As regular readers of this site might already know, we believe that sewage and waste water treatment should be funded through the reclamation of valuable substances. For whom is not already convinced of this, we would recommend an article on GreenBiz by Yalin Li: Waste water is an asset.
Reclaiming nutrients and other valuables from waste water would constitute a durable source of non-tax revenue for governments and will hence structurally reduce the need to impose taxes on the people.
A recurrent theme on this site is the idea that the recycling of waste could be funded through the proceeds of the reclaimed materials and that consequently waste-disposal fees should be abolished. However, this raises the question if recycling is indeed a profitable venture? Continue reading Wast-to-value: an analysis
This proposal combines Richard Stallman’s suggestion for a progressive business tax with Bernard Lietaer’s ECO-plan. We will first discuss both proposal separately and subsequently we will discuss a (possible) combination of both. Continue reading Stallman-Lietaer “Tax”
When you go outside is hard not to notice public advertisements: billboards, bus stops, on buses themselves and so on. In fact there is a lot of advertising in our public spaces. Continue reading Public advertisement
Recently we discussed how a sewer system could be run without charging citizens a special sewer fee, just through the sale of recovered minerals like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. A new scientific study confirms that recycling nutrients from human wastewater is an economically viable venture.
Two Italian fashion designers have developed a technique to make a silk-like fabric from citrus waste, called Orange Fiber. The orange juice industry produce a very large amount of waste in the form of peels. The use of citrus peels as a resource for the production of textiles, is interesting as it increase the value of citrus fruits and hence potentially increasing the income of citrus farmers.
Sewers are the summit of human civilization and taxation is the price of civilization. So we are supposed to pay sewer tax, right? No, not really. In this post I will explain how space settlements could fund a sewage and waste water treatment system without having to collect sewer charges. Continue reading Sewers and Taxes
About twenty years ago Danish artist Lars Kræmer started the Artmoney project. His idea is for artists to make small, bank note-sized pieces of art with a fixed value of two hundred Danish Kroner. These pieces of arts can be then be used to pay for goods and services. According to Wikipedia about 1,300 artists in 40 countries participates in this project and there have been exhibitions of artmoney. Continue reading Art and monetary policy
A funny concept developed by artists Kris De Decker and Melle Smets is the human power plant. As the name suggests this is a power plant which converts human labour into electricity. Like many artistic projects, the main purpose of this project is to make people think about our energy consumption. Continue reading Human Power Plants
David Graeber, professor in anthropology at the London School of Economics has conceived the concept of bullshit jobs. He defines a bullshit as any job which would not be missed by anyone if those jobs would suddenly disappear. More over he classifies jobs as bullshit ones if the very people who do those jobs consider their work as useless. Continue reading Bullshit guarantee… (?)
