Tag Archives: Collaboration

Building a Cooperative Economy

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By Oliver Sylvester-Bradley

Source: Resilience

In permaculture terms the economy sometimes feels like a segregated monoculture planted with terminator seeds, sprayed with patented pesticides on venture capital backed farms designed to maximise profits in an unsustainable market place full of thieves and cheats. No wonder people prefer to potter in their gardens and allotments – and try to forget the craziness of corporate capitalism!

But no matter how much we try to ignore the corporate machine it ploughs on regardless and at various points in all of our lives we are forced to interact with the unsustainable, greed-based economy whether we like it or not. We all need to travel, buy energy, we like presents and holidays and now we are buying more and more of these goods and services online, from people we do not know.

As local banks close in favour of apps, local taxis are driven out by Uber and the likes of Airbnb and other holiday and comparison websites offer us ‘guaranteed savings’ – the brave new world of digital platforms is being thrust upon us, whether we like it or not.

The dominant form of business in our economy has not changed, but the method of delivery has. Platform businesses which reach further and wider than conventional ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses, that are able to ‘scale up’ and attract customers in their millions are forcing out the smaller players, just like supermarkets killed the traditional garden market. Except these “platform monopolies” are taking things to a new level – often unbeknown to us they’re gathering our data and using sophisticated algorithms to work out how to sell us more things, that quite often we don’t need or want. They’re aggregating data and dissintermediating in ways that we never knew were possible. Uber is valued at over 60 billion dollars but does not own a single taxi…

From monoculture to platform co-ops

To someone practicing permaculture, there is something almost offensive about vast fields where businesses cultivate the same single crop and, in a similar way, the exponents of ‘peer to peer’ and ‘open source’ technologies get equally offended by monolithic platforms that dominate the digital landscape.

Peer to peer, (where individuals share content with other people, rather than relying on centralised servers) and open source software (which is free to use and adapt, without requiring a licence fee) are like the digital community’s own versions of permaculture. They provide a pathway to greater independence, autonomy, diversity and resilience than is offered by the dominant system.

David Holmgreen’s ideas about creating small scale, copyable, adaptable solutions which have the power to change the world by creating decentralised, diverse, and more resilient systems have huge parallels with open source, collaborative software projects, which are developing as a response to the monolithic, proprietary and profit driven enclosures that dominate today’s Internet.

The end goal of this work is to create ‘platform cooperatives’, as alternatives to the venture capital backed platforms. Platform cooperatives that are member owned and democratically controlled – allowing everyone that is affected by the business, be they customers, suppliers, workers or investors, a say in how the business is run and managed. Co-ops are an inherently different form of organisation than Limited or Public companies, which place community before profit, hence have entirely different principles than their corporate rivals. For this reason they are more resilient in downturns, more responsible to their communities and environments and more effective at delivering real (not just financial) value to everyone they interact with.

Platform co-ops provide a template for a new kind of economy built on trust, mutual aid and respect for nature and community. By placing ownership firmly in the hands of the people and applying democratic forms of governance they offer a legitimate alternative to the defacto form of business. There are several platform co-ops that already provide comparable, and often better services than their corporate rivals and with more support others will continue to develop.

On 26 and 27 July the OPEN 2018 conference at Conway Hall in London will showcase platform co-ops such as The Open Food Network – which is linking up local food producers and consumers through Europe, Resonate – the music streaming co-op, and SMart from Belgium which provides support for a network of thousands of freelancers throughout Europe. The beginnings of a viable, self-supporting and sustainable economy are stating to emerge and OPEN 2018, along with similar events in the US and across Europe, is bringing together the people with the ideas, the tech developers and the legal experts to help catalyse the transition.

Shared values and the network effect

There are so many similarities between permaculture’s philosophy and principles and the works of other progressive groups that hope to encourage a more sustainable, more resilient and equitable future. From Occupy to Open source, Permaculture to Peer to Peer and Collaborative Technology to the Commons Transition groups there are clearly overlapping values.

David Bollier, writing on the Peer to Peer Foundation blog has suggested that “…permaculturists and commoners need to connect more and learn from each other…” and the idea that these communities are ultimately working towards the same objective seems especially important to recognise if we are to accelerate the development of a more sustainable world.

There is already an evolving “shared narrative” between these various, disparate initiatives, but it is often sidelined by our self-selecting filters which lead us back into the communities we know and trust. Collaboration and cooperation can be hard work and as groups get bigger they can become harder still but that’s no reason not to try. The fact that Wikipedia provides a better encyclopaedia for free in more languages than Britannica ever managed proves that online, open source collaboration can deliver greater value than proprietary, closed source systems.

The true value of a collaborative, open networks only really manifests when its members communicate, and work together, through connected systems. Sharing ideas, discussing problems and addressing challenges in larger networks creates positive feedback loops via the network effect – a term which describes how the value of something increases in proportion to the number of people using it (like a phone, or social media network) – something all the various ethical and progressive networks could benefit from enormously.

