Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
So, what do we mean by a DisCO?
It stands for Distributed Cooperative Organizations, and it’s a set of organisational tools and practices for groups of people who want to work together in a cooperative, commons-oriented, and feminist economic form.
Peer to peer (P2P) is a type of social relations in human networks, as well as a technological infrastructure that makes the generalization and scaling up of such relations possible.
We need something like the guilds in the Middle Ages. We need leagues of cities. We need leagues of co-ops. In Fukushima you can’t just say, “I’m going to have a fishing co-op in my village”. Sometimes you need scale to answer certain issues that can’t be solved at any local level.
The Commons is maturing politically, its methods and principles becoming more visible and its participants winning municipal elections in a variety of European cities. How did this happen, and what happens next? First, a look at our present political context, and then some observations on the birth and trajectory of this new wave of commons politics.
Let’s engage in a way to produce goods and create value that is free, fair, and sustainable! What is peer production and commons economics? More importantly, how can they help bring about a thriving economy that work for people and planet?
In moments of crisis, when the structures of conventional governance are suddenly exposed as weak or ineffectual, it is clear that there is no substitute for ordinary people acting together.
The conference on Platform cooperativism organised by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider in 2015 helped to broaden the debate around the sharing economy, which is summed up in Platform Cooperativism. Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy.
It takes systematic work and engagement to build up a reputation that gives one more influence and support for one’s project. The non-hierarchical relations imply a lot of self-responsibility but also a feeling of empowerment.
The emerging answer for a new mode of value creation is the re-emergence of the Commons.
The emerging answer for a new mode of value creation is the re-emergence of the Commons.
The only way to achieve systemic change at the planetary level is to build counter-power, i.e. alternative global governance.
A growing movement that combines open source design with sustainability is creating an exciting alternative to profit-driven, proprietary sustainability products.
