A lot of the inefficiencies that exist in our current system comes about due of a lack of transparency. Our governments spend a lot of money and time coming up with solutions and then need to sell those very solutions to their constituents because they were not designed transparently. Corporations safeguard their proprietary information so the competition will not get it then they must counteract this this lack of transparency with expensive advertising to offset some of the trust they have lost.
Our Global cooperative is going to be as transparent as possible. As transparent as our current technology allows as we create the technology to be ever more transparent. Eventually all information that is available to the board of directors will be available to every single member in an organized and easily understood way.
Our finances will be transparent; where funding comes from and where and how it is spent will be available to all members during and after our crowdfunding campaign.
This level of transparency helps in many ways; it makes us more efficient, more trustworthy and protects us from many of the ways we could be destroyed. Our for profit “competition” can not be this transparent and therefore can not compete with our cooperative.
It makes us more efficient because ideas on how to improve, or mitigate risk can come from anywhere and everywhere. When we fail at anything we will have an open and honest conversation and come up with ideas on how to improve this in the future so it does not happen again.
For example, if we were in existence during the financial crash of 2008 and some of our members were able to foresee an issue but we did not listen to them and so we had the negative effects of the financial crash we could look back with hindsight and ask why didn't we listen to those exact people and is there a way to listen to those same ideas before the next financial crash or the next bubble bursts.
Mistakes made openly leads to faster improvement. We are not silencing descent we are encouraging it and using it to make our entire system better.
This is what transparency does. As a corporation when we make mistakes we will have to own them in full public view so that everyone can see what happened, suggest why it happened, and create systems to make it less likely to happen in the future.
To facilitate this we need an internal culture that allows mistakes and encourages learning from them. We are going to fail in the right direction as we perfect the system. Spoiler alert: they will never be “perfect”.
We are using full transparency internally but we are also creating systems to create more transparency in the external world as well. As consumers we will come to demand transparency from the companies we support and those that can not exist within this transparency will go out of business. As voters we will demand transparency from our politicians so we can better understand the decisions they are making and why.
The only way to compete with transparency is to become more transparent yourself. If you cannot exist in a system of transparency, you will probably no longer exist. When information is organized and made accessible to everyone a whole new level of transparency is possible because when we see it as possible we will demand it.
Transparency neutralizes marketing. You cannot create a brand that operates on spin of a product when we have access to the truth. It does not matter if you say your product is environmentally friendly and put on a green label because we can see the ingredients and track the record of the company and easily compare it to other competing products.
Corrupt politicians cannot remain in power when we can monitor their platform they were selected on and track the promises kept or broken. When we create a system to keep data on our politicians lobbyists loose most of the power that was obtained in secrect.
Pharmaceutical companies in the healthcare industry cannot get away with harming or poisoning us because it brings in more profit then they have to pay out in lawsuits, when we can transparently see those lawsuits and stand behind our fellow consumers. It becomes financially risky to be evil in a transparent system
We are going to run our board of directors with full transparency. The board meets weekly for an hour and these meetings are broadcast live to our members. Members will be able to offer suggestions, give opinions and participate as much as the current technology allows. Members can vote directly on issues or delegate their vote to a members of the board to vote on their behalf.
All members are able to participate at any level they desire. They can watch and participate directly in board meetings (when the technology allows). They can access and understand all relative information to help make informed decisions. The people who are very involved and become well known by our members will naturally become the next new board members and the transition to the board will be a much more seamless process
(efficiency of transparency at work).
No secret wheeling the dealings can be done behind the members backs as all internal corporate decisions must be made in full public view. Example: if the government demands we make internal data available to them the board has to tell the membership as every piece of information available to the board members is available to all members by design.
The level of trust that is generated with transparency cannot be replicated without it. Because every member can go as deep into the information as they wish to they can Also trust the surface level information made available in an easy-to-understand format. they know anyone can access the information so, someone who understands it, and cares, WILL. So we can trust any issues or corruption will come to light.
The company is designed so that the newest member can trust the system that was put in place before they arrived because they can fully see the entire process.
Transparency in for-profit corporations could mean somebody steals your proprietary idea and brings it to market before you. Working in complete cooperation we do not have this problem as nobody can steal and recreate our ideas in secret. We can operate with full transparency because we are not in competition with the existing companies but are in cooperation with each other. Facebook cannot operate transparently so that we can trust them and therefore they cannot recreate what we will create. We however could can reproduce a facebook-like platform that we design for the purpose of connection and information with full transparency out in the open for everyone to see because the worst that happens is somebody else does it first.
What to do if a different company creates a member-owned fully democratic transparent technology company where everybody is invited and we solve problems together using the tech we create?
We join with them (now or in the future)
Even our competition isn't actually competition because the design fixes it. The only people who would actually be competition are people doing the exact same thing in which case we can join them just like they could join us.
The reason not to have transparency is to hide something from your members / customers, shareholders or the government we I have nothing to hide so the outside forces cannot create spin about what we are doing as everyone can fully see what we are doing.
Full transparency helps us problem-solve more effectively. The board of directors is acting as the greater memberships proxy. For instance if the board of directors makes a budget and then goes over, it is not only on the board of directors that are responsible as every single member had access to the budget and could have improved it if they had better ideas. Because of this it is a lot easier to go back to the membership and ask for more money since we all went over budget together. Similarly if there is a legal ramification from a decision that is made we are all equally liable. If our data is breached in a way that nobody foresaw or in a way that we deemed was an allowable risk then we were all equally liable. This does not mean we do not make these issues right when mistakes happen. It means they are less likely to occur and when they do they are less likely to have large settlement amounts attached to them. It is like the difference between suing a restaurant that gave you food poisoning vs suing a friend who cooked you dinner and gave you food poisoning (the former is expected the later make you a bad friend)
We take on the entire risk together.
Transparency is the key to this revolution. It gives us the ability to trust. It makes us efficient and it gives us the potential to be as involved as we desire.