Parallels between collaborative, open source software development and permaculture principles:

1. Observe and interact

Progressive software projects often utilise ‘user focused’ design strategies to ensure they meet people’s needs. Taking time to understand how users interact with software systems via user experience testing groups and an ongoing, iterative design processes are recognised to deliver higher quality solutions which suit specific user needs.

2. Catch and store energy

Peer to peer networks don’t rely on centralised servers but instead make use of the latent capacity of other user’s machines. Imagine how much more efficient it would be than deploying huge server farms if our computers were not shut off at night, or left idle, when they could be providing valuable processing power for others. The Holochain project aims to make it simple and secure for anyone to join a truly peer to peer network and to share files and processing power in this way – and to even earn credits for hosting other people’s files and applications.

3. Obtain a yield

The Peer Production License provides a means by which open source developers can make the code they develop available for free and still benefit from it’s use. Sites like the Internet of Ownership, which contains a directory of cooperative platforms use the PPL to “permit reuse exclusively for non-commercial and worker-owned enterprises” thereby helping to grow the commons. The ultimate goal of the PPL is to enable mechanisms so commoners can support themselves and ensure their own social reproduction without resorting to capitalism.

4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

This principle is particularly integral to open source development since the concepts of ‘user focussed’ and ‘agile development’, ‘branching’ and ‘forking’ are all designed to ensure that software projects are self-regulating by listening to the users needs, driven by user feedback and that they are able to be adapted to changing needs.

5. Use and value renewable resources and services

Open source technology is inherently more renewable in the way it enables the reuse and repackaging of code for new purposes. Ethically minded hosts and developers such as Green Net power their servers with renewable energy.

6. Produce no waste

As above, open source code is often re-used and repurposed but progressive developers still have a lot to gain from better collaboration. There are often multiple teams working on identical problems and ideas and whilst this has benefits in terms of developing strength and resilience through diversity it also leads to waste, mainly in terms of time. At least the waste ‘product’ of web development is only digital and so old technology and code doesn’t littler the streets or pollute the environment as much as physical products can, especially if archives are stored on renewably powered servers.

7. Design from patterns to details

Genuine online collaboration has been slow to evolve, with the best examples being Linux (the open source operating system), Firefox, the open source web browser and Wikipedia, the open source encyclopaedia. It is only recently, with the rise of monolithic capitalist gardens such as Google and Facebook and Amazon that the hive mind of the internet is recognising the need to step back and redesign its systems according to new patterns. The push for “Net neutrality” and Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project are examples of this in action as is the Holo project, a very exciting and truly peer to peer “community of passionate humans building a distributed cloud, owned and run by users like you and me.”

8. Integrate rather than segregate

The move from centralised to decentralised, to distributed and federated technology is a a key element of open source and collaborative technology design. The entire Peer to Peer philosophy is based on the recognition that the connections and relationships between nodes (people or computers) in a network is what gives it strength and value. Collaborative technologists still have a lot to gain from developing deeper and wider integrations, like we see in nature, and which permaculturists know so well.

9. Use small and slow solutions

Designing a computer system to be slow is not something you will normally (ever?) hear a programmer talk about but they often talk about small, in many guises. Small packages (of code), small apps, “minified” (meaning compressed) code and even small computers, like the Raspberry Pi are key features of collaborative technology which all aim for increased efficiency.

10. Use and value diversity

Diversity is intrinsic to open source and collaborative technology. The plurality and adaptability of open source solutions ensures a highly diverse ecosystem. Users are free to adapt open source code to their needs and the open nature of most open source projects values contributions from anyone, irrespective of race, gender, age or any other factor. It is true that the majority of contributors to open source projects are normally young, white and male but the reasons for that seem more to do with societal inequalities and stereotypes rather than any specific prejudices or practices.

11. Use edges and value the marginal

The explanation of this principle places most value on “the interface between things…” and this is a central component of web design. Web services have now realised the necessity of providing intuitive user interfaces, to allow users to navigate complex data and to investigate deeper informational relationships but, more interestingly the latest developments in linked open data enable users to interface with more specific, more granular and more timely data to provide increase value. The Internet Of Things will facilitate a massive increase in the number and type of products which can interact over the internet. Whilst it is not the norm, drawing diverse information from the edges and valuing the marginal is something the open internet can really facilitate.

12. Creatively use and response to change

Most open source, collaborative projects use some kind of agile development, which advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. Permaculture and open source see eye to eye on this principle which bodes very well for a growing, symbiotic relationship in our rapidly evolving world.

There is something extraordinary happening in the world

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By Gustavo Tanaka

Source: Medium

A few months ago, I freed myself from society, I’ve released myself from attachments I had and fear that locked me to the system. And since then, I started seeing the world from a different perspective. The perspective that everything is changing and most of us have not even realized that.

Why is the world changing? In this post I’ll list the reasons that take me to believe this.

