The Cooperative Economy: A Solution to Societal Grand Challenges

Society faces significant grand challenges, such as wealth and economic inequality, Big Tech dominance, loss of privacy, and overconsumption. This book proposes a new economic system, the cooperative economy, that promotes ethical community-driven exchange and addresses these issues through design principles that prioritize self-sufficiency, sustainability, and economic equality. It is a valuable resource for policymakers, managers, scholars, and students interested in finding solutions to these complex challenges.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 268 pages
Publication date: 06 February 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Societal grand challenges have profoundly impacted humanity, leaving us at a critical juncture. The concentration of wealth and economic inequality, the dominance of Big Tech firms, the erosion of privacy and free choice, and the unsustainable overconsumption and abuse of natural resources have been exacerbated by globalization. Regulators, legislators, international treaties, and government and corporate policies have fallen short of providing adequate remedies.

In this groundbreaking book, the author identifies the root cause of these problems and presents a bold solution: a new economic system free from the design flaws that have contributed to these societal grand challenges. The proposed cooperative economy is an ethical, community-driven exchange system that relies on collective action to promote societal values while accounting for resource constraints.

Unlike the modern economic system, which is predominantly driven by opportunistic behavior, the cooperative economy departs from a materialistic orientation and embraces a more balanced perspective that leverages prosocial behavior. The book elucidates how this new system adopts design principles that foster self-sufficiency of communities, sustainability, and entrepreneurship while limiting overconsumption and excessive profit-making. It achieves economic equality by leveraging price subsidization and restricting salary differences.

Furthermore, the book describes how the system serves the interests of consumers, vendors, and employees while preventing the accumulation of power by the platform owner who operates this system. This book is a must-read for policymakers seeking solutions to the grand challenges facing our society, as well as managers seeking alternative approaches to navigate platform ecosystems, resource shortages, and the ever-present threat of superplatforms.

Weight: 448g
Dimension: 233 x 156 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032370651