[gg3]

This deserves a separate topic because it's an important issue to consider.

In another topic, we were discussing industrialism & capitalism.

Here we should be careful to distinguish between free-enterprise systems generally, and capitalism as a specific case thereof. Capitalism as such involves the public trade of equity in incorporated entities where owners' liability is limited by law.

However there's more to it than that. Capitalism is also a set of legal, economic, and social norms that are adopted to establish a hierarchy of valuation of the various inputs to a production/consumption process.

Those inputs include financial capital, plant & equipment, raw materials, labor, and market demand. A free enterprise system involving profit incentives and tradeable equity instruments can be developed in such a way as to utilize any number of potential hierarchies of value and control among those inputs.

Under capitalism as currently practiced in the US, financial capital is the controlling factor. Under a "green" form of free enterprise system, raw materials in the form of "natural capital" are the determining factor. In a "consumer cooperative" such as a food coop, market demand is the key factor, i.e. the consumers own the shares in the corporation. In a "producer cooperative" such as a farmers marketing coop (e.g. dairy coops, Welch's grape products, Ocean Spray cranberry products), the owners of the plant & equipment own the shares in the corporation. In an "employee-owned corporation," the employees own the shares.

In fact, the employee-ownership model has much to recommend itself, in terms of extending the incentives of ownership and profit more widely. Where it's practiced properly it's highly successful, e.g. Stone Construction Equipment (USA) has 51% of national market share in its key product lines.

For the best working example of the employee ownership model, check out the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in Basque Spain. Go here:
http://www.mondragon.mcc.es/

This is a large industrial conglomerate of over 125 companies in every field from raw materials production to shipbuilding to cybernetics, including a central banking institution and various secondary, postsecondary, and graduate educational resources, R&D labs, etc. Each employee owns a share in his/her enterprise. The overall pattern of governance is similar to a republic and in fact has significant resemblance to our own (US) constitutional system.

Interestingly, MCC is a world-leader in industrial automation systems. They beat Siemens for the contract to build a fully automated assembly plant for VW *in Germany*. Raw materials go in one end, cars come out the other. Their automated machine tools are used by global companies including General Electric.

The point of this is, here we have an example of a corporation that is highly successful in heavy industry, which still meets the requirements of private ownership and profit motive, but which uses a different organizational model.

The intrinsic benefit of that model, which is highly relevant to all of our discussions, is this: where control of a company is vested in those who are directly affected by its everyday operations, there is a great reduction in the incentive to "externalize" costs (e.g. pollution, waste of energy and resources, etc.). That is to say, people do not willingly "crap in their own nests."

The reason this model hasn't taken off in the US is simply that the capital ownership model was able to establish itself as successful early on, and then organize the legal, economic, and social systems to support it to the exclusion of all else.

We can see examples of that today, where corporations are able to lobby for and obtain tax benefits and other preferential treatments. But at an earlier stage, the benefits obtained included legal and economic structures that stifled the growth of competing business models.

What I'm suggesting we need right now, is to apply the principle of competition to the issue of *business models.* There needs to be a truly level playing field, so that new types of business models can develop which are viable in the post-peak world.

The truly fatal flaw of corporations operated on the finacial-capitalism model, is (as many have observed here) that this model depends absolutely on continued growth, and will crash and burn miserably once that growth ceases. It is viable for certain categories of enterprises, but not for those that will be operating in steady-state markets.

However, the financial-capitalism model has become what in agricultural (and lately cybernetic) terms is called a "monoculture." Like a farm planted with genetically identical crops (or a computer network whose workstations all use the same operating system), it is enormously vulnerable.

We all recognize the nonsense of statements from various corporate officials and economists to the effect that unlimited growth will continue forever. But the cause of such nonsense is a teleological fallacy: these entities *require* the unlimited growth for their own survival, therefore they *have got to believe* it is possible. Entities operating under a different economic model will not have their objectivity compromised in this manner.

A free-enterprise system populated by companies and corporations that use a variety of different economic models will be inherently robust, much like a farm in which crops are genetically diverse, or a computer network that supports multiple types of platforms and operating systems.

If we want to create the preconditions for the adaptation of human societies to a world of post-peak oil and other resource shortages, one of the key ingredients will be to introduce the legal mechanisms that will place diverse types of business models on a level playing field. Having done so, the profit motive and other personal incentives will make good use of the various business models, and each will seek out the niches in which it is most viable. Thereby we can retain a strong economy through the transition ahead.

