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Environmental impact of nfts

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Famed auction house Christie's just sold its first "purely digital piece of art" for a whopping $69 million. For that price, the buyer got a digital file of a collage of 5,000 images and a complex legacy of greenhouse gas emissions.

An "ecological nightmare pyramid scheme"

Individual pieces of crypto art, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), are at least partially responsible for the millions of tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions generated by the cryptocurrencies used to buy and sell them. Some artists - including those who have already benefited from the craze - think it's a problem that can be easily solved. Others think the proposed solutions are a pipe dream.

ArtStation, an online marketplace for digital artists, canceled its plans to launch a platform for NFTs within hours after getting a lot of backlash from people who think dealing in crypto art is environmentally unethical. Artists called NFTs an " ecological nightmare pyramid scheme" and ArtStation's plans to offset emissions a " scam " on Twitter.

Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, who goes by the name Beeple, is a believer in a more sustainable future for NFTs. His work "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" was the one that got the eye-popping $69 million bid at Christie's. Moving forward, he says his artwork will be carbon "neutral" or "negative," meaning he'll be able to completely offset emissions from his NFTs by investing in renewable energy, conservation projects, or technology that sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere. "I think you're gonna see a lot of other artists do the same," Beeple tells The Verge. But for now, there are still greenhouse gas emissions associated with his NFTs. It costs about $5,000 to offset the emissions from one of his collections, he says.

The dirty world of NFTs

An NFT is a unique cryptocurrency token that can take the form of pretty much anything digital - art, a GIF, or even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's first tweet. (For a more detailed look at what an NFT actually is, check out this breakdown.) There have been some initial estimates of how much power an NFT uses up and, consequently, how much planet-heating pollution that generates.

Take "Space Cat," an NFT that's basically a GIF of a cat in a rocket heading to the Moon. Space Cat's carbon footprint is equivalent to an EU resident's electricity usage for two months, according to the website cryptoart.wtf. That website used to let people click through the estimated greenhouse gas emissions associated with individual NFTs until creator Memo Akten took it down on March 12th. Akten, a digital artist, had analyzed 18,000 NFTs and found that the average NFT has a carbon footprint somewhat lower than Space Cat's but still equivalent to more than a month's worth of electricity for a person living in the EU. Those numbers were shocking to some people. But then Akten saw that the website had been used to wrongly attribute an NFT marketplace's emissions to a single NFT. He took the site offline after he discovered that it "has been used as a tool for abuse and harassment," according to a note posted on the site.

Since the crypto art craze is pretty new, none of the data that's out there so far has been reviewed by outside experts. And Akten admits in a blog about his methodology that the analysis was intentionally " one-sided." But here's why there's probably a hell of a lot of greenhouse gas emissions tied to NFTs: they're largely bought and sold in marketplaces like Nifty Gateway and SuperRare that use the cryptocurrency Ethereum. Ethereum, like most major cryptocurrencies, is built on a system called "proof of work" that is incredibly energy hungry. There's a fee associated with making a transaction on Ethereum - and, ironically, that fee is called "gas."

Proof of work acts as a sort of security system for cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and bitcoin since there's no third party, like a bank, that oversees transactions. To keep financial records secure, the system forces people to solve complex puzzles using energy-guzzling machines. Solving the puzzles lets users, or "miners," add a new "block" of verified transactions to a decentralized ledger called the blockchain. The miner then gets new tokens or transaction fees as a reward. The process is incredibly energy inefficient on purpose. The idea is that using up inordinate amounts of electricity - and probably paying a lot for it - makes it less profitable for someone to muck up the ledger. As a result, Ethereum uses about as much electricity as the entire country of Libya.

Airlines and Ethereum

When someone makes, buys, or sells an NFT using Ethereum, they're responsible for some of the emissions generated by those miners. What's still up for debate is whether NFTs are significantly increasing emissions from Ethereum or if they're just taking on responsibility for emissions that would have been generated by miners anyway. Without NFTs, miners would still be plugging away at puzzles and polluting. And NFTs are still a relatively small portion of all Ethereum transactions.

Figuring out the culpability of NFTs is a little like calculating your share of emissions from a commercial plane flight

Figuring out the culpability of NFTs is a little like calculating your share of emissions from a commercial plane flight, according to Joseph Pallant, founder of the nonprofit Blockchain for Climate Foundation. If you're on the plane, you're obviously responsible for a portion of its emissions. But if you hadn't bought the ticket, the plane probably would have taken off with other passengers and polluted the same amount anyway.

Individual behavior becomes a bigger problem, though, when it drives trends. If enough people decide to start flying who weren't planning to before, an airline might decide to operate more flights - which means more emissions overall. "Many NFT transactions send a stronger economic signal to the miners which may lead to increased emissions," Susanne Köhler, a PhD fellow who researches sustainable blockchain technologies at Denmark's Aalborg University, said in an email. If NFTs significantly push up the value of Ethereum, miners might try to cash in by upping how many machines they use. More machines generally mean more pollution. (And even if new machines are better at solving puzzles, making them more energy-efficient, proof-of-work puzzles are designed to get progressively more difficult. Again, the system was designed to keep things inefficient.)

Alternatives to Ethereum

There are other strategies for keeping a blockchain secure that might not be as hard on the planet. The most popular alternative to proof of work is a system called "proof of stake." NBA's Top Shot, the marketplace where basketball fans can buy NBA highlights as NFTs, operates on the Flow blockchain, which is an example of an arguably more centralized blockchain running on the proof-of-stake model. This system still requires users to have some kind of skin in the game to dissuade bad behavior. But instead of having to pay for huge amounts of electricity to enter the game, they instead have to lock up some of their own cryptocurrency tokens in the network to "prove" they've got a "stake" in keeping the ledger accurate. If they get caught doing anything fishy, they'll be penalized by losing those tokens. That gets rid of the need for computers to solve complex puzzles, which, in turn, gets rid of emissions.

"Electricity consumption will literally over a day or overnight drop to almost zero"

Ethereum has said for years that it will eventually switch to proof of stake. That's what crypto art optimists are hoping for.

"That would essentially mean that Ethereum's electricity consumption will literally over a day or overnight drop to almost zero," says Michel Rauchs, a research affiliate at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

The problem is that people have been waiting for years for Ethereum to make the change, and some are skeptical that it ever will. First, Ethereum will have to convince everyone that proof of stake is the way to go. Otherwise, the whole system could collapse.

"If not everyone agrees to that change, you're going to be in a situation where the network just falls apart," says economist Alex de Vries. "It can literally break into multiple chains if not everyone runs the same software. That's the downside of trying to upgrade public blockchains like Ethereum."

Private blockchains do exist, and some, like Flow, are completely devoted to NFT transactions, allowing them to sidestep some of the issues with cryptocurrencies like Ethereum. But those kinds of blockchains move away from what cryptocurrencies were supposed to do in the first place, which is create a decentralized network where anyone can make transactions without the oversight of a single institution.

