:34]
• The problem with co-ops [38:18]
• Transitioning to a post-growth economy [40:28]
• Asset based community development [41:01]
• Post-growth economics and geopolitics [45:43]
• Sources for hope [49:32]

To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com. There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.

Steward ownership is one of the single most important concepts to understand for those interested in reforming capitalism. Whereas all other models of corporate governance that seek to integrate purpose co-ops, public benefit corporations, B Corps, and PBLLCs leave intact a fundamental tension between purpose and profit, steward ownership instantiates profit in service of purpose in a way that is legally binding. Steward ownership is where the keys to the castle lie if we are interested in market economy that addresses the fatal flaws of capitalism as we know it.

Our guest for this episode are Derek Razo and Camille Canon, co-founders of Purpose US, a consultancy supporting companies looking to adopt steward owned governance models.

In this conversation Jenny, Derek, and Camille discuss:

• What is steward ownership? [4:41]
• Steward ownership vs. other familiar corporate governance models [6:50]
• Channels for profit in steward owned and other governance models [10:29]
• Importance of legally binding structures in reforming the economy [11:27]
• Value clarifying purpose amongst stakeholders [12:10]
• Steward ownership and securing purpose across multiple generations of leaders / protecting purpose against capture by any particular group's interests [13:01]
• Rethinking the definition of ownership [16:05]
• How steward ownership binds governance rights to purpose [18:37]
• Checks and balances to limit extraction with steward ownership [20:30]
• Legacy of steward owned models around the world [22:43]
• Camille and Derek's ladder of legal security for purpose driven governance [24:16]
• Entity types and legal forms for steward ownership [31:15]
• Steward ownership models vs. non-profits [33:29]
• Challenges accessing finance [35:13]
• Overcoming the growth stage financing gap without losing control [38:00]
• Innovative financing models [39:02]
• Founder leverage and alternative deal structures [40:24]
• The Purpose Futures Fellowship for fund managers [42:52]
• Steward ownership and DAOs [49:48]
• Web3 and new sources of liquidity [52:58]
• Current state of steward ownership interest and adoption [54:54]

‍Resources

• Steward Ownership: Rethinking Ownership in the 21st century A handbook outlining steward ownership
• Can Companies Force Themselves To Do Good? A feature in The New Yorker Magazine
• The Patagonia Structure in the Context of Steward-Ownership

To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com. There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.

We all know about all the things that are wrong with social media as we know it. It's a model where everything is centralized and the market dynamics foster very few competitors who just get bigger and have more power. Who builds? Who governs? Who owns? Where are the servers? Where do the applications sit? Where does the data live? It's largely in just a few companies that in many cases have walled gardens of content. This dominant model yields a tremendous centralization of power for tech executives who are incentivized by market dynamics, to grow and to extract and to capture more and more of our attention. So, how do we get ourselves out of this mess? Does the answer lie in decentralized social media?

Our guest for this episode is Evan Henshaw-Plath, veteran Silicon Valley engineer and CEO of Planetary, a decentralized social network.

In this episode we cover all things decentralized social media, including:

• The story of Twitter's "original sin" where it abandoned a federated model for a centralized one [4:14]
• A framework to think about decentralization across the Internet and social media [12:22]
• Distinctions between web3 and the dWeb (decentralized web) [15:18]
• What a protocol is, why it’s a core element of decentralized social media, and the current landscape of protocols [15:33, 23:37]
• Architecture and design considerations at protocol vs. app levels [28:39]
• Big debates in the decentralized social media space [31:31]
• Issues with blockchain based solutions [36:28]
• Evan’s vision for decent social media and what he’s up to with his startup, Planetary [38:56]

Resources:

• Denizen's writeup on decentralized social media
• Planetary's homepage
• Evan's homepage
• What obligation do social media platforms have to the greater good: A TED Talk by Eli Pariser
• ‍My first impressions of web3: by Moxie Marlinspike, who founded Signal
• The Battle for the Soul of the Web, The Atlantic Oct 2022
• dWeb principles‍
• ‍Web3 is Self-Certifying: by Jay Graber, the CEO of Twitter's spinout Bluesky

To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com. There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.

In this episode we're exploring a foundational topic: trust. Our guest Davion Ziere, known as Zi, has been thinking deeply about this topic for years. He's even written a yet to be published book on it. Davion is co-director of Mobius, founder of an online community marketplace called Origyn, a recording artist, and student of many indigenous traditions. This is the first of a two part series exploring Zi's work.

In this conversation Jenny and Zi touch on:

• Trust and grief [2:54]
• Defining trust [5:31]
• Trust in pre-modern cultures [8:10]
• Learning from Zi's study of indigenous groups in Hawaii, Peru, and the Amazon [13:30]
• Why trust is a root issue to address [17:00]
• Trust of self [19:59]
• Defining self worth [26:09]
• Restoring trust and the importance of truth [30:04]
• The importance of listening [41:51]
• The first law of thermodynamics [44:05]
• Zi's values around trust [45:47]
• Moving from transaction to trust [56:08]
• Redefining ownership [57:26]

Resources

• Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Building Trust: In Business, Politics, Relationships, and Life, Fernando Flores and Robert Solomon
• The Truth about Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More, David DeSteno

To stay connected to all things Denizen, you can sign up for our newsletter at www.becomingdenizen.com. There we share our latest content alongside community events, educational opportunities, and announcements from our many partner organizations.