Keep in mind that, depending on local legal system, a co-op may not need to be registered as such. In Poland, for example, social enterprises can assume various legal forms, my favourite beng a civic association.
This is the obvious way, yes. But it can be also a customer-owned one (housing co-op), or mixed / multistakeholder (patient/doctor-owned medical service co-op). We are not constrained by XIXth-Century imagination. :-)
We already have open source software, design, devices. Perhaps the time has come for open source social business? Collectively developed, publicly available and cooperatively implemented business models?
When the purpose of a business is to meet social needs, with care for the planet and fair wages for working people, there is no reason to compete.
So we can jointly develop business ideas and support each other in implementing them.
What do you think?
Nope. They are Medical Doctors' Co-ops. In principle they are simply workers', or perhaps freelancers' cooperatives in the area of medicine.
As for dentistry, while more costly, the approach is potentially quite simple. The patients' co-op can provide fully equipped facility for independent practitioners to use. The lease agreement may specify all kind of additional conditions, like a quota of gratuit services or offsetting the cost of used materials against rent.
Self-determined healthcare is one of my strategic topics. While solidarity (social) clinics are known and growing formula of activism, in Polish conditions it is still too radical, and beyond popular grasp. On the other hand, we have a tradition of MD cooperatives, which is just a step from what we need. It is fully legal, assumed official registration (and some creativity). Baby steps will be needed anyway, probably starting from some kind of group purchase (of medical services) scheme.
Testing the water. (context: Poland)
I am permanently dumbstruck by the wealth of neglected opportunities for cooperative social ventures. There are many needs created by hostile capitalist modernity, that can be fulfilled in a win-win manner: affordable for customers, justly paid for providers.
In TePeWu we are working towards starting some such projects, and I am curious if anyone here is thinking along similar ways. To me, it is a reasonable first step towards building a solarpunk society.
Examples in Polish context:
If anyone is interested in a deeper conversation, I am happy to have it.
You have 20 GB quota with 5 GB daily limit, moderated. Enjoy.
Drop me a link to your channel, let me see it. I can adjust limits, of course.
The first phase of the Looking Up! is the prototyping of the entire platform. Translated into more practical language, this means that we have to deliver specific elements, tangible and intangible, which are to work together as envisaged in the programme.
The purpose of the prototype is to give us a practical demonstration how the platform works, as well as to give us the experience necessary to get the ‘production’ version up and running.
A properly functioning prototype will also make it easier for us to raise funds for stage two – implementation.
Planned duration of work on the prototype: 6-8 months from the programme launch (1 February 2024)
This is current (work in progress) functional map of the platform. If you are interested, talk to me here, or via matrix #PwG_open:min.tepewu.pl
Hello again.
Here is the updated map of our "Looking Up!" platform for education, information and inspiration towards community resilience. Pattern language is located there as an independent layer, on top of existing semantic wiki (Software stack to be determined yet). Such approach will allow us to work on it in parallel, independently for general platform development.
My suggestion is: let's meet at cryptpd.fr (my profile link), where I already started a document collection. We can also use a matrix room, either here or at min.tepewu.pl (my address: @kanenas:min.tepewu.pl).
I will be happy to compare notes and ideas and perhaps somehow make our (and other) initiatives interdependent in a good, ecosystemic way.
Building resillient and post-collapse maintainable infrastructure of all kinds (telecommunications included) is the main topic for the inspiration part. A lot of "building blocks" are already there - what we need is to integrate them, document and fill the gaps. PwG is intended to be an environment for such processes.
I skimmed through the safenet.tech and it is convincing indeed. We will certainly need to list it as an option, together with ipfs, hyfanet and other similar solutions. Thank you.
For further conversation, I invite you to our matrix server, at #PwG_open:min.tepewu.pl
The planetary revolution is here - for some time, it appears. Only, as it is not exactly what we expected, it sort of blindsided us.
But we need to see it clearly now and find our way to navigate the transition between old capitalist ecosystem towards the new one, largely uncertain - and largely malleable, which is an opportunity and threat at the same time.
In few days I will be announcing our flagship project for 2024. Once it is done, I will get back to the pattern language topic (which also fits nicely as one of "legs" of the said project). Meanwhile, I am looking for other relevant resources, so we will hopefully have something to start with. Hope for your contribution, too.
There are two priorities I keep in mind, when thinking about collapse-time technologies.
When it comes to electric power generation and various types of generators, I am very reluctant to accept generators based on rare-earth magnets. First, they are "bloody metals" indeed, mined and refined with extreme hurt to the planet and people. Second, their delivery chain is long and quite centralised which makes them possibly unavailable in case of disruption of the logistic system. While we wait for the US-sponsored program to develop alternative materials, still we can explore two avenues of research:
The recycling topic deserves separate consideration, in respect to a hypothesis of the "scavengers civilisation" as the next stage of human history. Meanwhile, we can have a closer look at constructions, using much more sustainable ceramic (aka ferrite) magnets, or no magnets at all.
If we can develop a "DIY" technology to make ceramic magnets, we can combine it with designs from 19th and early 20th Century and create alter-futurist line of more collapse-friendly electricity generators.
Anyone into pattern language, to be applied to increase community resilience and preparedness?
There is a multitude of sources, providing technical knowledge and solutions to various needs in the spirit of low-tech, appropriate technology and resilience. Appropedia is surely the most renowned of them, accumulating information from many valuable collections.
However, typically for a wiki, the structure of this vault is more suitable for studying, than for direct implementation.
Let us assume the following scenario:
We plan to build technical infrastructure for a small settlement, located on a particular patch of land. We are moderately tech-capable. We can read and understand a documentation; we can implement it, with some adjustments. But we have no knowledge nor experience broad enough to deep-dive into a wiki and find solutions suitable for our specific situation.
We need a tool to help us somehow connect our context with searching criteria, and to select matching solutions, or at least to shortlist them.
First step toward this goal is to build a structure - a pattern language - starting from various needs to fulfill, and showing logical combinations of technical solutions to be applied.
Based upon such structure, we can try to build guidelines helping to make the whole process of selection semi-automated, with enough space for human consideration and variety of contexts. Using such a guide would lower the threshold both for selection and decision-taking process, and for education, allowing users to grow their knowledge and competences.
Do you know any such initiative being in progress? Or abandoned, that could be revived? Or maybe you would like to co-develop it?
In my dayjob, there are four such nice blue sticks, gathering dust on my shelf. I have a possibility to put them online via Raspberry Pi.
So, if there is someone who may have an interesting idea how to put them to work for the good cause, talk to me.
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/46443
Old society is not going to leave the scene peacefully. They will go down kicking and screaming, until their last breath leeching energy and matter from the planet and all of us. When they die anyway, why should they let us survive?
So, should we have a SolarPunk warfare available to defend the planet (including ourselves) against "apres nous, le deluge" strategy of planet destroyers?
There was an attempt to create similar kind of warfare, within the ranks of US Army, of all imaginable places. The 1st Earth Battalion, if not exactly what we may imagine, was certainly planet-oriented. https://web.archive.org/web/20110811190649/http://arcturus.org/field_manual.pdf
So, what do you think of the initial question? And if we need it, do you know any examples that could help us answer it and, perhaps, develop the idea towards implementation?
As far as I know I am the only person trying to explore this topic as defined, at least in Polish context. So far I found two documents that are close to my idea, f lacking a live collective to keep them up to date and to support newcomers.