Grassroots Economist - Econo-optimist - ❤️ Commitment Pooling and Common Pooled Resources & Regenerative Agriculture🌱 - Founder: @grassecon (a/yeye)
Kenya
Joined December 2007
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What does a bioregional economy look like when local commitments, community pools, and national currency can be seen moving together?
I made a short video walkthrough following five Chama pools near Kiriba and Takaungu across 4,606 public Celo events.
It explores how locally governed vouchers, shared liquidity, community activity, and national currency can connect without collapsing into one currency or institution.
There is a full article explaining this video and software (ask me if interested)
Mashujaa Day: What Does It Take to Keep Freedom Alive?
In 2009, I first walked past the Kengeleni Bell near Kongowea Market in Mombasa, while exploring ideas that would become Eco-Pesa.
The bell marks the history of Frere Town, built by Africans liberated from slavery. In 1889, £3,500 was paid to those relinquishing claims over 1,442 people. That's roughly £584,000 in today's British purchasing power, or **KSh 100 million**.
The money went to former enslavers, not the people rebuilding their lives. Generations later, much of Frere Town's original land was transferred to other interests.
Today, the surrounding economy is full of wealth: farmers, fishers, traders, carpenters, transporters, caregivers and countless other skilled people.
What if we brought together KSh 100 million in real commitments to deliver local goods and services?
That's the idea behind the Frere Freedom Market, connecting locally stewarded markets where people can exchange food, skills, services and productive commitments.
My experiences around Kongowea and working with Tendai Lewa Mtana and communities practicing Chikola and Dhome have given me enormous confidence in what people can accomplish together.
Thank you, Tendai, for helping us recognize and steward the wealth already among us.
This Mashujaa Day, let's honor those who fought for freedom by strengthening our capacity to sustain it.
What can we build together with the resources we already have?
willruddick.substack.com/p/m…
🩺 What if doctors could accept more than money for healthcare?
Imagine a doctor offering a consultation while a patient contributes gardening, teaching, transport, or another useful service through a community commitment pool.
Through Cosmo-Local Credit, we're exploring how medical vouchers, reciprocal exchange, and mutual aid could help communities make better use of the care and resources they already have.
Inspired by my search for healthcare for my daughter, I've written Healthcare Commons for Doctors and Patients.
Could this work in the US? What about taxes, medical ethics, and regulation?
I'm inviting doctors, dentists, healthcare lawyers, accountants, patients, and mutual-aid organizers to help us build the foundations for a small, responsible pilot.
🌱 What if more healthcare could begin with a promise to care?
willruddick.substack.com/p/h…
within the last 3 years, i ve witnessed my partner going through surgery and recovery
Watching her heal has changed how I think about rupture, acceleration, and recovery.
As a physicist, I think about how quickly forces can break things, and how much longer healing can take.
I wonder what it would mean to accelerate toward health as a society.
I think of our relationships, trust, mutual aid, and shared capacity to respond as a kind of social soil. Like living soil, it takes time to build and can be depleted much faster than it regenerates.
This connects to my work on settlement acceleration: how quickly we can increase the rate at which our commitments to one another are actually fulfilled.
Can we accelerate the flow of resources, care, and cooperation without exhausting the people and relationships that sustain them?
I've been exploring these questions in a new essay, Healing the Ruptures, connecting physics, violence, nonviolent communication, and commitment pooling.
willruddick.substack.com/p/h…
#🐂💩🪞
🤖 Made with AI
🐂💩The B.S. Mirror Test
... aka Recognizing What We Externalize
How easily we recognize domination, dependency, exploitation, and broken commitments in the world, while overlooking these same patterns in ourselves, our relationships, and our institutions.
The B.S. begins when our certainty about what's wrong with others exceeds our curiosity about what is happening within us.
Calling B.S. is an invitation to consciousness and hopefully a way to laugh through the tears. To notice where we externalize problems that may also be present in how we think, relate, and live. To recognize our contradictions without shame or blame, with curiosity, empathy, and a willingness to understand.
What we see in the world may also be a mirror of what we have yet to recognize in ourselves.
Perhaps that recognition is where transformation begins.
Try the 🐂💩B.S. Mirror Test today:
👀 Spot it: What B.S. bugs me in others?
