coops

Democratic control is fundamental to cooperative values: it's the second item of the ICA/Rochdale Principles1 , after being open to all. For most cooperatives, however, democracy means coop members can submit resolutions and vote on these at an AGM (Annual General Meeting) under the principle of one member one vote.

An open way to structure, set and pay out royalties, deferrals and profit-shares

RevenueSha.re is building an open source, community-driven system for precise and reliable automated revenue sharing for creators, non-profits, coops and collaborators.

Given Uber's ability – in spite of owning no cars and employing no drivers – to swiftly grow and dominate any market it enters, there's understandably a lot of interest in a driver-owned Coop competitor, not least amidst growing controversies and opposition. In this article, two coop structures are explored, as well as a third, more open and decentralised protocol option.

A short essay for Geo Coop on what makes worker-on-demand (WoD) service Uber unique and what it would take for the cooperative world to do the same. Some extracts:

Uberfication has become shorthand for many new concepts—from the sharing economy to any significantly disruptive digital business model. But what exactly did Uber do that was materially different to earlier disruptive digital businesses?

In short:

While co-ops and open source both exist within capitalism, and in some ways help drive it, they run contrary to its orthodoxy - as does most of the digital space, driven by unpaid activity. They could offer each other much: making the web more publicly controlled, and mobilising networked people to solve complex real world problems.