DisCO in 7 Principles and 11 Values

Overview

Open Value Cooperativism, expands the practices of Open Cooperativism by explicitly adding Open Value Accounting and Feminist Economics. Open Value Cooperativism is also the theory informing the DisCO Framework.

While the blockchain space has excelled in disrupting notions of how to track and reward value, its concept of value remains anchored in mainstream ideas about absentee profit maximization — the same ones that routinely call care work and environmental stewardship “externalities”. We challenge this normativity and are working to realize a more complete demonstration of value through the means offered by DLTs.

Open Coops came about as a convergence of three movements: the Commons, Open Source, and the Cooperatives. Over the last few years, we have examined Open Coops and how they relate to their cousins in the Platform Coop movement. Although firmly embedded in the Commons, Open Cooperativism seemed to us incomplete without incorporating two more main ingredients: Feminist Economics and Open Value accounting. Whereas Open Cooperativism has four non-prescriptive principles (statutory orientation toward the common good, multi constituent nature, active creation of commons and transnational nature), we have taken the premise further, resulting in Open Value Cooperativism — the basic DNA of the DisCO (Extracted from the DisCO Manifesto)