Skip to main content

Home/ Commons.fi/ Group items tagged social enterprise

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Jukka Peltokoski

Transnational Republics of Commoning | David Bollier - 0 views

bollier.org/...nsnational-republics-commoning

Bollier commons solidaarisuustalous Rifkin Bauwens Mason p2p osuuskunta platformcoop yhteisötalous valtioteoria partner state jukkap2p

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 03 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • The nation-state as now constituted, in its close alliance with capital and markets, is largely incapable of transcending its core commitments to economic growth, consumerism, and the rights of capital and corporations -- arguably the core structural drivers of climate change.
  • Because the piece -- "Transnational Republics of Commoning:  Reinventing Governance Through Emergent Networking" -- is nearly 14,000 words long, I am separating it into three parts.  You can download the full essay as a pdf file here.
  • In moments of crisis, when the structures of conventional governance are suddenly exposed as weak or ineffectual, it is clear that there is no substitute for ordinary people acting together. 
  • ...53 more annotations...
  • collectively our choices and agency are the ultimate guarantors of any values we may wish to secure
  • They can create their own cultural spaces to deliberate, collaborate and share resources without market and state structures that are often cumbersome, expensive, anti-social or predatory. 
  • A key political challenge of our time is to figure out new ways to preserve and extend the democratic capacities of ordinary people and rein in unaccountable market/state power, otherwise known as neoliberalism. 
  • Neoliberal economics and policy insist upon debt-driven economic growth, extractivist uses of the Earth, consumerism and nationalism
  • the creative use of new digital technologies on open network platforms could inaugurate liberating new forms of “open source governance.”
  • The superstructures of law and governance can achieve only so much without the consent of the governed.
  • Benkler
  • Rifkin
  • Tapscott
  • Mason
  • Bauwens
  • potentially transformative Commons Sector
  • the innovations now unfolding in various tech spaces suggest the outlines of new post-capitalist institutions
  • new types of group deliberation and governance software platforms such as Loomio and Co-budget; digital platforms that enable better management of ecological resources; and “blockchain ledger” technology, which is enabling new forms of network-native self-organization, collective action and “smart contracts”
  • online guilds
  • commons
  • open design and manufacturing communities
  • citizen-science
  • a process of commoning
  • to create functioning commons
  • The collaborative communities now emerging on digital platforms do not worry so much about resource-depletion or free riders – problems that affect the management of water, fisheries and land – as how to intelligently curate information from the multitudes and design effective self-governance structures for virtual collaboration.   
  • The point of the commons paradigm, despite its many different flavors, is this:  It provides “protected” space in which to re-imagine production and governance. 
  • “digital divide”
  • more accessible and transparent than conventional state democracy and more solidly grounded through bottom-up participation and ethical accountability
  • Digital networks are becoming deeply entangled with all aspects of life
  • our lives with digital technologies are profoundly affecting how we regard property, political life, and economic life
  • Facebook, Google, Uber, Airbnb and other corporate “gig economy” players
  • Unlike these capital-driven enterprises, the collaborations that I am describing are fundamentally non-market and socially mindful in character. They are less defined by technology per se than by the new social forms and political /cultural attitudes that they engender. 
  • to move people beyond the producer/consumer dyad and formalistic notions of citizenship, and enable people to enact a more personal, DIY vision of self-provisioning and governance. 
  • The state, having cast its lot with capital accumulation and growth, is losing its credibility and competence in addressing larger needs. 
  • With the rise of market-centrism and rational choice economics, government was devalued and allowed a role only in cases of ‘market failure.’ 
  • standard economics today largely ignores the fundamental, affirmative role that government plays in facilitating functional, trustworthy markets.
  • popular distrust of government has soared.  And why not?  Government has lost its actual capacities to serve many non-market social and ecological needs. 
  • Given this void and the barriers to democratic action, many citizens who might otherwise engage with legitimate state policymaking have shifted their energies into “transnational, polycentric networks of governance in which power is dispersed,”
  • the solidarity economy, Transition Towns, peer production, the commons
  • Thus the impasse we face today:  The neoliberal market/state agenda is inflicting grievous harm on the planet, social well-being and democracy – yet the market/state remains largely unresponsive to popular demands for change.
  • The (Still-Emerging) Promise of Open Source Governance
  • commons based on open tech platforms will play a central role in transforming our politics and polity
  • Electronic networks are now a defining infrastructure shaping the conduct of political life, governance, commerce and culture.
  • many legacy institutions and social practices continue to exist.  But they have no choice but to evolve
  • online commons are lightweight social systems that, with the right software and norms, can run quite efficiently on trust, reciprocity and modest governance structures
  • that enable users to mutualize the benefits of their own online sharing
  • Rifkin notes that the extreme productivity of digital technologies is lowering the marginal costs of production for many goods and services to near zero.  This is undercutting the premises of conventional markets, which are based on private owners using proprietary means to extract profits from nature, communities and consumers.
  • We are glimpsing at the outlines of a new economic system based on sharing and the collaborative commons. It is the first new paradigm-shifting system since the introduction of capitalism and communism. 
  • The “collaborative commons” that Rifkin describes is a hybrid capitalist/commons economy that is able to exploit the efficiencies and higher quality produced on open networks. 
  • “prosumers”
  • are able to create their own goods and services
  • But when some good or service is offered for at no cost, it really means that the user is the product:  our personal data, attention, social attitudes lifestyle behavior, and even our digital identities, are the commodity that platform owners are seeking to “own.”  
  • To combat corporate exploitation of open platforms, many efforts are now afoot to establish digital commons as viable alternatives.  The new models are sometimes called “platform co-operativism.
  • Digital commons are materializing in part because it is easier and more socially satisfying to participate in a commons
  • the most valuable networks are those that facilitate group affiliations to pursue shared goals – or what I would call commons
  • Open source tools and principles could unleash this value – but it would subvert the business model.
  • “hacktivists,” makers, software programmers and social media innovators who are consciously attempting to build tech platforms that can meet needs in post-capitalist ways, often via commons
Jukka Peltokoski

