Here’s evidence on that distinction. Cooperative care networks are distinct at the levels of actor and mechanism. The perm doesn’t solve just because we’re okay with the state!

As with any sustainable commons, a care cooperative must go beyond social relation to a process of collaborative organization and governance (Dengler and Lang, 2022). Horizontal, shared governance distributes power evenly across the member base. A key component to cooperatives is that they are owned by those who participate in the cooperative, so participants get decision-making power and monetary benefit when possible. Cooperatives build equity for worker-owners, giving them voice and power through participation (Waters, 2020). Cooperatives can also act as a forum for redistributive justice: “Because worker-owned co-ops function differently from other businesses, they build equity and ownership for care workers, who have been historically marginalized in an extractive economy” (Waters, 2020, para. 8). This power structure differs from effective altruism, where the dynamic is often that of a privileged group giving money to a less privileged group for a specific, clearly identified purpose. Through shared governance, horizontal power, and self-determination, cooperatives concentrate power in the people, rather than in the hands of the wealthy.

This type of collective arrangement applied to care work could also address the devaluation and invisibility of care work. Rather than relying on the market or state to assign value, participants themselves would jointly decide which acts and services are most important and how to compensate workers – and workers who join the cooperative would also have a say in their own pay rate.

Ostrom (2000) made the link from her empirical studies on shared governance of common pool resources to a theory of collective action. Her work was not conclusive, as the study of humanity is ever-evolving, however she found that external policies were less effective than social norms in promoting collective action. She concludes that “increasing the authority of individuals to devise their own rules may well result in processes that allow social norms to evolve and thereby increase the probability of individuals better solving collective action problems” (Ostrom, 2000, p. 154). This is not to say that policy or state support is detrimental or unuseful, but rather that the benefits of cooperative and collective action derive from the interdependency of participants rather than legal or regulatory enforcement. It also underscores the overarching need for a shift in societal values, rather than relying on policies and regulations to effect change.