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@Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist @ntnsndr @Stacco @alannairving @mattcropp

Strongly agree with Alanna Irving's take (unsurprisingly - she's consistently one of the most thoughtful people about online collaboration). Sharing here for emphasis:

"They are excited by the parts of the problem that are quantifiable or cryptofiable and forget that the important or hard parts of the problem (building trust, connecting your vision with the outside world) aren't quantifiable at all."

@shauna @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist @Stacco @alannairving @mattcropp I agree, absolutely, and have long tried to make that point as well (and have tried to learn as much from Alanna as I can along the way!):

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/economic-justice/an-economy-for-anything

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/03/30/nfts-non-fungible-tokens-gamestop-dystopia-240346

But to me the biggest challenge the co-op movement faces is not our ability to build relationships and trust. We're good at that. Our biggest challenge is quantifiable: we are up against systems with way more money and power.

@ntnsndr @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist Hmmm, that's an interesting point. How is power quantifiable, though? And I'm not sure the elements of money that are quantifiable are the elements that are important.

@shauna @ntnsndr @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist Yeah, what kind of power? And is it power you could wield without it corrupting you? Police and military power, to jail and kill opponents? Amassing private luxury to distribute to cronies? Such power is effective in blocking popular change, but it can't help us.

What is money good for? Helping people cooperate across time and space without directly interacting. Doing that without money is hard, but saving the planet with money may be impossible.

@skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist I like your framing of the problem as "Helping people cooperate across time and space" (not sure about the directly interacting). But two things:

Yes, money is quantifiable, and as long as that drives access to building institutions it matters. When money became available to co-ops through US law in rural electricity, credit unions, and agriculture, co-ops became significant shapers of those sectors. Elsewhere, co-ops remain marginal.

@skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist money is not everything. Some of those co-ops are great, some are terrible. But access to quantifiable resources can at least open the door to the possibility of democracy. This is why a major focus of my work now is policy strategies. To give us that chance to really test our ability to do economic democracy.

@skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist networks are also a way to enable coordination at scale. And I am interested in different kinds of network designs to enable this. I don't think blockchains are in any way perfect, but they do open doors, using some aspects of quantification, to enable collaborations across borders and in novel institutional designs that are not feasible with territorial law and server-centric networks.