Our Eyes On the Prize: From a "Worker Co-op Movement" to a Transformative Social Moveme... - 1 views

www.geo.coop/197

osuuskuntakirja osuuskuntakeissi

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 29 Jun 13 - Cached
  • The contemporary U.S. worker cooperative movement is somewhat ambiguous about its relationship to capitalism.
  • While empathizing with those who feel a sense of "inevitability" in the face of today's powerful capitalist economy (and disagreeing with those who see it as generally acceptable), I hold firmly to the perspective that a more just and democratic economy is both necessary and possible.
  • Operating as isolated businesses or even as networks of businesses, worker cooperatives have barely a prayer (contrary to what some cooperative activists suggest) of growing to "eclipse" and replace capitalist enterprise simply through successful growth and competition.
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • the long term replacement of capitalism--an economy which socializes costs and privatizes benefits--with an economy of democratic cooperation
  • link these interventions together--at every point of the economic cycle
  • The worker coop movement must work to build broader alliances, holistic economic and social visions, and contribute to the creation of not only more worker coops, but a transformative social movement capable of changing the culture and economy--the "social ecosystem"--in which worker coops struggle to exist.
  • Operating successfully in a capitalist market, worker coops can support movements for social and economic transformation
  • a cooperative solidarity economy
  • Worker cooperatives are a particular--and effective--structure for democratically organizing the production of goods and the provision of services.
  • n economy is an ecosystem, a cyclical whole that includes processes of creation (the "original production" of natural resources by geological, biological, and energetic forces), production (human transformation of resources into goods and services), exchange, consumption (perhaps more appropriately called "use"), the processing of waste, and the recycling of surplus (sometimes called "investment").
  • But even a solidarity economy movement cannot succeed without being intimately linked to broader social change work. It is our connections with the work of anti-racism, feminism, queer liberation, environmental justice, ecological sustainablility, immigrant's rights, counter-recruitment and peace advocacy, labor organizing, grassroots community development, and other movements for cultural and insitutional change that will generate the collective power and momentum needed to effect long-term transformation and generate widespread, committed support for worker cooperatives as economic and social-change insitutions.
  • Indeed, to create conditions under which their success is increasingly possible, worker cooperatives must work to generate, sustain and support institutions at all other points of the economic cycle.
  • constructing reliable markets
  • for goods and services produced by worker cooperatives.
  • We must, instead, work to transform the very terms of the economic game.
  • What does this "movement building" look like?
  • the creation of a shared story and through this, the development of long-term solidarity between worker cooperatives and other groups working for democratic, community-based economies such as local currencies, consumer cooperatives, housing coops and intentional communities, economic justice advocacy groups, neighborhood associations, local food system projects and more
  • solidarity economy
  • Further examples from the solidarity economy movement outside of the U.S. abound. I delve into some of these more deeply in GEO's recent collaborative issue with Dollars and Sense (see Ethan Miller, "Other Economies Are Possible".)
  • from a passive place of "entering markets" to an active place of constructing them
  • Green Worker Cooperatives
  • Red Emma's
  • Wooden Shoe Books
  • Electric Embers
  • Riseup
  • Gaiahost Collective
  • Brattleboro Tech Collective
  • pioneers of cross-sector movement-building
  • it is the work that we as cooperators must embrace if we choose to believe that another economy, and another world, is possible
  • Jukka Peltokoski on 29 Jun 13
     
