Grassroots Economics

Empowerment through Community Inclusion Currencies

[Will Ruddick @wor]

🩺 What if doctors could accept more than money for healthcare?

Imagine a doctor offering a consultation while a patient contributes gardening, teaching, transport, or another useful service through a community commitment pool.

Through Cosmo-Local Credit, we're exploring how medical vouchers, reciprocal exchange, and mutual aid could help communities make better use of the care and resources they already have.

Inspired by my search for healthcare for my daughter, I've written Healthcare Commons for Doctors and Patients.

Could this work in the US? What about taxes, medical ethics, and regulation?

I'm inviting doctors, dentists, healthcare lawyers, accountants, patients, and mutual-aid organizers to help us build the foundations for a small, responsible pilot.

🌱 What if more healthcare could begin with a promise to care?

https://t.co/ZMBzQ38h7e

[Grassroots Economics @grassEcon]

@wor @frerehugi @gnosischain @impactstake @Celo paraphrasing here for discussion.....

"[you] have a place in the [XYZ tech]-world." @frerehugi

vs

Does [XYZ-tech] have a place in actual communities in the life-world? @wor

@antonioavocado your opinion please?

[regenavocado @regenavocado]

@nicnode @gnosis_ @etheconomiczone im excited because @grassEcon just migrated to gnosis chain https://t.co/JyOTYipR79

[Grassroots Economics @grassEcon]

@frerehugi @wor @gnosischain @impactstake @Celo correct.
https://t.co/YWiJf1lQ14

[Will Ruddick @wor]

@frerehugi @grassEcon Thanks!

Note that @grassecon has moved to @gnosischain
Please stake on us here: https://t.co/4Zi4l1YbsY
@impactstake

[Will Ruddick @wor]

Come visit us together with our community! Oct 31st
(p.s. might be the last chance for a while) https://t.co/BdLrjz67d3

[Grassroots Economics @grassEcon]

@lifesmyth $3.86 USD

[Grassroots Economics @grassEcon]

Join us for a day of culture, connection, learning and nature with members of the Mijikenda community in Kilifi!
Come spend the day learning directly from Mijikenda community members, sharing experiences, and taking part in activities rooted in local culture and the environment.

[Will Ruddick @wor]

Dogfooding is still product-first. You build something, then try to live with what you built. I appreciate that ...
But I keep looking for the opposite order.

Dogliving: live the life first, then see whether the product belongs in it.

Live the week you actually want to live. Who do you answer to? Who depends on you? What gets forgotten? What happens when somebody cannot show up, when care is needed, when a promise becomes inconvenient, when something simply fails?

Then bring the tool into that week and see whether it survives.

A clear concept and a beautiful UX can both be real achievements while the actual use remains mostly the work of describing, demonstrating, and administering the tool itself.

I think this is what troubles me when software designers talk about community, mutuality, reciprocity, and care. I hear a great deal about the systems they are building for those things, and much less about the actual forms of dependence and reciprocity in their own lives.

Who are they caring for? Who cares for them? What obligations have they accepted? What do they give without optimization? Where have these practices become difficult, inconvenient, or costly?

...I wonder whether the attraction of the tool is precisely the hope that we can transcend the messiness of the life it claims to serve....

Everyone's private life doesn't have to become evidence for their product. .... yet I want to know where the center of gravity is.

Is the tool being created in service of a life that is already being attempted?

Or is the imagined life gradually being constructed in service of the tool?

Is the tool in the life, or is the life in the tool?

[Will Ruddick @wor]

About 20km from our home is Msitu Wa Ndoto, the Forest of Dreams ... a forest growing inside an ancient limestone cave that was once beneath the sea.

Inside Panga ya Saidi, people lived for tens of thousands of years. Here, around 78,000 years ago, a small child was carefully buried. Tools, shells, beads, stories, sacred places ... layer after layer of human continuity.

Standing there I kept wondering: after all this time, what would our ancestors still recognize in us?

Care. Burial. Singing. Dancing. Tools. Healing. Gathering together when one person or family cannot carry something alone.

We lose forests and languages and ways of living, and that deserves mourning. But not everything disappeared. Some things travelled an unbelievably long way.

If you are anywhere near Kilifi, please go visit and support Msitu Wa Ndoto. Walk slowly. Listen to the guides. It is really worth your time.

This little video is from our visit to the Forest of Dreams. 📷

Read more about recognizing ourselves in the past and future: https://t.co/ocIVgZEOBL

[Will Ruddick @wor]

If you are around Kilifi Kenya come join!

What to expect:
🪘 Meet and learn from the community
Sit together, hear stories, learn about Mijikenda culture and traditions, and bring your questions and curiosity.
🎶 Music, instruments & dance
Discover traditional instruments and music, and join in the dancing!
🍲 Share an indigenous meal
Enjoy a delicious local meal
🌱 Regenerative farming
Get hands-on with regenerative farming and permaculture practices
💚 Your contribution
Suggested donation: KSh 2,500 per person
You are very welcome to contribute more if you are able to.

Your contribution helps support Mijikenda community-led initiatives and Grassroots Economics' wider work to:
* strengthen local livelihoods and small businesses
* support farmers and local producers
* increase access to goods, services and economic opportunities
* provide training and community organising
* develop local exchange systems
* strengthen resilient, community-led economies

By joining us, you are not only experiencing a day of culture and connection, you are contributing to a community-led initiative and helping create opportunities for local people to share their knowledge, strengthen their livelihoods and protect their environment.

Come with curiosity, respect and a willingness to learn!

[Grassroots Economics @grassEcon]

You can support Grassroots Economics by staking ETH or stablecoins and directing a portion of your returns here:

https://t.co/0IDSMDWwRd

[Will Ruddick @wor]

Sustainable Finance Hackathon
https://t.co/vDMWvbVaKD
#cosmolocal #commitmentpooling

Share and Apply!

[Will Ruddick @wor]

this is new https://t.co/4Zi4l1YbsY

[Grassroots Economics @grassEcon]

You can support Grassroots Economics by staking ETH or stablecoins and directing a portion of your returns here:

https://t.co/0IDSMDWwRd

[Will Ruddick @wor]

Sometimes seeing real care hurts,
because I notice most clearly what is missing or what has been lost, rather than what we came from and what can still be nurtured. It is a little like a pain doctor who has never seen a healthy person and only knows the symptoms.

Watching our daughter being welcomed by so many hands gave me a glimpse of what healthy social soil can feel like. Not to romanticize, just something I could actually see and feel around us. Remembering that these ways of caring for each other exist, and can be nurtured, makes me hopeful.

[@ABOS-ANA AGENCY @JosephSilali]

SeedRights = Food Rights Kenya High Court: Criminalising indigenous seed sharing violates the Constitution. State appeal now threatens this win for farmers.@Seedsavers_KE @BIBA_Kenya @Greenpeaceafric
Read : https://t.co/GUlkZryYvV

[Will Ruddick @wor]

My hope is in neighbors and colleagues who cannot be hired or fired, and who often cannot be paid enough.

Alignment there means visible commitments, shared limits, and repair when someone defects ....

If that cannot hold, claims about regional, global or ASI alignment feels premature.