🪞 Flip it: Where do I do that too?
❤️ Feel it: What's going on inside me?
😂 Laugh: Oops! Caught myself!
🌱 Shift: Try something different, with care.
🐂💩The B.S. Mirror Test
... aka Recognizing What We Externalize
How easily we recognize domination, dependency, exploitation, and broken commitments in the world, while overlooking these same patterns in ourselves, our relationships, and our institutions.
The B.S. begins when our certainty about what's wrong with others exceeds our curiosity about what is happening within us.
Calling B.S. is an invitation to consciousness and hopefully a way to laugh through the tears. To notice where we externalize problems that may also be present in how we think, relate, and live. To recognize our contradictions without shame or blame, with curiosity, empathy, and a willingness to understand.
What we see in the world may also be a mirror of what we have yet to recognize in ourselves.
Perhaps that recognition is where transformation begins.
Try the 🐂💩B.S. Mirror Test today:
👀 Spot it: What B.S. bugs me in others?
🪞 Flip it: Where do I do that too?
❤️ Feel it: What's going on inside me?
😂 Laugh: Oops! Caught myself!
🌱 Shift: Try something different, with care.
💟Ahh the beloved 📶TCP/IP🛜 … and the growing concentration of internet infrastructure and platforms reminds me that interoperability alone doesn't prevent concentration of power.
At the same time I wouldn't try to encode the governance of a whole society into a protocol. I'd rather make the protocol simple, useful, and available to everyone. Although, of course, how we implement and design the protocol matters too!
… TCP/IP as an open protocol allows independently governed networks to communicate over HAM radio, Wi-Fi, fiber optics, and other technologies. It doesn’t dictate whether those networks belong to individuals, companies, communities, or governments.
So where do power asymmetries appear (in the CPP lens)?
Curation: Who decides which commitments are accepted or excluded?
Valuation: Who sets their exchange values, and whose contributions are discounted?
Limitation: Who sets the boundaries on access and exchange?
Exchange: Who controls the liquidity, fees, and settlement?
Imagine a farmer whose maize commitments are valued poorly or restricted by a pool controlled by a large buyer. Transparently published valuations, limits, and rules could make some of that power visible.
But the farmer's dependence on that buyer, their ability to challenge decisions, and their real alternatives require us to look beyond the software.
There's also power in registries, applications, technical controllers, and legal institutions.
Understanding who can decide, challenge, repair, or leave … requires looking at and distinguishing exchange routes, assets and obligations, technical controllers, and legal powers.
We're putting this into practice through CosmoLocal.Credit, currently on @gnosischain .
But CPP needn't belong to any particular blockchain. Its functions could be implemented through other blockchains, conventional ledgers, or even community memory, with appropriate connecting layers and agreements.
My hope is for a simple, open protocol that many different institutions can use, adapt, and connect, rather than one governance model imposed on everyone.
That won't make power asymmetries disappear. Nor will the protocol automatically make them visible or fair. Transparency, real alternatives, accountability, and meaningful exit need to be built and maintained.
I would like to make the underlying arrangements easier to understand, question, and change. CPP (if well implemented) might help us see what's being played, while leaving people the freedom and responsibility to decide how they orchestrate.
June 1971: ALOHANET becomes operational, serving as the first public packet radio network and laying foundational groundwork for modern wireless communication and Ethernet technology.
I am loving this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlin…
the history of TCP/IP is amazing
thanks substack.com/profile/3611069…
Come visit us together with our community! Oct 31st
(p.s. might be the last chance for a while) facebook.com/share/1DQ98AMrE…
Come visit us together with our community!
(p.s. might be the last chance for a while)
facebook.com/share/1DQ98AMrE…
Lula vs Flávio Bolsonaro … I just want to remember that after October 25, the Brazilian people will still be neighbors with each other. The music we make together will matter long after the election.
Words like "communism," "socialism," and "capitalism" have become instruments of fear ….. while real concerns about livelihoods, public services, freedom, and economic power deserve much more serious discussion.
I am hearing of, Brazilians supporting Lula abroad were branded "communists" online, while arguments over spending cuts and social programs have become very very charged.
We really need to look beneath these ideological tunes to the sheet music of economic coordination. Who decides what is valued, who controls resources, who benefits, and who bears the risks?
