Monthly Archives: March 2008

Is Our Business/Economic System Like a Biological System?

Posted on March 17, 2008 by Dave Pollard

Chart of group satisfaction by size, from Life With Alacrity Elisabet Sahtouris wrote an article in 2005 called The Biology of Business, which began with a dubious recapitulation of Darwin’s model and explanation of evolution, and then attempted to apply … Continue reading →

Posted in Working Smarter | 2 Comments

Saturday Links of the Week — March 15, 2008 — The Heavy Ideas Edition

Posted on March 15, 2008 by Dave Pollard

Image: Last Monday by SuperNova K, taken in January at UBC during a storm.  The Ghost in the Hologram: Back in 2005, my friend Joe Bageant was invited to be part of a conversation on “the condition of the world”. … Continue reading →

Posted in Our Culture / Ourselves | 3 Comments

Friday Flashback: What Blog Readers (and Writers) Want More Of

Posted on March 14, 2008 by Dave Pollard

Buried at the bottom of my right sidebar is a list of what, from my experience, blog readers want more of, and what I, as a blog writer, want more of (from readers). It was initially my most popular post, … Continue reading →

Posted in Using Weblogs and Technology | 5 Comments

A World Without E-Mail: Getting Our Lives Back in Synch

Posted on March 12, 2008 by Dave Pollard

About twenty years ago, I was at a meeting of business executives complaining about a new (at that time) technology they instinctively disliked. It was voice-mail. Their view was that it wasted time: If it was important, people would call … Continue reading →

Posted in Using Weblogs and Technology | 4 Comments

Business Risk, Prediction Markets, Sustainability, Resilience, and the Wisdom of Crowds

Posted on March 11, 2008 by Dave Pollard

You can’t make people care about what they don’t. Sure, you can get people worked up about Darfur or Global Warming with some good photos or a stirring editorial, but soon enough it becomes abstract to them again. If you … Continue reading →

Posted in Working Smarter | 1 Comment

The Phone Company That Doesn’t Answer the Phone

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Dave Pollard

I just have to pass this on. This is the typical “customer service” that we now get from all large corporations. This is the reason why we have to walk away from this crap, and not put up with it … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works | 22 Comments

Saturday Links of the Week — March 8, 2008 — The Time Management Edition

Posted on March 8, 2008 by Dave Pollard

If you don’t have time to check out all of the links below, at least check out the first two :-) The Virtue of Getting Less Done: William Tozier of the Notional Slurry blog writes a brilliant, liberating response (two … Continue reading →

Posted in Our Culture / Ourselves | 4 Comments

Friday Flashback: Socially and Environmentally Sustainable Economics

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Dave Pollard

A lot of people are intimidated by the vocabulary and complexity of economics, so when many of the dangerous myths of traditional economics are espoused (e.g. economies of scale, that the market is democratic and nearly ‘perfect’, that ‘free’ trade … Continue reading →

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Apology: Behind in Everything I Want to Do

Posted on March 5, 2008 by Dave Pollard

It’s about time I stop pretending there’s nothing wrong. If you’re a regular reader of How to Save the World you’ve certainly sensed from my writing that something’s amiss — my writing is shorter, disjointed, unfocused, just not all there. … Continue reading →

Posted in Working Smarter | 17 Comments

Peer Production and the Myth of Economies of Scale

Posted on March 4, 2008 by Dave Pollard

(chart is explained in more detail in this earlier Gift/Generosity Economy article) If you read the business press, you will find, just about every day, stories about acquisitions and takeovers of small companies by bigger companies. Some large corporations now … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works | 4 Comments