There are other ways to bring down emissions from NFTs and keep a more decentralized proof-of-work network. One potential solution is to build out another "layer" on top of the existing blockchain. Working on this second layer can save energy because transactions happen "off-chain" - away from the energy-intensive proof-of-work process. For example, two people who want to trade NFTs might open up their own "channel" on the second layer where they can make a virtually unlimited number of transactions. Once they're done doing business, they can settle up the net result of their transactions back on the blockchain, where it can be added to the verified ledger via the proof-of-work process. You're essentially bundling or netting a whole bunch of transactions into just a few that need to take place on the inefficient blockchain, which ultimately saves energy. The bitcoin Lightning Network, launched in 2018, is an early example of a "second layer."

Renewable energy isn't a perfect solution

Then there's the most straightforward solution to the emissions problem of NFTs: clean energy. If more cryptocurrency machines run on clean energy, emissions go down. This is starting to happen, but there's still not a clear picture of how much cryptocurrencies are mined using renewables. For bitcoin, in particular, for which there's the most research, the estimates vary wildly - from 35 to 80 percent. Some experts, like de Vries, have argued that relying on renewable energy isn't a perfect solution for proof-of-work cryptocurrencies either. If mining for tokens continues to be extremely energy intensive, it will continue to put pressure on electricity grids and eat up renewable energy that could otherwise go toward something arguably more urgent - like heating or lighting homes.

Leaner, Greener NFTs?

While people try to hash out the kinks in all of these proposed solutions, the climate crisis grows more dire every day. Against the very real backdrop of climate-related disasters, there will still be people who refuse to participate at all in a system that they think is inherently harmful and environmentally destructive.

On the now-defunct page of cryptoart.wtf, a note points readers to GitHub pages and essays that guide people through carbon footprint calculations and current thinking on the topic. "CryptoArt is a tiny part of global emissions," the note reads. "Our actions in this space is a reflection of the mindset that we need in our efforts for larger-scale systemic change."

Potential fixes to the NFT climate pollution problem are in the works

All of the potential fixes to the climate pollution problem of NFTs are in the works to varying degrees, but they haven't been widely adopted yet. Still, a lot of artists - and even some environmentalists - are optimistic about crypto art. "I think in the next year, year and a half, the emissions will be a non-issue," says Blockchain for Climate Foundation's Pallant.

Ultimately, artists are the ones pushing the most for change. If marketplaces for NFTs don't start to meet their demands, artists could start minting their NFTs on marketplaces using cleaner cryptocurrencies. There's already an artist-led effort to raise money to reward people who can figure out new ways to make crypto art more sustainable. Anyone who wants to support those artists by buying their work can migrate along with them to less polluting platforms - or maybe just buy a physical copy of their work.
Elizabeth Lopatto and Jacob Kastrenakes contributed to this report. Update March 15th, 12:05PM: This story was updated to include the term for a fee associated with making a transaction on Ethereum.

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The climate controversy swirling around NFTs

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Most NFTs are bought and sold with Ethereum, a cryptocurrency that guzzles up energy and pumps out a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. Artists are fighting over whether there can be a more sustainable future for crypto art.

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Our co-operative had plans to add NFTs into our game initially, but considering its environmental impact and that blockchain technology is still in its early stages and could be grossly overhyped, we decided to drop it from our project.

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NFTs are unique digital collectibles on the blockchain. This feature makes them suitable to use in games as representations as characters, consumables, and other tradeable items.

NFT games have become popular in the Game-fi world as a way to earn income. You can sell your in-game NFTs to other collectors and players and even earn tokens with play-to-earn models.

When moving your gaming NFTs, make sure you transfer them to a compatible wallet. Also, look out for common scams whenever you send the NFT to an NFT marketplace or other user. Finally, read the rules carefully of any NFT game you play to see any chance of loss.

NFT games are mainly present on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Some offer a battling experience with collectible characters like CryptoBlades and Axie Infinity, and others use collectible cards like Sorare.

Binance also offers NFT Mystery Boxes, which give holders the chance to own NFTs of varying rarity. These Boxes are included in Collections partnered with NFT games.

From their beginnings with the CryptoKitties craze, NFT games have developed and begun to offer play-to-earn models. Game-Fi, as it's become known, mixes the worlds of finance and gaming, providing players opportunities to earn income as they play. You no longer need to only rely on winning, finding, or breeding a scarce collectible worth thousands of dollars. Players can now choose to experiment with multiple gaming models in various themes aside from collectible animals.

A Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is a digital, cryptographic token on the blockchain representing a unique item. An NFT has many use cases. It could be a digital asset in a game, a collectible piece of crypto art, or even a real-world object like real estate. NFTs have solved the long-standing issue of creating decentralized digital collectibility and ownership in a "copy-paste" world.

An NFT is non-fungible. This property means each token is unique and cannot be swapped identically for another token ever. You can trade 1 BTC ( bitcoin) for another 1 BTC equal in every single way. With an NFT, this is impossible, even with NFT art released in a series with multiple versions. In this case, each NFT's metadata will differ, just like you would have in a numbered series of prints.

NFT games are different from just holding crypto-collectibles in your wallet. An NFT game will use NFTs in its rules, mechanisms, and player interactions. For example, a game could represent your unique character or avatar as an NFT. Digital items you find while playing the game could also be NFTs. You can then swap or trade your NFTs with other players for profit. A newer, play-to-earn model also allows you to generate income from NFT games which we'll discuss more later.

So how do you take NFTs and technically implement them into a game environment? To swap, create, and implement NFTs within a game, developers create smart contracts that make up the rules for the NFTs used. Smart contracts are self-executing pieces of code stored on a blockchain.

CryptoKitties, for example, has a small number of main contracts that structure the game. The most famous is their geneScience contract that determines the random mechanics that generate new cats. The game developers initially kept its code secret. Interested players even created tools to analyze the odds of particular traits in cats turning up. With this information, players could optimize their chances of developing a rare breed worth more money.

Play-to-earn NFT games give users the chance to generate an income stream through playing. Typically, a player is rewarded with tokens and occasionally NFTs, earning more the longer they play. The tokens earned are often needed as part of the game's crafting process.

The token method is usually the more stable of the two, as tokens can be earned steadily through play while NFT drops are more chance-based. Play-to-earn has been especially popular with users in low-income countries as an alternative or boost to fixed income or social security.

Axie Infinity has become one of the most well-known play-to-earn games. The game requires an initial investment to purchase three Axies, or you can receive a free Scholarship from another player. Once you have a Starter Team and begin completing tasks and challenges, you can earn Smooth Love Potion (SLP), an ERC-20 token tradeable on exchanges.

Breeders use SLP to breed new Axies, creating an economy for the item. Axie Infinity became particularly popular in the Philippines, where many users started to live off its play-to-earn model. Many players are making between $200 to $1000 (USD) per month, and some even more than that depending on the market price and time invested.

In-game NFTs offer another way for you to generate an income through playing NFT games. Rather than earning a fungible ERC-20 token like SLP in Axie Infinity or SKILLS in CryptoBlades, you earn NFTs that represent collectible items. This gameplay mechanism is the traditional way of generating income with NFT games. Items will vary in their worth based on their cosmetics, rarity, or utility based in the game.

CryptoKitties is one example of a game that relies only on the collectibility of in-game NFTs. There is no way to keep playing and earn a steady income without the element of chance. Most newer NFT games offer a mixture of both play-to-earn and in-game NFTs.

