DisCO Principle 1: Values-Based Design

DisCOs start from values-based accountability: DisCOs are economic organizations where decisions are not guided by profit, but by social and environmental priorities. These need to be both visible and accountable. For example, they can be embedded in the DisCO's legal statutes or its technological accountability tools. Before arriving at any legal or technical solution, groups need to discuss, clarify and consent to the values they'll be accountable towards.

In short: DisCOs are no-bullshit and committed to keeping it real.

Overview

DisCO Principle one is about keeping it real by being accountable.

DisCOs are geared toward positive outcomes in key areas: This means that production is guided not by profit but by the needs of the people and planet. Determining these needs requires clear thinking. As an anticapitalist, decolonial and intersectional feminist framework, we explicitly jettison artificial needs propagated by the trifecta of hierarchy (capitalist, colonialism and the patriarchy) focusing instead on what we can agree that people and the planet really want.

This isn't such a hard exercise. We can agree that most people want:

• To be cared for
• To be fed
• To have appropriate housing and surroundings
• To be able to express themselves to their full potential
• To enjoy a rich social life

People do not exist in isolation of the planet that birthed us : we are part of it and, as conscious beings, responsible for keeping it in homeostatic balance. To keep the balance we can venture that the planet wants:

• To be cared for
• To replenish its resources at a rate surpassing their extractions
• For carbon dioxide levels to be radically diminished
• To restore topsoil
• To end deforestation and species extinction
• To reverse ocean acidification…..

The list goes one. Extensive scientific literature supports these needs, both human and non-human. In contrast the dominant system asserts that some if not all of these goals are unrealistic or need to be tempered against the needs of neoliberal markets.

These dominant system narratives are extremely harmful as they enclose our scope for restorative action. Scientifically there is nothing impeding us from taking the necessary actions to meet the needs expressed above. DisCO Futures envision a world of federated organizations dedicated to meeting these needs.

Having good intentions is not enough, these need to be followed through while progress needs to be monitored. The non-profit industrial complex and feel-good legal options such as B-corps, as well as dubious accumulation-friendly solutions such as Conscious Capitalism and Green Growth abound. These provide the false sense of addressing such needs, while keeping the pernicious mechanisms that underlie planetary and social destruction intact and primed for escalating the damage beyond repair.

To reverse this trend, DisCO Principle 1 proposes that individual organizations explicitly embed these values in their cultural, productive and organizational processes, and technical/legal statutes.

Most companies and indeed many cooperatives, orient their production toward profit and meeting market demands, but in DisCO we want production to be explicitly guided by the social and environmental needs sketched earlier. This orientation towards positive outcomes is the heart of a DisCO's values and there are various ways of ensuring their follow-through. Remember: you have to walk the talk. Empty gestures with no follow through are the hallmark of the dying system.

The follow through can take place through legal means. We recommend cooperatives as they legally ensure certain democratic ownership and decision making mechanisms which are highly DisCO compatible. Furthermore, we'd recommend reflecting your own interpretation of the DisCO Principles, your values etc in the constituent legal documentation of your organization.

In the case of a DAO or an on-chain based organization, the accountability mechanisms could be embedded as smart contracts. In most cases you don't need to get so complicated. The key is building trust is being able to visualize it, one of the key features of the DisCO Deck.

Both examples (Cooperatives and DAOs) address the structural side of the Culture/Structure spectrum, but what's really important is the group culture that designs the structural mechanisms to support these shared agreements.

To be clear, distributed cooperative practices should never be solely dependent on technology, protocols or governance models. These are only tools to facilitate and strengthen our collaborative culture. Enforcing technical and legal means to ensure agreements that are only superficially made is a recipe for disaster. Get your culture right first, and help us co-design your accountability tools from the shared agreements that emerge.

Examples

In progress. Please check back soon for updates.

Why this is important

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Tensions

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Interactions with other principles

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Related Elements

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

More Resources

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

TLDR

• Bulleted list item

Image Credits

• [XXXXXXXX Lead Image] by [XXXXXX NAME HERE]