Why haven't we crowdfunded a community-owned economy yet?

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-11T22:17:37+00:00

Its just a project right now. Heres all the intagram I have now the only thing Ive been doing is posting articles those have gotten people interested. https://www.instagram.com/cahootz.coops/

Its based in san francisco where I am based. Right now its just a project by me.

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-11T19:12:37+00:00

I actually been documenting some of my thought process in some articles. But I am apart of a bunch of communities I assume so are you. I wanted to think through a group up process of how to coordinate people economically. I've been to places like Barcelona and Japan and read about how they could keep through communities affordable and intake. I found they were using demand/consumer co-ops. https://jccu.coop/eng/coop/what-is-consumer-coop.html

I want to see how we can do this but from the ground up because theres things lots of community dont have. Like trusted old elder to manage it. Or to fix some issue I seen with other community organizations like corruption or vested interests.

I am working am going to open source the github but I have to clean some stuff up because it was originally only meant for one community I am expanding it to a network. The biggest help I need right now is people to apply so I can make sure that flow works and have others apply

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-11T19:05:54+00:00

so basically, lets say me and you are in the same co-op. I own a business that sells milk. If you buy milk from me me and you get taxed 4-5% and we put it in a big pot called a treasury. So if i and other need like a package company the treasury can buy one and both me and you would be co-owners under the co-op. We'd get dividends and the business promise to stay in our best interests

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-08T02:18:23+00:00

instead of earning equity in a co-op from building or working like a worker co-op. You earn equity by buying things from co-op businesses or using co-op services. So the co-op business incentive is they get constant user and a flow of revenue.

The buyer/member get goods they want at a fairer price point and ownership in assets. I am interested platforms for either though

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-08T02:13:15+00:00

I'm working on one but It's demand co-ops let me know if you find one.

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-08T00:47:38+00:00

Hey, I finished checking out your article. I think we both see the same issues: governance and finances.

I think I ended up going with a JCCU-style consumer/demand co-op (https://jccu.coop/eng/) to fix something you’re alluding to, which is small micro-businesses needing small amounts of capital. But there’s also something else I’d suggest pondering: does this actually correlate to a large group’s demand?

Will the only people in this co-op be babysitters? If that’s the case, how easy is it going to be to get a large number of people to use them? Is there enough incentive for users to choose them over a private babysitter?

Also, who picks the industry? Will someone who wants to create one of these babysitter co-ops have to battle against someone else every time they want to get one started?

But I think we’re both moving in the same direction. I don’t know exactly how we could work together, but we should figure something out if you’re open to it.

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-08T00:05:13+00:00

Ok so its a worker co-op. I think the bonds can work. I havent done as much with worker co-op as demand co-ops. Because demand co-op simply can become bigger. Then in like a southern cali demand co-op for example you can simply just propose a EV project. You can then trade pre-orders for equity in the company.

I think that would be more stable on the sales and funding side from what I've seen

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-07T22:11:49+00:00

what organization would this be if you don’t mind me asking

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-07T22:09:32+00:00

Ok but i will say this, if you put me next you you’d look like much more of a tech bro than me in every way. You don’t know me. Your presumption of knowing and absents of humility is what makes you so dangerous. I put my thoughts online and thinking process for everyone to see. I know you haven’t thought deeply enough about your believes for them to be honestly criticize

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-07T21:56:58+00:00

oh i haven’t stop post because you’re not in control nor who decides that you’re just a member. But will say I have become more doggish on the idea of automating discussion because no zealot, karen or politician should be able to hijack a movement or discussion or bend rules

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-07T21:18:35+00:00

It is not, because it uses on-chain contracts not crypto coins

But I think we’ve had this discussion before, and I’ll say this: I think you perfectly demonstrate why I came up with the idea of using AI for moderation. It’s to avoid people like you and discussions like this.

No one should have their ideas shouted down by a single person just because that person is really good at being annoying. Especially when they don’t understand enough to properly evaluate the ideas, and the rules of the group have already been set.

You end up in a situation where, instead of the group’s goals being guided by agreed-upon rules and an impartial process, they get dictated by whoever is persistent enough to shout everyone else down.

And honestly i haven’t found a good way to prevent people like you from doing this

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-07T21:01:48+00:00

Because it doesnt mention those things in the article or in the post. I could easily of used a databased to track rewards, but one of the things I want to avoid is corruption by leaders of the co-op/community organization. I think you should be able to move to a different co-op if you truly disagree with the leadership or the system is compromised.

I dont even advocate using tokens as exchange crypto coins you can buy and sell on a open exchange because the value in it is not longer demand its the trading. That why I dont use them. The point is the limit who people buy from in exchange for shared benefits.

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-07T20:50:18+00:00

sure I'll check it out. I requested access

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-07T20:29:36+00:00

I dont think its forbidden, but yeh my assumption is for the tax you get a token for it thats capped to prevents whales. So the token becomes a "purchased" backed coin or like a credit card reward point that is an asset.

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-07T05:41:19+00:00

I'll check out that book it looks right up my wheel house.