The amount of money you can earn playing an NFT game will depend on the specific game's mechanics and market demand. The money you make will come from other users who value the NFTs or cryptocurrencies earned in the game. You will need to cash out by selling your goods on a market, exchange, or auction house. With NFT games, value is derived either from the NFT or token's collectability or in-game utility. These two factors also lead to speculation.

It's possible to lose money playing NFT games. The exact amount depends on the type of game you're playing, its mechanics, and the value of the NFTs you're handling. Losing money doesn't necessarily mean you're being scammed. As NFTs are speculative and their value depends on what people place on them, your losses also depend on market forces. Like any crypto investment, only spend what you can afford to lose.

With the value some NFTs are worth, it's a common fear to lose them while playing a game or interacting with the blockchain. Whether you've purchased your NFTs or earned them in-game, you need to make sure you keep them secure. In short, it's possible to lose your NFTs if you aren't careful. However, your chances of losing them are minimal if you follow the best practices we'll outline later.

There are few possible ways you might lose your NFT:

1. You attempt to transfer it from your wallet to another that doesn't support your NFT's token standard.

2. You are the victim of a scam or fraud, and you send your NFT to a scammer.

3. You give a malicious smart contract permission to access your wallet, and it takes your NFT.

4. You lose it as part of the rules of a game.

Apart from the last, you can avoid the situations above with some improved knowledge of NFTS, blockchain technology, and scams in general. Just like you wouldn't use PayPal or internet banking without understanding how to use it correctly, the same goes for NFTs. To make sure you don't lose your NFTs, you should:

1. Confirm that if you are sending your NFT to another wallet, you aren't falling for a scam. You can see the most common ones in our 5 Common Cryptocurrency Scams and How to Avoid Them guide.

2. Understand the types of tokens and blockchains your wallet or platform supports. ERC-721 and ERC-1155 are the most common NFT token protocols for Ethereum, and BEP-721 and BEP-1155 are the most common for Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Always make sure you're sending them to the correct address and never assume their compatibility.

3. Only interact with smart contracts from reputable projects you can trust. If you permit a smart contract to interact with your wallet, be aware of the risk that the contract could remove your funds.

4. Check carefully the rules of the game you're playing. Some NFT games allow you to trade with other users or use NFT consumables. These could be items or potions for example. Familiarize yourself with the game to avoid any unwanted surprises.

There's a wide range of NFT games available, with the majority on BSC and Ethereum. Some offer more traditional video game experiences, and others depend mainly on the collectibility of NFTs.

Axie Infinity

As we mentioned before, Axie Infinity follows a model similar to Pokemon with collectible creatures and battles. Axie Infinity is on the Ethereum blockchain and provides users a potential income based on trading Small Love Potions (SLP), Axies, and Axie Infinity Shards (AXS). SLP and AXS are both available to trade on Binance.

Sorare

Sorare is a fantasy football game with collectible, tradeable soccer players from real life. You create a five-player soccer team using either free cards for beginner players or purchasing tokenized cards. You can earn points to level up for every game you win, goal you score, or other events you complete.

Gods Unchained

Gods Unchained is a tradeable NFT card game on Ethereum similar to Magic The Gathering or Hearthstone. Gamers build decks with different powers and strengths to combat other players. As you win, you find in-game items to use or sell. If you win Ranked games, you can begin to earn Flux that lets you craft powerful NFT cards. You can then take your profits by selling them or reinvest in new cards and continue the process.

Binance NFT Collections

Binance NFT Marketplace provides an NFT gaming experience with NFT Mystery Boxes and Collection partnerships. These partnerships range from digital artists to NFT games. Every purchasable Mystery Box contains a random NFT of a different rarity from the Collection. You can either open the box to reveal the NFT or sell it without opening it.

NFT Collections contain several NFTs and Mystery Boxes centered around a theme or project. Some of the most popular so far have been Game-fi Mystery Box Collections. Let's take a look at a few:

1. The MOBOX Collection. MOBOX is a gaming platform on BSC combining DeFi yield farming with NFTs. The Collection involves NFT Mystery boxes containing MOMO NFTs with randomized hashing power in the MOBOX platform. The more hashing power the NFT has, the more valuable the MOMO is in MOBOX's games.

2. The My Neighbour Alice Collection. My Neighbour Alice is a virtual world-building game featuring NFT cosmetic items. While the game assets contained in the Collection's Mystery Boxes are cosmetic only, users still value them and give them worth in the secondary market.

NFT gaming takes digital collectibles and creates rules for players to interact with each other's NFTs. While some people value NFTs for their collectibility, others want them for their utility. Many NFT games work like a trading card game, but not everyone who collects the cards intends to play. Game-fi has now created new NFT gaming economies that have changed how people can earn using NFTs. To make money, it's not just about luck and collecting anymore; it's also about playing too.

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What Are NFT Games and How Do They Work? | Binance Academy

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NFTs are unique digital collectibles on the blockchain. This feature makes them suitable to use in games as representations as characters, consumables, and other tradeable items. NFT games have become popular in the Game-fi world as a way to earn income. You can sell your in-game NFTs to other collectors and players and even earn tokens with play-to-earn models.

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It’s Hard to Tell When the Crypto Bubble Will Burst, or If There Is One (Published 2022)

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Crypto prices are highly volatile, as this week’s sell-off showed. But die-hard enthusiasts believe prices will keep soaring in a world where traditional notions of value don’t apply.

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What is the Dotcom Bubble?

The dotcom bubble is a stock market bubble that was caused by speculation in dotcom or internet-based businesses from 1995 to 2000. The companies were largely those with a ".com" domain on their internet address.

The dotcom bubble's origins can be traced to the launch of the World Wide Web in 1989, the subsequent establishment of internet and tech-based start-up companies during the 1990s, and rising momentum as the decade came to its end. The period marked the emergence of the widespread use and adoption of the internet from shopping online, communication, and a source of news.

Understanding the Dotcom Bubble

Several online and technology entities declared bankruptcy and faced liquidation - namely Pets.co., Webvan, 360Networks, Boo.com, eToys, etc. However, other internet-based companies struggled but survived and are giants today, notably Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, Qualcomm, and Cisco.

The bursting of the bubble caused market panic through massive sell-offs of dotcom company stocks, driving their values further down, and by 2002, investor losses were estimated at around $5 trillion.

Characteristics of the Dotcom Era

The frenzy of buying internet-based stocks was overwhelming, as many internet-based companies, so-called dotcoms, were starting up. Because they were in a fairly high-growth industry, they needed funding. Funding came primarily from venture capitalist firms. Lenders and individual investors also followed later.

Most startups did not adopt viable business models, such as cash flow generation; hence, they were overvalued and highly speculative. It culminated in a bubble that grew rapidly for several years.

Outrageous valuations were placed on these companies, and share prices continued to go up as demand was overwhelming. Therefore, the bursting of the bubble was inevitable and resulted in a market crash, which was more conspicuous on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange.

The dotcom bubble crash was a shock event that resulted in massive sell-offs of stocks, as demand waned and restrictions on venture financing increased the rate of the downturn. The crash also resulted in massive layoffs in the technology sector, as it was inevitable.

The dotcom bubble started collapsing in 1999, and the fall precipitated from March 2000 until 2002. Several tech companies that conducted an IPO during the era declared bankruptcy or were acquired by other companies. Others hung by a thread as their stocks plunged to levels so low it was never envisaged.

