Talk:Commons-Oriented Open Cooperative Governance Model V 1.0
Supporters
Stacco:
Supporters can engage with Guerrilla Translation through email or social media but, preferably, through an open Loomio group for that purpose. In time strategies can be studied to use the Loomio group for polls etc,
What would this Loomio group look like? What discussions and consultations would be initiated there? How can trolling be prevented?
Members beyond the Testing Phase
Stacco: In the intro, we say:
(... María) ...In fact, she could spend all of her time just doing agency/livelihood work, and it would still benefit the pro-bono/love side and vice versa.
Meaning that full members, as long as they get 400 credits, regardless of whether they're livelihood or love, meet the minimum quarterly requirements. But should they obligatorily get 400 LOVE credits, anyway?
Pros: That would ensure no shortage of pro-bono translations being published online Cons: It may take away time from paid work, which the collective needs.
Maybe there's a halfway, or negotiated solution (or we determine a general pro-bono quota which, when met, exempts those full members from having to accrue 400 love credits (and just present the equivalent or more in Livelihood credits). Or we cut the pro-bono quota to 200 for full members? The important thing is that the commons is never starved.
Casual Relationships: Contributors
Stacco: Could there be a provision for "Casual" members taking on livelihood/paid work? Think of great translators that, for some reason or other, do not want to get committed or follow the model. this would only be in situations where no Guerrilla Translators can cover work. However, these casual members would be paid proportionately less, with an important percentage going back to GT to fulfill the streams (like a normal translation agency).
On the other hand this may not be something to be encouraged, as the idea is to get people working within the collective, creating Commons etc. It also technically sets GT up as capitalists (employing wage labour), which runs counter to its ideals. Another problem would be when to pay these "casual translators". Would their payment be part of the monthly distribution, or would they be paid in bulk (meaning that Guerrilla Translators would have give a part of their monthly shares to be able to priorotize non-member paymen).
All in all, I think it's more trouble than it's worth, even if this means having to say "no" to paying work because there are not enough committed members available.
What happens when a Guerrilla Translator doesn't meet the quarterly quota? And if they leave?
Stacco:
Even when something unexpected happens and no sabbatical was announced, that's OK, but those 400 divested credits will be deducted automatically.
For how long is it OK? Imagine that someone doesn't contribute at all to the pro-bono stream. Sure, divested Love credits are erased, but the person may have a lot of livelihood credits, or even choose only livelihood translations. Maybe we can set a limit of minus 1000 credits (- 1000) and, after that, the collective will consider that a final split.
Guerrilla Stewarding Posse (Core Team)
Stacco: Lots of questions here
- Should posse members kept to a set four, specifically stewarding those areas (vision and values, economic governance, carework and language), or can there be more?
- Should accruing a certain number of credits give the option to become a Posse member?
Credits: Contribution Tracking
Stacco: Should we use Equity Credits as defined by the Better Means model?
Equity Credits. Equity credits are the total number of invested credits plus the total number of divested credits. Divested credits expire after time, invested credits don’t expire (unless, of course, they first become divested credits). For now, the important thing to understand about equity credits is that they can be used for voting purposes when the enterprise submits a measure to be decided by using vote-by-credit voting. For each equity credit the member has, they get 1 vote.
Read this from the original model for more.
It seems very complicated and we could achieve similar functionality with historical credits equalling equity and without factoring payment delay and expiration. This ties in to the larger discussion about what to do with Initial Credits due first, where the simplest thing would be to "gift" them (ie, they won't ever be divested, but are reflected as "invested" in historical credits, which can then function as equity). By "Initial credit first" I'm talking about start-up/admin/Carework credits, not translation love credits.
Or perhaps it can be used once the system is in place (what we used to call D-Day)?
Balance between invested and divested credits
Stacco: This is pretty weak.
The balance between invested and divested is also important. Ideally Guerrilla Translation wants to provide meaningful work (and income) to all it's members, so mechanisms can be provided to keep this balance (ie, when one member's livelihood credit allocation is very low due to other translators taking paid gigs, this member would be prioritised.
We certainly don't want anybody to hog all the livelihood work which, currently, means more immediate payment than pro-bono work, but maybe we can have some markers here (ie, we aim that all active (or "full time") Guerrilla Translators earn 2000 € a month (providing there's enough work, of course). If there are noticeable disparities, we need to see how to balance them.
Accelerating Love Credit Payment
Stacco: Most of the stuff in the bullet points is taken from GT's 1st sustainability model (before coming across the Open Enterprise Model). I've basically copied and pasted it tweaked minimally, so these have to be thought about in more detail. What other ways of accelerating Love credits can we think of?
The Sliding Scale in Action
Stacco: In the sliding scale section, whenever there are surpluses, these are allocated to make more funds available to the Love Stream. I have formulated this as "bonuses", so, if in a given month we divide whatever income is in the bank among:
- 74%: Livelihood stream
- 25%: Love Stream
- 1 %: Ice cream fund.
Then apart from the regular monthly distribution all surpluses (imagine it's 500 €) get divested as a Love Bonus, according to each members Love shares.
But what if we just increase the 25% Love quota in the regular month distribution based on what the surplus is? I'm incredibly bad a math, so please tells me of a) This makes sense/is it understandable b) is it doable and c) Is it preferable to the Love Bonus method?