More about my past attempts to join or start a worker cooperative.
Most of my job searches over the last fifteen years have included at least a few polite emails to tech co-ops, all with equally polite refusals. I understand how it must feel to do all the work of a founder, and then have some dude show up looking for an easy route in, which he has not earned.
In the history of intentional communities, one major cause of failure has been poor screening of new people.
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@mpotter I am a founder of a worker co-op, and in apparent contradiction to the trend, I'm fairly eager to bring in new members. However, the other current member do not share this eagerness, and our growth has been slow.
In the case of tech, I've seen a lot of people posting right here about being laid off and in need of a job. If all these folks got in touch with each other, I strongly suspect they could agree to form a platform co-op.
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@Steve This is part of the reason I've started posting in the open like this. I doubt I'm the only person who has considered a co-op in the past, only to find no takers in a secure job market. But now, this obstacle may be less of a problem.
I get why people resist expansion, a flood of new people can destabilize a small direct democracy.
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@mpotter The kinds of things that @spritely is doing to build out distributed tech seem like a natural fit for platform co-ops. Each co-op could have its own server, with its own extensions that are specific to its inner workings, and the network to reach clients, supporters, and colleagues is already there and waiting. In other words, the barriers to entry will soon be lower than ever.
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@Steve @spritely I like Spritely and I've had my eye on them. I think platform cooperatives sound good in theory, but they are still trying to answer the question, "Who's going to pay for that?"
I had something more agile in mind, which could simply be bootstrapped. I also want direct democracy. An organization that grows to a hundred-plus becomes more top-down in nature.
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@mpotter @spritely Well, the platform itself is the most expensive thing about a platform co-op. I know this from both direct and indirect evidence. And that's exactly what's so interesting about fediverse servers -- the bulk of the work is done, and the rest is simplified, at least compared to starting from scratch. So, the costs are reduced pretty significantly.
This is as close to an off-the-shelf solution as we'll ever get to -- or want.
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@mpotter @spritely The number of members in a co-op is entirely up to the members themselves. If I'm right about the barriers to entry being lowered (for tech co-ops especially), the natural thing for an oversized co-op to do would be to split into more specialized co-ops, like mitosis. This process could repeat indefinitely. Platform co-ops are more ephemeral than brick-and-mortar, but we can treat that as a feature, not a bug.
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@Steve @spritely Mitosis is a great way to describe what should happen, instead of a battle of wills where the defeated leave.
Platform co-ops seem mostly the consumer style of co-op. I haven't heard of any that are worker-based.
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@mpotter @spritely They can take a variety of forms, including hybrid models, just like brick-and-mortar co-ops can. It's a question of what meets member needs best. If we had co-op hosting, co-op software, co-op workers, and maybe even consumer members, then we'd have a whole Venn diagram of co-ops, and we'd be one step closer to an online solidarity economy.
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@Steve @spritely It sounds good, although it sounds like only a specification right now.
It's like that period when tech had the GNU system, and even a Linux kernel, but no distributions yet. Linux was only mainstreamed by an investment hype as VC got that gleam in their eye.
Platform co-ops are more an alternative structure, the last thing VC wants. So, we're gonna need a smaller boat...
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@mpotter @spritely Yes, what I'm thinking is very much at the drawing stage. But, if we had a self-conscious model of platform co-ops with a culture of flexibility, adaptability, even portability (people could swtich from one to another at will), it could be a great fit for both workers and consumers. And the fediverse is perfectly positioned to support that kind of culture, in sharp contrast to VC-funded models.
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@mpotter @spritely As various people have described over time, physical infrastructure tends to map pretty closely on to social/organizational structures. Co-ops are autonomous but mutually supportive, which is the closest organizational analog I can find to the fediverse. That doesn't mean other orgs shouldn't be here -- they should -- but co-ops fit especially nicely.
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@Steve @spritely I don't want it to sound like I'm denigrating platform co-ops, I just have to work on my own piece of the puzzle for now.
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@mpotter @spritely No worries at all. There are lots of pieces that need work.
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