Causes of the Dotcom Crash

The cause of the dotcom bubble can be attributed to the following factors:

1. Overvaluation of dotcom companies

Most tech and internet companies that held IPOs during the dotcom era were highly overvalued due to increasing demand and a lack of solid valuation models. High multipliers were used on tech company valuations, resulting in unrealistic values that were too optimistic.

2. Abundance of venture capital

Money pouring into tech and internet company start-ups by venture capitalists and other investors was one of the major causes of the dotcom bubble. In addition, cheap funds obtainable through very low interest rates made capital easily accessible. It coupled with fewer barriers to acquiring funding for internet companies led to massive investment in the sector, which expanded the bubble even further.

3. Media frenzy

Media companies encouraged people to invest in risky tech stocks by peddling overly optimistic expectations on future returns and the "get big fast" mantra. Business publications - such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Bloomberg, and many investment analysis publications - spurred demand through their media outlets adding fuel to a burning fire and further inflating the bubble. Alan Greenspan's speech on " irrational exuberance " in December 1996 also set off the momentum on technological growth and buoyancy.

How to Avoid Another Bubble

The measures below provide some insights on how to avoid another internet bubble:

1. Proper due diligence

Investment in new start-ups and similar tech companies should only be considered after carrying out proper due diligence, which involves a closer look at the company's fundamental drivers of value, such as cash flow generation and sound business models. The long-term potential of a stock should be properly analyzed, as a short-term focus will lead to the formation of another bubble.

2. Removing "investment of expectation"

Investors should desist from investments based on unrealized potential in entities that are yet to prove their cash flow generating ability and overall long-term sustainability. The expectations lead to the emergence of a bubble through speculation.

3. Avoiding companies with a high beta coefficient

During the dot-com bubble, most tech stocks posted high beta (greater than 1), meaning their downfall in times of recession would be much more than what the average market fall would be.

A high beta coefficient signals a high-risk stock in times of a market downturn. Since the opposite is true when there is a market boom, investors should be wary of a bubble formation.

More Resources

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The dotcom bubble is a stock market bubble that was caused by speculation in dotcom or internet-based businesses from 1995 to 2000. The companies were largely those with a ".com" domain on their internet address.

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There was an interesting point about tech hype and our tendency to advertise and capitalize on virtually meaningless or just not needed innovations such as 8K and VR

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We would like to avoid hiring freelance work as much as possible, and instead recruit the artists we are still missing as equal partners into our co-operative.

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Think freelancing creates a perfectly equal playing field? These survey results show otherwise.

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Image: Solar installers from PV Squared, a worker cooperative and certified B-Corp

Are mission-controlled, employee-owned companies better environmental stewards than conventional corporations? Is transitioning to employee ownership a more likely path to keeping a firms' ecological mission alive, compared to selling a firm to a large competitor? The answer to these questions is critical to enterprise design for the 21st century and beyond. If we understand the relationship between enterprise design and a sustainable, equitable economy, we can be more deliberate in the choices we make.

To illuminate this issue, the Fifty by Fifty project is launching a series of company profiles and interviews of thought leaders, as part of a research project funded by Partners for a New Economy.

We are looking in part, though not exclusively, at B Corporations that are employee owned, because these companies have a commitment to social and ecological benefit embedded in their governing documents. We've identified several dozen of these firms and will be profiling them, and others, in this series. Ownership by workers, combined with mission-driven governance, may be an emerging model - viable in today's economy - that embodies critically needed design elements required for environmental sustainability.

If the goal is system change, we as a society want to build and invest in durable enterprise designs that create and preserve environmental and social missions over the long term.

Our hypothesis is that firms that have shares predominantly trading in public markets are less capable of having a deep and genuine sustainability mission. Shareholders in publicly traded companies are large in number, geographically remote, disengaged from companies, and structurally unable to effectively voice social and ecological responsibility. Creating shareholders with different characteristics - fewer in number, close to the firm, engaged, committed to a common social or environmental mission - could help create companies compatible with an environmentally sustainable economy.

In this configuration, owners can become moral agents. Sustainability expert Carina Millstone, in her book Frugal Value, emphasizes that true sustainability cannot be driven by purely commercial concerns. The "business case" for sustainability is true only one-third of the time, MIT research has found. In two thirds of cases, there is no business case. True sustainability requires moral decision making. The question then is: in what ownership configurations is this possible?

We're on a journey to explore these questions and look forward to sharing what we learn along the way.

-Marjorie Kelly and Sarah Stranahan, for the Fifty by Fifty project.

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Employee Ownership and Ecological Sustainability

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Are mission-controlled, employee-owned companies better environmental stewards than conventional corporations? Is transitioning to employee ownership a more likely path to keeping a firms' ecological mission alive, compared to selling a firm to a large competitor? The answer to these questions is critical to enterprise design for the 21st century and beyond.

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How'd you end up doing what you do now? Were there a few particular forks in the road that helped you define your practice?
Right now, my practice feels like a braid of three different things. There's computational architecture and design, and thinking about-in a somewhat heavy, intellectual way-how different tools change how we design things, and teaching that. Then there is the community-organizing and space-building part of my work, which is really important to me. And then there's this idea of activist real estate, which is an inquiry into, "What are the financial structures necessary to create space, and how do you shift them?"

Around the time I was in grad school, Occupy Wall Street became interesting to me. I got really into it, which was surprising. There was a kitchen where people were making food, and just handing it out to anyone who wanted to eat. I can't really explain why, but it was really revelatory for me, like, "Wow, it doesn't take that much to feed people. It doesn't take that much to create social infrastructure." It was a very clear example of everyone working together, in what I would call a joyous and convivial way, to make infrastructure and support each other. I'd never seen something like this before, where everyone was like, "I'm rolling cigarettes for people who want to smoke cigarettes. I'm making sandwiches for people who are hungry." That was really impactful.

In grad school I was also reading and thinking more about financial inequality. And then I also went on a trip to Israel and Palestine, and did a lot of thinking about politics and power. I started questioning, "What are the financial structures of how architecture is supported? Who are buildings built for? Why are so many architectural practices so connected to luxury?" Space is so interesting, yet the architectural discipline is dominated by visual aesthetics, and not usually the other aspects of it.

And so most of my projects started leaning towards that. I remember in grad school, designing projects that leaned towards alternative-currency building systems, or into developing new economies through space.
What's an "alternative-currency building system?"
For example, I had a project that was set in Japan, where there's an alternative currency called "Fureai Kippu" ( ふれあい切符 in Japanese, or "Caring Relationship Tickets"). It's for elderly folks to give young people tokens of gratitude for doing grocery work or helping out around the house. I designed a combination of a retirement home for the elderly, and a co-living space for early- to mid-20-year-olds. Because there are a lot of older people in Japan with a lot of disposable income, but not a lot of social connections, and then the exact inverse for younger people. So within the space, there would be an ecosystem that ultimately had a social effect.

These are the kinds of projects I got really into. Then towards the end of grad school, a friend approached me for help finding an architect for the nonprofit he was running, called Prime Produce. I thought about it for a day and I was like, "Actually, I will give you my own pitch in two weeks. If you don't like it, then I'll help you find someone else really great." After that, I got together with two other friends and we started working on the building. Two weeks later we pitched to him and his board of directors. After months of talking about it, they agreed, so we started working on this real building project right at the end of school.

