183. Economy 2.0 - A Conversation with Nicolas Franka

For today’s episode, host Josh Sidman sat down with Nicolas Franka to discuss why money is broken, why reform movements so often work in silos, and what it would look like to build a real dialogue across competing monetary reformers.Nicolas Franka is an economist and founder of the Monetary Diversity network. His work focuses on alternative monetary systems and complementary currencies. He explores the intersections of ecology, economy, and society, and how money can become a tool for resilience and transition. Actively involved in cooperatives, he advocates for participatory democracy and collective intelligence as drivers of transformation.To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

For today’s episode, host Josh Sidman sat down with Guido Preparata to discuss Silvio Gesell's monetary economics, the nature and origin of interest, and the controversial relationship between Gesell and John Maynard Keynes.Guido Preparata is an Italian-American economist who currently resides in Umbria, Italy. He did his PhD in Political Economy at the University of Southern California and also has a masters in Criminology from Cambridge University. He taught political economy at the University of Washington and was a Fulbright Scholar studying Middle Eastern international relations at the University of Amman in Jordan. Among his diverse professional interests is the economic perspective of Silvio Gesell, which he has been writing about since the 1990s. He wrote a paper in 2002 arguing that some of Keynes’s most important insights on money were inspired by, if not plagiarized from, Silvio Gesell.To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

For today’s episode, host Josh Sidman sat down with Felix Fuders to discuss the problems caused by the unnatural monetary system and potential solutions.Felix Fuders is originally from Germany and is a professor of economics at the Universidad Austral de Chile, where he is the Director of the Economics Institute and the head of the Right Livelihood College. He is also the chairman of the Natural Economic Order Foundation in Frankfurt, Germany and one of the leading researchers in the world on the economic perspective of Silvio Gesell, having published multiple books and articles on Gesell’s ideas. His most recent book How to Fulfill the UN Sustainability Goals: Rethinking the Role and Concept of Money in the Light of Sustainability makes the argument that the root cause of unsustainable environmental practices and the so-called “growth imperative” is our irrational form of money and that achieving a more sustainable future requires a fundamental overhaul of our monetary system along the lines proposed by Silvio Gesell.To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠⁠ 

For today’s episode, host Josh Sidman sat down with Christian Gelleri to discuss Chiemgauer, a regional currency in Bavaria, Germany.Christian Gelleri is a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Siegen in Germany and a leading innovator in the complementary currency space. He is the creator of the Chiemgauer, a regional currency in Bavaria, Germany which is intended to increase local employment, support local culture and make the local food supply more resilient. The currency incorporates Silvio Gesell’s proposal of demurrage, or carrying costs, to incentivize steady circulation of money. Christian is a former Waldorf School teacher, and he created the Chiemgauer in 2003 as a project with his students. Now, over 20 years later, it is one of the most successful and sustained complementary currency projects in the world, with an annual turnover of over 7 million Euros.To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠⁠ 

For today’s episode, host Josh Sidman sat down with Carlos Louge to discuss the life and ideas of Silvio Gesell (specifically, his thoughts on Keynes).Carlos Louge is the Founder and Director of the Silvio Gesell Institute in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A lawyer and economist by training, Carlos has worked in the areas of alternative exchange systems and complementary currencies since the 1990s. He has written numerous articles as well as a book entitled Keynes and Gesell: A New Paradigm, in which he argues that many of the core ideas in The General Theory were previously developed by Gesell during his years in Argentina. He furthermore advocates for a more inclusive view of economic history, making the argument that many ideas which are ascribed to European and American thinkers were developed decades and even centuries earlier in South America.To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: ⁠https://www.hgsss.org/⁠ 

