How Cooperatives are Going to Save the Future

Cooperative Capital versus Crony Capitalism

The first question most folks have is: I’ve heard of cooperatives but aren’t those for farmers? Yes, historically agriculture industries have benefited from the cooperative business structure. Plus, if you are a member of a credit union or a rural electrical coop you have experienced a few of the benefits of being a coop member!

However, with the evolution of technology, I would like to introduce you to the world’s 1st Web 3.0 Cooperative… Cooperative Capital Communities Alliance aka C3 Alliance. So I know you are thinking to yourself what the heck is a Web3 Coop? Well, thanks for asking!

C3 Alliance blends several key concepts to bring you the tokenized capital Cooperative. Firstly, we must do a little education before proceeding. It is imperative that you understand a few concepts.

1. What is a cooperative? There are several types of cooperatives. Historically cooperatives have been formed to serve the interests of a specific stakeholder such as workers or buyers. However, C3 Alliance is a multi-stakeholder cooperative. What that means is our membership is NOT limited to serving the interests of one group like most coops.
2. What is patronage? Every cooperative’s economic activity is based on member patronage. For the sake of this article it is important to know a key element for C3 Alliance to work is we have created a process tokenizing member patronage using roles. Cooperatives receive some tax advantages being a not-for profit entity organized for the purpose of serving its members! This is extremely important and we will cover more on this soon. Patronage just means members are rewarded for using the coop’s products and services. These rewards can be a combination of access to surplus (profits), discounts, and/or special privileges.
3. What are the member stakeholder roles? Since, we use a role-based tokenized patronage system. This is what’s new and makes us the 1st Web 3.0 Cooperative! How the tokens work will also be the topic of future articles. However, to give a basic idea of how we use them. We mint role-based patronage tokens for Producer [PDT], Purchaser [PCT], and Promoter [PMT] for our members to stake to smart contracts on the blockchain. The smart contracts are sponsored and administered by our local communities. Yes, there will be a future article discussing why communities. The important thing to understand here is that everything is tokenized!

Awesome, so now that we have introduced those core concepts back to how cooperatives are going to save the future. At this point, I should introduce the evil nemesis in this story. We will name this enemy “Crony-Capitalist Corporations”! I know what you are thinking not another article about evil capitalism. Nope! That is NOT what this article is about. “Crony-Capitalism” is a corrupted variant of capitalism. We actually believe in a better version of capitalism that we like to call “Collaborative Commerce”, which we will discuss more later. Most likely your next question is what is so bad about Crony Capitalism? Let’s take a look at the definition to help with that.

“Crony capitalism, sometimes called Cronyism, is an economic system in which businesses thrive not as a result of free enterprise, but rather as a return on money amassed through collusion between a business class and the political class. This is often achieved by the manipulation of relationships with state power by business interests rather than unfettered competition in obtaining permits, government grants, tax breaks, or other forms of state intervention[1][2] over resources where business interests exercise undue influence over the state’s deployment of public goods. Money is then made not merely by making a profit in the market, but through profiteering by rent seeking using this monopoly or oligopoly. Entrepreneurship and innovative practices which seek to reward risk are stifled since the value-added is little by crony businesses, as hardly anything of significant value is created by them, with transactions taking the form of trading. Crony capitalism spills over into the government, the politics, and the media,[3] when this nexus distorts the economy and affects society to an extent it corrupts public-serving economic, political, and social ideals.”

It is the position of the C3 Alliance that Cronyism is the single largest reason for global human poverty and exploitation. The extraction-based labor practices of multi-national corporations that serve the interests of shareholders at the expense of all other stakeholders (employees and customers) are truly evil and are the enemy!

Here is the good news! We have the solution to save the future!

Cooperatives are member-owned not-for-profit enterprises. The primary purpose of cooperatives is to deliver services to their members! Why is this better than a corporation? Friendly reminder corporations exist to deliver value to shareholders, communities exist to serve our members! The next huge benefit of cooperatives is the “One-Member, One-Vote rule”. This means no one member has more power or influence than any other member! The members vote on all governance decisions. Also, we have included globally accessible blockchain tools to facilitate democratic governance.

Okay, we have established that we are using a tokenized multi-stakeholder role-based cooperative business structure (World’s 1st). We still need to answer the question why is this the solution for the future?

The short answer is we are going to create an alternative economic system. C3 Alliance is building the infrastructure of member-controlled cooperative capital communities all over the world using our collaborative commerce enterprises to facilitate the transmutation of energy into storable wealth.

I know I just said a lot in that last paragraph! Here is the take away till the next article. Imagine living in a local self-sustaining community of members serving the interests (WANTS token/ more on that soon)of members globally via an infrastructure that facilitates transmuting [WORK] energy into [Want] product/services solutions. A community where you are performing as a Producer/Purchaser/Promoter role depending on the contracts you decide to stake your energy to… by the way we are also the world’s 1st [WORK] as Proof of Work consensus. Yep, future article as well.

Please follow for the next article… What is a “Collaborative Commerce Enterprise”?