Economic Cooperation Societies

As I think about how to mitigate the effects of the depressed economic conditions we see ourselves sliding toward I have been trying to figure out if we can organize new social institutions built on voluntary association outside of the governmental support structure. The idea would be to take on projects that are too big for the individuals involved to handle on their own and organize everyone's time, talents, and other resources to complete their projects.

Why outside of the government support structure? This work is meant to be a mitigation for the effects of what some call "late stage capitalism". As everyone feels the squeeze that comes from our unhealthy economy most governmental units also feel that squeeze. Becoming dependent on those organizations and their budgets can be a sure way to end up working on things that they want worked on instead of remaining independent enough to focus on what a group wants to work on. We need to regrow the social power that has waned in response to the steady growth of State power.

As we try to discover and describe the philosophy behind Zion I also want to find a way to support efforts to organize both distributed and localized project groups that act on the philosophy to solve real world problems and ease the discomfort of people everywhere feeling the squeeze of systems that appear to be cracking.