It has long been common practice to worry about “campaign finance.” But even since the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision further unleashed dark money, that kind of finance was relatively straightforward: contributions to support the costs of campaigning. But something different is happening here: campaign financialization. The election is becoming swallowed into a far more bewildering mix of speculative financial instruments. Their purpose is not simply to funnel money into campaigning but to turn campaigns and politics into a mere asset class.

This election season, we’re not just watching the speeches, ad buys, and polls. Election junkies are also paying attention to the bets on Polymarket, a cryptocurrency-based betting platform that counts Trump donor Peter Thiel as a major investor. They are following the temperamental swings of Trump Media & Technology Group stock—the holding company for the former president’s Truth Social platform. They may even be following the prices of Trump-branded sneakers, bibles, and NFTs. Trump’s family now has its own “decentralized finance” platform in the works, World Liberty Financial, turning them from mere market participants to market-makers.

Something is also changing with the practice of polling and organizing. Partisan polls are aiming less to produce truthful assessments of the electorate than headlines that will seed future declines in institutional trust. Trump-aligned mobilization efforts seem less focused on getting out the vote than producing expectations about what should happen that could set the stage for delegitimizing a loss. Those predictions have the power to remake reality.

We already know how financialization turns human lives into data points and game pieces. This is how Wall Street’s inventiveness meant millions of people losing their homes in the 2008 financial crisis. This is how pandemic-era shortages made the richest billionaires richer.

Watching the lead-up to the election has left me with a case of deja vu. For the past decade, I have been studying the development of governance practices in the realm of blockchains and cryptocurrencies. There, the reigning political ideology goes by the name of “cryptoeconomics”: the belief that a combination of digital cryptography and economic incentives can produce more trustworthy institutions than relying on human judgment or political ideology. Through ever more intricate financial techniques, carried out across unregulated digital networks, self-interested speculators are supposed to produce worthwhile public goods. As a common slogan in this subculture goes, “The casino bootstraps the infra[structure].”

This is not such a new idea, really. Back in the 1990s, a pair of Brits diagnosed the strange “Californian ideology” coming out of Silicon Valley, which sought to discard the messiness of partisan politics with the alleged efficiency of technology and markets. But even while many Big Tech companies have finally invested heavily in Washington politicking, blockchains have given the Californian ideology a new lease on life.

Using cryptoeconomics, people have designed a mirror world of institutions based on cryptoeconomics in place of professionalism, democracy, or mutual trust. Blockchain-based organizations use tradeable tokens to vote on decisions large and small—relying on economics, not legal enforcement, to orchestrate decision making. Blockchain-based courts attempt to resolve disputes with juries who act not out of public duty or virtue but out of economic self-interest. The same logic of a prediction market like Polymarket is used throughout these systems. Betting on future outcomes, and shaping those outcomes through betting, is the replacement for good citizenship.

I have been fascinated by these experiments, and I came to be convinces that they have some virtues. Cryptoeconomics has produced innovative new methods for voting and forming Internet-native organizations. Some of these techniques could contribute to making future institutions more accountable, responsive, and trustworthy. Prediction markets, properly designed, could help produce better policy by focusing decisions more on evidence than ideology. But soon I began warning the crypto community that relying too much on cryptoeconomics presented a profound danger to good governance, limiting the scope of people’s motivation and enabling a race to the bottom. One of the leading acolytes of cryptoeconomics, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, came around and agreed.

This is because, over the years, the perils of financialization have played out in practice in crypto-world. The ecosystem is full of startups peddling complex financial tricks, but very little gets invested in solving real problems for people outside of finance. I have known a lot of well-meaning people in the blockchain community who genuinely want and work toward the common good. But they get drowned out by the speculators. Many retail participants who were sold on the idea of decentralization and economic freedom got burned by scams and grift.

The past decade of financialization in crypto has lessons for the prospect of campaign financialization in politics. When you put speculation in charge, it consumes all other interests. There is no invisible hand that makes it work toward the common good—at least not without strong regulation to set rules and goals. The more you let financialization run amok, the more you end up with a nihilistic culture that values nothing more than the next chance for a bit of upside.

Among all the risks that this election poses to democracy, the slide into financialization seems to be creeping in undetected. In some respects it is ancient; speculation on the future has long been part of political life, going back to ancient Chinese divination with bones and the oracle of Delphi in Greece. But digital networks and financial techniques run the risk of supercharging this old temptation, to the point of washing away what is left of democracy.