Today’s discussion was recorded in August of 2025 between me, Nathan Greene, and our returning guest, Dr. Ansel Schiavone.Before we get into today’s discussion, I have some updates for you all regarding the show. I have some bittersweet news to share: this is my final episode hosting the podcast. After 178 episodes, I, your host, Nathan Greene, am unfortunately moving on to a new role.I am an inherently curious person, and I love to learn through conversation. This podcast presented a unique opportunity for me to meet many people with interesting ideas and gain insight into how they perceive the world. While I didn’t always agree with them, it was always a fascinating conversation nonetheless. I got to speak with thinkers I love, have read about, and even got to reconnect with some I had already met. Needless to say, it was an incredible opportunity.By the time you’re hearing this, I will have already begun my new job. My last day with the Henry George School was September 14th, and this will be published shortly after. I hope you all loved listening to the podcast just as much as I enjoyed making it. The show will go on, though. While it may not be me behind the mic, the Henry George School will continue to put out the content you all come to love and expect. The show will be taking a break until next year. They will let you know ahead of time when the show will be back. I’m not too sure when that will be, but I know I will be listening, and I hope you do too. If you want to keep up with me and my work, I will leave some links below to my Twitter, LinkedIn, and Substack. I can’t promise I’ll be very active on either, though, since this new role will be quite consuming, but a follow is always appreciated, and free. I can not thank everyone who gave me this opportunity enough: from the listeners, to my coworker Kuba who helped me put the episodes out, to Andrada, the president of the school, who trusted me enough to manage the show myself. I am sad that I’m leaving. But I can’t wait to see, maybe I should say hear, what the podcast does next. I hope you all are just as excited.Dr. Schiavone is a macroeconomist whose research focuses on inequality and structural change. He has worked as a Research Assistant at the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the International Labor Organization. He has published numerous articles in journals such as Economic Modeling, Metroeconomica, and Regional Studies. Dr. Schiavone is an Assistant Professor at St. John’s University where he teaches microeconomics, macroeconomics, and the economics of poverty and inequality. He earned his bachelor’s from Dennison University and his Ph.D. from the University of Utah, both in economics. Together, we discussed why workers are receiving a smaller and smaller share of what they produce, some of the policies recently passed to try and correct this inequality, and why certain critiques of globalization may not be unfair. This is your host, Nathan Greene, signing off for the last time. Stay curious and keep searching for the truth. It may not be what you expect, but nothing ever is in this world.To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: https://www.hgsss.org/Nathan’s Links:Twitter: https://x.com/Nathan_Greene16LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-greene-596466171/Substack: https://nathangreene1620.substack.com/

What does it mean to be an economist? It’s something I have thought a lot about. I graduated from St. John’s with a bachelor's degree in economics, and I have been fascinated by it ever since. But, through reading, networking, job interviews, and taking courses on other subjects, I’ve begun to lose sight of what exactly an economist is, or what they are supposed to do.If you work for a tech or logistics company, they hire economists to sort through data to help make better decisions. In this role, economists are more like data scientists. If you are just starting out at one of the Fed’s branches, you are spending a lot of time coding. But economists aren’t taught computer science. Many top-notch economics programs teach their students statistical methods that forecast outcomes, making these students more like weather forecasters than economists.I’ve also heard a lot of different perspectives on how economists should approach their work. We’re supposed to think like auditors, architects, plumbers, or engineers. But, how can economists work like… economists?I think part of this is the change the discipline has gone through. Economics used to be a discipline that looked at a narrow set of indicators. Now, economics has merged with other disciplines. Behavioral economics comes from psychology, natural resource economics comes from environmental science, and health economics comes from the study of medicine. Heck, you can even take courses on agricultural or neuroeconomics.Needless to say, the role of an economist is one in flux, and for good reason. As Esther Duflo, a recent Nobel-winning economist, noted in a UK survey, only 25% of people trust the opinion of economists. One of the lowest among any other profession. And this is, in part, because the current understanding of economics is highly flawed, and, in my opinion, not applicable to the real world around.So today, I embarked on a mission to understand what economics education is like and how it can be improved. I’m hoping to turn this into a series or mini-series where I interview a host of economics professors to see how different universities approach their economics programs. For now, it may be a one-off episode, but I hope it continues. Dr. Gevorkyan received his bachelor’s degree in international trade and finance from Louisiana State University, two master's in economics from The New School and Louisiana State University, and his Ph.D. in economics from The New School. He is an expert on Central Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union economies. He is the author of numerous journals and articles, as well as the author of two books: Transition Economies and Financial Deepening and Post-Crisis Development in Emerging Markets. He is a professor and Henry George Chair in Economics at St. John’s University, as well as a member here at the Henry George School.Together, we discussed what the St. John’s curriculum entails, why economists tend to defend current paradigms instead of discovering new ones, and what type of economist he wants his students to become. To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: https://www.hgsss.org/

