 Thanks Sarah so much for joining me. I'd like to just kick it off by starting to motivate some of our somewhat spicy title. I'd love to ask for you to explain a bit about what mutualism is and how you came to this framework of thinking about systems, public goods, commons, that sort of thing. Well first of all it's really nice to see you all. I'm gonna jump in with a definition of mutualism without any context but hopefully we'll get to that and I just want to say it was really interesting hearing Juan's talk just before when he was talking about what's the best way that you can get to some success and it's by being connected to other people and mutualism actually is the way it's the operating system of how people come together, how they have in the past. It has three principles. It's a community. People come together because they have shared interests. They live in the same building. They're in a food co-op. They're in a union. Number two is that they have an economic mechanism. It's a self-funding community. You pay your dues, there are services. It's not like a big donor drops the money in. You organize the capital within that community and the third is that it tends to have a long-term horizon and you see that in unions, cooperatives, mutual aid groups and the business of the faith communities, schools, insurance companies and when you look at that as a sector it's a trillion dollar sector so this is not like a small thing. And the idea of a self-funded long-lived community that is aligned around goals seems to be very consistent with what a lot of people in Web 3 are talking about with DAOs now and I have not come across anyone referencing these types of labor union, these types of existing communities that have been doing this for decades if not set like at least more over the more than a century. Are there, what are the most obvious connections that you see to some of these Web 3 or Dow like things that would benefit from making that connection? Yeah. No, it's a great question and it's really true. I have to say that I am like the last person you think would be like a Web 3 person. It's like just not my cultural thing. Oh, actually, sorry to interrupt but I would love to have you dig into a little bit more about your background, your career and how you got to this either after you're finishing that thought or sure sure and so basically yeah what a great conversationalist you are so but the Dow to me is like we are so at the early stage of this like in three years we'll look back at now I'll be like that was so stupid but it's like we're starting to really get smarter about it but it is that idea of the collectivity and that it starts to have its own ecosystem there it's boundary it is a group of people that are connected for a reason and it is not just an open thing and so I think those are the connections so let me just say I come from a labor family my grandfather was a vice president of the garment workers union in the 1920s and I my father was a labor lawyer my husband's a labor lawyer my child wrote a great senior thesis around labor so you know it's the thing we do but really unions are about people coming together they have a collective in an ecosystem they have their own money that they generate the union generates it through dues you know when I start describing this it's like if I didn't tell you it was a union from the 1920s you would be like that's a really cool down so I think the big and I'll and then let me just say I then started the freelancers union I don't know if anybody here was a member is a member anybody here who remembers now yeah okay and that really was based on thinking about a new union structure that would I guess I should be looking at you gosh that was a union structure that was built like a network so that you would join and be part of the network as opposed because freelancers are working all over the place so anyway that sort of got me started thinking about that yeah I'm curious was has there been anything you've heard about with dows that where you think like it doubt tooling it could be useful for the freelancers union I realize I haven't had masses before yeah I mean I think it's for for so for unions cooperatives I think that there's something that like where where I feel conceptually is like the Dow world of what is being organized call it sort of like discord unionizing then you kind of have like traditional analog groups and and we're looking for the bridging and I think that's so I'll tell you some things where I think the Dow world is not getting it so I kind of have been because of our conversation I've been thinking about it sort of like where Airbnb got things right in a funny way because we can all have our criticisms but the major point is that they had this insight that people already had infrastructure and that you built on the infrastructure that they had so very quickly they became bigger than all these major hotels and I feel like the way that we're thinking about scaling dows is that we're gonna manufacture these communities you know we'll like we'll just find some way it'll be in the discord channel be really easy like they'll come together and it'll be great and then it'll go to scale and that's why you should give me this much money investor but the truth is that the smarter solution is to for us to start to look at these existing communities that are like seedlings that have popped out of the earth they are there they are functioning there's some solidarity and we should be like Airbnb thinking about them as how we're gonna organize and so to me to put it in sort of business terms like the one the businesses that will succeed are the ones that understand that you you expand on the community's trust you don't manufacture it and it's a summation of those groups not homogeneity yeah and I think that the the trust factor here is something really interesting that I think dows would there's a trust there's a ability to leverage trust that the anonymity or pseudonymity of dows kind of creates a limit around the effectiveness or the ability number of like affordances or things that dows can do and it seems like starting from a community where there is trust could empower so many other types of actions that dows could suddenly take I like really love the the meme that crypto has basically speedrun the last few hundred years of finance and we're now trying to speedrun