Ways to improve the ownership economy — Mirror

Community ownership is a virtuous aspiration among web3 organizations. However, without an agreed upon definition or collective understanding of what ownership actually is, we may inadvertently dilute or abstract its meaning.

For networks that aim to be community owned, there should be some form of codetermination at the outset, allowing community proxies or representatives to be involved in treasury-related decisions -- particularly around token allocation.

If Apple were structured as a worker-owned cooperative, the ownership stake of each of its 150,000 workers would be worth over $15m. On top of that, each employee would receive an annual dividend of over $400k. Ownership creates wealth, and its concentration helps create wealth inequality.

If tokens = ownership, who makes decisions around distributing ownership?

Ownership can be understood as a proxy for two things: decision making power and financial power. This suite of benefits includes the ability to have a voice in the direction, strategy, operations, or fate of a company; as well as the ability to capture profits and the value of its equity and assets.

While musicians faced an existential crisis during a pandemic, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s ownership stake in Spotify climbed to be worth over $4 billion. In order to earn $4 billion, a musician earning the median wage of $25,000 would have to work for 160,000 years – in other words, they’d have to have started working before human history began.

Some questions to consider:

Disclosures of compensation within crypto networks should become a core standard in order to demonstrate real community ownership.

Whereas "democracy" was redefined to mean "access", "ownership" risks being abstracted away to mean little more than "exposure to upside". Yes, having the ability for users to capture more value is good, but does it qualify as "ownership"?