Principles for a True Sharing Economy

From P2P Foundation
Jump to navigation Jump to search


= (Shareable) Draft Principles for a True Sharing Economy

draft updated via https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TueZDgo7DaOUK4OF7Vo2wT2G9HUzKJNjSlkjTRu2DSg/edit#


Text

Below are five proposed principles, and the bullets underneath are qualities and practices that manifest those principles (which could eventually make up the categories on a scorecard). Please add to this and leave comments!

  • Principle 1: Sharing Wealth and Prosperity
  • Principle 2: Sharing Power
  • Principle 3: Sharing Resources
  • Principle 4: Sharing Knowledge, Skills, and Information
  • Principle 5: Sharing Responsibility for the Common Good


Principle 1: Sharing Wealth and Prosperity

The project or enterprise creates and spreads wealth throughout communities, and works to reverse the trend of increasing wealth concentration.

Qualities and Practices that Advance Principle 1:

  • Distribution of Earnings: Earnings are either 1) re-invested in the project, 2) distributed to participants based on patronage, or 3) dedicated to projects that serve the common good.

Comments and Examples: This is in contrast to the predominant model where earnings are distributed to investors on the basis of capital investments (i.e., the rich get richer).


  • Limited Return on Capital Investment: To the extent that the project receives investment of capital, the investors receive a fixed or capped return, and no investor can maximize his/her gain.

Comments and Examples: We need an objective measure to indicate what is a reasonable return. Perhaps Slow Money has some guidance.


  • Safeguards to Prevent Market Buy-Out: The legal structure includes safeguards to disincentivize demutualization and to prevent the project and assets from being sold and returned to the market.

Comments and Examples: Ways to prevent buy-outs like the fishy one orchestrated by Couchsurfing. Equal


  • Exchange governing documents require that all assets and proceeds be distributed to a nonprofit if the company is dissolved or sold. This gives the worker-owners disincentive to sell the company. Other cooperatives require that any sale proceeds be distributed to both current and past members on the basis of patronage (which reduces incentives of current members to demutualize). Another approach is to cap individual pay-outs, and distribute the rest to a nonprofit.


  • Fair and Balanced Wages: If the project or enterprise has employees, it pays a living wage and sets limits on pay scale ratios, to ensure that the highest wages are not vastly disproportionate to the lowest wages.

Comments and examples: Need to define living wages and set a pay scale ratio. SELC uses Economic Policy Institute’s measure of living wages. I think Equal Exchange has a 4:1 pay scale ratio.


Principle 2: Sharing Power

Spreads power throughout communities through democratic and highly participatory governance structures, instead of concentrating power and granting control based on capital ownership.

Qualities and Practices that Advance Principle 2:

  • Democracy: Governing bodies are democratically elected on a one-member, one-vote basis.

Comments and examples:


  • Polycentric Governance: The project or enterprise creates many centers of power, engaging participants’ voices and seeking direction at the smallest levels possible.

Comments and examples:


Principle 3: Sharing Resources

The project or enterprise equitably and efficiently uses existing resources of a community, in order to create abundance (rather than scarcities) and in order to promote broad access to resources without causing harmful extraction.


Qualities and Practices that Advance Principle 3:


  • Preventing waste: The project or enterprise harnesses the potential of existing resources in communities and seeks to maximize their value.

Comments and examples:


  • Mutual aid and shared risk:

Comments and examples


Principle 4: Sharing Knowledge, Skills, and Information

The project prioritizes transparency and open access to knowledge and information.

Qualities and Practices that Advance Principle 4:


  • Transparency: The project or enterprise manifests transparency in a variety of forms (income and expenditures, labor practices, supply chains, etc).

Comments and examples:


  • Ethos of Upskilling: The project or enterprise seeks to empower participants and community members with skills and knowledge.

Comments and examples: I got this phrase “ethos of upskilling” from Derek Razo of Enspiral. I really like the idea that every organization should be working to grow the skills and knowledge of its participants, since that is empowering and helps prevent concentration of power. The Rochdale Principles include education, training, and information.


  • Knowledge is shared, not sold: To the extent possible, the project makes its knowledge, information, and intellectual property freely available and has open licenses.

Comment and examples: This needs greater specificity and refining. A key concept is to not capitalize on knowledge scarcities, which, for example, is currently how lawyers currently manage to get so rich. They withhold legal knowledge and information from the public, obscure it, make it very difficult to understand and access, and then sell it back to the public.


Principle 5: Sharing Responsibility for the Common Good

The project prioritizes advancement of the common good.

Qualities and Practices that Advance Principle 5:

  • Combatting inequity and discrimination: Actively works to combat inequity and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation, and sexual identity.

Comments and examples: …

  • Growing a sharing economy globally: The project sees itself as a part of a broader sharing movement and seeks to grow that movement.

Comments and examples: The project grows to the extent that it provides benefit to the community, and provides a transparent process to help the public understand the pathway to involvement. The idea is that it does not become an insular club to benefit only the present members, but that it also keeps an eye toward expansion - to the extent that it benefits the common good. This principle might also encompass the principle of cooperation among cooperatives, which is part of the Rochdale Principles. The idea is that the project collaborates with and supports the growth of similar projects throughout the world.


  • Collaboration with governments: Collaborates with governments in order to balance in consideration of broader concerns, such as supply of affordable housing, impact on neighborhoods, and use of municipal resources.

Comments and examples: …

Incentivizes good behavior: The project rewards and incentivizes generative behaviors and activities that advance the common good. Comments and examples: …

Designed with future generations in mind: Comments and examples: …

Economic Localization: ? Comments and examples: ...

Regeneration of Ecosystems: Comments and examples: ...