[gg3]

If you believe that structural factors in economic systems are contributing to the current predicament, then it logically follows that we have to consider ways of modifying the economic systems to bring them into line with reality.

I'm frankly disappointed as hell that no one's responded to this topic yet. Let's try again....

Perhaps I made the mistake of putting some of my most important points down toward the end of a rather long posting. So here's one of them in a short posting:

"...the financial-capitalism model has become what in agricultural (and lately cybernetic) terms is called a "monoculture." Like a farm planted with genetically identical crops (or a computer network whose workstations all use the same operating system), it is enormously vulnerable."

My point being that a sustainable free enterprise system will necessarily make use of a variety of business models in various sectors, and we should be considering what types of business models are appropriate to which sectors of activity.

Also as per Hubbert and Technocracy, considering alternative means of establishing mediums of exchange that do not lend themselves to creating an addiction to exponential growth.

Well..?....

[MadScientist]

good info for rebuilding after the crash. I concur that a new economic model is essential for a better world post oil. When that day comes Ill be doing my part to promote such changes.

You have significant leadership skill gg3. I respect you a lot for that. There are several other advanced PO readers around this forum who share your goal of saving the world. Peakoil.com is a gathering place for leaders as much as a noob information site. My point is that if there's anywhere you can assemble a team to develop a solution and take action, its probably here.

It's a worthy challenge.

[Aaron]

Bump

I think this is the real culprit as well.

Colin Campbell says as much in his recent ASPO conference interview.

Something like "Outdated economic theory not suitable for contemporary markets" or the equivalent.

I agree that the coop model has many benefits over traditional corporate models. But the inertia is massive for the status quo to maintain itself. In fact, short of revolution, I'm skeptical that actual coops can really thrive.

The corporate world would have to be dragged kicking and screaming into a coop based economy I think. And for the spin doctors of the world, appearance is everything (Wag the dog). I see this same doctrine hijacked by corporate America today. By creating what amounts to an illusion of cooperative ownership, without actually "turning over the reigns", companies encourage higher employee loyalty and improve efficiency for what amounts to the crumbs off the boardroom table.

As a career corporate technology officer I can attest first hand to the level of cynicism of corporate giants. I would posit that these powerful institutions will literally go to ANY lengths to preserve their hegemony.

GWB serves, (as any national leader does), as the epicenter for political will and power for the public. We do well to note however, that as powerful as the office of US president is, it pales in comparison with the senior members of the large institutional investment firms. These "heavyweights" of the global market shift in their chair and the world trembles.

I participated at a senior level in a recent merger between two technology giants as project manager - global content systems. The merger was opposed by the most powerful board member of the larger company, as well as others. It was necessary to begin the dialog between these potential merger candidates prior to the actual legal certification because of the complexity involved in this type of major restructuring. This basically meant that the original pioneers architecting the merger worked in a very secretive and clandestine way until the merger was sanctioned. As a technologist, it was the antithesis of my common experience in business technology. Even the large financial institutions and banks I have worked for didn't require this level of security. Imagine calling some person you don't know from another company and asking for sensitive internal data without even telling them who you are and why you want it? More than once I had to ask for a manager, before the then sheepish employee returned all smiles and apologies with my requested data. It was like being the Gestapo (spelling? My German sucks) I swear.

A battle ensued between the merger and non-merger camps for weeks, much of it played out in the national press. The merger team lived on egg shells during this time, knowing full well the personal consequences if the merger failed for cross-contaminated personnel. In the end, it was not the heavy weight and fraternal players inside either company who turned the corner. A single institutional investor, (our largest one), finally decided the issue by endorsing the merger. Once this proclamation was made, no amount of protest, even from Senior board members from founding family members, could prevent the merger moving forward.

If we seriously propose to make fundamental changes to our global economy, we should be prepared for a fight that will make the American civil war (our bloodiest ever), look like a stroll through central park on a Sunday afternoon.

IMO

[Licho]

The problem is that those various business models are still based on free market, and will perform equally bad in case of extremely high fuel prices. There is no difference between giant corporation and small business owned by employees during fuel decline. Giants and coop companies are just more likely to survive (moving production closer to energy sources, optimizing transports etc..).

Another problem is that business models are thing that evolves naturally, you cannot suddenly change all structure of world economy.

I think that stronger more authoritative goverments will be required during crisis, with massive redistribution of wealth to really invest in areas like energy production, transportation infrastructure and new transport research. We are also going to need stronger goverment to provide higher security and if demand seriously outstrips production then to ration oil.

