Adam Greenfield on Nostr: I was yapping with Jim from The Approach the other day, and our conversation turned ...

I was yapping with Jim from The Approach the other day, and our conversation turned to a set of institutions that had been significant in both our lives – *not* collectives, necessarily, *not* coops, simply small businesses run by human beings, who’d decided for whatever reason to be “bad at capitalism.”

That is, these businesses and their owners faced the world with policies and practices that were consciously suboptimal, by the late capitalist economy’s cut-throat rules of accumulation, because it allowed them to preserve space for the community, for taking care of neighbors, and for the introduction of other, more congenial values.

After I got off the call with Jim, I remembered what it was like to run a West Philly coffeehouse, a long long time ago, that was like that, so we could e.g. let runaway kids crash in the basement, feed unhoused customers for free on the DL, etc. And I thought: huh, actually, this space is really undertheorized on the left.