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.
- 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.
- 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 by 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.
- 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. Members receive role-based patronage tokens for Producer [PDT], Purchaser [PCT], and Promoter [PMT] economic activity within the cooperative. The innovation here is we are able to directly link member contribution results to enterprise surplus created and pass through dividends accordingly. Producer over-performance is rewarded not exploited like it is by the for-profit corporatist shareholders!
- Collaborative commerce enterprises we call them [C2E]’s are the primary economic engines for the cooperative capital communities. Communities promote the [C2E]’s for producers and purchasers to deliver the goods/services to our members.
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…
Read More: medium.com