As we started to design it, I was having so many interesting conversations with [Prime Produce's founding members] Jerone Hsu and Chris Chavez about how the space would inform the social interactions, like, "What would happen if the second floor was all shoes-off? What kind of space do you need to make decisions within?" And so the spatial and social were really mixed within our discussions.

At some point, Jerone and Chris were like, "Maybe you should just join our group?" So I decided I should put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. I became part of Prime Produce because I thought working within such a group would enable me to explore this social extension of what architecture can and should be.
Can you describe what Prime Produce is?
Prime Produce is an intentional community of people, all of whom are trying to serve other people through their work. We have members working on racial justice nonprofits, mindfulness meditation, advocacy for community gardens, and so many other things. There are also some artists in the space. It's kind of like a commune, but for work. It's a cooperatively run group, so everyone is a member of the cooperative and all the decisions are made together.

Photo from Architecture and Labor fundraiser by The Architecture Lobby, hosted at Prime Produce
What does it take to be a cooperative?
There are a few principles involved in being a cooperative. They used to be called the Rochdale Principles. It started with those in the early 20th century, and now there's an international association of cooperatives. But basically, to be a cooperative, all decisions must be made by members via consensus, or modified consensus.

Consensus often says that everyone has to be okay with something to move on; modified consensus might mean like 90%, or 95% can be okay with it. Consensus doesn't mean unanimous support. Often, it means decisions are passed with some people being like, "I disagree with this, but I'm okay with it passing." That, I think, is really healthy because it doesn't mean everyone agrees; it means everyone is okay with something moving on because there's enough trust in the group.
When you're creating a social space in which trust is so important, how do you think about engineering that?
I like to think of gardening metaphors, like growing trust. You have to water it-not too much, not too little. And things will always grow in different directions and with different outcomes than you're expecting, but that's okay.

Another part of growing trust is being really open about how power flows, or how money flows in different projects. Like, what are the finances of the project? And being really honest about what is either the explicit power structure that's present, or the implicit soft power structure that's present.
What does that look like, practically speaking?
Let's say we're making a decision about holding some event, and the person who wants to hold the event is a friend of mine who's not part of our group. We have this very specific process-a form that people need to fill out-so that all of the members in the cooperative can see what the event is, before we decide to host it or not. Acknowledging soft power would be like, "I really want this event to happen, but I'm also aware that this person is a friend," and so explicitly stating that, and then maybe trying not to talk a lot during the decision-making process-like, trying not to have my voice be too loud, and recognizing that since I am a founding member of the space, I may have more social sway.
That requires a certain level of awareness of your own power, and the dynamics of how decision-making actually works. How do you self-check your own power?
My theory about power is that you never feel powerful, you only feel comfortable. Like, rarely are we like, "Ah ha ha, I am so powerful!" It's more like, "I just feel really comfortable," you know? But not feeling powerful usually manifests as feeling uncomfortable. That's why, in an office context, the boss could be like, "Let's all go have drinks on Friday, yeah?" And then someone who works for the boss feels like, "I'm uncomfortable, because I want to say no, but I can't." So I think self-checking means asking, "Do I feel really comfortable?" And if I do, I'm probably holding some power that I'm not too aware of.
As someone who's juggling a lot of demands, how do you balance the desire to be a productive, accomplished person with the desire to take care of yourself?
That's something I'm definitely still finding ways to do. I have always prioritized working for and with the collective over taking time for myself. Now, I'm in the process of slowly shifting that. Part of it is setting good time boundaries. This is aspirational, I guess.

Also, trusting and communicating with others is really important for finding balance. One of the nice things about a cooperative or collective is that people support each other. If you say, "Hey, I'm going to be away for this time. I can't work on these things," people will sub in. At Soft Surplus, another cooperative space for making and learning that Melanie Hoff, Austin Smith, and I started together, we have a gardening meeting. The idea is that gardening is a metaphor for taking care of the space, but there are no gardeners. It's not a singular role, it's a verb. So we have this gardening meeting every Tuesday, and we have a structure of facilitating it that has gradually evolved. Someone will take notes, and someone will then organize those notes and post them to our Slack, so everyone can see them. The roles always rotate.

An important thing worth noting is that there are so many people who create these spaces, and who have sculpted them into what they are now. It's important for me to say that I can't and don't personally speak for Soft Surplus and Prime Produce-with collectives and cooperatives, it's easy to risk them being misrepresented by a single person. The community garden metaphor I usually use is that we might have helped create the water irrigation system, but we certainly didn't grow the plants. The actual growth is a shared, collective, long-term process.

Jo Freeman talks about this in The Tyranny of Structurelessness with the idea of the "star" system. Like the parable of three blind people touching an elephant, my perspectives on these communities will always be limited, sometimes incorrect, partial, and personal. But I think this is a really good thing. Everything I shared here is just my personal viewpoint on a luscious garden, many parts of which I don't see.

Photo from Air Sessions Workshop at Soft Surplus, taught by Austin Wade Smith and guest teacher August Lehrecke from Pneuhaus, with students from the Cooper Union School of Architecture
That's a nice metaphor-in a cooperative, you are one plant contributing to the larger garden. Has it been hard to learn to operate this way yourself, and then teach other people how to operate this way? What has it been like to create these sorts of non-hierarchical spaces within a country that functions primarily through capitalist and patriarchal structures?
It's interesting. Part of me is like, "Yeah, it takes some getting used to." Everyone comes from different places. When we all gather together, we have, I don't know, decades of a certain kind of hierarchy training embedded in us from school and jobs and whatnot. It is an interesting process in letting that go.

So yeah, there is an adjustment period. There are a lot of organizational structures and lived practices embedded in our bodies that we just enact by default. But through explicit facilitation practices or when we make meetings happen in a certain way, that helps change these conditioned ways of operating. In the process of learning to work this way, what really helps is, again, trust. Trust lets us give each other slack or be more accepting, and that really helps things be cooperative. But it is hard.
Would you call the cooperative frameworks you have for running these spaces a type of social software or technology?
Yes, I do think of them as technology, but in the same way that chairs are technology or a colander or a frying pan is technology. It's open and sharable and usable and changeable, but without the implication of a highly deterministic sense of, "We're locked into this track and if we do this, it will certainly produce this outcome."
How do you keep a cooperative financially sustainable?
Well, with both of the spaces I'm part of, the main expense is rent. We pay our rent through member dues, mostly, and doing event rentals. We are pretty transparent about our finances. For Soft Surplus, I think a month ago, we did a budget meeting and we were like, "Here are our finances." Our spreadsheets are on a Google Drive that all members can access.

We also have a work exchange system so that certain members have lower membership dues in exchange for doing work that they have defined as being helpful to the space. As part of this program, members have researched nonprofits, fiscal sponsorships, 501(c)3s, and talked to other people on our behalf. It creates an opportunity for them to do a hybrid kind of personal- and work-research project. They then presented what they found out, and shared a bunch of resources.