In an article such as this, it would be customary at this point to suggest reforms to correct for the situation I have identified. But given the unwillingness of the political class to equip itself for even the last war of campaign finance, I have little confidence that such suggestions would do much good.

From what I can tell, however, only one side in this election has massively invested in campaign financialization. The other seems to be clinging to the notion that politics is still about campaigning, persuasion, and identifying a shared sense of the common good. When political discourse is just an asset class, it becomes easier for wealthy, charismatic figures to accumulate it for themselves. A vote for Donald Trump, among other things, is a vote for the speculative casino as the engine of our political future.

I apologize because I’m entering this promotional phase. I’ll be reaching out again asking you to help, if you’re so moved. But I don’t apologize about that, really, because the book shares stories that I believe need to be known—stories of the promise and struggle in the new generation of the cooperative movement. At a time when democracy is on the rocks, when the economy seems to run on a mix of autopilot and superheroes, we need these reminders that cooperation has helped build our world and can shape its future.

Learn more here. Retweet this. Maybe even place a preorder. Let me know if you’d like to publish a review or interview, or to schedule an event. Together, let’s help bring this radical tradition back to life.

Various dystopias

In the meantime, there are powers-that-be to troll. Here are some recent publications of mine more or less in that vein:

• Facebook isn’t a startup anymore. It’s not yet a real “community.” It’s time for Mark Zuckerberg to give up control. (Vice)
• Some people want to turn more and more of life into cryptocurrency-powered auction markets. (America)
• Journalists and researchers could share a whole lot more of the data they collect. But should they? (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Read the first scholarly journal article on platform cooperativism behind an impenetrable paywall. Or not. (The Sociological Review)

Works not cited

Have you read what Mark Twain regarded as his best book? Ted Gioia wades through his pious, late-live tribute to Joan of Arc.

Jessica Weisberg points out that America’s favorite guide to the corporate ladder was himself a precarious gig worker.

Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza learned to organize in the kitchen.

Now is an interesting time to revisit Mr. Zuckerberg’s pre-IPO letter to potential investors.

Scott Korb wonders whether standardized testing has killed the first-person.

Students are already producers; what if they were co-owners?

My CU Boulder colleagues and I stand with our embattled local journalists.

Times and places

• 2018.05.02: Oakland, CA – “User, Worker, Owner!” #platformcoop event
• 2018.05.24: Berlin, Germany – “Mapping the Ecosystem” #platformcoop workshop at SUPERMARKT, 3-6 p.m.
• 2018.07.26-27: London, UK – Open2018: Collaborative Technology for the Cooperative Economy
  
• 2018.11.07: Boulder, CO – Colorado Shared Ownership Summit
• 2018.11.17-20: Denver, CO – American Academy of Religion

Want to help bring democracy to the internet? On the heels of the successful platform co-op conference in Toronto, I’m now working with a mighty team of collaborators to organize November’s conference in New York, The People’s Disruption. It’s all about connecting the resources of the present with ambitious visions of a cooperative future online, featuring speakers from #BlackLivesMatter co-founder Alicia Garza to venture capitalist Brad Burnham. I hope you can join us! Space isn’t infinite! Register today (and retweet this).

Communists and Catholics

Over the summer I had the chance to join the MBA program at St. Mary’s University in Canada for a tour of the co-op sector in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. There was plenty to write home about, and I put it together in a dispatch for America magazine, which will appear in the next print issue. Read it and share it online now: “How Communists and Catholics Built a Commonwealth.”

It’s both a report from the field and a reflection on why, as we build a new economy, we should look to our past.

More Where that Came From

I’ve also been writing about stuff like how we can democratize ISPs and the little churches of St. Francis. I turned in a book draft, too! And then there are some live events coming up:

• 2017.09.28: Denver, CO – “Startup.Coop: How to Build a Real Sharing Economy through Shared Ownership” and “Demystifying the Hype: Understanding Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies with an Expert Panel,” Denver Startup Week
• 2017.10.4-6: Alexandria, VA – Keynote and other talks at the Co-op Impact Conference
• 2017.11.07: New York, NY – Lecture on Catholic cooperative economics at St. John’s University
• 2018.03.07: Cambridge, MA – TBA at Harvard Law School
• 2018.03.08: South Hadley, MA – TBA at Mount Holyoke College
• 2018.03.10: East Lansing, MI – TBA at MSU Student Housing Cooperative

Thank you for reading, thank you for what you do.