[Chichis]

A problem is that freedom, free market, liberty, and democracy have been pounded into our heads as all that is good and decent. If you don't believe in these ideals then you are evil. As exposed above, a free market requires constant growth which isn't safely sustainable. Democracy requires people to rise above their base instincts and ask for what is good for everyone, rather than the individual. This doesn't work either.

[gg3]

Thanks...

To overcome the resource crises, we have to 1) live within our net energy income, and 2) address the question of distributional equity.

Stored energy capital (coal, oil, natural gas, uranium) shouldn't be directed toward consumption but toward development and deployment of the means to sustain civilized societies on their net energy income. In essence, stored energy capital is our "R&D budget."

Net energy income ultimately translates to incoming solar radiation, which includes wind, tides, biomass, etc. This is what we have to live on.

In a practical sense, we are facing the short-term necessity of using the remaining stored energy capital to make the transition to living on net energy income.

This gets us two goals in terms of economics: 1) create the incentives to use stored energy capital in this manner, and 2) create an economic system that is viable on a net energy income basis.

With respect to (1), the moderate-optimist position seems to be that existing market mechanisms will automatically assure the transition. The moderate-pessimist position seems to be that market mechanisms are insufficient (e.g. not sufficiently proactive given the resource constraints), and that some form of regulatory intervention is necessary. This debate is already going on throughout these forums.

The issue I'm concerned with here is (2).

In a formalistic sense, civilization can be considered as a form of society that continually increases its level of embodied information without having to decrease the level of embodied information of other socities.

Growth of information is not identical with growth of resource consumption, as per the mundane example that a scientific institution can achieve new discoveries in an ongoing manner while operating on a stable budget. The resource input is steady-state, the knowledge output is cumulative; knowledge is a positive-sum outcome.

There are three preconditions for civilization to form and continue: 1) sufficient resources to support the cumulative increase of knowledge over time, 2) minimization of random violence within the society, and 3) freedom of inquiry in order to develop, accumulate, and apply knowledge. These conditions must obtain over an unbroken period of many generations.

An economic system is a tool for producing and distributing resources. That is, an economic system is a means, rather than an end in itself. The end, i.e. the goal-state of an economic system, in a civilized society, is to serve the progress of civilization and its members. (By analogy, one uses a hammer to build a house; one does not build a house in order to find something to use one's hammer for; and one does not keep using one's hammer for tasks to which it is ill-suited such as eating a meal. This is merely common sense, though when applied to the purpose of an economic system it can sound heretical.)

Net energy income is a fixed quantity. So we are necessarily talking about a steady-state economy in terms of energy inputs.

Now this is where things get messy. Steeady-state economics has a tendency to devolve back toward mercantilism: the idea that the potential volume of trade is inherently limited and is a zero-sum game. This in turn tends to move toward imperialism, the policy of improving one's own national wealth by extracting wealth from other nations to the detriment of the latter.

Liberal capitalism attempts to provide universal prosperity on the foundation of a positive-sum economy. This has ultimately led to the present state of growth-dependence, an era that is rapidly coming to a close whether we like it or not. Yet the opposing theories of communism and fascism have proven themselves even less viable, as they lack the checks and balances of competition to prevent themselves ravaging their own resource bases including their own human populations. In any case, communism and fascism also violate two of the preconditions of civilization, namely minimization of random violence, and freedom of inquiry.

The foregoing are some of my starting points for seeking to design an economic system that is sustainble and viable for a civilized society. Now comes a large intuitive leap (which I suppose I could explicate retrospectively with some effort), the result of which is:

What I think we need is an economy that is predicated on a robust mixture of business models, rather than only on a single model.

Fields of business that directly utilize energy inputs as primary factors of production, must ultimately operate on a basis where growth is only possible via increased efficiency or the discovery of new sources of energy income (as distinct from new sources of energy capital).

Fields of business that involve the use of raw materials must ultimately become closed-cycle, in the sense of being able to recycle their raw materials subject to the limits of available energy inputs.

Thus far, growth has to be driven by real progress in science and engineering, rather than by financial constructs such as subjective valuation or fractional-reserve lending.

