Some notes on the Creative Collective concept

An artist Collective for collaborating and promoting each other's work is a great concept, especially for members who don't have the temperament or inclination toward self-promotion. It's also great for encouraging collaborations between members. A good example of this is Dan Deacon (musician) working with Jimmy Joe Roche (visual stuff/filmmaker) and other members of the Baltimore based Wham City collective. That level of co-operation makes sense to most people, especially in the context of a much more famous member being able to lift the status of other members and help connect them with paid work.

The next logical step in organization is to directly fund members with the eventual goal of being able to fund all members so that they don't have to work their soul-crushing day jobs (or if they have fulfilling day jobs, more autonomy to to focus on their creative endeavors). I think this has the potential to go beyond the idea of allowing a few people to quit their day jobs. People do their best work when not stressed out and distracted by the concerns of a 40hrs/wk + job combined with mere survival. It's the difference between "what would you do if you didn't have to worry about money?" (note, this is not the same as "what would you do if you were very rich?") and "what would you do with the two or three hours of free time you have at the end of the day when you're tired from work?". I think it's fair to say that most of the best books, tv, music, video games, etc were made by people who have the privilege of focusing on their work for large (many weeks/months) blocks of time. Many creatives have a "struggle work" they created prior to financial independence, but it's not a sustainable life.

What is Fair:

My experience is that a sense of fairness is the most important thing for sustainable long term collaborative efforts. I've lived in several big houses with diverse groups of house mates that at some point went sour because some people started to feel that things were becoming unfair. What's "fair" to everyone is subjective, so the default mode of splitting up all the costs and revenue among members doesn't necessarily always feel fair for everyone. Like in a roommate situation, if one person never has guests over but others do, another person always cleans thoroughly, and another person cleans a little but always pays his portion of the rent on time, "what is fair" between them requires conversation and transparency to avoid the resentment that sets in when things don't feel fair for a long time.

Transparency and clearly defined goals.

It's no coincidence that talking about money is taboo in the workplace (well, in America, at least). I worked at a tech company where I found out new hires were making a lot more than I did which completely ruined it for me. The idea that we're all supposed to be constantly negotiating our salary leads to weird neurosis where we see everyone as competition while the most content-able people get the worst deal. In a non-corporate context this situation is further complicated when factoring in people's home situation (kids, dependents, etc), disabilities, location, age, and other personal needs.

So in the name of full transparency, at the bottom of this doc (personal needs) is my needs and wants list. I will include explanations for why I have certain needs, but I don't think all members should be expected to.

The Life Cycle of a Collective.

At the start there is no money coming in so the focus is in launching small yet meaningful projects, getting attention, building the consistency of doing a little bit everyday, and developing road maps for larger future projects. This phase should include a plan for how to divide money during the different stages, the process of recruiting and on boarding new members, how to handle conflict and future bad actors, and other details that can trip up groups of people. At this point, it's basically a traditional "artist's collective" where coming up with a name, agreeing on a general ethos, and just making stuff is the goal.

Next is the making a little bit of money phase. Things are fragile now because the collective must remain consistent in the process of creating and building yet members must also continue with their day jobs. If the collective is successful, it will start to become possible for this to be the full time occupation for some members. I think in practice this would function similar to a startup company in terms of the sense of adventure and novelty of being at the beginning of something with potential. This is probably why this is the road less traveled. Most people (who haven't gone through this process before) would rather take the instability of a startup that /might/ make everyone rich than the same sort of risks with the potential pay out of "only" escaping the rat race and having a stable life.

The mature collective then is like a union job in a stable company except the work has meaning beyond being a means for getting money. Money would be put aside to cover several months expenses and more ambitious projects could be pursued.

Is this some sort of non-profit company?

There are challenges to establishing anything that kind of looks like a company. Questions about taxes, working internationally (Is it still illegal for American companies to export certain types of cryptography? Will I get in trouble for distributing software that contains GPG?), and what kind legal entity to register as are beyond my expertise. At first maybe the best thing to do would be for every member to have their own patreon or other crowd funding thing managed on their own.

To go beyond this, it'll require writing a group charter (statement of intent) and bylaws that include mechanisms for changing the bylaws. I think there is strong evidence that all top down hierarchical institutions are self-corrupting, so for the sake of building something that lasts would require a governance structure more complicated than a worker's co-op but less involved than the commune hinted at in the Monty Python bit.