    Ethan Miller ehdottaa työosuuskuntaliikkeen viemistä uudelle tasolle. Mukana kiinnostavia esimerkkejä.
Jukka Peltokoski

Owning is the New Sharing | Open Co-op Commons - 1 views

open.coop/...owning-is-the-new-sharing

osuuskunta omistus yhteisötalous coop opencoop jakamistalous neweconomy osuuskuntateoria commons p2p sharing owning jukkap2p

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 28 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • “I’m working to find a steady economic base,” he said. “I don’t really want to put it into the hands of the VCs.” Venture capitalists, that is — the go-to source of quick and easy money for clever tech entrepreneurs like him. He’d get cash, but they’d get the reins.
  • new company,Swarm, the world’s first experiment in what he was calling “cryptoequity.”
  • Swarm would be a crowdfunding platform, using its own virtual currency rather than dollars; rather than just a thank-you or a kickback, it would reward backers with a genuine stake in the projects they support.
  • ...37 more annotations...
  • Entrepreneurs could sidestep the VCs by turning to a “swarm” of small investors — and maybe supplant the entire VC system. By the end of the summer, he’d raised more than a million dollars in cryptocurrency. The legality of the model is uncertain,
  • High hopes for a liberating Internet have devolved into the dominance of a few mega-companies and the NSA’s watchful algorithms. Platforms entice users to draw their communities into an apparently free and open commons, only to gradually enclose it by tweaking terms of service, diluting privacy, or charging fees for essential features.
  • Facebook started flocking to Ello
  • The line between workers and customers has never been so blurry. Online platforms depend on their users
  • looking for ways to build platforms of their own.
  • VC-backed sharing economy companies like Airbnb and Uber have caused trouble for legacy industries, but gone is the illusion that they are doing it with actual sharing.
  • OuiShare, which connects sharing-economy entrepreneurs around the world
  • it’s becoming clear that ownership matters as much as ever.
  • Loomio is now being used by governments, organizations, and schools; a significant portion of the current usage comes from Spain’s ascendant political party, Podemos.
  • new kinds of ownership the new norm. There are cooperatives, networks of freelancers, cryptocurrencies, and countless hacks in between.
  • aspire toward an economy, and an Internet, that is more fully ours.
  • Jeremy Rifkin, a futurist to CEOs and governments, contends that the Internet-of-things and 3-D printers are ushering in a “zero marginal cost society” in which the “collaborative commons” will be more competitive than extractive corporations.
  • People are recognizing that doing business differently will require changing who gets to own what.
  • form of ownership
  • Cooperative intelligence
  • Occupy’s kind of direct democracy and made it available to the world in the form of an app — Loomio
  • It’s a worker-owned cooperative that produces open-source software to help people practice consensus — though they prefer the term “collaboration” — about decisions that affect their lives.
  • Rather than giving up on ownership, people are looking for a different way of practicing it.
  • Enspiral, an “open value network” of freelancers and social enterprises devoted to mutual support and the common good.
  • The worker cooperative is an old model that’s attracting new interest among the swelling precariat masses
  • Co-ops help ensure that the people who contribute to and depend on an enterprise keep control and keep profits
  • multi-stakeholder cooperative — one in which not just workers or consumers are voting members, but several such groups at once
  • “It’s more about hacking an existing legal status and making these hacks work.”
  • Sensorica pays workers for their contributions to the product. Unlike Sovolve, they participate in the company democratically. Everything from revenues to internal criticism is out in the open, wiki-style, for insiders and outsiders alike to see.
  • Only one device has been sold
  • Bitcoin
  • makes possible decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs,
  • The most ambitious successor to Bitcoin, Ethereum,
  • to develop decentralized social networks,
  • even an entirely new Internet
  • Swarm’s competition makes it hard not to notice the inequalities built into the models vying to disrupt the status quo. Bitcoin’s micro-economy holds the dubious distinction of being more unequal than the global economy as a whole. On a sharing platform, who owns, and who just rents? In an economy of cooperatives, who gets to be a member, and who gets left out?
  • Sooner or later, transforming a system of gross inequality and concentrated wealth will require more than isolated experiments at the fringes — it will require capturing that wealth and redirecting its flows. This recognition has been built into some of the most significant efforts under the banner of the so-called “new economy” movement. They’re often offline, but that makes them no less innovative.
  • connecting them to large anchor institutions in their communities; hospitals and universities with deep pockets can help a new enterprise become viable much more quickly than it can on its own
  • Government is an important source of support, too. Perhaps more than some go-it-aloners in tech culture might like to admit, a new economy will need new public policies
  • The early followers Francis of Assisi at first sought to do away with property altogether
  • There are many ways to own. Simply giving up on ownership, however, will mean that those who actually do own the tools that we rely on to share will control them.
  • changing what owning means altogether.
  • Jukka Peltokoski on 28 Oct 16
     