Healing begins when we can hear the real needs and fears beneath the labels, question our own assumptions, and recognize each other's humanity despite deep disagreements.
Note…. After October 25, Brazilians will still be neighbors. The music we make together will matter long after the election.
.. again: after October 25, the Brazilian people will still be neighbors with each other. The music we make together will matter long after the election.
P.S. We're also working on Portuguese translations of the Cosmo-Local Credit documentation to make these ideas more accessible and invite wider participation and discussion in Brazil. 🇧🇷
Can Capitalism and Socialism Play the Same Sheet Music? 🎶
I began noticing something curious. Rotating labor associations, cooperatives, banks, and markets all seem to share four underlying functions: curation, valuation, limitation, and exchange. These observations led to the Commitment Pooling Protocol (CPP).
What if we could make these functions programmable and interoperable?
Private enterprises, worker cooperatives, communities, and governments could develop and connect their own economic arrangements without adopting the same ownership or governance systems. Perhaps the innovation isnt discovering new economic music, but making it possible to read, modify, and connect the arrangements were already living within.
When the music stops, whose promises were fulfilled? Who has food, shelter, and a voice?
🎵 Read the full article: willruddick.substack.com/p/c…
… a reflection exploring capitalism, socialism, and the many other tunes our economies might play.
I'd love to hear where you see possibilities and tensions.
Can Capitalism and Socialism Play the Same Sheet Music? 🎶
I began noticing something curious. Rotating labor associations, cooperatives, banks, and markets all seem to share four underlying functions: curation, valuation, limitation, and exchange. These observations led to the Commitment Pooling Protocol (CPP).
What if we could make these functions programmable and interoperable?
Private enterprises, worker cooperatives, communities, and governments could develop and connect their own economic arrangements without adopting the same ownership or governance systems. Perhaps the innovation isnt discovering new economic music, but making it possible to read, modify, and connect the arrangements were already living within.
When the music stops, whose promises were fulfilled? Who has food, shelter, and a voice?
🎵 Read the full article: willruddick.substack.com/p/c…
… a reflection exploring capitalism, socialism, and the many other tunes our economies might play.
I'd love to hear where you see possibilities and tensions.
Anyone can ask an AI to produce fluent writing.
The harder question is: why are you writing it?
What experience, curiosity, stake, or relationship brought you to the question? What did the AI contribute? What do you actually know, what are you inferring, and what are you willing to answer for?
I wrote a short style and AI-use guide around this idea of epistemic integrity: using AI without disappearing behind it.
willruddick.substack.com/p/w…
If only these were trade-able ....
Starbucks books as income the money customers load onto cards and never spend. From $31.2m in fiscal 2010 to $222.4m in 2025, that income grew sevenfold while revenue grew 3.5 times. An AI agent that tracks every balance and spends it down will eat into it. Any business selling prepaid cards should work out now how much of its profit depends on customers forgetting.
ALT Bar chart: Starbucks' income from gift card and app money customers never spend, FY2010 to FY2025, rising from $31m to $222m.
What holds a person when the salary or grant disappears?
In the United States, the Federal Reserve found that in 2025 only 63 percent of adults said they could cover an unexpected $400 expense entirely with cash or its equivalent. Twelve percent said they could not cover the expense by any means at that moment. In the United Kingdom, the Financial Conduct Authority found that one in ten adults had no cash savings at all in 2024, while another 21 percent had less than £1,000 available for an emergency. About a quarter were classified as having low financial resilience.
Financial buffers matter a lot .... But I’ve been thinking about the other things that hold capacity in place: employers, professions, families, communities, savings groups, friendships, cooperatives, even collective practices.
An institution does more than provide money. It can make a person’s capacity recognizable, trusted, priced and usable.When that scaffolding disappears, the capacity may still be there.
That leaves me with a #dogliving question: before building another tool or institution, what is already alive? What is already standing? What has fallen away?
And if something new needs to be built, what exactly are we asking it to hold?
What Holds Me?
Buffers, institutions and what remains when the salary or grant disappears.
willruddick.substack.com/p/w…
Commitment Pooling Protocol is a coordination protocol abstracted in part from patterns of human social coordination, where autonomous agents can coordinate commitments, limits, exchange, authority, and shared memory without requiring a digital substrate.