If you’ve listened to this series before, you know I’m not a fan of the “physics envy” plaguing economics. I find a lot of the most relevant economic research to be overly mathematical, loquacious, and lacking a grounding in reality. One example I constantly hear about is GDP growth. Economists strive for never-ending economic expansion and assume this is possible. But this violates the law of the conservation of mass: we have finite resources and can’t continue growing indefinitely. Economics has always been considered a social science, but maybe it should just be straight-up science. From Karl Marx to Steve Keen, many economists have strived to make economics more scientific. With this more scientific grounding, economics can better make sense of what is going on in the world, and hopefully regain the trust it has so sorely lost with the public. This is not an argument for de-growth, but instead a more realistic understanding of how economies reproduce. My guest today helps move economics towards physics, but in a healthier way. Dr. James K. Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations at the University of Texas Austin, where he holds a professorship. He was the Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress in the 1980s, and before that, an economist for the House Banking Committee. He chaired the board of Economists for Peace and Security from 1996 to 2016 and directs the University of Texas Inequality Project. He is a managing editor of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics. He is the author of Entropy Economics, The End of Normal, and The Predator State. Dr. Galbraith earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and his master’s and Ph.D. from Yale, all in economics.Dr. Galbraith joined the Henry George School to discuss how entropy economics departs from conventional economics, why regulation is always necessary, and why there are markets, but no such thing as a “free market.”To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: https://www.hgsss.org/

Today’s conversation was about a topic I’ve covered a few times now: Universal Basic Income (UBI). Most of my work on UBI has been about its benefits, especially how it can be used as a tool for poverty alleviation. And while I think the economic rationale for UBI justifies itself, others make a more ethical appeal to its justification. The more heterodox side of the left tends to focus on the morality of its economic policies, why it is wrong to have homelessness, malnutrition, and destitution in affluent societies. I think this can be seen in the appeal of figures like Bernie Sanders or even the newest Pope. So what are the ethical considerations for UBI? Why is it not only right, but just, to give people a guaranteed income? Are there any downsides to it? Or, does having a universal guaranteed income create a backstop to poverty and a path towards a Jeffersonian self-sufficiency?My guest today helps us answer these questions and navigate the philosophical justifications for UBI globally. Dr. Karl Widerquist, a philosopher, activist, and economist from Georgetown University, specializes in political philosophy. Much of Dr. Widerquist’s work focuses on conceptions of justice and freedom, and how they can be enhanced by UBI. His research has been published in journals such as Basic Income Studies and Ethical Perspectives, and he has authored several books, such as The Problem of Property, Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, and The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee. He is the cofounder of the US Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG), an organization that hosts discussions and promotes UBI policy in America. He is part of the left-libertarian wing of the spectrum, and reminded me a lot about my conversation with Martin Jacobsen earlier in the year. Dr. Widerquist earned his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Michigan, and two Ph.D.s, one from the City University of New York in Economics and the other from Oxford in Politics. Together, we discussed criticisms of UBI, why UBI doesn’t quite fit in the right-left political spectrum, and where the future of UBI is headed. To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: https://www.hgsss.org/

Today’s discussion originates from our 2025 Annual Conference, The Rise of AI and Automation. Today’s episode is part of our fourth and final panel, “AI and Inequality – Are our Social Safety nets up to the task?”.Our panel today is led by our returning guest, Mr. Steve Shafarman.Mr. Shafarman has been a universal basic income (UBI) proponent since the 1980s. He is the program director of Basic Income Action and a member of Basic Income Earth Network, two non-profits dedicated to promoting the implementation of UBI. He is also the author of several books: Basic Income Imperative, Our Future, We the People, and many more, all of which focus on the benefits of UBI. Steve earned his bachelor's degree in Philosophy, Psychology, and Human Development from Colby College.Mr. Shafarman joined the Henry George School to discuss how his work in childhood psychology informs his perspective on the economy, why UBI is a crucial aspect of social safety nets for responding to AI disruptions, and how a land value tax can fund this expanded social safety net. To check out more of our content, including our research and policy tools, visit our website: https://www.hgsss.org/