    Omistaminen on uusi yhteinen.
Jukka Peltokoski

Towards a Legal Framework for the Commons by Tommaso Fattori | via Michel Bauwens | Soc... - 0 views

snuproject.wordpress.com/...aso-fattori-via-michel-bauwens

commons p2p commons-talous commons.fi

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 21 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • It is commonly acknowledged that there is a legislative gap concerning the protection and recognition of the sphere of Commons (1). The consequence of these inadequate legal guarantees is the extreme vulnerability of Commons, which remain without protection from processes of “enclosure”, due both to the market and to public policies in favour of privatization, in their various forms. (2)
  • A first preliminary step is the drafting of a catalogue of Commons (3), both at the national and European level, albeit in the knowledge that it must remain a potentially open and updatable catalogue
  • A catalogue which forms the basis for a Charter
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • the state and institutions must take an active role in supporting commoning and to support the creation of new Commons.
  • But the sphere of Commons is broader still, sometimes even tied to specific projects, as normally occurs in the case of digital or non-material Commons.
  • Commons must be defended by the legal system and safeguarded through particularly stringent protective norms which can ensure the collective enjoyment and use of them, also for the future. Commons also need a specific form of self-governing by the commoners themselves, which must also be strenuously defended
  • This active role must translate into forms of public-common partnership, where the institutions enable and empower the collective/social peer-creation of common value.
  • Governments could also provide seed funding
  • , incentives and grants for Commons and commoning, just as it currently provides research and development support and assistance to businesses and corporations (6).
  • The legal recognition of the sphere of Commons must lead to a delegation of authority and power by the state to commons-based institutions.
  • Current debates (and experiments) focus on Trusts, Foundations, for-benefit institutions etc.
  • Such trusts can be located either inside the boundaries of one state or be trans-border, according to the size and range of the resource and/or of its relative community of interest.
  • Just as it is true that commoning normally produces use value which cannot be accounted for in monetary terms (values which are part of the range of positive social or environmental externalities) one should construct a special legal form which could recognise and protect a similar type of enterprise or “project” (a common social enterprise) and protect a similar form of production of use value of collective use, which will help build another type of economy.
Jukka Peltokoski