the last few thousand years of governance and I think that there's some element where if you would realize that like having trust having relationships having communities that you can start from and leverage and build allows you to be much more effective in achieving your goals yeah even delisting goals from the population aggregating them prioritizing them and then acting against them I think it's there's a bunch of things in that I think like one thing is you know first of all I feel like the era of 2009 to 2022 is ending you know like we are our stock market is you know having major difficulties we are having significant worldwide inflation and so we can't keep assuming that the market is going to be like it was before and I think that's really important because when you're talking to a community that community has skin in the game because they want this to succeed because they're getting something for being in that community and so it's actually a cultural change and the cultural change is that you trust that community to understand what they want because they're grownups and they probably have a pretty good idea of what they want and I'd say that's where both our politics and our business community are totally getting it wrong so we feel like we are really smart we are going to hire and this is everybody business foundations the Democratic Party the Republican Party like we hire McKinsey Bain dot no offense please say you are management consulting firm and then we find out what it is that we want by some data system and then we implement from above and tell people what they want but that's to me the promise of dows if we can start to get it right is that we're actually having a community that's in control and they're saying what they need and we're architecting around that and iterating with them yeah and I you've had a great take on the over-reliance on traditional solutions from the last few decades for both the left and the right can I ask you to go into that a little bit yeah yeah you know let me just say I'm like a lifelong Democrat but so hear that like I just feel the need to say that but I think that it's really important that we understand that we have to have a community orientation and when I say community I literally mean an organization of people if like you you might say Dow like but that we have to have an expansion of these kinds of organizations for our democracy because they actually are deeply rooted but the role of government isn't to do it for those groups we don't need more centralized government we need more decentralized government that funds actively and builds this new sector and so it's a very weird thing it doesn't fit neatly within these paradigms it's not it I don't think the free market alone works it's evident that it doesn't and yet what you have to do so I saw those in the the libertarian world like no I don't I don't think that that works I think it's this hybrid and that's why I call that mutualism and it's if we went around the room and we all talked about whatever ethnic group we came from as immigrants everybody would tell you the name in their own language for a tontine or a lending circle and everybody will have done it through their faith community so to give you an example the Korean community has and somebody here who knows better jump on in but you through your church community you don't you put money into a hat every month until it's your turn to get that money and you take that money and then you start your business every group does that this what we need to go back to and start building upon because it actually works it's decentralized and communities run it yeah I think it's amazing to realize that after our conversation acted and thought about both some of the some of the more radical exchange dynamic like digital democracy type directions that tend to be very focused on representation of different groups different experiences and I feel like that strongly lines with this community built like the idea that we should build communities empower them to decide what they want and then we'll incorporate that into governance structures but it also connects very strongly to the like crypto nation like a lot of the things that people who are pushing sovereign individual type things are saying like we should have the ability to opt into our own and create new governments it seems like it's basically just trying to drag either democracy or markets into this central idea that you should be able to opt into or out of these different organizational mechanisms and it was remarkable for me to realize that like you've highlighted exactly that these organizational mechanisms have existed in community forms for hundreds of years yeah yeah I mean I think that one thing when I listen to people talk particularly in the technology world and they talk about self-sovereignty it is very much this idea of the individual is coming to this place to make a decision and can easily leave just learned about rage quit two weeks ago and and but but it's it's a good reaction and I understand why somebody might have an orientation around libertarianism when you see how we're getting so little done in this country you know in a democracy it's frustrating but you can't stop there because it we have to we have to function in a in a more sophisticated way and I just can't help but say so my hero is this man named Sydney Hillman and he was the president of the amalgamated clothing workers union and what he did is he had collective bargaining with the companies but then he took some of the dues and he became his own venture capitalist though that no one used that term and they then invested and built labor insurance labor insurance companies banks housing and literally the modern system of remittances to send money back home came they invented that so it's actually extremely sophisticated it's actually not like homes fun yeah and I I wanted to dig into a little more of the differences between those business creations and existing venture capitalists and the idea or venture capitalists and entrepreneurs I you've mentioned that there's like the one large distinguishing factor is that a lot of these things spin outs from unions were to generate public goods or commons and or I guess to some extent member goods or club goods rather than being these generalized open like permissionless for profit entities yes