1 — No one can stand the employment model anymore.

Each one is reaching its own limit. People that work in big corporations can’t handle their jobs. The lack of purpose starts to knock the door of each one as a desperate scream coming from the heart.

People want to escape. They want to leave everything behind. Look how many people trying to become entrepreneurs, how many people going on sabbaticals, how many people depressed in their jobs, how many people in burnout.

2- The entrepreneurship model is also changing

A few years ago, with the explosion of the startups, thousands of entrepreneurs, ran to their garages to create their billion dollar ideas. The glory was to get funded by an investor. Investor’s money in hand was just like winning the World Cup.

But what happens after you get funded?

You become an employee again. You have people that are not aligned with your dream, that don’t give a damn to the purpose and everything turns into money. The financial return starts to be the main driver.

Many people are suffering with this. Brilliant startups start to fall because the model of chasing money never ends.

We need a new model of entrepreneurship.

And there is already many good people doing this.

3- The rise of collaboration

Many people have already realized that makes no sense to go alone. Many people awake to this crazy mentality of “going on your own”.

Stop, take a step back and think. Isn’t it an absurd, we, 7 billion people living in the same planet get so separated from each other? What sense does it make, you and the thousands (or millions) of people living in the same city turn your back to each other? Every time I think of that I get kind of depressed.

But fortunately, things are changing. All the movements of sharing and collaborative economy are pointing towards this direction. The rise of collaboration, sharing, helping, giving a hand, getting united.

It is beautiful. It brings tears to my eyes.

4- We are finally starting to understand what the internet is

Internet is an incredibly spectacular thing and only now, after so many years we are understanding it’s power. With internet, the world opens, the barriers fall, separation ends, union starts, collaboration explodes, help emerges.

Some nations made revolution with the internet, such as the Arab Spring. In Brazil we are just starting to use better this magnificent tool.

Internet is taking down mass control. There is no more television, no more few newspapers showing the news they want us to read. You can go after whatever you want, you relate to whoever you want. You can explore whatever you want, whenever you want.

With internet, the small starts to get a voice. The anonymous become known. The world gets united. And the system may fall.

5- The fall of exaggerated consumption

For many years, we have been manipulated, stimulated to consume as maniacs. To buy everything that was launched in the market. To have the newest car, the latest iphone, the best brands, lots of clothes, lots of shoes, lots of lots, lots of everything.

But many people have already understood that it makes no sense at all. Movements such as the lowsumerism, slow life, slow food, start to show us that we have organized ourselves in the most absurd possible way.

Each time less people using cars, less people buying a lot, each time more people trading clothes, donating, buying old things, sharing goods, sharing cars, apartments, offices.

We need nothing of what they told us we needed.

And this consciousness can break any corporation that depends on exaggerated consumption.

6- Healthy and organic eating

We were so crazy that we accepted eating any kind of garbage. It only needed to taste good, that was ok.

We were so disconnected, that the guys started to add poison in our food and we didn’t say anything.

But then some guys started to wake up and give strength to movements of healthy eating and organic consumption.

And this is going to be huge.

But what does it have to do with economy and work? Everything!

The production of food is the basis of our society. Food industry is one of the most important in the world. If consciousness changes, our eating habits also change, and consumption changes, and then the big corporations must follow these changes.

The small farmer is starting to have strength again. Also people who are planting their own food.

And that changes the whole economy.

7 — The awakening of spirituality

How many friends do you have that practice yoga? What about meditation?

How many used to do it 10 years ago?

Spirituality for many years was a thing of the esoteric people. Of those weird people from mysticism.

But fortunately, this is also changing. We got to the limit of our rationality. We could see that only with the rational mind we cannot understand everything that happens here. There is something more happening and I know you want to understand.

You want to understand how things work in here. How life operates, what happens after death, what is this energy thing that people talk so much, what is quantum physics, how can thoughts become things and create our reality, what are coincidences and synchronicities, why meditation works, how is it possible to cure with the hands and what about these alternative therapies that medicine does not approve, but work?

Companies are promoting meditation to their employees. Schools teaching meditation to kids.

8 — Unschooling movements

Who created this teaching model? Who chose the classes you have to take? Who chose the lessons we learn in history classes? Why didn’t they teach us the truth about other ancient civilizations?

Why should the kids obey rules? Why should they watch everything in silence? Why should they wear uniform?

Take a test to prove that you learned?

We created a model that forms followers of the system. That prepare people to be ordinary human beings.

But fortunately there are many people working to change that. Movements like unschooling, hackschooling, homeschooling.

Maybe you have never thought of this and you are chocked with the points I’m listing here.

But all these things are happening.

Silently, people are awakening and realizing how crazy it is to live in this society.

Look at all these movements and try to think everything is normal.

I don’t think it is.

There is something extraordinary happening.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Gustavo Tanaka — Brazilian author and entrepreneur, trying to create with my friends a new model, a new system and maybe helping to create a new economy.