Worker-Owned Cooperatives: Direct Democracy in Action - 3 views

truth-out.org/...ves-direct-democracy-in-action

coops tesa osuuskunta-keissi osuuskunta-teoria cooperative osuuskuntakirja

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 14 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Flashpoints—those unexpected events that movements gather around, when everything is accelerated, exciting, and energizing—fizzle.
  • The cooperative movement is experiencing a string of these moments now, and is burgeoning with renewed activity. I see this first­hand as a co­-owner of the Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA), a worker­-owned cooperative
  • It’s our philosophy that cooperatives enable direct democracy and local control over the economy. As participants in the co­op movement, we help to turn flashpoints into lasting social change.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • The organization is structured as a worker co­op, and operates by consensus with a membership comprised of representatives from other worker co­ops.
  • Even though only 1% of the cooperatives in the United States are worker owned, their organizing success has recently made them a focal point in the struggle for economic justice. Indeed, Occupy Wall Street participants launched a worker-run co-op print shop in Brooklyn called OccuCopy.
  • Guided by cooperative principle number six, which promotes cooperation amongst cooperatives, partnerships between co­ops were easily realized. They multiplied and soon turned to regional alliances, which snowballed into national networks.
  • Inspired by the Mondragon cooperative network, the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives (VAWC) came together in Western Massachusetts in 2005. The group first met at the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives Eastern Conference on Workplace Democracy, and they are a direct result of national networks crystallizing at the regional level. What sets VAWC apart is a strategy of co­op-led development. The organization helps start­up or transitioning co­ops get their footing; they provide technical assistance to their membership in the form of skill­sharing and professional guidance.
  • VAWC recently launched an inter­cooperative loan fund. Through the fund, members tithe 5% of profits to help one another and to invest in new co­op ventures.
  • information and resources according to the membership’s needs, such as meeting facilitation, or research into health plans
  • VAWC enjoys an exceptionally cooperative cultural context in the Pioneer Valley, where there is a strong desire for economic democracy, and a history of collective management.
  • As many look for ways out of the capitalist morass of boom­-bust cycles, worker cooperatives have taken center stage. Cooperatives are democratic enterprises where both ownership and decision­-making power are democratically shared. As a result, they keep money and power in the hands of the community.
  • A stunningly large network—nearly one out of every five U.S. worker co­ops are part of NoBAWC —most member co­ops are in Oakland, San Francisco, and Berkeley. Like other membership organizations, NoBAWC grew out of a need to collaborate and share best practices amongst like­-minded organizations.
  • The members now share resources and incentivize collaboration by offering each other reduced rates on their goods and services.
  • As the first and primary national hub, the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) brings together the full array of players within this movement. After many years of organizing, they were incorporated in 2004 to provide support to their membership, as well as educational outreach to the public. A small organization with a two­-person staff, USFWC’s extensive work to promote cooperation puts them in the center of a dynamic movement.
  • regular conferences and events
  • A similarly rich cooperative culture exists across the country, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives, or NoBAWC (pronounced "no boss"), is a hub for the region, literally centralized within 30 minutes of each member organization.
  • USFWC capably handles a membership representing over 1,300 workers
  • the Democracy At Work Network (DAWN), a peer adviser system
  • The co­op movement is gaining steam, drawing from new energies and a renewed interest in the model. All movements have these periods of acceleration, times when opportunity comes knocking at every turn. Typically, such are the times when reflection is most needed, because new dynamics can dramatically change the situation.
  • David Morgan is a worker-owner at the Toolbox for Education and Social Action, a worker-owned cooperative created to democratize education and the economy while furthering the cooperative movement. The Toolbox designs curriculum and next-generation resources for learning, such as Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives."
Jukka Peltokoski

Postcapitalism and the city - 0 views

blog.p2pfoundation.net/...12

'paul mason' p2pfoundation post-capitalism information jukkap2p technology commons

