Capital should flow and not accumulate – Melanie Rieback

Decide for Impact podcast

Today, we are learning from Melanie Rieback. Melanie is CEO/Co-founder of Radically Open Security (the world's first not-for-profit computer security company), and "Post Growth" startup incubator Nonprofit Ventures. She is also a former Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Free University of Amsterdam. She was named "Most Innovative IT Leader of the Netherlands" by CIO Magazine (TIM Award) in 2017, and one of the "9 Most Innovative Women in the European Union" (EU Women Innovators Prize) in 2019. She is also one of the 400 most successful women in the Netherlands by Viva Magazine (Viva400) in 2010 and 2017, and one of the fifty most inspiring women in tech (Inspiring Fifty Netherlands) in 2016, 2017, and 2019. Let's get started... Note: The sound quality on my end, is not good in this episode. By mistake, I recorded this conversation with the other microphone in my office, far away from my lips. In this conversation with Melanie Rieback, I learned: 00:00 Intro 03:05 A short idea of what happened since our last conversation for this podcast. 04:15 Scaling in the incubator program rapidly. 05:45 Creating a playbook. 07:55 THe PGE roadshow 10:20 10th anniversary with Radically Open Security 10:35 In these 10 years we donated 1 million Euro in donations to the NLnet foundation. 12:15 Ten years is an awful lot of time to do anything. 16:30 Foundation ownership is enough by itself, look at OpenAI. 17:50 When Patagonia's business transformation caused a bit of backlash, shows that the movement is growing. 19:05 The gap between the 99% and the 1% is getting worse. 19:30 Even though the beyond growth movement is growing in size, we are not necessarily growing in power. 20:25 The political mandate we have is slowly slipping away with each election. 21:55 The progressive left needs to be extremely realistic that we can't do it by ourselves. 22:30 Maybe we need a more constructive story, and maybe we need to be building bridges with people, rather than canceling them. 23:05 The example of the steward ownership entity form (rentmeesterschap). 25:05 The progressives can look at topics where we align with the Christians, there is a lot of progress that can be made. 27:15 Ann Pettifor (progressive) worked successfully together with the evangelists on building the Jubilee 2000 concept. 29:55 Christians plus progressives are pretty much unstoppable. 30:45 Financial extraction is prohibited in all three global Semitic languages. 31:40 The terms post growth and regrowth have become politicized. It is better to use the term financial extraction. 33:50 Capital should flow and not accumulate. 34:15 We need to learn how to translate concepts from woke to Christian. 36:00 It starts with finding common ground with people who are different from us because they are not bad people. 37:20 How much are we clinging to symbolic virtue signaling? 39:15 The left has been so extreme in its approach, it wound up pushing people away. 39:40 We need to start rebuilding the center-left. We do this by being different from the extreme left. We should be progressive without being woke. 41:50 We need to start using tools like nonviolent communication, to reach out to the people who are different from us. 48:20 Pretty much everybody has been colonized by the economic system. 51:45 Some great examples of why it is important to have local people make the translation for their community 57:00 I realize that I need to let go. How do I get myself out of the middle of it? 59:40 I am terrified that financial non-extraction will be stamped woke. 1:01:50 If we can start to fix the economy, people will have fewer reasons to be angry. 1:02:20 Our future in moving forward depends upon translators and bridge builders. More about Melanie Rieback: https://decideforimpact.com/show280-sharing-post-growth-entrepreneurship-with-the-world-melanie-r...