Let's not see this as simply a national policy issue. It's a global problem where peoples lose control to the levers of their governments. Sometimes, it's abou

Let's not see this as simply a national policy issue. It's a global problem where peoples lose control to the levers of their governments. Sometimes, it's about a population that is deliberately misguided by propaganda. Often, it's a problem with the concentration of wealth and transnational entities who escape any reasonable form of governance. The solutions to this won't be found by ostracizing any nation's citizens, but, to join in solidarity to solve the economic and governance issues that are at its core. Cooperative structures could offer an approach to these problems. Cooperatives are a way for a group of people to collectively own shared resources and make decisions about them democratically. Importantly, they are not governmental (i.e., they lack force of the police/military) yet can use the same legal environment that for-profit corporations enjoy. Cooperatives fall in the middle of the political spectrum: to liberals, they are about economic self-determinism; to conservatives, they are about smaller government and corporations. Cooperatives could be used to peel away economic activities from unaccountable entities. As leaders and doers, we should start thinking about what activities we perform should be governmental, which should be proprietary (privately controlled) and which should be cooperative yet economically participatory. For example, regional water systems are often operated as cooperatives rather than for-profit entities or as a department in a municipal government. This distributes economic and political power. We could build upon this organizational pattern in other industries. We need more tools, research, and investment into how cooperatives could help us form global democratic networks that are small, distributed, financially sustainable, and accountable. We need global, bottom-up, fractal governance and economic markets that distribute political and financial power.