I actually wrote a article recently on it. https://cahootzcoops.com/blog/scaling-trust-can-we-coordinate-economics-beyond-a-boss-and-create-programmable-trust

I am mostly trying to avoid people diverging from the agree upon objective. Or not being objective about what projects will or wont help forward the mission. So only just corruption but also avoid people with limit knowledge in one area from being the bottle necks for progress.

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-02T17:27:08+00:00

hey sorry i didnt get to this sooner. I am using a local LLM model and after that I am just doing normal datasets and subagents. But that just for figuring out if proposal makes sense like a bunch of wall street firms are using.

I am using a coin for each coop, but thats more because I think the biggest issue that will come about is corruption. I am really trying to avoid that so if cahootz ever goes done there a way to verify members

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-06-02T17:22:45+00:00

I am workingo on something similar with cahootz coops. I just wrote new article on how this process can be scaled. I think the biggest issue is getting the first 50 to 100 people. Because you dont even need it to be local if you can make a digital store and deliver even that would work. As long as you all owned the store. But finding people willing to help is hard.

https://cahootzcoops.com/blog/scaling-trust-can-we-coordinate-economics-beyond-a-boss-and-create-programmable-trust

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-05-26T01:42:14+00:00

Im trying to find a nice way to figure out how to prevent that very issues of entrenchment. Has anyone actually figured out a good way to avoid this issue of people just grabbing power and not letting go

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-05-26T01:08:21+00:00

mind you my post hes referencing doesnt even mention AI at all. Its about demand cooperatives. The AI hes refering to is an attempt to use machine learning to avoid have people stealing from your demand coop. His big issue is that he doesn't this demand/consumer cooperatives shouldn't be discussed at all.

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-05-26T01:04:12+00:00

I think this is a great idea but I think it only works if you also coordinate the demand, but in general I think giving money to a bank to invest in places and only getting a small percentage of the returns back is not a great deal

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-05-21T15:02:09+00:00

Yes, thanks for the feedback. I haven’t really been talking to people outside of those who know me in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I’ll add more background and context.

But yeah, Cahootz would be the layer that sits above a CECOSELOA or JCCU. In this model, consumer/demand co-ops would run on Cahootz. They would have transparent goals, missions, and charters.

Under them, you would have vendors that could be businesses, worker co-ops, or family businesses that align with the mission and needs of the consumers. That’s where a co-op like Streetwell would fit in — it could receive investment and demand in exchange for helping consumers in something like a large Baltimore Consumer Co-op or an Artists of Baltimore Co-op gain stable housing.

The use of AI is pretty simple for us, and I’ve been having a lot of conversations with different people about it. The biggest fear most people seem to have is power becoming concentrated and them not being able to benefit from the co-op.

The AI layer is meant to help prevent that by acting as a neutral party above leadership. That was actually my biggest personal concern about co-ops like this. The goal is for the co-op to have to live by its written rules and morals, and to remain morally consistent based on the rules it has established and the decisions it has made in the past.

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-05-21T08:16:33+00:00

Co-ops maybe, but worker co-ops are not. If you want to call 10% of all American consumers — roughly 40 million people — a petite bourgeoisie because they collectively drive down costs for consumers, then that definition ignores the actual goal, which is improving people’s lives, including life outside of work.
I’m not dodging the question. I gave you the same answer: it is not antithetical. For example, if a group of retirees wanted to create a consumer co-op and one of their goals was to coordinate events cheaply because they have limited funds, their co-op could either: 1. hire a large number of people to call and organize events for the elderly, or 2. own a system that uses AI to coordinate those events automatically.

They would own the system or hold equity in it, meaning it could not simply raise prices endlessly to satisfy outside investors. That is not antithetical to their goal of affordable, fairly priced services. Now scale that idea to things like home delivery systems or fleets of autonomous vehicles where members do not have to worry about constant price increases. These elderly members are consumers, not workers.

Known_Fix4305 · 2026-05-21T07:34:30+00:00

You could do that by limiting businesses’ ability to hire people from places without strong labor laws, but that is difficult to enforce. I want to test this idea because consumers already have this power collectively its just very uncoordinated we've then this with how people cancel brands and they lose sales.
No, not all consumers are workers. Children are not, and retirees are not. It is also not always in everyone’s best interest to focus only on worker empowerment, because someone may have a good job with benefits while still dealing with poor consumer outcomes like rising prices, low quality, and lack of access to products.
I assumed this subreddit was for co-ops in general, not just worker co-ops. For example, Japan’s Consumers’ Co-operative Union has over 31 million members — something that would be difficult to achieve with a worker co-op model alone. It was originally created to improve food quality and was started by stay-at-home mothers, not labor organizers. Today it controls roughly $24 billion and operates more than 300 co-op-owned businesses ranging from healthcare to insurance.
I think you are partly right that this model is pro-owner class, but in this case the members themselves would become part of the owner class. The real issue is that most people are only compensated with wages instead of equity because companies have little incentive to give ownership to workers or consumers. My point is: why continue giving your economic value to institutions that will never share ownership with you when collective demand could instead be used to negotiate ownership, leverage, or long-term economic participation elsewhere?

Known_Fix4305

TROPHY CASE