DisCO-Tech and Commons Governance

NOTE: This is a temporary page, pending the publication of Care Before Code: The DisCO Elements. The following text is excerpted from a chaoter on DisCO featured in Platforming Equality: policy challenges for the digital economy, "....a collection of papers on the challenges that the digital economy poses to policymakers, activists and researchers."

DisCO-Tech and Commons Governance

The DisCO Governance model is an extensive reworking of an orphaned open source governance protocol. It was developed and put into practice by Guerrilla Media Collective (GMC), a Spain-based cooperative focussing on language and communications services, which became the first DisCO pilot. In 2018, a group of experts on decentralised/non-hierarchical organisations, facilitation, peer governance, distributed tech and mutualised finance were invited to help reimagine the model, which resulted in a new version: The Distributed Cooperative Organisation Governance and Economic Model.

Here is a brief overview. Co-op members are owners and shareholders, each holding different types of shares in the collective. These correspond to value-tracked pro bono and livelihood work, as well as reproductive or care work (see below). Shares in these three types of work determine how much is paid on a monthly basis. The money to pay shares come from the productive work performed by the co-op’s worker-owners, which is accounted for in internal credits (1 credit = 1 Euro), creating shares. The shares accrued by co-op members correspond to the work done in these three areas of value:

• Paid work performed for outside clients who are invoiced by GMC as an agency. We call this the “livelihood work” stream.
• Pro-bono work in a DisCO's specific productive area. For example, members of GMC choose articles to translate pro-bono based on their enthusiasm and how the material aligns with their values. These translations are presented in Guerrilla Translation's websites, with the consent of, but at no cost to, the authors. These translations create an open knowledge commons. This is described as the “love work” stream.
  

• Care work which, as explained in the 5th DisCO principle above includes "caring for the collective and its social mission" ensuring that all the collective's administrative, communication and economic needs are cared for, and "caring for the humans that make up the collective".

These are proportionally accounted for and treated as shares, and are the basis for the distributions of income. Note that the same value metrics are used for both types of productive work (in this case, translations). DisCO's model of income distribution diverts a portion of paid work towards the pro-bono work previously performed by members. Net funds held on account are distributed on a monthly basis: 75% to pay members’ agency (livelihood) shares, and the remaining 25% pays for pro bono (love) shares.

Meanwhile, reproductive work is tallied in hours and distributed according to each member's ratio of benefits vs. contributions. These Care Work hours dynamically affect the 75/25 Livelihood/Love split described above. Members who performed fewer care hours while earning more in the Livelihood/Agency or Love/Probono streams will have a proportional deduction from their pay. Those adjustments are redistributed towards those contributing more care hours.

In practice, this means that if all members perform roughly the same amount of care work over a month, the 75-25% split on Livelihood and Love shares will remain intact. Any imbalances are immediately compensated. The system enables flexibility and fair compensation toward activities that each DisCO values as essential for their health and reproduction.

This type of share-holding is in contrast to that found in a corporation. While shareholders in a corporation accrue power through money, the DisCO model treats power differently. DisCOs value forms of power understood as “shared capacity to act” and “collective strength” centered around work undertaken for the commons. A corporation employs wage labor to produce profit-maximising commodities through privately owned and managed productive infrastructures. By contrast, DisCOs work together for social and environmental purposes while also creating commons and building community, locally and/or globally. The model allows members to choose to do work that they consider value-aligned,and therefore worthwhile. This is how DisCOs model a practice of economic resistance.

Various things are accomplished through this method. First, all members can gain income for both types of productive work, whether pro-bono or paid for by a client. Second, nobody has to compete internally for paid work versus the equally important pro-bono and care work. All three types of work are equally valued within a DisCO. Meanwhile, there are variable tiers of external pricing based on the client’s means and budget. Clients with the greatest financial means who are aligned with the DisCO's principles and values, and who wish to provide support for developing its mission, are offered the top tier rate. Extra income from this level of client payment goes directly toward repaying the collective's internal pro-bono shares (this additional income is also used to offset the cost for work performed for clients in the “solidarity tier,” i.e. value-aligned small organisations with minimal or inadequate budgets). This sliding scale helps nurture relationships and supports collectives and initiatives with the least financial means, creating better and fairer access to the DisCO's services.

Currently in testing phase, the DisCO Deck is a custom platform being developed to facilitate the value tracking, redistribution and payment protocols of this governance model. Based on the Value Flows economic vocabulary, DisCO Deck balances lightweight, DLT tech (such as CommonsPub) for Intra-DisCO accounting and blockchain technologies for transactions and value mutualisation with other DisCOs and generative economic entities. In contrast to an automated platform auto-executing smart contracts (ie. DAO), the DisCO Deck will help educate mission-oriented cooperatives in new, inclusive economic flows that support all their members.