We've only tried this approach once, and now we're starting to turn it into a system. I think a lot of things work this way, where the first time you try something, you just try it out without making a rule for it yet. Then the second time around, we'll try to have a good process in place. If you make a process too early, you can overthink things and make it too rigid. So we were like, "Let's try this thing out. Please tell us what you would like to work on for your work exchange." Now we're figuring out how to formalize this into a thing that all the members can apply to do, so that it's a little bit more accessible.

The finances are both a hard part and the easy part of running a cooperative. It's easy because it's very transparent and we share our numbers. Also, in Soft Surplus's case, Austin and Melanie and I, we initially put an investment into the space for the lease's deposit and renovation, and things like that. Our goal at the end of five years is not to make any money, but just to get that money back.
That's very generous.
Yeah, but also, we now have this amazing, socially beautifully space that we can make a lot of things in, and share with a lot of friends. We all have our own practices that we're looking to be enriched through this cooperative, and so far, it has been amazing. The fact that we're just looking to cover our costs after five years makes it very easy to be honest, if that makes sense.

Although, I do recognize that we have used a lot of our own labor in making it. I don't know if I'd call it self-exploitation, but it's in that territory, or maybe it used to be. Now it's a little bit more healthy because the space is running on its own, kind of.
It's tricky when you're doing all this work because you want to do it, and it's rewarding. But at the end of the day, you're like, "How fast until I burn out?"
Yeah, totally. I think burnout needs more social acknowledgement. I had some friends run a retreat series upstate once every month. Burnout started to happen to the people running it, but I think they didn't know it and we didn't know it until it was too late to fix. They were so excited to host people and we did have this system of cleaning up and whatever, but yeah. I think social acknowledgement of burnout, before it gets out of hand and things stop being sustainable, is really important.
Back to your earlier answer about alternative currency, it's almost like a currency of generosity or something. It needs to be reciprocated in some way, in order for it to be sustainable.
Yeah, it does. Most spaces we encounter are not spaces that are communal, as in a coffee shop, a coworking space, or an office space. They are spaces that run via capitalism and a whole network of hired hands, like janitors and everything.
Right, spaces that are more transactional.
Exactly. I feel like 99% of the spaces I enter into are transactional spaces, pretty much. Everyone has assumptions about spaces that are baked in from transactional experiences, so people would come to Prime Produce and Soft Surplus and be like, "Oh, who's your janitorial staff?" It was a really interesting challenge to use different metaphors, like, "Think of this as your living room," or, "Think of this as a commune." Because most of the spaces we see are run in a specific way, and we don't see a lot of alternatives to it, so people make a lot of assumptions.
If you were going to give somebody who is thinking of starting a cooperative space one piece of advice, what would it be?
Well first, definitely do it.

Beyond that, I think it's trusting in the collective. If you make a cooperative, you have to know that you can't design them; you can only grow them, like plants. If you grow one and you do it with other people, then everyone will undoubtedly have ideas about what the best way to grow it is. In my experience, there have been a lot of times where I've been like, "I think this is right," and things haven't gone my way. And in the end, that's turned out okay.

When you trust in other people, really incredible and unexpected things can happen. Usually, it's things where you're like, "Oh, I didn't even think of doing that," or, "Oh, I don't think that will work out well," but it actually does. Part of trusting other people might involve letting go of certain images you have of what the outcome should look like. If you can do this, then things can flourish in a really healthy way-like a healthy garden with a lot of different plants growing around each other.
A postscript note from Dan on the cooperatives and collectives mentioned: Melanie Hoff, Austin Wade Smith, and I started Soft Surplus together, and now there are many people who have grown and gardened it together: Amanda Lind, Andres Chang, Angeline Meitzler, Ann Haeyoung, beck haberstroh, Callil Capuozzo, Denny George, Édouard Urcades, Elizabeth Hénaff, Fei Liu, Jonathan González, Grace Jooyei Lee, Katie Giritlian, Lai Yi Ohlsen, Lily C. Wong, Lucy Siyao Liu, Nahee Kim, Pamela Liou, Phyllis Ma, Sandra Atakora, Taylor Zanke, and others. Prime Produce was initially founded as a non-profit by Jerone Hsu, and the physical space of the Prime Produce Apprentice Cooperative was initially created by Jerone Hsu, Chris Chavez, and myself. It is is now cooperatively organized by past and present members, residents, and fellows: Alex Qin, Amelia Foster, Chris Chavez, David Isaac Hecht, Emlyn Medalla, Home H.C. Nguyen, Jerone Hsu, Joe Rinehart, Larnell Vickers, Leng L. Lim, Marcos Salazar, Michelle Jackson, Patrick Paul Garlinger, Qiana Mickie, Qinza Najm, Rosalind Zavras, Sabrina Suliman, Saks Afridi, Wally Patawaran, Yasmine Fequiere, Yuko Kudo, Yvonne Chow, and so many friends, neighbors, and strangers. Dan Taeyoung Recommends:

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On growing a cooperative like you'd grow a garden

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How'd you end up doing what you do now? Were there a few particular forks in the road that helped you define your practice? Right now, my practice feels like a braid of three different things. There's computational architecture and design, and thinking about-in a somewhat heavy, intellectual way-how different tools change how we design things, and teaching that.

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Perfect for a small game studio we are currently making.
6-8 people
-should require full consensus for an idea to be put forward due to numbers
-equal revenue share
-we use gitlab to create isses that need to be solved, and assign them to ourselves to work on them in our own pace
-we don't really need a huge initial investment since everything we do is being produced in open source softwares (blender), or platforms which operate with a revenue share (unity, Steam ect.)
-governance, finance and ownership are equally distributed among our members.
-later stages, if the cooperative would grow too large to keep this structure, we are considering an employee stock ownership plan to maintain a more sustainable model

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For the past two years, I've worked with a team to build Ampled, an artist and worker-owned web platform for direct community support of musicians. By applying a cooperative business model to the web, we're making a platform that's owned and controlled by its community, instead of by investors. Our hope is that by developing this model, it can be a seed for something transformative: ideally a new economic operating system for sustainable community support.

Idealism aside, starting a cooperative business is not easy. Perhaps due to a residual Cold War-era aversion to anything resembling a critique of capitalism, alternatives to investor-owned corporations are barely taught in the vast majority of American business and law schools. When I began researching how I might start one myself, I went to the Business & Career Center at the Brooklyn Public Library and found exactly zero books on starting cooperatives. There were a few dusty books on co-ops in the basement archives, but trust me-they weren't much help. It's odd, because cooperatives aren't new, unusual, or rare. Recognizable names like R.E.I., The Associated Press, and Land O'Lakes are all co-ops. In many ways, cooperative ownership models predate investor-owned corporations. They're all around us, but can feel invisible.

In the book Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy, professor Nathan Schneider refers to co-ops as a "radical tradition." In this same spirit of passing on ideas through inherited knowledge, I'd like to share what I've learned about starting a cooperative through this guide. What follows isn't meant to provide a prescriptive technical checklist for creating a cooperative. If that's what you are looking for, Democracy at Work Institute has a fairly comprehensive library of resources. Instead, in this guide, I'm passing along the attitudes and beliefs that helped guide our process in the hope that they can be useful.

