Contributor & public ownership

Organisations should be contributor owned or publicly owned.

Principle

Organisations should be contributor owned or publicly owned.

Ownership in contributionism

Contributionism advocates for social ownership. Organisations are either privately owned by contributors or publicly owned by the government. Organisations need to self determine which contributors will be the most suitable for handling the governance of the organisation out of workers, consumers and donors. In some situations, such as for national defence, the organisation might be better suited for public ownership.

Contribution based ownership

Contribution based ownership means that contributions would be used to determine who has ownership in the organisation and who will receive governance rights for those contributions. Contributor ownership approaches include labour, consumption and donation based approaches. Organisations could decide to become a type of worker, consumer or donator based cooperative however a formal legal structure is not required for organisations to operate under contributionist principles. Each of the following contributions can be suitable as an approach for determining ownership:

• Labour - Labour is a contribution that will nearly always be required to create, maintain and operate an organisation over the long term. Therefore workers are naturally a default suggestion for how many organisations will be owned and governed. Workers should usually be the most well informed about exactly how an organisation operates and how it could be operated effectively in the future. The experience and knowledge gained by contributing labour towards an organisation should result in workers being a highly suitable group of individuals for owning and governing the organisation that they are responsible for.

• Consumption - Consumption is often a necessary contribution for an organisation to survive over the long term. Consumers that pay for products and services could become owners of an organisation. Web3 ecosystems are a good example of consumer based ownership where the common intent of these networks is to be owned and governed by the people that use them.

• Donations - Donations can be a necessary contribution for some organisations to thrive over the long term such as not-for-profits and charities. These organisations don’t often don’t generate revenue from offering products and services. Donors that pay for the operational costs of an organisation could be owners of those organisations. A group of people may come together to donate their capital to a charity that could help with benefiting the local community. In these situations the donors might prefer to have ownership over the organisation and that their donations become the contribution that influences how the organisation is owned and governed.

Contributions that are not suitable for ownership

• Capital - Capital is a supplementary contribution. Not every organisation requires capital investments to get started or for it to be maintained and operated over the long term. Capital can be highly useful for certain organisations at certain stages of their development. Capital by itself does not create a highly functioning and profitable organisation. Instead, it is the labour that is able to utilise capital effectively that will determine whether an organisation is successful or not. In situations where capital is required, an agreement needs to be made about what the value of that capital is and what a fair and reasonable return on investment should be. Some types of capital don’t need to be invested and can be returned if the organisation fails such as property (physical capital) or patents and intellectual property (intellectual capital). If the capital can be returned to the investor they do not need to receive governance rights in the organisation as they are not risking the loss of their capital. Instead the type of governance rights that might be more suitable in those arrangements is that they might be able to influence how the asset can be used or modified if this was necessary. Financial capital investments are suitable for adopting loan structures that can account for the risk of the organisation failing. These loans could give the investor temporary governance rights so they are able to protect their interests. This is warranted as the capital they invest is at risk of being lost entirely if the organisation fails. Financial capital investments can in practice lead to organisations that are governed by capital investors due to the amount of governance rights they receive. However this would be temporary as the governance rights would eventually lapse once the loan is repaid. The amount of voting power that an investor receives in their governance rights could be proportional to the remaining amount of capital that needs to be repaid.

Public ownership

Public ownership means the government owns the organisation. Workers would govern these organisations and receive governance rights for their contributions. As the organisation is not privately owned, workers would not be able to sell the organisation to another person or organisation. The same contributionist principles can be adopted in organisations that are publicly owned. A benefit of adopting contributionist principles, such as permanent records of contribution, is that it would mean that publicly owned organisations could be transitioned into privately owned organisations fairly easily due to the record of who has contributed towards it.

Common ownership

Common ownership focuses on how resources or assets can be collectively owned without the pursuit of individual profit. Natural and digital resources could be owned collectively by a community to help prevent the misuse of those resources. Any organisation could be required to seek approval to use resources that are being governed under a common ownership model. Common ownership helps to prevent the need for community ownership over an organisation as the exact resources or assets that need to be protected can be isolated and governed by the community. How people decide to collaborate together in an organisation can be left to them to decide as long as they comply with any laws and regulations.

Principle compliance

When a new organisation is created the contributors involved will need to decide which type of ownership is most suitable. Organisations could be owned by workers, consumers or donors or they could be publicly owned. Anyone who contributes towards the organisation should know how the organisation is owned as this will determine who receives governance rights. Governance rights will determine who is responsible for governing the organisation.