Perth Commons is an association created with the purpose of experimenting with and building out a parallel democratic economy intended to better deal with the age of the Anthropocene while strengthening democracy against growing attacks. This means a focus on universal protocols, localised control and increased democratic participation. This allows for three simultaneous and intertwined goals:

1. By creating more decentralised and democratic systems, we are increasing resilience to the unstable and unpredictable nature of the 2 degrees climate warming we appear to already be locked into. This not only improves human well-being going into the future but also gives us a better foundation to take action against reducing the impacts of climate change.

2. It shifts the economy away from a focus on reducing investor risks to induce high growth, to a focus on individual and community responsibility and holistic feedback better suited to dealing with an age were human impact has such a huge and complex affect on our biosphere.

3. It allows for relatively easy interlocking of resources on large scales for when and where it's needed, while maintaining localised autonomy for rapid response to local issues.

The name of the association reflects all this. We are focused on building localised community management of common resources in Perth Western Australia; but also focused on aligning the protocols and standards we use to do so with the broader goals of community control of the commons around the globe. The term "Cosmolocal" has come to define this in recent times; globalised protocols and communication with localised control of resources. This is a very important dynamic considering how localised and disproportionate the effects of climate change can be in time and space, while also being highly non-localised in how it must be approached and solved.

We are not a political party. We do not aspire to getting elected into office to implement these things on wide ranges of local and unique conditions where they may not be appropriate. Instead, we are focused on an opt in approach. This has major benefits. Firstly, it acts as a validation procedure. Institutions and systems are allowed to grow organically. At a certain point, any institution or system that becomes significant enough applies its own coercive forces. But given that these systems will have already been well tested through organic opt in growth, they are inherently democratically validated in ways that other approaches are not. Second, our means and ends are aligned. Instead of voting for some person who you hope will act in your interest, or buying from some corporation that espouses "your values", responsibility is placed on you and your community. You take the steps to opt in in a very practical sense. This can be an extremely freeing realisation for many. A direct dismissal of the notion of the end of the world being easier to imagine than the end of capitalism.

Yes, opt in is slow in the grand scheme. But again, that's the point. Rapid growth should not be a key metric of the insitutions we adopt. Means and ends.

Please reach out on LXMF: 7f67c2ab153a2e63ad40e7abd507ba18 (Perth Commons)