- Austin Robey, Worker-Owner/Co-founder of Ampled

A cooperative is a collectively owned enterprise that serves the interests of its members. This means a company owned by its workers, customers, or both.
Co-ops are for-profit, private enterprises.
There is often a misconception that co-ops are non-profits. This isn't true. Like traditional companies, co-ops are profit-seeking private enterprises that act in the interest of their shareholders. The primary distinction is that the shareholders in co-ops are its workers or customers-not its investors and founders. This means that the company's profits are distributed back to its members, instead of to a singular owner or group of executives.
Co-ops are controlled by their members.
In addition to profit sharing, cooperative member-owners are given a voice in business decisions. This does not mean sitting in a circle making consensus-based decisions. A cooperative may design elegant and transparent systems for decision making that meet the needs of the organization.
Co-ops are a constructive alternative.
In 2020, despite increased worker productivity, we see growing wealth inequality, an economic system that increasingly serves plutocrats, and stagnant wages. As workers and citizens, it's clear our needs are not being met by techno-solutionist progress. In Silicon Valley specifically, fortunes are being created by extracting value from our ideas, art, labor, relationships, and data. We've become digital sharecroppers-tilling on land we don't own, and giving our harvest away.

Historically, co-ops have emerged when markets have failed to meet the needs of a particular community, or to correct markets that have consolidated into monopolies or monopsonies. When the government or private market fails to provide solutions, collective actions are needed.

Co-ops are the answer when people organize and say, "If no one is going to build this for us, we'll build it for ourselves." For example, electricity was brought to rural American farms in the 1940s by community-owned co-ops when existing power companies determined they were not profitable enough to serve.
Co-ops are an answer to platform capitalism.
If you are starting a business or organization, pursuing a cooperative model could be an excellent choice if you are looking to enable workers to keep any generated wealth within their community, and protect the value of workers' labor from being extracted. Cooperatives can build local wealth, be more productive, and create quality jobs that tend to pay higher wages than investor-owned corporations.

Because they are more difficult to finance, cooperative business models are often easier to implement in instances when little startup capital is needed, and where workers are contributing their physical or freelance labor. This makes organizations that rely on a network of laborers or creative content producers a natural fit for the cooperative model.

However, in tech, where organizations may require more investment capital to build and grow, cooperative models are often not even considered as options. This is in part because founders are advised to craft their business goals and models to be attractive to traditional venture capitalists. It is also because community-based cultural commons are a blind spot for Silicon Valley. Sure, venture capitalists may sometimes flirt with the idea of distributed ownership or governance-but only if it involves some kind of blockchain token that can make them rich.

We need to free ourselves from startup monoculture and market-friendly conventional wisdom. We don't have to engage in pattern matching to fit what venture capitalists tell us is investible. Venture capitalists are the smartest idiots on the planet. We don't have to subscribe to their worldview. We need to have the imagination to view platforms as more than financial arbitrage machines, and instead as sustainable organizations serving as permanent vehicles for community prosperity.

We can create community-owned and governed organizations that serve our needs and allow us to capture and keep the value we create, instead of allowing it to be extracted from us. Co-op models can provide the constructive alternative we need.

It's important to remember that when we talk about cooperatives, we are talking about more than business entities or models-we are talking about core cultural values that give us humanity. The core function of a cooperative is to democratize ownership and control.
Cooperatives are organizations of people.
Cooperatives share:

When framing conversations about cooperatives, we should remember these core concepts. Co-ops are a way to give communities ownership and control. Technical frameworks and operational instruments like bylaws or the structuring of patronage dividends serve an end to share ownership and control amongst its workers, members, or customers. As you start your own cooperative, you will need to first articulate who you are sharing ownership and control with, and then work together or with outside help to build out a framework on the mechanics of how to do so.

"...The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change." - Audre Lorde

One of the most difficult challenges in starting a cooperative is unlearning biases toward market-driven models and behaviors. These biases can be subconscious and really powerful. Status-quo processes, systems, and rules are presented throughout our lives as timeless truths. Conventions and practices for incorporating and financing traditional businesses are widely understood and standardized.

However, when navigating a path forward, we have to create our own compass, not use someone else's map just because it's easier. Our compass should be our set of shared values.

We need to be critical of assumed truths by filtering them through our shared values.

Ask yourself:

We should be comfortable challenging accepted practices of businesses and startups. We should apply skepticism to hollow tech mission statements and the logic models of "conscious capitalism." We should reevaluate the cultural definitions of what it means to start a company or be successful.

By bucking convention, we can define new measures of success based on our values, and create our own purpose-driven counter culture. Values are the foundation of a human-centered organization and should lead all other decisions.

In order to build a constructive alternative, we have to understand the status quo. Similarly, if we want to create a new economic engine, we have to look under the hood of traditional businesses and learn how to disassemble their parts. This means starting with a foundational knowledge and frame of reference for how traditional businesses are financed, incorporated, and structured.

Co-ops don't have standardized formations like LLCs or C-Corps. There is no equivalent Legal Zoom or Rocket Lawyer for starting a cooperative. We have to learn the rules in order to bend them.
Rules To learn:

Ownership Structures: You'll want to learn about all the ways companies typically share and issue ownership. This includes understanding: common stock vs. preferred stock, employee stock ownership plans, stock options, restricted stock units, redeemable shares, to start.

Corporate Financing: Learn how companies tend to finance themselves. This includes venture capital, convertible notes, priced equity rounds, revenue-based financing, DPOs, SAFEs, equity crowdfunding, and more.

Corporate Governance: Learn how companies make decisions. This includes understanding the role of a board of directors vs. advisory boards, steering committees, and alternative management theories like holacracy and sociocracy.

For many of the concepts listed above, the best way to learn is to dive deep into startup literature. This collection of " MBA Mondays" from Fred Wilson's blog is helpful and comprehensive. Reading posts in the "Startup" topic on Medium can sometimes be insightful, although it is mostly a catalog of unoriginal thought.

It's also a good idea to learn how others have bent the rules of capitalism to create their own (non-cooperative) models. For example:

Eileen Fisher is not a cooperative, but has a progressive employee stock ownership plan, giving employees 40% ownership of the organization.

Buffer is not a cooperative, but is trailblazing new standards of c orporate transparency.

Sharetribe is not a cooperative, but has adopted a "steward-ownership" model, assigning special rights to an outside non-profit foundation tasked with preserving its social mission.

Starting a cooperative requires organizing people and selling ideas that may be unfamiliar or unintuitive to some. So as you organize your own cooperative, use storytelling as a tactic to get people excited about the new model you're building.

By mobilizing communities around a common purpose and shared vision of co-ownership, we can grow networks and unlock huge competitive advantages. Co-ops win by planting their flag, articulating what they stand for, and amplifying stories of dignified work.

We can best attract people to join a movement by articulating a compelling vision. We can bring workers and community to the front, and share narratives of the people we serve and the change we seek to make. Through storytelling, we can grow awareness and attract talent. In a world with creeping corporate malaise and meaningless jobs, people seek to apply their time, energy, and skills to something they feel matters.
A compelling narrative can unlock huge competitive advantages:

Decreased user acquisition costs through higher earned media conversion rates

Decreased operational startup costs through collective efforts

Additional revenue stream through membership fees and donations

Increased motivation to participate through common purpose, ownership, shared vision, and membership

Encouraged word-of-mouth dissemination

Starting a cooperative takes vision and hard work to pull off, but you don't have to go it alone. If you are committed to starting a cooperative, there are groups and individuals who want to help you. As a first step, look for "cooperative developers" in your area. These are consultants who exist to help create cooperative organizations. In NYC, there is a publicly funded initiative called the Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative that can connect new or existing cooperatives to legal, business, and financing support.