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 12 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • bullshit jobs
  • Capitalism’s response mechanisms
  • a) to maximise capacity utilisation of low-skilled labour and of assets.
  • ...39 more annotations...
  • b) to artificially inflate the price and profitability of labour inputs
  • Things that in all previous eras of capitalism the elite desired to be as cheap as possible—to ease wage pressures—are now made as expensive as possible
  • capital migrates away from production and from private-sector services towards public sector services.
  • capitalism being replaced by a stagnant neo-feudalism
  • central bank, pumping money into the system
  • the state, propping up effectively insolvent banks
  • the migrant labour exploiter
  • the innovator someone who invents a way of extracting rent from low-wage people
  • But as soon as technology allowed it, we started to create organisations where the positive effects of networked collaboration were not captured by the market.
  • Wikipedia
  • Fortunately there is a third impact of info-tech. It has begun to create organisational and business models where collaboration is more important than price or value.
  • Linux
  • the platform co-operatives
  • The technology itself is in revolt against the monopolised ownership of intellectual property, and the private capture of externalities.
  • We must promote the transition to a non-capitalist form of economy which unleashes all the suppressed potential of information technology, for productivity, well.being and culture.
  • The strategic aim is: to reduce the amount of work done to the minimum; to move as much as possible of human activity out of the market and state sectors into the collaborative sector; to produce more stuff for free.
  • If the aim is for humanity to do as little work as possible, you can do it through three mechanisms. One is to automate. The other is to reduce the input costs to labour, so that we can survive on less wages and less work. The third is to push forward rapidly the de-linking of work and wages.
  • The city is where the networked individual wants to live
  • First—be overt. Help people to conceptualise the transition by actually talking about it.
  • Next—switch off the great neoliberal privatisation machine.
  • We know what it’s there for—to hand public assets to the private sector so that the profits of decaying businesses are temporarily boosted
  • The next proposal is more radical: model reality as a complex system.
  • Next—promote the basic income.
  • The basic income is an idea whose time is coming, because there won’t be enough work to go around. For me the basic income is a one-off subsidy for automation—to un-hook humanity from bullshit job creation and promote the delinking of work and wages.
  • However, it’s a transitional measure.
  • Next—actively promote the collaborative sector over the market and the state.
  • You have to understand the benefits of these entities are not completely measurable in GDP terms.
  • The building block is the co-op, the credit union, the NGO, the non-profit company, the peer-to-peer lender and the purely voluntary or social enterprise.
  • You have to promote new ways of measuring activity and progress.
  • Finally, understand and fight the battle over the externalities.
  • the state and eventually the commons should have first rights to all the data just the same as in a republic it owns all the land
  • Ultimately, however, the greatest good comes from the common ownership and exploitation of data, because it establishes the principle that this vast new information resource—which is our collaborative behaviour captured as data—is part of the commons.
  • Would capitalism collapse?
  • But you would attract the most innovative capitalists on earth, and you would make the city vastly more livable for the million-plus people who call it home.
  • No. The desperate, frantic “survival capitalists” would go away—the rip-off consultancies; the low-wage businesses; the rent-extractors.
  • All the other challenges would remain: the environmental challenge—not just low carbon but the preservation of quality living environments in a city sometimes deluged with visitors. Also the ageing challenge and the debt challenge.
  • a common platform for the left, for social democracy and for liberal capitalism
  • I could be completely wrong. But if I am right, it makes sense for all cities to ask themselves: could we become the first city to begin a demonstrable and tangible transition away from neoliberal capitalism, towards a society of high equality, high well-being, high collaboration?
  • the collaborative city, the city of participatory democracy, the networked city
Jukka Peltokoski

Co-operative Commonwealth: De-commodifying Land and Money Part 2 | Commons Transition - 0 views

commonstransition.org/odifying-land-and-money-part-2

cooperative commonwealth land osuuskunta maanomistus velka debt osuuskuntakeissi Conaty commonstransition

