Giving Compass' Take:

• In this excerpt from "Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy," Nathan Scheider explores how the co-op movement could help us build a resilient commonwealth.

• Do the concepts of this book track with the direction philanthropy and giving are going? In what ways might we learn from the structure of co-ops to advance more economic equity? 

• Find out why when robots take our jobs, here's why platform cooperatives might be a solution.

Cooperation is no drop‑in solution-​for-​everything. It’s a process that happens a million ways at once, a diversified democracy. The troubles are as endemic as the promise. It starts with the capacities we already have, recombined to solve common problems. The commonwealth doesn’t defer its business until after the world passes through some revolutionary event. It doesn’t wait for things to get worse so they can get better. It doesn’t appear from nowhere and disrupt everything. Instead, it grows through what Grace Lee Boggs called “critical connections” — bridging generations, forging bonds too strong for profiteers to break. It requires people who know their own strengths.

A lot of those who have been drawn into the co‑op movement in recent years hope it can be something like universal basic income — a drastic, radical fix that changes everything. They try to create co‑ops for the hardest of problems, using the most untested of means, building their dreams out of policy proposals and foundation grants and panels at conferences. I watch the news of these developments closely. But some of the most remarkable things are happening more quietly, making use of latent resources already in our midst.

Read the full article about how to make a fair economy by Nathan Schneider at YES! Magazine.