Alberto Cottica

Post-growth economist, citizen, runner. Network science, complex systems, digital anthropology, collective intelligence. Co-founder of Edgeryders, currently with the United Nations Development Programme. Ex minor rockstar. Polyamorous. Thoughts my own.

Boosting does not imply agreement.

#economics
#degrowth
#postgrowth
#anthropology
#NetworkScience

No license, implied or explicit, is granted to use any of my posts for training AI models.

website: https://www.cottica.net

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Last Notes

2026-04-08 08:09:06 GMT

If you are a European Union citizen, there is a concrete way you can support a peaceful resolution in Iran and Gaza: you can demand the full suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement in view of Israel’s violations of human rights.
#peace
#palestine
#iran
THREAD 1/

2026-04-02 06:53:51 GMT

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that's not how I understand it. Is resilience not a property of systems? When applied to individuals it would still refer to.some kind of system, for example if I live and work in the same dense neighborhood my life is more resilient to shocks that affect transport and mobility.

2026-02-10 08:56:10 GMT

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To this, I would humbly add a bit more specificity: the benefit for the wealthy is not so much in "number goes up" or "number eat dirt" per se, it's in VOLATILITY. Buy in a crash, sell just before the next crash, rinse, repeat. This allows you to extract the value others have built using liquidity.
Taleb makes this point forcefully in "Black Swan". Steady, predictable prosperity is bad for the rich. Their interests are fundamentally misaligned with everybody else's.
2/2

2026-02-10 08:54:15 GMT

This post by @npub1fdr…lvhs makes an important point: the wealthy ("the Epstein class") benefit from economic crashes, because, when ordinary people are in debt and distress, they are the only ones with the cash to scoop up their assets for pennies on the dollar.
1/2

2025-09-22 08:52:56 GMT

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emphatic yes. Successful civilizations do not make great, stupidly expensive coffee for the privileged, but great commodified coffee available to all.
(which is to say that successful civilizations do not measure economic performance in monetary terms, but in the ability to satisfy human needs within planetary boundaries)

2025-09-22 08:44:01 GMT

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ahhh, indeed, I did not get the joke.
As you must have found out by now, Italians are almost never coffee geeks, and do not make a big deal about coffee. We expect great coffee as a matter of course and with minimum fuss: a cup of espresso should cost 1 EUR and take 30 seconds to serve at the counter. No equipment needed except a moka (and a grinder, if that's your pleasure). Buy once, use forever.

2025-09-22 07:55:43 GMT

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what's wrong with this? Lasts forever, never glitches. No cutesy design needed.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/115/246/871/064/949/039/original/fdd1f9eed5bd7bca.png

2025-07-15 21:02:55 GMT

Everybody, do yourselves a favour and read this post from @npub1fdr…lvhs .
AI is not about the tech. Neither were blockchains and the metaverse. It's always about the economics.
Pluralistic: When Google’s slop meets webslop, search stops (15 Jul 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/15/inhuman-gigapede/#coprophagic-ai
#AI
#enshittification

2025-06-26 18:55:48 GMT

Ye Gods. @npub1fdr…lvhs goes straight to the heart: advances in surveillance technology make it possible for the oligarchs to push our society deeper jnto democratic debt. Until... What? 100 families eat UK the entire world's wealth? The guillotines come out?
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114750843996343134

2025-04-16 17:49:56 GMT

These DOGE emails lend themselves to being imitated by phishing schemes or just generic fraudsters.
https://mastodon.world/@obtener/114348648816583025

2025-04-10 12:54:18 GMT

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I am curious as to how the choice of Microsoft as a provider was nevertheless made. So I made a FOIA request, which came back today:
https://www.asktheeu.org/request/security_risks_associated_to_the
The result is inconclusive: DIGIT does not have the information. "the European Commission limits its cloud services to be operated within the EU by general principle" (but then Microsoft is considered Irish 🤦‍♂️ ), "adheres to binding public procurement rules when contracting cloud providers", etc.
2/n

2025-03-31 13:58:49 GMT

The combo of monopoly, unlimited property rights, and erosion of privacy rights souped up by AI has created a toxic world where private companies have both the legal and practical power to deny essential services to people who criticize them. This post by @npub1fdr…lvhs is his clearest formulation of the problem yet:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/31/madison-square-garden/#autocrats-of-trade
Conclusion: a healthy economy must have strong anti-monopoly provisions, or it won't stay healthy for long.

2025-01-25 08:49:53 GMT

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shame, would love to catch up. And with my newfound reluctance to flying, it is unlikely I'll show up in Rejkiavik any time soon...

2025-01-22 13:49:59 GMT

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I live in Brussels if that counts.

2025-01-09 16:51:08 GMT

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sounds to me like you are calling for a new _economic_ paradigm, one based on the efficiency of public information instead of the exclusivity (hence monetizability) of paywalls. I could not agree more! #NewEconomicThinking #OpenKnowledge

2024-10-21 12:47:12 GMT

"It is disappointing to see [GDP] used in a document of the importance of the Draghi report. #NewEconomicThinking scholars would have tried to estimate physical productivity: for example, by comparing worked hours and material input with some measure of human welfare like the United Nations’ Human Development Index."
http://www.cottica.net/2024/10/15/the-draghi-report-vs-new-economic-thinking/
#economics #MarioDraghi #degrowth #EUCommission

2024-09-24 15:02:05 GMT

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you would like @npub1cdn…ndeg 's "The Value of Everything". #economics

2024-09-17 10:06:58 GMT

Dear fellow Europeans, I am respectfully asking you to consider signing this European Citizen Initiative to institute a billionaire tax. It was invented by leading French economist Thomas Piketty; I read the whole thing, and it is technically excellent. Hit me if you have questions, but please sign it, it is important.
https://www.tax-the-rich.eu/
It needs 1 million signatures (currently 300K) and seven countries over their threshold (currently three: Denmark, France, Germany).
#economics #tax

2024-08-07 13:01:30 GMT

1/
The ever-brilliant @npub1fdr…lvhs calls our attention to the fact that, in the US of A, three companies control the market for school lunch payments, and they hit poor families with junk fees that go up to 60% of what families pay.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/26/taanstafl/#stay-hungry
Now, some of you might have seen newer economics papers refer to something called “mode of provisioning”. The concept is not very intuitive, but – I believe – the story of school lunch payments is great to explain it.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/112/920/853/635/316/613/original/a201248a0b281b35.jpg

2024-06-12 18:16:23 GMT

"Labour theory is all about formal workers, whereas over 65% of the world's workers are informal. There is a huge literature on informality, but we do not teach it to #economics students."
#newEconomicThinking