Cooperative infrastructure doesn't emerge from nowhere. Every structure we build carries the DNA of structures that came before — and those structures were designed by someone, for someone.
This series traces the institutional ancestors of modern cooperative and corporate structures. Not to celebrate or condemn them, but to understand a simple pattern: structures concentrate power in whoever designs them. Limited liability partnerships, joint stock companies, revolutionary funds, platform cooperatives — the tools are powerful and largely neutral. The question is always who holds the pen when the terms are written.
We're reading history not as scholars but as builders. Every post asks: what did this structure get right, what did it hide, and what does that teach us about designing infrastructure where the people who do the work have a seat at the table?
Posts in this series
- The Structure Is the Extraction — What 954 years of "revolutionary" finance teaches about who owns the work. From the Venetian commenda to Cuban revolution to Citibank.