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About us

We are a publication owned and governed by the readers and the writers as a cooperative.

Here are our three key principles:

  • We seek to advocate for ideas, not attack people.

    We want to inform, not infuriate. Provocation, personal criticism and controversy has its place. But this publication is not it. We do not believe our approach is the only correct one – just that there is lack of it in the media.

  • We seek to create consensus, not controversy.

    There are big ideas that bring together people who otherwise disagree. If people from many different perspectives conclude that an idea has merit, it is often a sign of a great idea. We are not here to preach to the choir.

  • We seek to revitalize democracy beyond just the state

    Elections in trade unions and co-operatives, such as credit unions, are democratic mechanisms that are underutilized due to media neglect. We want to change that.

We are a co-operative owned by our readers and writers. Everyone in the world can join either by paying a membership fee or writing articles for us.
We use democratic, participatory budgeting to decide how our funds are shared between writers and our members also elect our board of directors.

We are strong believers of cooperation between cooperatives. By joining Mutual Interest, you support a wider ecosystem of co-operatives. For example:

  • Instead of Patreon, we use a similar service called Open Collective, hosted by Platform6 Co-operative. Instead of paying 7% to Patreon shareholders, we pay 2% to Platform6 Co-operative, which uses the money to help fund new cooperatives.

  • We are hosted by Web-architects Co-operative. We are also a client-member of Webarchitect Co-operative, which means we co-own it and are allowed to vote in their board elections.

  • We use Loomio to make our decisions. Loomio is a tool for democratic decision making for online groups, developed and hosted by a worker cooperative. We also encourage our members to participate in the development Loomio.

If there are other co-operatives or similar projects that could provide us with opportunities for collaboration, do not hesitate to contact us.