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 08 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Usury is little discussed today but it is crucial in policy terms.
  • in Germany, Christian Christiansen championed the founding of a number of rural savings and loan co-operatives that went by the acronym JAK, short for Jord Arbete Kapital (“Land Labour Capital”)
  • There were other models that flourished. Dr. Thomas Bowkett introduced a mutual organization in the 1840s to provide housing and smaller loans interest-free.(7) Twenty years later, Richard Starr made some adjustments to the system, and the “Starr-Bowkett” societies spread fast.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • in Brazil today. CoopHab is a major housing federation of co-operative savings societies.
  • During the industrial revolution English working people were excluded from bank lending though pawnbroking was rife. Mutual aid savings clubs developed interest-free lending systems for housing. The most successful were the Terminating Building Societies for buying land and building houses.
  • Sweden
  • Operationally, JAK is very similar to a credit union, except that members do not earn any interest on their savings or dividends on their shares.
  • The total cost of a JAK loan covers four things:(12)loan appraisal and set-up cost at a fee that is 2-3% of the approved loan value.an annual administration fee equal to 1% of the loan.an annual fee of approximately $30 to support the JAK educational system and volunteer services.(13)an equity deposit equal to a 6% of loan value to cover risk on any loan in the portfolio.
  • Members are strongly encouraged to pre-save in order to qualify for a loan.(15) Members also contract to continue saving while they are repaying their loans.
  • The Greenbacks would not be backed by gold, but by the farmers’ crops, which would be stored in sub-Treasury warehouses paid for by the government.
  • Swiss WiR
  • President Lincoln
  • free Greenback dollars
  • Lincoln
  • he had led the introduction of a paper money not backed by gold or silver, and had shown that the government could create, issue, and circulate by fiat the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers.
  • the privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity.
  • JAK banking, CoopHab and Community Land Trusts work well but are below national policy radar. This is not entirely the case for co-operative commonwealth systems.
  • National Farmers Alliance and Co-operative Union, led by Charles Macune, developed the Sub-Treasury Plan.
  • So this was not simply a co-operative currency. It was a new national currency under a co-operative and state partnership to expunge the debt peonage imposed by merchants and bankers.
  • Infuriated, farmers and workers created their own party in 1891 to carry forwardmonetary reform and a co-operative economy. The new Populist party won some local, state and Congressional elections before falling into decline after 1895.
  • A.C. Townley launched the Non-partisan League (NPL)
  • Bank of North Dakota
  • Henry Ford and Thomas Edison suggested a novel solution.
  • proposed that new money be created by issuing interest-free government bonds
  • Frederick Soddy
  • made the first case for an ecological economics free of debt
  • “100% money.”
  • 100% reserve requirement.
  • Clifford H Douglas
  • He argued that a clear-cut and labour-saving solution would be for Government to create new money, interest-free as “Social Credit.”
  • First all citizens would receive a National Dividend.
  • Second, Douglas proposed that publicly-owned producer banks be set up in each region of the UK to provide finance debt-free to industry and enterprises.
  • From 1929 monetary reform attracted a wide audience In the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada with growing grassroots calls ranging from public banking to universal basic income.(34) The New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt took inspiration from John Maynard Keynes.
Jukka Peltokoski

Incubator.coop: an Incubator for Platform Cooperatives | P2P Foundation - 0 views

blog.p2pfoundation.net/...13

Incubator.coop kiihdyttämö start up osuuskunta cooperative yhteiskunnallinenyritys rahoitus yhteisörahoitus Unioni alustaosuuskunta

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 13 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • 1. Conventional Incubators are not viable in themselves.  Instead they act as a business development tool for “side-car” investors trying to pick winners.  We think you need an incubator that exists to serve its incubatees.2. Conventional Incubators look for a 1-in-1000 unicorn to repay their many wrong bets.  We think you need an incubator that creates businesses of value that go the distance.3. Conventional Incubators looks for exceptional talent.  We think you need an incubator for collective endeavours4. Conventional Incubators function with a top-down approach.  We think you need an incubator that harnesses the wisdom of the crowd.5. Conventional Incubators promote returns for the 1%.  We think you need an incubator where 1 Member = 1 Vote6. Conventional Incubators run for 6-months.  We think you need an incubator that supports the whole period of development from formation through to operation.
  • We help any type of Cooperative to ‘Form, Organise, Fund and Operate‘.  The exciting areas of new CoOp formation include:– Community Owned Enterprises – anything from a pub to a post-office, school to satellite, house to hospital– Platform or Online CoOperatives – these are being created by online communities in place of Venture Capital backed 2-sided marketplaces
  • Collaborative ventures employ a variety of tools (web apps, social media, wikis etc.) and strategies (regular group meetings, webinars etc.) to make working as a group functional.There are some challenges with working as a group that aren’t solved by todays technology and they include1. Reaching a timely and productive consensus that in turn creates “collaboration paralysis“.  2. Groups try to be decentralised, but often most have a bottleneck around finance related decisions.3. Collectives need a way to track and incentivise efforts with non-financial and / or financial rewards and4. Groups need a way to create agreement contingent on future outcomes on the blockchain to improve trust within commerce
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The extent of the tools we can offer comes down to the success of this crowdfunding campaign.If we get the money to develop the technology, then projects going through incubation can offer supporters black chain agreements and in turn offer payment contingent of future events.  This is a big deal.
1 - 9 of 9
Showing 20▼ items per page