totally no thank you that's such a great question essentially it was so remember I said we'll start with the three principles of mutualism out of context so the first one is community the second is economic mechanism but the economic mechanism the purpose is not to extract the money out but to recycle it back and that's what they did and I'm really sophisticated way and I feel like there is some interesting opportunity to imagine the generation of some currency token that have the equivalent of gas fees and the need to buy in and have membership and to like web three eyes all of this and as soon as you start doing that I think that there's also interesting ideas from modern monetary theory where like what happens whenever union can be a sovereign currency issuer where you have something that looks like tax but then you can think about what it would mean to create or drive or mitigate inflation of the goods created by this community and the number of levers that you now pull as a sovereign currency issuer just as an organization you know I think that's a really good point of the really good conversations that we can start to have right like it kind of sounds a little outer space but it also really sounds like there's something something that could be in there and I think that's really the opportunity right now is that if we can start to realize that this isn't quaint or charming you know it's not you know Birkenstock wearing likes dismiss it though you secretly wear them you know it's like I think there's something here and we're ready for really creative conversations and I think that that's what so that's what's so interesting you know I I kind of feel like we're at that moment like you know how when you hear like what came before Silicon Valley and it's like really it was like a lot of people and hate Ashbury tripping right and they were like talking and sharing information so like everybody grew more because it wasn't attached to returns and then we started investing in the schools in the great university systems so by the time we got to the place where people were making their investments and making money there had been like a lot of other non-market activity that really made that happen and I kind of feel like that's where we are at now and sometimes the pressure to have to like you know get your deck and be ready to get your a round and be around you know it's kind of gonna kill things but because we have to find that place to maybe not trip like in hate Ashbury but like do legal cannabis it'll be here soon right but like do something where we we connect to one another in non-market transactional ways and I'll just say one thing also that's the beauty of mutualism is like if you think about any natural disaster anywhere the first thing that happens is people come together they're starting to use technology to be able to coordinate but where they physically meet is in the credit unions the churches and the union halls because that's where there's an edifice that they can go and they start to coordinate and I think that's kind of both metaphorically right and it literally is right and I think there's also a huge opportunity for like non geographically centralized organizations like this one of my favorite stories from the pandemic is that there were a few like Slack servers and discord servers where the researchers working on cutting-edge things got together and were sharing all of their preliminary data because they knew that time was of the essence and I think a lot of the breakthroughs can be traced to collaborations that showed up on there that was this para academic system that did not exist through addition existing like normal channels because suddenly the incentives were not the systemic incentives of academia around grants and publications and citations it was around trying to address this global problem that was growing worse by the week or by the minute no I think that I I really love that point because you know I think we're at this time I don't know about you but I suspect like we're all feeling like we want something greater than ourselves you know we want to stop just being critiquers and want to start building and the existing so the existing groups that we would join that have a lot of face time in the media like the political parties seem like they are not set represent not sufficiently representing any individual group and so you see a lot of momentum building around things like ranked choice voting that might break us out of a two-party system that leads to perverse incentives around representation yeah I mean I feel like you get the leaders you deserve and so I think that we have to start to build right and say what we need and I think then we will feel like we see ourselves a lot more in in this and yeah so I think that that's it and I think there is something about building and I think if like if like we were thinking about what can you do it's like what can you build and how can you start to make this happen yeah are there any groups in the world you think would benefit from forming a new type of union or organization that maybe couldn't like has difficulty or had difficulty previously because they had like barriers add to some amount around finding each other or getting together or communicating or coordinating that maybe they like organization around dows might facilitate I feel like digital art might be one well I think the creators are probably the first group that has a model that you can explain with common sense and understand it and it's not like people just wanting to move money around under whatever the radar and that's a business model apparently or not but I think that but I do feel like there are these groups that are starting to form that are like there's resilience force which organizes climate workers and there's co-worker org so these groups are there I think it's the bridging of the groups you know it's sort of like I bet you after people organize at Starbucks and at Amazon it's not going to be very long before they start realizing that there's a Dow and you know if you're here trying to think about how you're gonna make a lot of money like I think that's where the next thing is is trying to reach those groups and helping them build what they need but it's non-market activity in the beginning because they don't have the funding to pay you but that's probably where if you want to