I keep finding diverse implementations of CPP that follow lived coordination needs.
The key question for me is: what is the least costly adequate technology that can reliably hold the commitments, limits, authority, exchange, and memory needed?
For example, @gnosischain is useful today because it is inexpensive, well connected to stablecoin payment rails, and smart contracts can already handle programmable authority well. That is a practical fit, not a claim that CPP belongs solely on an EVM blockchain.
I am very wary of the pattern: “We invented XYZ technology, now let’s find communities to run it.”
@Holochain, Dregg, blockchains, or other technologies become relevant to me when lived experience reveals a coordination problem they solve better.
Live → notice → articulate → build → live with it → notice again. The living relationships remain the reference implementation.
A #Dogliving Standard
Don't show me that you use your own product.
Show me the life your product claims to serve.
Show me that the life existed before the tool.
Show me the people, practices, obligations, dependencies, failures, and repairs that would remain if the tool disappeared tomorrow.
Show me where the tool enters that life, and show me that it can leave without taking the life with it.
Show me a week in which people are mostly doing the thing, rather than talking about the tool for doing the thing.
Show me what happens when somebody fails to show up, refuses, changes their mind, needs care, cannot pay, or disagrees with what the system says.
Show me that the builders themselves have enough at stake that failure is experienced as more than product feedback.
Dogfooding asks: Would you use what you built?
Dogliving asks: Are you living what you claim to serve?
The strongest evidence is not a testimonial, a dashboard, or a demo.
It is a life that makes sense without the software, and works a little better with it.
#Dogfooding : I made food for the dog, so I should be willing to eat it myself.
#Dogliving : Before I design for the dog, I should know what it is to live the dog's life.
#dogliving awards. A rough top 10.
Dogfooding is product-first: you build it, then try to live with it. Dogliving is the other order. The life was already there. The tool had to survive it and help it.
@craignewmark a 1995 email list for friends about events in his city. Jobs and apartments arrived because people asked.
@Pinboard Maciej Cegłowski. Bookmarking was already the habit. The product was kept small so it would not become the life.
@simonw Datasette came out of his own publishing and data week, then stayed the tool he uses to look things up. Narrow, and real.
@evanpro StatusNet and the fediverse were a social web he was already trying to inhabit. Partial: the scene can still become the product.
@andrestaltz Manyverse was the usable face of a network for people who are not always online. He lived in that constraint longer than most protocol authors.
@Mappletons the digital garden was her own notes before it was a genre. Weaker: a lot of the public use is now describing the practice.
@openstreetmap the award is the mapper who surveys a street they actually use. The account is only the proxy.
@inaturalist the walk comes first. The record is how not to forget it.
@hotosm mapping where someone already needs a road or a building. Stronger when the mapper is local. Weaker when it is a remote mapathon.
@brewster_kahle the Archive as a library he keeps walking people through. Closer to a life of keeping than to a platform launch.
Dogfooding is still product-first. You build something, then try to live with what you built. I appreciate that ...
But I keep looking for the opposite order.
Dogliving: live the life first, then see whether the product belongs in it.
Live the week you actually want to live. Who do you answer to? Who depends on you? What gets forgotten? What happens when somebody cannot show up, when care is needed, when a promise becomes inconvenient, when something simply fails?
Then bring the tool into that week and see whether it survives.
A clear concept and a beautiful UX can both be real achievements while the actual use remains mostly the work of describing, demonstrating, and administering the tool itself.
I think this is what troubles me when software designers talk about community, mutuality, reciprocity, and care. I hear a great deal about the systems they are building for those things, and much less about the actual forms of dependence and reciprocity in their own lives.
Who are they caring for? Who cares for them? What obligations have they accepted? What do they give without optimization? Where have these practices become difficult, inconvenient, or costly?
...I wonder whether the attraction of the tool is precisely the hope that we can transcend the messiness of the life it claims to serve....
Everyone's private life doesn't have to become evidence for their product. .... yet I want to know where the center of gravity is.
Is the tool being created in service of a life that is already being attempted?
Or is the imagined life gradually being constructed in service of the tool?
Is the tool in the life, or is the life in the tool?