The big oil and electric companies are largely unaccountable to the communities they power and pollute. But the U.S. power grid has other kinds of companies, too. Seventy-five percent of the landmass of the country gets electricity from electric cooperatives—a wildly successful New Deal program, long maligned as communist, and now little-remembered, even by its members. These co-ops’ lobby just fought hard to end the Clean Power Plan and elect Donald Trump, but they might also become the cutting edge for a renewable-energy future.

This week in The Nation I report on the contradictory state of electric co-ops, from the promise of distributed, local generation to some of their members’ uphill battle for racial justice.

I hope you’ll consider helping to share this story, for instance by retweeting this, retooting this (if you’re in the fediverse), and liking or sharing this on Facebook.

The future of Twitter

At their annual meeting on May 22, Twitter’s shareholders will be voting on a proposal to consider options for converting the company to some form of democratic user ownership. The proposal is an outgrowth of organizing that began with an article of mine in The Guardian last September, along with the brilliant, determined organizing of friends like Danny Spitzberg and Maira Sutton. With just two weeks to go, we’re doing all we can to spread the idea and persuade shareholders. Read more about us in places like Recode, Vanity Fair, and the Financial Times.

We need your help. Tweet your vision for the future of Twitter and sign our petition today. Or simply retweet this.

If you think the idea is crazy or impossible, tell that to the Associated Press.

More cooperative futures

If you’re not watching Jackson, Mississippi, you should be. In 2015 I went there to report on the life of Chokwe Lumumba, the black-nationalist mayor who died suddenly after just a few months in office. But now his son, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, has just won the Democratic nomination, all but clinching the next election. Antar is riding the same platform of cooperative enterprise and local economy that brought his father to office. We have a new rebel city.

And more. In my first article for Quartz, I wrote about why tech startups need new business models, and how we can build them.

Finally, through the delightful Colorado Co-ops Study Circle, I’m co-hosting a new, monthly community radio show, the Co-op Power Hour. Subscribe to our feed and listen up for shows on Black Lives Matter, co-op education, business conversions, and more.

Near and far

• 2017.05.16: Washington, DC – Community Purchasing Alliance annual meeting address
• 2017.05.18: Boulder, CO – “Startup.coop” session at Boulder Startup Week
• 2017.07.19: Denver, CO – Keynote address at the Association of Cooperative Educators (ACE) Institute at Regis University
• 2017.07.17: Bologna, Italy – “An Internet of Ownership” at the University of Bologna
• 2017.06.09: Padua, Italy – Panelist at Pathways to a Cooperative Market Economy

Usually when I throw out a somewhat crazy idea, it remains just that—a somewhat crazy idea, out there in the ether. But when I proposed in The Guardian recently that maybe Twiter users should buy Twitter rather than letting it get sold to another big company, something else happened. People started organizing. It has become the latest outgrowth of the platform co-op movement that’s the subject of my new book with Trebor Scholz (and 60+ contributors), Ours to Hack and to Own, available for preorder from OR Books.

Articles

• As an editorial for the current issue of The Nation, I’ve proposed that platform cooperativism is on the rise, backing the claim up with the stories of two very different platform co-ops: Stocksy United and Green Taxi.
• Want to learn about economic democracy in business school? Good luck. In The Chronicle of Higher Education (available here for a month before getting paywalled), I consider how and why it’s virtually impossible to study this sizeable chunk of the economy in the United States.
• In addition to the stuff I wrote, I’m featured in two recent articles in Shareable —one on art co-ops and one on gig economies—plus an interview with Grand Rapids community radio and a report that includes my agitating around platform co-ops in Australia over the summer.

Speaking

• 2016.10.20: Boulder, CO – MALfunction with the Media Archaeology Lab
• 2016.11.02: Austin, TX – HHHI HComp plenary
• 2016.11.11-13: New York, NY – Platform Cooperativism conference at The New School
• 2016.11.17: Denver, CO – “How Platform Co-ops Can Take Community Wealth Building Online“
• 2017.02.09: Nashville, TN – Belmont University Faith and Culture Symposium
• 2017.04.06: Santa Barbara, CA – UCSB Community Matters lecture

Okay, that’s it. Take heart!

