Welcome to the organisational documentation for Third Nature Records. This information is provided to allow people to get a better understanding of the organisation, to see how we work, how our money is used and made, how we incorporated, and how to get involved.
A co-operative is a collectively owned enterprise that serves the interests of its members. This means a company owned by its workers, customers, or both.
Co-ops are for-profit, private enterprises.
There is often the misconception that co-operative are non-profit organisations. However, like traditional companies, co-ops are profit-earning enterprises that act in the interest of their shareholders. The difference though, is that the shareholders in co-ops are its workers or its customers, rather than investors and/or founders. This means that its profits are distributed back to its members, instead of to a singular owner or group of people 'at the top'.
Co-ops are controlled by their members.
In addition to profit sharing, co-operative member/owners are given a voice in organisational decisions. However, this doesn't mean that we all meet with our oat lattes and make consensus-based decisions. Maybe sometimes we will... But, a co-operative may design elegant and transparent systems for decision making that meet the specific needs of the organisation.
Co-ops are a constructive alternative.
In 2021, despite increased worker productivity, we see growing wealth inequality, an economic system that increasingly serves plutocrats, stagnant wages and precarious work. As workers and citizens, it’s clear our needs are not being met by techno-solutionist progress. In Silicon Valley specifically, fortunes are being created by extracting value from our ideas, art, labour, relationships, and data. We’ve become digital neoserfs—tilling on land we don’t own, and giving our harvest away.
Historically, co-ops have emerged when markets have failed to meet the needs of a particular community, or to correct markets that have consolidated into monopolies or monopsonies. When the government or private market fails to provide solutions, collective actions are needed.
Co-ops can be A solution when people organise and say, “If no one is going to build this for us, we’ll build it for ourselves.