Unlimited growth is really only possible in fields of business whose primary outputs are knowledge or information. But here we must be careful to not replicate the fatal flaws of other economic models. The abuses of the patent system (absurd or predatory patents), the extension of copyright to facilitate monopolization of information over absurd periods of time, the abuses of intellectual property law including proliferation of lawsuits related thereto, etc., are all variations on the theme of mercantilism: treating as zero-sum the one resource that is truly unlimited.

The line of reasoning I'm pursuing here is completely orthogonal to the issues of ownership (personal, corporate, state) and the issues of profit and/or other incentives. Each of those are entirely independent variables. Also I am not presupposing that specific business models are a-priori necessary or inevitable in various fields of business; only that the models used should be logically related to empirical conditions.

This posting is getting too-long, so I'll stop here for now.

[Licho]

gg3, in previous time, civilization had to live within energy surplus too. There is not big difference in this manner between today and future. Energy decline from failing oil will be less than 1.5%/a even if you consider that oil coveres 50% of total energy (this is not true and it's less in fact). Current economy will be still able to grow energy production by more than 1.5% annualy.
What I think is a major issue is initial stage, when world realizes that oil is declining. Possible price shock leading to extremely expensive transports and possible crash/depression of global economy. These issues must be addressed, total energy is not a problem. We are not facing energy crisis, but just oil crisis. Goverments will have to act if such runaway price shock happens to prevent world-wide depression and fatal decline in industrial production.

[rowante]

Energy decline from failing oil will be less than 1.5%/a even if you consider that oil coveres 50% of total energy (this is not true and it's less in fact). Current economy will be still able to grow energy production by more than 1.5% annualy.

Licho, could you please explain your figures? Where is the new energy production coming from? When are you dating your decline? How did you get the figure of 50% of total energy for oil? What about the fact that 90-95% of all transport relies on oil based fuel, the percentage of energy from oil maybe in critical, not easily replaced areas? Why is total energy not a problem, I thought it was THE PROBLEM?

I found your post confusing, could you elaborate?

[Aaron]

I second rowante's question...


What are you talking about?

[Licho]

- Expected maximum yearly fall of CONVENTIONAL oil production is 3% (MAXIMUM!).
Source: ASPO

- Primary energy production from oil is
worldwide: 37%
USA: 41%
Source: http://energy.murdoch.edu.au/teaching/acre/pec292-492demo/lecture03/m292lec3ln.htm

This means that maximum expected fall of conventional oil will cause total energy availiable to society to decrease by 1.23% annualy.
This 1.23% energy shortfall can be covered by nuclear sources (long term, these take longer time to build), alternative sources/initial conservation. (It takes just few months to put multimegawatt wind farm online).

Of course this is just total energy, but gg3 was talking about energy too, many people seem to worry about energy in general. Yes transportation is going to be a problem, but still - USA uses terribly inefficient engines, and uses car in ineficcient ways. Alternatives do exists - pressured air cars for city traffic/communiting, biodiesel for trucks and rail transportation. It will take time to transform all we have but we have enough time. Oil production will decrease for decades, after 30 years, we will stil be at production levels of 1970's..

[tkn317071]

That was a lot to absorb...I can say with confidence, however, that I agree that the monoculture model of business, cropping, and living in general is a dead end and diversity is the key to real problem solving.

A recurring thought of mine has been to start a business that is totally democratic. In other words, to have as many different minds thinking about critical decisions as possible. The initial reaction is that it would never fly because something like that is too inefficient, but I think if part of the process is to streamline the collective decision making process, by innovating, improving information exchange, etc. after a brief period of working out the kinks, an employee owned business could work. The benefit being that balancing the desire for profit would be a desire to maximize employment. It would still require leaders and workers but it would be less hierarchical and more affirming of each individuals worth as a human being.

Anyways, gg3, count me in when you're ready to move.

[Cool Hand Linc]

GG3

To overcome the resource crises, we have to 1) live within our net energy income, and 2) address the question of distributional equity.

This is really what the world will face. GG3 what you are proposing, If I understand you correctly, Is to design a “system” that will allow the world to operate within its means. Not just economically either.

What you wrote is pretty deep! It also makes allot of sense. Can you write more on the “distributional equity”? what do you mean?

[Onyered]

I think that there needs to be a reform in our monetary system. Maybe this relates to the “distribution of equity” that you spoke of.