Order your copy today!

Momentum is building. Just last week, UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn issued a manifesto that explicitly calls for creating platform co-ops. We hope that this book will help show that online democracy is both a live option and a moral necessity.

Cooperative advantages

I’ve been continuing to follow a bunch of different leads along the cutting edge of economic democracy. In The Nation this week, read about Denver’s 800-driver taxi cooperative vying to turn Uber’s disruption into a push for worker ownership. If they keep

Meanwhile, in the September issue of Vice, I return as economics columnist with a report on Enspiral, a remarkable co-working network based in Wellington, New Zealand, which shows how trust can become not only a cooperative advantage, but a competitive one. If you missed it, also, I recently reported for Vice about the latest on ColoradoCare, the controversial ballot proposal poised to bring cooperative, universal medical coverage to all the state’s residents—now, with the help of Bernie Sanders.

Utterances

Upcoming talks and trips:

• 2016.09.29: Alma, MI – Alma College
• 2016.09.30: Grand Rapids, MI – Aquinas College
• 2016.10.06: Omaha, NE – IGNITE at Creighton University
• 2016.10.12: Quebec, Canada – Collaborative economy session at the International Summit of Cooperatives
• 2016.10.20: Boulder, CO – MALfunction with the Media Archaeology Lab
• 2016.11.02: Austin, TX – HHHI HComp plenary
• 2016.11.11-13: New York, NY – Platform Cooperativism conference at The New School
• 2016.12.08-09: Cambridge, MA – Harvard Religious Literacy and Journalism Symposium
• 2017.02.09: Nashville, TN – Belmont University Faith and Culture Symposium
• 2017.04.06: Santa Barbara, CA – UCSB Community Matters lecture

Un-branding

You might have noticed that I’m writing from a different email address. Over the past few months I’ve pivoted from a public self-presentation heavily weighed toward modes of transportation: nathanairplane, The Row Boat, etc. As much as I enjoy transportation, I’ve decided to reorient my self-presentation around the name my parents gave me when I was born. So now this is where you can find me and my stuff:

• Website: www.lelandquarterly.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Social media: @ntnsndr

And watch out, because I’m still playing around in various ways, like for instance with a shorter form of the URL; both https://ntnsndr.in and [email protected] work right now but we’ll see if it really seems worth keeping. In the meantime, see y’all there!

Colorado could be on the brink of embracing universal medical coverage. Thanks to an effort in recent months led by a band of doctors and volunteers, a proposal called ColoradoCare is going to be on the ballot, which, if passed, would create a quasi-cooperative healthcare system for everyone in the state. In an article for Vice, I introduce some of the people behind the effort, as well as their delectably Koch-backed detractors.

Meanwhile, a group of Oregonians wants to put a price on carbon and distribute the proceeds to everyone. In YES! Magazine, I interview Camila Thorndike of Oregon Climate, who is leading the effort. As the COP21 talks wind down and Finland considers a basic income policy, the moment seems especially ripe for such adventuresome thinking.

For more on ColoradoCare, too, see my earlier interview in YES! with its chief architect, Irene Aguilar, a physician and state senator.

Platform Cooperativism

Last month, together with Trebor Scholz of the New School, I co-organized a two-day event called “Platform Cooperativism: The Internet, Ownership, Democracy.” More than a thousand people from around the world came to help build a new breed of online platforms, with shared ownership and governance baked in—a real sharing economy. To learn more, read our manifestos at Fast Company, The Next System Project, and Pacific Standard. Relatedly, also, in The New Yorker, I reported on a new cooperative, co-working “guild” in New York that sets out to practice “slow entrepreneurship.”

Now, back in Colorado, I’m working with a fearsome team of visionaries and cooperators to strengthen the cooperative ecosystem here. More TK.

#OpenTheseDoors

It’s Advent. As I wrote in my last column for America, the Mother of God is very pregnant right now. It was surprising how many fellow Catholics, who have no trouble contemplating the wounds of Christ-crucified, squirmed at reading about Mary’s stretching skin and discomfort. But whatever. This season is a great time to join the struggle to ensure necessities like paid family leave and access to the means for a safe, minimally invasive birth.

