Fairness As Foundation

As children, we learn the principle that those who don't contribute to an effort shouldn't expect to share in its rewards. For example, see the story of the The Little Red Hen. Let's call this the "Fairness Principle." It's a principle any 5-year-old can understand.

Politics

Here's something any adult can understand: neither Wall Street nor the central planning politburos of the world exist to implement the Fairness Principle. You may prefer one or the other as a lesser evil, but the fact remains that both operate to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a privileged few. As a result, the laboring masses are deprived of their fair share, and the wars continue in every domain.

There will be no political solution based in national elections or violent revolutions. Such things originate more unfairness than otherwise. Better solutions will come by believers in the Fairness Principle applying their intelligence and agency to create institutions for fair dealing that are immune from subversion, which can only come by granting equal agency to each member.

DAO Dreams

Such dreams might have seemed impossible were it not for the example of Bitcoin and the explosion of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) that followed. For more than 15 years, DAOs have thrived despite opposition from very powerful players. Nonetheless, DAOs to date have been limited to operating computer networks for token ledgers, authentication registers, and other immutable data applications. They have not thus far been used for organizing corporate governance for general business operations.

More recently, some have began using the nascent term "work DAO" to describe a way of organizing work generally, using tools and processes borrowed from the existing world of DAOs. Work DAOs, in theory, use cryptographic ledgers and the algorithmic contracts secured by those ledgers to govern corporate enterprises for any business endeavor. It remains to be seen whether and how work DAOs might be used to organize any business that a corporation can.

What Are Equallectives

Equallectives, although inspired by DAOs, should not be confused with work DAOs or DAOs in general. "Equallective" is a term coined by the author of this post to describe an association of equal peers, incorporated or not, characterized primarily by:

1. agreement on a common purpose and governance (e.g., a charter);
2. earned-only, non-transferable voting shares, issued in proportion to work and extinguished upon death of the holder;
3. transparent mechanisms for earning voting shares and benefit shares by advancing the common purpose;
4. separation between benefit shares and voting shares; and
5. a distributed conflict resolution and reputation system based in personal agency, reciprocal rights and obligations, and freedom from compulsory jurisdiction.

Although Equallectives are not DAOs, their characteristics make them ideal candidates for implementing as DAOs. They can also be organized as corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, or unincorporated associations, for example.

Much more could be said about Equallectives, but this is a blog post, not a book.

Why Form an Equallective?

When the goal is to create content capable of generating income in a competitive market, it can be very risky to invest a lot of time and effort in a group project without a written agreement and a way of keeping track of each member's contribution. The usual solution is to find a "Producer" who assumes all the financial risk of the project, and most or all of the reward if the project succeeds. Nearly everyone else works entirely for upfront pay. Everybody works under one or more agreements written by lawyers specializing in entertainment law. Most Hollywood production is done this way.

The Hollywood approach works for well-funded production studios and other established players, but it is not the only way. A massive middle ground exists for producing music, videos, graphic novels, NFT's, books, and other creative content independently of production studios. Some of this "indie" content breaks through the enormous clutter of the digital age and earns real income for its creators.

In the electronic age, sophisticated music, audio, and video content can be produced with inexpensive equipment and free or cheap software. Money by itself produces nothing. Instead, the essential ingredients are artistic vision, skill, effort, and persistence. Teams can produce richer, more compelling content much more quickly than individuals working alone. The most important use for investment money is hiring skilled artisans. Which begs the question: why don't skilled artisans get together to produce their own content and share ownership in their own creations?

They can, and sometimes do, but one common barrier is a lack of commonly understood and easily accessible methods and agreements for fair and mutually beneficial collaboration, especially for larger or more complex projects. It's just too much work or expense to figure out the details, so team members join based on hope. The lack of a written agreement too often leads to misunderstandings and disagreements later.

Some small projects don't need a formal workshop agreement. Sometimes the collaborators have a very high confidence in each other based on their experience working together, or the project is just for fun and won't make anything of monetary value. Informal "handshake" agreements are fine for these simple cases. Equallectives make sense when there is not a clear shared understanding about how the benefits of a project will be divided, especially when the project requires a substantial investment of uncompensated time from two or more partners.

How To Learn More

To learn implementation details of Equallectives, you can study the Creative Commons licensed WikiWe Model. The WikiWe Model represents an early, comprehensive charter and guide for organizing Equallectives under the Wyoming Limited Liability Company Act and its Decentralized Autonomous Organization Supplement. The Model may be adapted for use in other jurisdictions. Hopefully, more concise and effective models for Equallective charters will evolve with time, including models easily adapted for algorithmic governance in work DAOs.

If you want to dive deeper and study the principles and theory of conflict resolution systems for Equallectives, you can read the book Blockchain Faith or query an LLM here. For a more concise introduction, check out this blog post. To collaborate on development and use of the WikiWe Model or alternative Equallective models, join any hub advertised at WikiWe.org or the Eggseed Press Model Development Workshop.