Someone posted this link in a previous thread and I looked but couldn’t find the thread again. I did save the link and found this to be very interesting, mostly because it explains the old saying that the rich keep getting richer. I had postulated this as “capital has power over labor”, but this article explains that capital (money) holds power over everything because money can wait, as in the example below. Fascinating reading.

http://www.sunshinecable.com/~eisehan/newpage1.htm#4)%20The%20Law%20of%20Supply%20and%20Demand
Snip:
“Money has an invisible advantage over the objects of exchange - it doesn't loose its nominated value. While most goods will rot or rust and gradually loose their value or require special care, i.e. costs, to keep their value like cars or houses which need repair and renovation every now and then, money only requires a safe to put it in - and that's it. In an economy which is based on barter only, a farmer who produces - say - tomatoes and wants apples in exchange, meets the farmer who is willing to give him apples for his tomatoes under the same condition: both want to get rid of their goods before they rot. Under these conditions a fair deal is possible. If money comes in, the whole thing becomes quite different. The owner of money has an advantage over the farmer who produces tomatoes or apples. The farmer has to get rid of his tomatoes before they rot, the owner of money can wait and eventually extort a reduction in prize even below the value of the farmer's work.”

[Whitecrab]

Snip:
“Money has an invisible advantage over the objects of exchange - it doesn't loose its nominated value. While most goods will rot or rust and gradually loose their value or require special care, i.e. costs, to keep their value like cars or houses which need repair and renovation every now and then, money only requires a safe to put it in - and that's it. In an economy which is based on barter only, a farmer who produces - say - tomatoes and wants apples in exchange, meets the farmer who is willing to give him apples for his tomatoes under the same condition: both want to get rid of their goods before they rot. Under these conditions a fair deal is possible. If money comes in, the whole thing becomes quite different. The owner of money has an advantage over the farmer who produces tomatoes or apples. The farmer has to get rid of his tomatoes before they rot, the owner of money can wait and eventually extort a reduction in prize even below the value of the farmer's work.”

Except by waiting he leaves himself with an inferior (worse-tasting) product, and less of a window to use it himself. People will pay for freshness/quality.

[gg3]

I've been wanting to reply to some of the points in this topic for a couple of days, but I'm currently working on a design case for a client who wants an 80-station PBX that will support telecommuters. I'll be back tomorrow night to post something more interesting than a "be back later" message:-).

[Onyered]

[quote="Whitecrab
Except by waiting he leaves himself with an inferior (worse-tasting) product, and less of a window to use it himself. People will pay for freshness/quality.[/quote]

You miss the point. The money can wait and not buy at all. The money will not go bad, it will draw interest. Maybe you should read the article for a better insight than the example I gave.

[rowante]

gg3, what sort of government or political system do you imagine pioneering your ideas? Are you talking revolution or adaptation?

[gg3]

tkn, where are you geographically?, perhaps we can get together by phone or in person and talk about this more. In the meantime...

tkn, what you're talking about is generally known as "democratic enterprise." DEs can be organized under any type of legal entity that permits multi-person ownership (e.g. LLCs, coops, corporations). Their sucesss rate is comparable to that of other enterprises starting with equivalent capital resources and market conditions. Or to put it differently, they fail as often as regular startups, but since they are using a different business model, their failures are used as an ideological point by those who are opposed to the idea.

The most important considerations when starting a DE, and in fact they're absolutely necessary in order to succeed, are for the prospective members to a) be thoroughly educated in the principles and practices of management and corporate governance practices, b) be committed to an ownership mentality rather than an employee mentality, and c) be educated additionally with regard to the unique characteristics of DEs, i.e. participatory decision making or governance by election of management.

The idea that you can just be a regular worker-bee and fulfill a certain number of hours per day, is out. You have to think in terms of task-completion. If your task requires that you stay late or come in early, you do it, and you don't get extra hourly wages or direct salary benefits for doing so (you might get added "overhead hours" toward your yearly or quarterly profit distribution, which is a nice incentive).

Also, democratic management cannot be allowed to become a forum via which people act-out their unresolved issues with authority. First and foremost it's about being in business and earning the daily bread. So you can elect your managers, but then you have to respect their authority to the same degree as if they were your commanding officers in the military. And if you don't like the way they manage, you can fix it at the next annual meeting.

And/or you can have "functional authority" that operates according to expertise. Let's say you've got a constuction company that runs as a DE. Each member has expertise in one of the building trades or sub-fields. When the crew is pouring a foundation, the person with the greatest expertise in concrete work has authority and runs the crew. When the crew is framing the house, the person with the greatest expertise in carpentry has authority and runs the crew. Etc. So each person occasionally has superordinate authority, and more often is in a subordinate position.