Last week, also, Pope Francis proclaimed a Jubilee of Mercy by opening the Holy Doors of St. Peter’s in Rome. In New York, some friends of mine took the occasion to call for the archdiocese to “Open These Doors” of its shuttered buildings for the city’s tens of thousands of people experiencing homelessness. Take part in their Advent calendar here, and read my interview with them at America, as well as Kaya Oakes’ report for Religion Dispatches.

Have a happy new year!

For more on Francis, don’t miss my latest column for America magazine on the idea of the commons in the pope’s thought, as well as a controversial blog post about the ecology encyclical and an interview about just how far the Vatican has come on environmental issues.

Higher ground

As much as I still love getting invited to awesome things friends are doing in New York (I do), it turns out that I don’t live there anymore. A few weeks ago my family arrived in Boulder, Colorado, where I am now serving as a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado’s new College of Communication, Media, and Information.

And what’s that book in the way of the mountains? Well, just in time for hauling my books halfway across the country, my dear God in Proof has been released in a lighter, convenient paperback edition—the perfect companion for adventuresome bike rides. Get your copy today!

Debts worth having

We’ve lost our language for talking about debt—for knowing the usurious from the upbuilding, the good from the bad. That’s why you should be sure to pick up Yes! Magazine‘s current “debt issue”, full of stories and wisdom from people like Charles Eisenstein, Laura Gottesdiener, and Raj Patel. I’ve got an essay in there too on the question of what debts are actually worth having. Pick up the issue from newsstands today, and look for my essay online starting September 15.

People’s platforms

You might have noticed that a lot of my articles over the past year have dealt with efforts to build a more democratic Internet. Those efforts are now building toward a first-of-its-kind event at the New School on November 13-14: Platform Cooperativism: The Internet, Ownership Democracy. Featuring co-op developers alongside tech CEOs, venture capitalists alongside domestic workers, my co-organizer Trebor Scholz and I are trying to throw an historic coming-out party for the cooperative Internet. Register now.

To learn more about what we’re up to, see my new manifesto in Pacific Standard‘s “future of work” series, “Owning What We Share.”

Moneyless elf

One last thing I’d like to share with you is a story that appeared recently at Killing the Buddha, an oral history I recorded last year while working on an article for The Nation about a group of hackers modeling their commune in Italy on a medieval monastery. One evening when the others were gone, one of those hackers, elf Pavlik, recited a detailed account of living for the past five years without money or government documents. Read what he told me here.

Read the article in The New Republic here. To help spread the word about it, retweet this, share or like this, and upvote this.

Has the Time Come for Universal Basic Income?

Across the political spectrum, the idea of a no-questions-asked payout for everyone is gaining momentum. I’ve written about how Silicon Valley is getting behind the concept as an antidote for what automation is doing to the job market. Libertarians want it as a replacement for means-tested welfare programs, while socialists see it as a step toward abolishing the wage system. It seems like a crazy, impossible idea, but it may not be for long.

On May 26 at Civic Hall in New York City, I’m going to be part of a discussion about the prospects of universal basic income with progressive entrepreneur and activist Peter Barnes. Barnes’ proposal for a “citizen’s dividend” based on carbon emissions is an ingenious way of both mitigating climate change and strengthening the economy. We’ll be joined by scholar and basic-income advocate Michael Lewis, as well as Institute for the Future fellow Natalie Foster. RSVP on Facebook and Eventbrite here.

To learn more about universal basic income, listen to recent podcasts on the subject from my friends at Belabored and Disorderly Conduct.

If you could make a new economy from the ground up, what would it look like?

Enric Duran has tried—twice. In 2008 he became famous after borrowing half a million dollars from Spain’s banks and refusing to give it back. He then masterminded the Catalan Integral Cooperative, a network of independent workers that may just represent the future of work altogether. Now, still in hiding because of his heist, Duran is orchestrating his next utopia, a cryptocurrency-infused global financial system. In this month’s issue of VICE magazine, I go face-to-face with Duran and on a tour of his remarkable undertakings.

Read the article VICE‘s website or look through the print version. While you’re at it, retweet this.

In other news

I had a great time speaking about God in Proof at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada. I talked about cooperativism on Majority Report with Sam Seder and at Civic Hall with a panel of sagely organizers and thinkers. I upset some white people and prayed the Angelus.