Unlike the typical worker's co-op (like the Mondragon corporation) which makes physical goods, an artist and programmer collective would have a much different landscape of things to work out together. If we're making widgets, the main concern is when workers work, when they get time off, and how much everyone is paid. If we're making a poster, the question "what do we want to say with the poster?" is already something that goes beyond a mere 2/3rds majority vote. Art, code, video games, memes, music, fashion, etc, are inherently a conversation that doesn't end when the process of making the thing begins. This means there is more personal investment involved and more room for conflict. There has to be room for dissent and the option for members to publicly say "I don't agree with the latest project". I think this would truly be the greatest challenge in sustaining an artist's collective, which to me, is still a much easier ask than working for the rest of my life for a company that doesn't give me a voice in matters, no stability, and the sickly feeling that all my job is accomplishing is putting a few extra tons of C02 in the atmosphere so stock market line can go up.

I think it's sad that the starving artist trope (and the parallel poor free software developer trope) is what many creative people are resigned to. It doesn't have to be like this, so I'd like to be part of making an alternative.

Personal needs:

Everyone has different needs. Below I have outlined what I need to thrive as a

human being. For some my figures are absurdly low or high, so don't use my dollar

values has a hard rule. There was a study some years ago that $75k a year is

peak happiness for most people. Less than that they're stressed about money,

more than that they're stressed about the mental weight of your possessions. I

think adjusting for inflation it's probably closer to $95k a year now for

Americans. Personally, the most I ever made at a job was $50k/yr working for a

very shady tech company while which at the time was a significant raise from

what I had been making. Even though in my area that amount is considered very

low, it FELT like a lot and it was night and day going from worrying about

every dollar spent to going into a grocery store and just buying whatever I

wanted without even looking at prices.

I need to earn between $25k to $80k per year net. Living on less than $25k a

year has lead to terrible health consequences for me and I want to reverse

that. $80k for me would be amazing because it would allow me to help several

people in my life who have been trapped in bad situations over small amounts

of money for things like deviated septum to surgery to fix a breathing issue.

That is the most pressing thing to me outside of my own health issues. I'm

stressed out because everyone I know is slowly sinking into permanent survival

mode and I want to break this cycle. I am basing this figure on the following

needs.

Live within public transportation distance of the medical school I go to

for treatment. I live in the PNW of America

A bit larger food budget than most people because of my health problems and

long list of food allergies. I do all my own cooking and that will continue

for the foreseeable future.

Between $1200 and $2000 for housing. I am looking into cheaper housing

solutions in the long term (Yurts, more collective housing situations), but

for now I'm limited in the short term (3-months to a year?) by factors like

being allergic to cats and dogs while every lower cost option having one of

those. It also seems my chronic health problems are tied to my stress levels,

so not having a bunch of house mates might be good for me in other ways.

A tech budget of $300/yr. My life runs on used computers and at this

point I'll take a 5yr old thinkpad over a brand new computer.

Continued access to my medication for treating my eczema. This a weird item

because the retail price is $3000 a month for 30 pills which is currently 100%

paid for by the drug manufacturer and my state's health plan since I qualify

for the health care they assign you when you're too poor for anything else.

What is nebulous to me is how much of that $3k a month will I have to pay for

when I make more. What are the income thresholds for this? Is there a point

where I make too much to qualify for a subsidy yet not enough to pay for it

myself? My efforts to find a solid answer to this question have been

inconclusive in part because it's a new drug and I only have access because

one of the top dermatologists in the country wrote a letter to the the

pharmaceutical company on behalf of me, a person who was subject to a medical

trial that was necessary for FDA approval. The other part is that what my

state's health plan does and does not cover changes yearly.

To save at least $3000 for things like not having to suddenly buy a month's

supply out of pocket to avoid a treatment gap. I would also be considerably

less stressed out if I had SOME certainty in my life. I've been living on

less than $800/mo for years which has put me in situations where creating

things is a distant second to just surviving.

To feel like I have a future beyond working until my body physically cannot

anymore then just dying. I think my health problems are such that I don't

really have to "worry" about retiring, but from what I know about neurology

having 7 or more consecutive days off in a row where you're not thinking

about how you're going to survive changes the brain. I take a day off

here and there to relax but the idea of a full week or more without worrying

about it sounds so amazing I'd like to try it. The last time I had a planned

vacation was in 2012 and I like to do something like that at least one more

time.