One of the thorniest issues is compensation of "staff," by which I mean, the distinction between "line" (direct production, as in carpenters building houses) and "staff" (support activities such as administration). The relationship between line employees & line-management, and actual income for the company, is direct. The relationship between the activities of staff employees and staff-management, is much less direct and harder to quantify.

I could go on for ten or fifteen pages on this subject, having done some consulting work in the field and also operating within this context.


Also keep in mind that the DE model is an ownership & management model for specific individual companies; it does not claim to address the issue of how to design an economy at the macro level. The main issue I'm concerned with here is to develop a range of different business models and fit them to various sectors of the economy in a rational manner that preserves individual equity, provides personal incentives for work and innovation, and is long-term sustainable in a manner that is compatible with the values of a civilized society.


Missing Link:

Yes, design a system that will enable the world to live within its means. Consider that the current economic system resembles two very obvious disease processes. One is the "business cycle" of boom and bust, which closely resembles bipolar disorder or perhaps bulemia. The other is the "growth paradigm" which closely resembles the behavior of a tumor. The system is clearly not self-regulating in a homeostatic manner (by which I don't mean "regulation" in the sense of "government regulation of the economy," which has its own problems). It lacks sufficent short-term feedback loops, particularly in regard to effective negative feedback that will limit excesses at both the individual scale, the microeconomic scale, and the macroeconomic scale. So our task is to design something that solves for these issues.

Onyered:

I certainly get your point about money. Now here is something very interesting. What could be done to cause money to be subject to "spoilage," same as any other physical object, so it can't be used in the invidious manner you describe?

Well, in economic terms, spoilage means that the value of something is clearly decreasing over time. Okay, so what causes the value of money to decrease over time...?

Yep: Inflation! Now for those of you whose gut reaction to that word is similar to your gut reaction to a picture of Osama, think about this for a moment. Inflationary times benefit those who operate on cashflow: who earn their paycheck and spend it on goods and services; or who run small businesses that do things such as invest their cashflow into tools and other physical capital resources that enable labor to produce more income. Inflationary times are specifically bad for the Big Guys who are holding lots of cash but little else.

Now you can start to see why the present dogma in government and business is that inflation is a bigger taboo than kiddie porn! Inflation is good for the little guy, bad for the big guy. Up to a point. Beyond that point, it's bad for everyone because it prevents people from carrying on their normal lives and the whole system breaks down.

Right now Greenspan in the US is doing a darn good job of holding inflation down. Has it occurred to you that government could do an equally capable job of managing the economy in such a manner as to be good for the Little Guy, or good for sustainability, or good for some other measurable dimension of value...? And do it without destroying the premise of free enterprise and a viable level of personal incentive...?

Rowante:

What sort of government? Personally I have to hope that it can be done within some kind of parliamentary or republican form of representative democracy. An enlightened monarchy could do it by fiat, but that's vaguely like cheating:-). And seriously, we have to practice what we preach.

Re. "revolution," the choice isn't between ballots and bullets. The choice is between fighting and building.

We can try to get there by first fighting those who are holding all manner of corrupt and unethical power, and then building something new afterward. But as long as we're a free society, we don't have to do that: we can go directly to the stage where we're building something better. And if it really is better, it will over time gain enough participants and supporters to become a true competitor against the status-quo.

By analogy think of the Internet: it's designed to route communications around areas of damage. Back in the days when all this was new, we used to say "censorship is a form of damage," meaning that the Internet was, by virtue of its design, capable of providing free exchange of ideas despite anyone's attempts to censor it. This ideal has largely come true. And the point of the analogy is, we can route our new sustainable economics around the damage caused by the present corrupt & unsustainable economics.

The fact is that Ma Nature is going to do it for us whether we like it or not. This is going to be a century when unlimited growth hits its limits, when resources start to go into shortage, and when ecological externalities come home to roost. The question for us is what we want to do about it, which is to say, whether we prefer to be guided by our aspirations or merely by the avoidance of pain.

More later, this post is already too long:-)

[tkn317071]

tkn, where are you geographically?, perhaps we can get together by phone or in person and talk about this more. In the meantime...

I am in Western Oregon, and I'd like to chat by phone but I don't think I want to post my phone number on this forum.

DEs can be organized under any type of legal entity that permits multi-person ownership (e.g. LLCs, coops, corporations).

Can DEs be non-profits? Also, do you know of any businesses that are managed collectively (i.e. without "management" by managers?)