learn and do something good and feel good about yourself like that would be quite interesting or organize your own place yeah and I would hope that impact certificates might be an interesting way of tracking the contributions within something like this so that after the fact if someone wanted to support the creation of this after the fact they could come through and purchase impact certificates or use other mechanisms that we're trying to design in order to fund that incentivize these kinds of things ahead of time or fund them after the fact you know I often think about like Facebook groups like what's wrong with the Facebook group well what's wrong with it is that you'll never get a notification that's like form your own group and you know keep your own data and like get your own leader and leave this platform and also you can't do anything that's against Facebook or if you can then they can always de-platform yeah exactly and that's and so I think that is that is the point that it's actually these skills that you know how to do or you could watch a YouTube video or just talk to somebody over 50 but like set an agenda you know find somebody who or a group that will be the leaders and it's not a bad word and start to pass the hat around to support yourselves in your group and I think that to me is the impact certificate because that's actually where you really see real impact you know we really like to see forests right we want and so we're like we're gonna have a forest and it's gonna be big and it's gonna be big in three months but the forest has to actually start growing by somebody planting the tree and I think that's that's the moment we're in we're tree builders now yeah and I I would encourage everyone here who is like has a tree in mind that you'd like to incubate or plant to try and share that with as many people as possible and also commons at protocol.ai if you're having trouble refining or reaching out to people do you want to make an impact certificate I could I couldn't figure out how to do it so you tell me what do you think would be the impact certificate I I think that the the question becomes what scope of like which what work we want to include in it or not I think that like there we could have an impact certificate of this conversation that people if anyone found this particularly engaging or interesting we could mint and give it to them as something that they could represent or present as a reference to as an artifact to represent or point to this conversation or we could mint impact certificates for the the generation or planting of some of these tree. So we'll do this like a cultural experiment so take that this is how I would what I would say I would say wouldn't it be interesting to see if you could go around the room to see what groups people either are in or and that could be your faith group it could be your food co-op like whatever that is and then you could see what do you think you could do to help them so in other words you don't decide what they need you say to them what do you need and then you help them do what they say they need and then you see how many of them were here then you learn what did you do over the course of the year that was actually helpful or interesting or worked or satisfying or that you made money at and then you came back the next year and you said okay we asked you this we learned and then we saw what those top five things were we are gonna now iterate and then we're gonna go to like digit fine coin whatever and get them to give us a grant to like help those groups yeah I think that could be really compelling we have a few minutes left and I wanted to ask well I wanted to also state that I've been very much enjoying Sarah's book mutualism this is not a placed ad I've been enjoying it I would recommend it I would recommend it as a source of learning more are there other places that you would or recommendations you would have for people who want to understand more about the dynamics of labor unions or the history of them or places that have conversations with people who have I guess like-minded people who would be willing to engage with and experiment with some of the weirder web three ideas or the idea of incorporating new tools and experiments in connection with some of the more traditional robust and classical organization movements yeah well one thing is that you can go to mutualistsociety.net which just got its new URL about an hour ago but I'm so hopefully that's up but it's I would say probably looking at reading reading more about labor just googling around and looking at the history there are other people who've written really interesting books John Rostakis I can if anybody is interesting you can reach out to me and I would be happy to to send it or send it to you when we can come up with a list but Nathan Schneider is a great person you should look at his work in Boulder Colorado yeah I think it's happy to share a list sounds great is there a way that you would recommend or encourage people to reach out to you oh yeah you can reach out to me on LinkedIn if I know that's like what but I really will that's like the only thing you I'll give you my email but if you want to talk to me come find me so I'll do it up here and I'll add some of those recommendations and contact information to the PL Twitter oh I do have something there's a really great newsletter called ownership matters and that is key that is really a good place to look at interviews with other mutualists that ownership matters is a good thing to look at fantastic thank you very much any closing thoughts questions you have for me or the audience that you want them to think about well I mean I feel like the thing that is on us is to start bridging this and starting not just for an intellectual reason but because like the time is now getting right for these really interesting ideas and so let's start having salons again you know sounds great yeah if you know of any communities who are trying to organize then it may be finding like good tooling or ways like venues that you can create help create for them or tools you can create for them or if you are part of a community I think there's a great direction of bridging those communities with existing movements and organizations to see if you can strengthen them and create totals that are greater than the sum of their parts perfect thank you all very much