:date: 2017-03-31

======================
Friday, March 31, 2017
======================


Implement milestones as activities
==================================

I did :ticket:`1546` (Use courses.Course as milestone_model). This is
a great example of how flexible Lino applications are.

Some days ago I added the :mod:`courses <lino_xl.lib.courses>` and
:mod:`cal <lino_xl.lib.cal>` plugins into :ref:`noi`. That was for my
quick demo last Saturday for :ref:`vilma`. This made me realize that
an "activity" (AKA "course" or "workshop") in
:mod:`lino_xl.lib.courses` is equivalent to what we have been calling
a milestone until now. And that the "room" of the calendar module is
equivalent to what we called a "site" until now.

So now I removed the models `deploy.Milestone` and `tickets.Site`.
Existing `deploy.Milestone` objects must be migrated to
`courses.Course`, existing `tickets.Site` to `cal.Room`.

I also removed `tickets.Competence` because that notion is not
useful. Existing rows can be thrown away.  Note that I plan to change
the verbose_name of `tickets.Project` from "project" to "mission".

Side effect I stumbled over a little bug which caused a
:message:`TypeError: unorderable types: str() and <type 'str'>`. And I
fixed it.



About economic democracy
========================

I read parts of `A wealth of possibilities: Alternatives to Growth
<http://gef.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/GEF_BackgroundStudy-screen-ok.pdf>`__
(found via `this
<http://gef.eu/publication/wealth-possibilities-alternatives-growth/>`__). My
quotation:


    In general, a post-growth economy should resemble what Johanishova
    and Wolf (2012) describe as **"economic democracy"**, a concept
    that advances the **right of citizens to participate in the
    economy, shifting their role from passive consumers to engaged and
    productive subjects** with access to a new typology of means of
    production. In this way, employment opportunities would shift from
    capitalist corporations to collaboratives; that is to say, social,
    individual and informal enterprises fomenting local economies.

    Put differently but implying similar ideas, Christian Felber
    defines the `Economy of the Common Good
    <https://www.ecogood.org/en>`__ as an attempt to create an
    alternative economic system to both the planned and the capitalist
    economy, seeking implementation from the bottom up directed at
    individuals, enterprises or municipalities.

    (...) Since a specific answer cannot be given concerning the
    future outcome, **we can only acknowledge that we face a
    bifurcation where the global outcome will be the result of many
    different local outcomes, and prepare for successes as well as
    tragedies**.  The policy-makers should therefore adopt a flexible
    role in devising policies that facilitate the creation of
    democratic processes and can, in parallel with technological
    innovation, foment social innovation which, in turn, will
    instigate the post-growth economy and its new institutions.

This confirms to me that :ref:`vilma` is something that the world
needs. One of the key points in Vilma is a new style of
democracy. Unlike many projects Vilma encourages volunteer agents to
become qualified representatives for their neighbors.