Just add beard?

Any neighborhood where the denizens have (nicely trimmed, please) beards, wear suspenders and sport a few tattoos would be a place I wouldn’t mind visiting – hey, a lot!

In Sara Horowitz’s story in The Altlantic on the new (old) mutualism, she describes the movement (at least in Portland)  as thus. As in, the male folks involved in cooperative ventures have this aesthetic.

More important, of course, is the movement behind the fashion – cooperatives filling a void to which neither government nor the private sector has been able or willing to provide good solutions.

I remember back during my one year at the University of Wisconsin in Madison – where I lived within walking distance of the Mifflin Street Co-op, which was a thriving holdover from the 1960s countercultural movement (it seemed like a long time from the anti-war riot days, but it was really just 1977-78). I tried to support it as best I could, but I do remember the healthy offerings weren’t often what my college-age junk food-loving body wanted.

But I digress. Horowitz goes on to talk about some of the bigger successes, like the Freelancer’s Union insurance programs, as well as more glamorous enterprises like Etsy and Kickstarter, which has funded thousands of art/music/film/design projects over the last year.

The cooperative movement couldn’t be more American or traditional than Ben Franklin, who started a “fire insurance company, Philadelphia Contributionship, which still operates today.”
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I found this definition of a social-purpose venture: It needs to:

1. Be financially sustainable
2. Have a social impact

So that’s pretty broad. I think the main differences between the old mutualism and what passes as the new version will have to do with technology – specifically the internet and crowd-sourcing, avenues simply not available to our ancestors in the 1890s. Maybe that and the tattoos – I can see the men of the 1890s in suspenders and beards, but were tattoos really the thing back then? I think that’s a more modern wrinkle. Then again, I could be wrong.

And, I learned a new word: locavore. I bet you, smart reader, don’t even have to look it up.