[p2p-research] Capital Club

[Josef Davies-Coates]

Hi all,

On 06/03/2008, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think another part of the problem is in figuring out how those
> resources should be shared among the owners.  It is a difficult,
> sticky situation that most people would rather just avoid altogether
> because of the in-fighting they perceive would occur.  It seems such a
> group could write some 'rules' about how to schedule access and how
> much each individual must compensate the others for any extra wear or
> exclusion they cause.  I see such a contract, if 'properly' written,
> would be the only thing our society needs to begin down the road of
> peace and abundance, but will delay that discussion for now.



I think all this talk of profit/ economics etc. is a distraction (certainly
for the average person on the street - they don't care about nor need to
understand this stuff) and that this point above - about how to formally
agree to share stuff -  is far more interesting and worthy of discussion.
Your work on this complements Chris Cooks ideas very nicely and I'm
implementing them :)

(but, I do agree with you Patrick that profit should rightly be considered a
investment by the consumer because that is exactly what it is -- although in
the present system it is more like a coerced donation. I often wonder why
those who campaign for lower taxes don't also campaign for lower profits too
- to me they are essentially the same thing)

At last years Big Green Gathering here in the UK I was telling people about
plans to get a bunch of people to start pooling the time, resources (e.g.
Solar panels, wind turbines etc.) and money, to invest in more shared
resources/ infrastructure.

People were generally positive and keen to get involved but almost
universally said that the hardest thing about it would be deciding how to
store, maintain and distribute stuff efficiently and fairly (both existing
resources people are willing to share, and new resources purchased
collectively).

Say a group of people pooled some money in order to purchase a mass dvd
duplication machine. Where would it live? Who would be responsible for it?
Under what terms would people be able to use it? What happens if it breaks?
etc. These are questions that are both hard to answer and often not
transferable to other goods and services (e.g. storage of a large vehicle
would bring different challenges).

A group that is working on this stuff in a very practical way is the newly
formed "Activist Tat Collective": http://atcoop.org.uk - inspirational stuff
:)


Cooperative consumer ownership is quite rare today



Thankfully not that rare (in fact, co-ops globally employ far more people
than multinationals) and there is a massively growing amount of
co-operatives at the moment (especially in Latin America) :)

(BTW, I don't personally believe in either consumer nor worker ownership. I
believe in stakeholder ownership -- e.g. consumers AND workers AND suppliers
etc - anyone who contributes or is effected).

Indeed, when I was in Caracas for the World Social Forum (I was part of an
international team flown out there to help organise and run a free software
festival see http://caracas.trollparty.org ) I gave a talk about The Open
Co-op http://open.coop and was inspired by the response; here in the UK (and
probably even more so in North America) even well educated and well meaning
people tend to assume that co-operative stuff just won't work or isn't
efficient. In Venezuela I found a much more refreshing response; to them
cooperation is simply obvious common sense that clearly works and is clearly
better (I think this is in part due to their indigenous culture that is very
much based on solidarity and mutually).

The same day I gave my talk about The Open Co-op, I met a Venezuelan friend
of a friend whose job was basically DOING what we were dreaming about.

In Venezuela they have TWO economic Ministries; the standard one that is not
much different from what we have in the UK or US but also MINEP the Ministry
of Popular Economy. This is who my friend of a friend worked for. They run/
organise courses in socialism and cooperativism. After completing the 10
week course pupils are then asked to choose a trade they would like to get
into. Pupils are then put on apprenticeship and after that are encouraged to
set-up a co-op. Its great! :)


Another example is shared ownership of a vacation house.  The
> for-profit "Time Share" industry has grown around that desire, but I'm
> referring to the less common case when a private group of people buy a
> house that they share amongst themselves in whatever way they see fit.



The most common version of this is of course Housing Co-operatives.

I live in London's longest running Housing Co-op (http://www.sanford.coop )
and benefit from ridiculously cheap (compared to the rest of London) rent
(less than £50 a week including all bills, council tax and broadband)
because there is no landlord taking away profit - collectively we are our
own landlord and effectively pay ourselves rent.

Moreover, our ridiculously cheap rent is actually more than our costs.
There, when I moved in a couple of years ago we had amassed a surplus of
over £500,000!

This has recently been spent on the Carbon 60 project (an effort to reduce
our Carbon emissions by 60%) and we've become the first whole street in the
UK to ecorefurbish (we've not got cavity wall and loft insulation plus solar
water and woodchip boilers for hot water and heating)

I've got lots more relevant thoughts and experiences to share, but I'm not
too good at writing; it takes me far too long to write coherently, because
my mind just doesn't work in a linear way and texts are linear.

Smiles,

Josef.

-- 
Josef Davies-Coates
07974 88 88 95
http://uniteddiversity.com
Together We Have Everything
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