cofi:collaborative_finance [Knowledge Commons]

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This topic is part of [[gt:economy|Economy & finance]].
====== Collaborative Finance (CoFi) ======

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===== What is collaborative finance? =====

The commons movement is a backlash to the idea of private property, in which ownership of land and other assets is exclusive, which gradually splits society into classes of owners and of the dispossessed. But ownership is just a part of the problem. 

Collaborative Finance addresses another dimension of the problem, which is how the money and financial system puts the state, its institutions and its plutocrats between people struggling to make a living, skimming and confiscating their resources at every turn.

Let's consider some common, even essential, financial instruments:

  * Insurance
  * Pensions / Unemployment benefit
  * Gambling
  * Loans and mortgages
  * Saving and investment
  * Payments

These mechanisms' smooth and fair operation is critical because their failure ruins lives. Stringent regulation helps to protect against fraud and failure, but also to obstruct small players and innovators. Maybe this is fair - when it comes to risk management, the larger institutions can juggle more assets and cope with larger hazards. But this also leads to the financial sector being owned and run exclusively by the ruling class. Those elites can evade these regulations because they can afford specialist accountants and access tax havens. The products and tools are arcane and difficult for the government to regulate. Revolving doors, corruption and other mechanisms compromise the regulatory system. Despite all the government protection, violent speculative cycles, scams and abuses still happen, and justice fails to catch up. The largest institutions are often the most prolific criminals, and in some ways hold sway over government itself.

Meanwhile, for most of us the financial services have become like indifferent machines: algorithms decide if we are creditworthy; our pensions are used to finance polluting industry and war-criminal governments; we struggle to keep our data from predators and time-wasters. We watch all the money slipping through our fingers and being collected in enormous pools which overflow with riches we may never enjoy.

Being organised at such a large scale ensures that only remote rich people design these systems and derive all the secondary benefits. But what if there was a more appropriate scale, in which trust actually played a role, in which profit was not the prime directive and surplus was used to strengthen and stabilise the system? In which risk was managed by the people whose assets are being risked? What if the so-called free market had space for small-scale financial services, like house and car insurance cells for every street? What if pensions were managed by the local government which, after all, is the provider of elderly care? What if we could invest in the very businesses that produce and sell our necessities, as a way of ensuring our own security? What if those businesses turned around and invested in us, making our security mutual? And what if this myriad of local human financial organisations could de-risk through voluntary federation?

One of the first assumptions we unpack is about the role of [[cofi:money]], a public service that integrates all our activities with the omnicidal capitalist machine, implicating *each of us* as part of the problem. To what extent might we distance ourselves from that? How do we finance infrastructure when we don't want to yield financial returns? How can we manage the risk inherent in small groups and informal financial arrangements? Then how long does it take to convince people to use experimental tools for matters critical to their wellbeing?

===== What are the benefits of collaborative finance? =====
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If mainstream finance maximises profit for the owners, the benefits of CoFi are *not* greater rates of return on investment. Instead finance done collaboratively between peers should be less fearful, more flexible and less legalistic, more fun, more participative, more considerate of the environment and community. It should build social bonds, it should provide more non-monetary and serendipitous returns.

#CoFi is not envisaged as standing on its own, nor does it try to build community around a service. Instead #CoFi is a dimension of the commons, and of each commons. #CoFi is how any group or community manages its resources, short term and long term.

Its benefits might include having more control over your assets, being able to share your assets with people you care about or people who might reciprocate, having a source of credit or finance which is sympathetic to your or your cirmcumstances, and hopefully not losing everything in a macroscopic event like [The Great Taking](https://thegreattaking.com) or a financial crisis.

===== What can I do? =====
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Finance is always a shared activity - you can't do it on your own! But you can start by deprogramming yourself from  deep cultural indoctrination. Reflect on the meanings of words:

* **Money** is a means, not an end in itself. 
* **Value** is what YOU value, not the market.
* **Work** is the creation of wealth for yourself or for your community.
* **Wealth** is not the balance of your bank account but the quality of your life, your health and your relationships.
* **Security** is emotional and relational, not just physical.

/* make some of these into concepts */

With this grounding you can work with others to create wealth and security together. Building large-scale, trustworthy institutions from scratch takes years or even decades of patience, yet commoners have achieved it many times before. [[bsoc:building_societies|Building societies]] took hold and thrived amongst the urban poor of the Industrial Revolution; savings pools can be found in nearly all the monetised societies of the world; the [Mondragon Coop](https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en) still dominates a whole region of Spain. But there is a lot of churn in this field. Many projects fail to get off the ground, often for governance or personality problems, and if successful, there is always the danger of being co-opted and the temptation to sell out.

So building a more collaborative financial system can only happen gradually, cautiously, even if you feel the need for it painfully urgently. We do it because it is not glamorous and few others are paying attention. Financial structures become stronger the more they are leaned on, and the more you lean on it, the more you need to participate! That's the virtuous circle.

==== Come to the gathering ====
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{{:cofi:cofi_group_photo.gif?600|}}

Every summer geeks from this field meet in Austria to exchange ideas and collaborate around these ideas. [More information](https://collaborative-finance.net)…

===== Forum =====
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This topic belongs to the section [[gt:economy|Economy & finance]]. You can ask questions or add information on the corresponding [Forum section](https://forum.growingthecommons.org/t/economy).

===== Further resources =====
Here we point to some examples of new and established projects.

The Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) /* concept? */ is where it started for many of us: local groups serving each other and keeping account using abstract accounting units. The heyday was the 1990s, but many groups remain.

Any [ecovillage](https://ecovillage.org) /* TODO change into a concept, move link there */ involves collective managing of resources, whether it be around housing, energy, work, food or money.

A newer project, [Kin coop](https://kin.coop) offers fiscal hosting (a virtual bank account) to activist groups, saving them admin work, and ensuring their accounts are transparent.

In Stroud, UK the team that built this wiki [Stroud Commons](https://stroudcommons.org) is working on a whole cluster of projects related to resource management and finance .

[Local Loop Merseyside](https://localloop-merseyside.co.uk) (Liverpool) is bringing small businesses together to cancel out payments within the network, reducing cashflow risk for all of them. 

The [Economic Space Agency](https://ecsa.io) is rethinking economics, accounting and money from the bottom up.

In Kenya, [Grassroots Economics](https://grassrootseconomics.org) has developed its own tools and language to revive and update pre-colonial traditions of cooperation.

===== Related topics =====

- [Blockchain](bloc:blockchain) /* should be a concept */
- [Building societies](bsoc:building_societies)
- [Commons economy](coec:commons_economy)
- [Credit clearing](crcl:credit_clearing)
- [Credit commons](crco:credit_commons)
- [Credit unions](crun:credit_unions)
- [Cryptocurrencies](cryp:cryptocurrencies) /* should be a concept */
- [Local currencies](lcur:local_currencies)
- [Mutual credit](mucr:mutual_credit)
- [ROSCAs - rotating savings & credit associations](rosc:roscas)
- [Use-credit obligations](ucos:use-credit_obligations)

===== Specialist curators of this topic =====

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  * [[user:matslats|Matthew Slater]] of [[https://creditcommons.org|CreditCommons.org]]
  * [[user:mrauchs|Michel Rauchs]]
  * [[user:dil|Dil Green]] of [[https://www.mutualcredit.services/|Mutual Credit Services]]