If anyone is specifically looking to develop an app or platform that is owned by its workers or users, look at Internet of Ownership or the Platform Cooperativism Consortium. Also, feel free to reach out to me at austin@ampled.com. I'd love to help and stand with you.

Ours To Hack And To Own, edited by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider

Patterns For Decentralised Organising, by Richard Bartlett

On growing a cooperative like you'd grow a garden, a TCI interview with Dan Taeyoung

Starting A Cooperative Platform: 10 Questions We Answered by Austin Robey

Equity-Free Fundraising: Here Are Our Revenue Share Term Sheets by Austin Robey

Interview: Stocksy's Brianna Wettlaufer And Nuno Silva On Building A Cooperative Stock Photo Platform
Platform Cooperatives: Solving The Capital Conundrum
Video: The Power of Cooperatives: Nathan Schneider & Jason Wiener at The Harvard Law Forum

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For the past two years, I've worked with a team to build Ampled, an artist and worker-owned web platform for direct community support of musicians. By applying a cooperative business model to the web, we're making a platform that's owned and controlled by its community, instead of by investors.

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This sort of speaks for itself

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Made By Jimbob, Denver, Colorado. 13,166 likes · 8,875 talking about this. Satirical cartoonist

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Yes, we can clearly see that it is only about 1% of people who get covid die. But if we only look at that number, or the recovery rate, we can easily miss the simple fact that even with lockdowns and mask wearing in place, that 1% came out to be 6.000.000 people as of 2022.03.07.

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Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

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COVID-19 Map - Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

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Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

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This is an example of a poorly thought out message. It is not to say that the fearmongering in mainstream media is entirely a good thing. But this is an example of using a number out of context to make a problem seem less prominent than it really is. Looking at recovery rates alone might make us feel better about our own chances, but it can also justify thinking we do not need to do anything against this virus.

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Regardless of what we might think now, Battleship Potemkin was created by people who truly believed it would help change people's minds for the better.

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The famous Odessa Steps sequence.

"The Battleship Potemkin" has been so famous for so long that it is almost impossible to come to it with a fresh eye. It is one of the fundamental landmarks of cinema. Its famous massacre on the Odessa Steps has been quoted so many times in other films (notably in " The Untouchables ") that it's likely many viewers will have seen the parody before they see the original. The film once had such power that it was banned in many nations, including its native Soviet Union. Governments actually believed it could incite audiences to action. If today it seems more like a technically brilliant but simplistic "cartoon" (Pauline Kael's description in a favorable review), that may be because it has worn out its element of surprise--that, like the 23rd Psalm or Beethoven's Fifth, it has become so familiar we cannot perceive it for what it is.

The Battleship Potemkin (1925)

75 minutes

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The Battleship Potemkin movie review (1925) | Roger Ebert

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"The Battleship Potemkin" has been so famous for so long that it is almost impossible to come to it with a fresh eye. It is one of the fundamental landmarks of cinema.

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Similarly to Ecosia, impossible foods and similar fake meat vendors realized, it is difficult for people to change their habits (eating habits this case). Someone who has meat in 80% of their meals will not receive the notion well, that they have to go completely vegan now.
In order to make it as frictionless as possible to make the switch, they try to replicate every minute detail of meat to make the transition seamless. Including texture, taste, smell and even the sound when you are cooking it.

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Impossible Foods | Sustainable Food for a Better Planet

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Eat meat, save the planet. Learn how Impossible Foods is transforming the global food system, one Impossible™ burger at a time

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A great example of how we can use our current systems to solve a major part of climate change. People use search engines like google very frequently, and the reality is, it's becoming more and more difficult to get them to make a conscious effort to make a donation or pay for something they otherwise wouldn't have to, just for a charitable cause. Using the advertising business model to their advantage, ecosia makes it almost completely frictionless for people to make the change they need.

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Ecosia is the search engine that plants trees

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When you search the web with Ecosia, the profits from the search ad revenue go to support tree planting programs.

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Regardless of the intention behind using your creativity to enact a positive change in the world, there will always be a major limiting factor: we aren't necessarily right about what is 'good'.
Creative propaganda, however we like to justify it, is just propaganda in the end, and always serves the creator's sense of right.

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When employed with the right mindset, creativity can be (and has been) an incredibly powerful agent in changing the world. Well thought out propaganda such as the "votes for women" pennies can infiltrate the mainstream in very effective ways and spread awareness about certain issues, which in turn can spark action.
Thinking creatively is also an immensely important factor in reaching solutions to global issues, that would otherwise be neglected by conventional methods.

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Creative conscience is essentially a non-profit, set out to create a better world through clever propaganda, incentivizing creatives to use their creativity for good.

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This 1897 penny is one of 11 known to have been countermarked by suffragettes between 1913 and 1914. They were probably all countermarked by one person working by hand, using the same letter punches usually used to inscribe metal objects such as nametags or even munitions or weapons. The coins are of Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, George V. On the first, as with this example, the punched letters cover Britannia's body, and on the latter two, the inscription covers the king's face.

Defacing money was, and is illegal, yet countermarking the coins was likely seen to be an effective method of advertising the suffragette cause whilst also demonstrating an ideological protest against male authority figures and a political system which disenfranchised women. Groups of suffragettes had been peacefully lobbying for the right to vote since the mid-1800s. The suffragette movement grew in the early 1900s, perceiving these peaceful methods to have been ineffective. They were willing to break the law in order to convey their message. Finally, in 1918 a small proportion of women were granted suffrage and by 1928 all women over the age of 21 were given the right to vote.

Countermarking, the practice of stamping a coin after it has originally been produced, has been practiced for centuries. It may be for a legitimate reason such as to mark a coin with a new value, or render foreign currency accepted within a country. However, the suffragettes would have been inspired by the long history of sending political messages by countermarking.

More information about the wider suffragette movement can be found on the BBC bitesize site.

Look

Who is on this old penny?

Can you see something that has been added after it was first made?

Think

Suffragettes stamped 'VOTES FOR WOMEN' on this penny in the early 1910s.

They were fighting for women to have the right to vote.

Why do you think they chose coins to spread their message?

Do

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Home Learning Look Think Do Votes For Women Coin This 1897 penny is one of 11 known to have been countermarked by suffragettes between 1913 and 1914. They were probably all countermarked by one person working by hand, using the same letter punches usually used to inscribe metal objects such as nametags or even munitions or weapons.

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Multi-surface 360˚ projection with directional surround sound

The 360˚ infrastructure presents multiple art forms and content possibilitiesfor large headset-free audiences; natural world, projection-based art, live performance, 360˚ films, agency/brand/product launches, future retail, gaming...

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Multi-surface 360˚ projection with directional surround sound The 360˚ infrastructure presents multiple art forms and content possibilitiesfor large headset-free audiences; natural world, projection-based art, live performance, 360˚ films, agency/brand/product launches, future retail, gaming...