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by erikerikson 785 days ago
A co-op only attenuates to employees. There are better options. Example: FairShares Commons
2 comments

Don’t you have the same problem illustrated by this author? My perspective is the “untapped” people get diminished rewards for their inputs because they are being outplayed by politicos who inflate their importance to the process at the expense of others. For some people it is less work to make the system unfair than to excel on a fair system.
I agree that this structure has incentive problems and have so far avoided it. That said, I think it does better than a co-op. This fits the saying "the opposite of stupid is not smart". Standard corporations [frequently] used to serve only owners have a problematic incentive structure for everyone else. A co-op that serves only employees has a different bad incentive structure. Of course there are instances of improvements over the base incentive. The FairShares Commons attempts to be explicit about the balance between the stakeholders of the corporation. You can read more on Boyd's site [0] but really chapters 15 and 16 of his book Rebuild that seems to be linked there.

[0] https://graham-boyd.biz/fairshare-commons/

>A co-op only attenuates to employees. There are better options. Example: FairShares Commons

I am very interested in learning about these types of models.

I don't know what search terms would get me there, and/or any lists of these types of models that have been curated.

Could you suggest anything that would expedite researching this?

I'm sorry that I don't have a good index or personal awareness to share. Boyd's book linked in a peer response is a source but otherwise I can only offer that B-Corps [0] or Benefit Corps are the formally/legally recognized entry into space. A structure like the FairShares Common is a sophistication, based on the articles of incorporation above and beyond establishing legal obligations to a purpose (as is part of B-Corp incorporation). It is, itself, based on the FairShares [1] and Commons ideas [2].

[0] https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/ [1] https://www.fairshares.coop/fairshares-model/ [2] https://p2pfoundation.net/the-p2p-foundation/about-the-p2p-f...

That is helpful.

I previously had no idea of any existing frameworks.

I will undoubtedly gain a lot of insights through learning about them.

Thank you.