What I’ve learned from Will Ruddick so far

You can just make up a new economy. And it helps if what you make up mirrors ancient indigenous practices of sharing and mutual obligation.

We want to make up a new economy of reliable abundance through collective local philanthropic investment where the gift comes back to be given again. That’s why we are talking to Will Ruddick. We want to do something similar to what he did.

I’d suggest aiming for nested cooperatives, including service cooperatives to serve the coops as outlined in Assets in Common, the new book and model I am finding compelling.

If businesses arose they could be organized in stewardship trust like forms, to enable the mission to stay intact, with nested coops to distribute ownership broadly and for the resources to be shared in the pattern Industrial Commons and Poder Emma have demonstrated that it is a reliable generator of abundance for good. Couple that with regerative philanthropy, artesian well philanthropy, where the gift comes back to be given again. Then you could build future focused infrastructure since you have reliable abundance coming back regularly you can plan around into the future. And they’d follow the existing models that have figured out how to pool and share resources with other people building similar economies based on reciprocity. 

When building new economies, you should build in reciprocity and mutuality now, before climate change forces into that kind of cross sector collaboration for our mutual survival.

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