Dawn Allen is a freelance writer and editor who is passionate about sustainability, political economy, gardening, traditional craftwork, and simple living. She and her husband are currently renovating a rural homestead in southeastern Michigan.
Conservatives (especially their Libertarian umbrella-mates) have been telling us for years that they are pro-freedom and favor small government. Government should be big enough to protect us via the police and military, but small enough to allow for people to make decisions about how to live their own lives. You know, you should be able
There is speculation in the financial technology (fintech) industry that the deregulatory atmosphere embraced by the incoming Trump administration will allow for an upswell of innovative new products. But will innovation in banking be a curse or a boon for the underbanked among us, who both stand to gain from new products and yet have
Yesterday we tackled warm clothing and safe boots, but thorough winter preparedness includes places where you spend a lot of time, including your home and automobile. Preparedness is about knowledge as much as it is about having the proper equipment. Remembering some common sense directives can be the difference between getting to your destination safely
It’s finally winter for real here in the upper Midwest, with snow piling up, salt trucks and plows on patrol, and that delightful “wintry mix” of sleet, freezing rain, snow, and ice that makes the coldest season such an adventure. Just as the locals have to remember how to drive on the white stuff every
In recent weeks, whistleblowers revealed that “sharing economy” giant and somehow-not-a-taxi taxi service Uber may have been less than honorable concerning their pledge to stop tracking their customers when there wasn’t a valid business reason to do so. The story begins two years ago, when Uber executives allegedly abused the company’s God View feature, which
The classic definition of the tragedy of the commons involves the mismanagement of a shared resource. Individuals are said to act in pure self-interest by grabbing as much of the shared resource as they can, in order to privately profit at the expense of the collective wealth. The tragedy is that this resource, if properly managed
Fake news is a scourge upon the media landscape. While it’s certainly not a new phenomenon, the partisan divide in modern day America is certainly ramping it up to obnoxious levels. Satire based publications such as The Onion write fake news in a more or less obvious attempt at social commentary (“The play’s the thing
While the world was watching the standoff between the local authorities and water protectors at Standing Rock, the Navajo nation was preparing a lawsuit over the fouling of their water. The Gold King mine spill in August of 2015 turned the river a deep yellow and sent toxic pollutants like arsenic and lead coursing through
The recent tragic fire that engulfed Oakland’s Ghost Ship warehouse / artist space / underground residence, killing at least 36 people, is sparking a conversation about why so many people were living there in the first place. One obvious answer is that young artists that are struggling to get by can’t afford the exorbitant rents
In any society, there are people who break the rules. What the people of that society choose to do about that not only says something about that society, it also determines how well that society is going to re-assimilate the rulebreakers. If the crime is egregious and the victims hurt beyond repair, there is a