Intro
We are pretty sure that we are not the first to come up with the model described in the book RADICAL COMPANIES: Without Bosses or Employess. You find instances of communities and businesses everywhere in the world and at different times in history. However, an alternative model to the Fiat system has never reached escape velocity.
Precursors
Radical-like groups have been around for a while: one comes up, others copy him, and they pick up some momentum, but never enough. The reasons range from the visionary leader passing away, dogma setting in, or the group being taken over by barbarians.
What drives these barbarians to take over? Why do they believe they are winning when their chieftains get the long-term benefits of their work? Don’t they, the people who do the winning, realize that they, too, can easily end up on the wrong side of this win-lose mindset?
Or maybe we are all barbarians and we can’t help it. It's just the human condition, so don’t go against it. But, in spite of it all, these, Radical-like groups keep coming up, over and over again. Why?
Maybe, just maybe, it is because the barbarian thing is a system? It encourages and guides people to act like barbarians.
Then, how does that lead some people to act like barbarians? Did this system get started? And, why has it been so robust, so long-lasting?
Money Did It
In Debt: The First 5,000 Years ∇ author David Graeber proposes that the development of coinage sparked the system we live in today. Author Paul Mason agrees,
Graeber says what emerged after 800 BCE was a ‘military-coinage-slave complex’, which forms the common basis for very different… city states across China, India, and ancient Greece. ∇
All of them, China, India, and ancient Greece, are remarkably long-lasting States.
From Social Debt to Taxes
Before the arrival of coinage, debt was a social thing, based on reciprocity. Then coins arrived, quantified debt, which gave rise to taxes, and, finally, the State was born.
This happened, first by force and then by habit. A few barbarians in a group declared that they were owed everybody’s surplus value, or else. Over time, barbarians transformed into defenders and people just paid their debt to them as taxes.
Tax, then, is a form of debt that can be paid with State coinage.
Ideology
Ideology makes this tax-paying habit, paying this imaginary debt, easier to live with. The defenders keep me alive, ideology says, they are good and necessary. Eventually, this gets codified as, our King keeps us alive.
This is obviously a very rough sketch of how the system could have gotten started.
What has kept it going is that this system has been supported by the very people exploited by it: the footsoldiers, the mothers who bear them, the families and communities that feed and nourish them. Ideology made this system possible.
Barbarians vs… ?
The ideology of the barbarians-as-defenders is simple: they get to live in abundance for minimal work. But, all this time there hasn’t been a different ideology to unite the defenders. Armed revolutions, unions, and the like are just variations of the or-else ideology. Pry their privileges from their cold, dead fingers. This approach simply makes the barbarian system stronger.
What has been missing from the various approaches is a simple and clear foundation, a simple and memorable language, and easy to use tools. This is why, I am guessing, a lot of Radical-like groups have not lasted very long.
The Radical system is a more robust potential solution because it has those elements in place.
Fiat vs Radical
Instead of barbarian, we call the force-based system Fiat and the alternative Radical,
|
Radical Foundation |
The foundation is made up of people, commitments, and practices. |
|---|---|
|
Radical Language |
The model is based on co-ownership and co-management. |
|
Radical Tools |
The RADs! mobile app supports RAD DISTRIBUTIONs, the key tool of co-ownership. The Explicit Relationship tool helps people come together and build a social circle based on trust from the start. |
Radical Foundation
The Foundation is simple and easy to remember,
| people | Meaning & Belonging |
|---|---|
| commitments | Decentralization & Transparency |
| practices | Experimentation |
Radical Language
In the model we use only two terms: co-ownership and co-management. These terms take up new meanings in the Radical model.
|
co-ownership |
People who embody a company are co-owners of it and can earn a dynamic piece of the value through recognized contributions to what they have created together. Note that co-ownership, as we define it, doesn’t depend on a static number of shares, whose financial value comes from trading them but from people’ contributions. |
|---|---|
|
co-management |
Self-management makes sense as it applies to individuals. But in the case of a company, there is no self which can manage itself. People who embody the company, manage it collaboratively. |
RADs! Mobile App
We have a mobile app called RADs! that supports RAD DISTRIBUTIONs.
- Co-owners use the RADs! Mobile App to recognize contributions.
- Anybody can start a company or any other type of community by simply inviting people to the RADs! app.
- From recognized contributions, it calculates the number of RADs given and received by each co-owner.
- The amount of RADs each person has earned determines their share of ownership (i.e., the value created by all co-owners).
- The whole thing is transparent. Everybody can see who is given RADs to whom, how many RADs each co-owner has, etc. Among other benefits, this lets anybody raise a red flag when they see a problem.
Explicit Relationships
Explicit Relationships help people come together and build trust from the start.
Inspired by J Kim Wright’s Conscious Contracts® framework, ∇ an Explicit Relationship consists of four items that would-be co-owners discuss. Then, when they agree to come together as a community (see Avout Community, below), they create an Explicit Relationship from their discussion notes.
There are still lots of things to work out (e.g., how to scale it), but so far we’ve gotten good feedback, including, some organizations never build up trust among people, even after years of operation.
Reaching Escape Velocity
Simple Foundation, Language, and Tools, I believe, is what we need for the Radical model to build momentum and reach escape velocity.
Many experiments will shape what this Radical thing will turn into. The people making it happen will develop the skills to collaborate with others, create value for their communities, and will enjoy direct, tangible benefits from this. Just as key, people will recognize each other, and collaborate on their journey towards a healthy future.
APPENDIX
About Communities
A community could be,
- A legal entity (e.g., C Corp, LLC, or an Unincorporated Association in California).
- A group of people working together, with a RADs! Mobile App community.
- Temporary or permanent.
And one more thing: a community’s boundary is porous, made up and changed by the people who embody the community as they come in and out of it.
ENDNOTES
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David Graeber.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
<https://radicals.world/MUUUcg>
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Paul Mason.
Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being
<https://a.co/5uoB2P8>
-
J Kim Wright.
Conscious Controls®.
<https://radicals.world/U2nQNc>
