[p2p-research] Pay-it-forward Mutuals and Cooperatives

[Patrick Anderson]

Edward Miller wrote:
> mutuals and cooperatives
...
> fall short and only make up a tiny share of the overall market.
> Why is this the case?

The most fundamental problem with these entities is that they do not
use property rights to eliminate the exchange of goods.

What I mean is easier to understand using an extremely simplified example:

The owner of a nut tree must pay all the Costs of production,
including any Wages if he doesn't do all of the work himself.

But he cannot pay Profit because he does not 'buy' the nuts at the end
of the season - they are *already* his property.

When this model is scaled through co-ownership - when a group of
Consumers purchase a grove of nut trees with the understanding that
they *own* the output of those trees in an amount directly related to
the % of ownership they have in the orchard, then Price == Cost and
Profit == 0.

But one more detail that must be addressed is the case where the
Consumer accidentally owns more of the orchard (Physical Sources) than
they need to satisfy their own needs.

In that case we (the group of co-owning consumers) should use "the
market" to sell that excess to other consumers that do not yet have
sufficient ownership in the orchard (for if they did, they would not
need to buy nuts) but under a strict condition that any amount we
charge over the real Cost incurred for that production must be treated
as an Investment from the consumer who paid it.  This perpetuates the
elimination of exchange.

This arrangement will outperform the "Free Market" because the
investors are the consumers and expect only Product in return, and so
these organizations can saely allow Price to reach Cost and are also
not threatened by automation or robotics or abundance in general.