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So if state-run media leads to propaganda, then the simple fix is for news orgs to be privately owned, right? Well, not really. Wanting journalism to be better than the ruling class’s mouthpiece is a bar lower than the Titanic’s liquor cabinet.

Just as pro-government pressure, whether ordered or inferred, can stain journalists’ honest efforts, private ownership can as well. Take, for example, The Washington Post, which, in August 2013 was the target of Jeff Bezos’s retail therapy. 

Gloucester agri co-op Stroud Micro Dairy has launched a £115,000 community share offer in a bid to secure full community ownership of its operations.

With the help of RMEOC, Fancy Tiger was able to transition into a worker cooperative, allowing the original owners to sell their company and have the peace of mind that the integrity of the company they created is upheld. 

“We briefly thought of selling the business (to an outside buyer), but we have so much love for what we built that putting it into someone else’s hands who we don’t know their intentions would feel kind of wrong,” says Corcoran, referring to the traditional business succession method of selling to the highest bidder. 

“We knew our fundamental purpose was to increase meat processing capacity for the Boundary region, but we didn’t really know what that would look like,” said Moes. “We had an idea that the cooperative model would be a key part of that.”

To round out this series, I wanted to dive deep into crypto governance. Is it adding to the concentration of power or helping to democratize and diffuse it? Are there models that actually lead to more equitable outcomes? How do the economic incentives of any crypto project constrain or shape its governance?

For the next few weeks, Sparwood’s Greenwood Mall is home base for an indoor mini-market, with the Creative Co-Op opening its doors in Mid-November.

“It is a space designed for creativity and for handmade or home-based vendors to come in and market their goods,” said organiser and vendor, Robin Hutchinson.

It’s the first year the Creative Co-Op has been in operation, and Hutchinson said it partly a result of uncertainty going into market season, and partly a desire to have an indoor, convenience space.

As such, fanfic is not an inherently radical practice, despite some of the anti-capitalist ideas that undergird the systems that support it. What’s more, the intentions of individual fanfic writers are not monolithic, and, as Copeland Titus puts it, “It is a mistake to assume that everyone engaging with fandom is doing so with the intent to subvert capitalistic notions of authorship.”

Earlier this year, I wrote about the rise of an emerging business model: the digital news co-op. Now, eight months later, taking a second look, we have seen two important developments. First, newly launched news co-ops are gathering steam in Baltimore and West Virginia. At the same time, the nation’s first such co-op, in Akron, Ohio, has stopped publishing.

This week on The Encrypted Economy, our guest is Greg Brodsky, founder of Start.Coop. Greg joins us to discuss worker cooperatives and Start.Coop’s mission to empower entrepreneurs by supporting the formation of sustainable and transformative organizations...

The Ohlone hunter, then, did not feel that he lived in a highly competitive, every-man-for-himself world. Rather, he saw himself as a working member of a family and a tribelet—organizations which he knew from birth as trustworthy, permanent features of the world, organizations which he felt sure would take care of him when he was sick and weak as well as when he was strong and able.

In August, Holst had a nine-panel, 3.3 kilowatt system installed on his roof. Now, instead of paying $40-50 per month for electricity, Holst actually made $13 in September because the panels produce more power than he and his family used and the excess electricity is returned to the grid.

“It’s almost been like a life or death situation for me,” says Rebecca Lawson. “To get it up off the ground and get it running, I know that it’s going to do a lot for our church, our community, and it’s gonna be a good blessing on us giving back. And it’s definitely made me stronger as an individual.”

Ms Lawson is a co-founder of a newly established co-operative, T-shirts and Apparel Unlimited, and a recent graduate of the Power in Numbers training programme in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Imagine a world where consent decision-making is a part of the school curriculum. Imagine a world where students have a voice in the governance of their school, a world where children and youth are empowered to decide collaboratively on issues that are important to them.

Can cooperatives, based on the values of democracy, equity, and “one person, one vote,” offer sustainable solutions for people navigating reentry in the United States? Collective REMAKE, a hybrid cooperative nonprofit in Los Angeles County, is working to do just that, along with a broad stakeholder network.

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