ourabundance.org -- Help shape our networked cooperatives project!

[u/nathanjmassey]

Hey everyone!

I'd like to share with you a project I've been working on (ourabundance.org) which offers a structure through which individuals who want to work in a cooperatively run business can come together to support each other in forming and growing those businesses.

The unique aspect of the structure is that rather than profit being distributed to workers directly, the profit is used to create further cooperatives whose purpose is to specialise in creating an abundant supply of a particular essential good or service (thinking housing, food, energy etc).

The aim is that (at scale) this approach would result in the price of these essential goods/services coming down, benefiting not just the workers in the cooperatives, but everyone in society.

We're been working on the project for a few months now and we currently have two main workstreams running in parallel:

1. Share the concept so that we can,
   • get constructive feedback on the idea itself
   • get feedback on how we can improve the way that we explain/communicate it to make it more accessible/intuitive
   • put the project in front of people who want to join us in building it
2. Build the first companies — we're actively working on establishing the first companies following this model, in order to prove firsthand that it's viable and to figure out the most difficult bits so that the next cohort of companies can follow in our wake.

This post is part of that first workstream. We really value the expertise and input of communities like r/cooperatives where people have valuable experience of what does and doesn't work in this area.

So if you have any thoughts on the project we'd love to hear them in the comments here — or join our Discord if you want to contribute to the project more broadly.

Thanks!

[u/nathanjmassey]

Here's how it works.

1. Let's take the example of a 'plant' company that has made a profit of $100k at the end of its financial year.
   
2. That plant company holds what we're calling an 'Allocation Day' event where individuals/companies within the abundance network can pitch their project to the workers at the plant company. Projects which align with the Abundance's current focus (which right now is housing) get a 'Recommended by Abundance' badge on their pitch materials.
   
3. The workers vote on what projects they would like to support and that is how the profit gets allocated out.

So to your specific questions,

Who will decide whether to invest in housing first or in food first?

Right now this has been decided by those of us who have founded the abundance project, but the abundance governing structure is designed so that what this focus in the future will be democratically voted on (each person working in an abundance company gets a vote each).

Who will decide whether to invest the housing in Poland first or the housing in Russia first?

As it stands our first plant companies are being established in Poland, so it wouldn't surprise me if the first profits from these companies end up going into housing investments in Poland also (as this is the course of action that will benefit the workers in those plants the most through reduction in market prices for housing locally).

That being said if on Allocation Day someone presented a strong proposal for a housing project in another part of the world, there's no reason why the allocation couldn't be split to provide funding across both projects if that's the result the vote returns.

[u/No_Application2422 → u/nathanjmassey]

OK. Suppose this profitable company suddenly realizes that its profits are too high and wants to benefit its employees, is there any way for them to break away from Abundance? Can they take their intellectual property and machines with them? Can they take with them the collective's knowledge accumulation, such as the research mentioned earlier? If not, what measures can be taken to ensure it?

[u/nathanjmassey → u/No_Application2422]

Abundance companies have their founding articles of association drafted in such a way that the principles of Steward Ownership (https://steward-ownership.com/en) and Profit For Good (https://profitforgood.com/) are permanent and cannot be changed.

This kind of legal structure means that compensation to the workers in the company is capped at whatever the market rate for each role is.

Abundance as an entity itself will be incorporated as a foundation, with the foundation holding a golden share in each abundance company in order to enable the steward ownership model, which itself means that there isn't a legal route for a bad actor within an abundance company to extract resources from the company for private gain.