Mutual Interest Media tried to do something like this a couple of years ago. I don’t think their model worked out all that well though, as the site hasn’t been updated in some time. www.mutualinterest.coop
A non-web model that has had some success, and that you might be able to learn from is the Many Worlds Collective, which is a co-op of fiction writers who create stories in a shared universe, and publish anthologies of their authors’ works. www.manyworldsforum.com
This is GREAT! I’ve been burned by Etsy drop shippers too often so I’ve stopped using that platform. Super stoked to actually get handmade items and for the artist to make decent money off of it.
That’s not even relevant as my initial comment had nothing to do with a handout, and only pointed out that $1,000 is a huge chunk of money for most, especially upfront for a completely untested marketplace intending to take on an industry leader for the interests of small-time makers and micro-businesses. Don’t be childish.
Can it be, that you haven’t read the article? Because in it, you’d find this passage
That’s when she found out that there are other ways to earn points toward member-ownership, making it more accessible to those who cannot afford a $1000 expenditure. This is referred to as sweat equity, where artisans earn 25 points per hour by contributing their skills to the co-op
You can earn the buy in by supporting the site with “member activities” which you can read more about here artisans.coop/pages/membership
Points can be purchased (1 point/US dollar) or can be earned from member activities (such as hanging up flyers or joining a team), sales, purchases, referrals, handmade verifications, and more. Learn more about our Points & Tiers Policy.
Most member activities currently earn 25 points/hour, so undertaking one full time week of member activities (40 hours) in most cases will earn you the 1,000 points you need for membership.
But it doesn’t. You can pay with work for the co-operative instead of actual money. It says in the article that they have the point system exactly for this; people who can’t afford the cost
I think human nature is such that any cooperative can work up to a limited size, kind of like primitive tribes - up to 150 people. In order to do your part honestly, you have to know most/all members personally, otherwise an incentive to slack on the job is too tempting…
And then one sees the manager/coordinator, sitting on their ass in air conditioned office, while most others are sweating outside (in case of farms) or in the workshop/garage…
Please don’t use terms like ‘primitive tribes’ - whoever you think of when using this word might want to discuss the definition of ‘primitive’ with you. Because whoever limits their group size to about 150 ends up being less primitive than those who never question the infinite growth of everything.
I don’t disagree with your premise but I do think the latter two should be mostly avoidable as issues. If the workers are involved in the decisions then they would be able to spend (or decide it is not worth the expense) on cooling technology (AC for indoors or any other outdoor/personal solutions). Seems less of an issue than saying corporate doesn’t care etc.
You’re right that cooperatives above a certain size can’t be direct democracies. I do think we need to be able to cooperate at scale in a democratic way, like representative democracy - otherwise how do countries work? (Not very well some might argue) but if we don’t develop an alternative to the googles and amazons of the world then we’ll never outcompete the current system.
I’m sure there are certain issues where direct democracy would be appropriate, regardless how big the cooperative is. But technological reasons aren’t the issue. A manager is delegated authority to make decisions because it’s inefficient to involve members in every single matter.
perhaps it should be treated like a priority list: direct democracy for every single thing won’t work, but perhaps if there’s a monthly vote on the top 10 issues people have (as prioritised by the members of the coop somehow: maybe you get 5 votes to spend however you like in the issues list?) and the rest is delegated
There are also a lot of things where not everyone in a society needs to vote on something. Do men need to have a vote on the type of tampon that is stocked in the bathroom? Do the other departments need to weigh in on the butcher's scheduled hours?
It really does have a limit where once you go more than a couple layers decisions get made by people who are not involved or invested in whatever is being decided.
I’d argue that this is a benefit. Too many companies are way bigger than they need to be. Instead you could take a more federated approach and have a cooperative of cooperatives. Each location would be it’s own worker owned business, and each of these would in turn get to work cooperatively together to decide on branding and larger strategy. You could have representatives from each store and maybe still have everyone vote for a cooperative president.
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