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Terms and Conditions

Terms and Conditions of dealing with Fractal Economy Co-Operative Ltd (the Co-Operative).

Rights and responsibilities, terms and conditions, of being an Individual Member

  • Individual Membership is given only to individuals.
  • The Co-Operative has no joint membership.
  • Incorporated entities must register as a Trading Partner or Not For Profit Beneficiary. This is done by an existing Individual Member who is also an employee or authorised representative of the entity.
  • Individual Members may vote, raise petitions, and participate in meetings in any way that is allowed in the Co-Operative rules and policies.
  • Individual Members also vote on the allocation of gift funding to Not For Profit Beneficiaries.
  • The rules of the Co-Operative are available on request and will be provided on approval of application.
  • Applicants have a five day cooling off period to reconsider their membership.
  • If an Individual Member has signed on to be tax payer within the Co-Operative; and if another Individual Member has made a purchase from them; and the buyer then declares their membership; the seller must take all reasonable steps to notify the Co-Operative of the sale using the methods endorsed by the Co-Operative.
  • Currently, this is primarily through the Co-Operative’s transaction tax app.
    The Co-Operative will notify members of any changes or additions to its tax collecting methods.
  • Sellers may decline to register a sale if the value of the sale is less than twenty dollars ($20).
  • If a tax-paying member has opted to pay a higher tax rate, they may advertise their membership with a ‘star rating’. A 4-star member pays 4% tax; a 5-star member pays 5%, etc.
  • The Co-Operative will help with logo display to this end.
    A 3% tax rate is the minimum.
  • Members may adjust their tax rate and star rating at any time – taking effect at the beginning of the next month.
  • Tax payments are billed monthly and the terms are 30 days.

Rights and responsibilities, terms and conditions, of being a Trading Partner

  • Trading Partners do not have voting rights within the Co-Operative.
    Only Individual Members have voting rights.
  • The rules of the Co-Operative are available on request and will be sent along with approval of your partnership application.
  • You have five days to reconsider your application after approval.
  • If a Trading Partner has signed on to be tax payer within the Co-Operative; and if another Individual Member / Trading Partner / Not-for-Profit Beneficiary has made a purchase from them; and the buyer then declares they are an Individual Member, Trading Partner, or Not-for-Profit Beneficiary by providing their respective ID number; the seller must take all reasonable steps to notify the Co-Operative of the sale using the methods endorsed by the Co-Operative.
  • Currently, this is primarily through the Co-Operative’s transaction tax app.
    The Co-Operative will notify ndividual Member / Trading Partner / Not-for-Profit Beneficiaries of any changes or additions to its tax collecting methods.
  • Sellers may decline to register a sale if the value of the sale is less than twenty dollars ($20).
  • If a Trading Partner has opted to pay a higher tax rate, it may advertise its Co-Operative affiliation with a ‘star rating’.
  • A 4-star trade partner pays 4% tax; a 5-star trade partner pays 5%, etc.
  • The Co-Operative will help with logo display to this end.
  • A 3% tax rate is the minimum, and Trading Partners may ask to adjust their tax rate and star rating at any time – taking effect at the beginning of the next month when adjustable.
  • Tax payments are billed monthly and the terms are generally 30 days.
  • The board of directors reserves the right to cancel a Trading Partner’s status if it:
    • does anything which brings the Co-Operative into disrepute
    • does not pay any dues owing for an extended period
  • The board may, at its discretion, refuse any application for Trading Partnership.

Rights and responsibilities, terms and conditions, of being a Not-for-Profit Beneficiary

  • Not-for-Profit Beneficiaries of the Co-Operative do not have voting rights within the Co-Operative. Only Individual Members have voting rights.
  • The rules of the Co-Operative are available and will be sent to you on request and on approval of your application.
  • You have a five day cooling off period to cancel your Not-for-Profit Beneficiary application.
  • Not all Not-for-Profit Beneficiaries will qualify for gift recipient partner status with the Co-Operative, e.g. football clubs. Only some incorporated associations will qualify.
  • All Not-for-Profit Beneficiaries who quality are required to undertake a financial audit or review every year as a matter of course. The Co-Operative may or may not request such a report.
  • All Not-for-Profit Beneficiaries have a tax-free status in the Co-Operative.
    The Co-Operative, being a new organisation, is still working on clarifying and defining the criteria for gift recipient status.
  • The founding board of directors considers these examples to be eligible organisations and activities:
    • Schools and educational institutions – private (not-for-profit) and public.
    • Scientific and religious institutions
    • Environmental and social justice organisations (including say protest groups of coal mining projects and coal seam gas fracking)
    • Women’s refuges, soup kitchens, etc
    • Neighbourhood centres, ‘Men’s Shed’ and similar
    • Community music and arts festivals
    • Not-for-profit media

More Rights For all Members

  • Individual Members are free to question decisions, or make suggestions to the board regarding gift recipients eligibility.
  • Individual Members may also start a petition to make formal policy changes to the Co-Operative’s criteria on this issue. We are a direct democracy-based organisation.
  • Allocation of gift money to gift recipient partners is decided by direct voting of the Individual Membership.
  • Any Trading Partner or Not-for-Profit Beneficiary of the Co-Operative is free to advertise its relationship with the Co-Operative, particularly with the use of the Co-Operative’s logo.
  • No entity which is not a registered Trading Partner or Not-for-Profit Beneficiary may use the Co-Operative’s logo or make any claim or suggestion of a Co-Operative relationship.
  • The board of directors may, at its discretion, refuse an application of a Not-for-Profit Beneficiary.
  • The board also reserves the right to rescind a Not-for-Profit Beneficiary status if it does anything which brings the Co-Operative into disrepute.
  • The board may do the same if it reconsiders that an organisation does not fall within its criteria. This may follow non-board members’ input.

Transaction Tax

In the national economy, a transaction tax would be a flat rate tax on every monetary transaction with only a few minor exceptions such as transfers within a family unit. No costs or expense s by businesses will be tax deductible. Purchases of things like shares and currencies will also incur this tax (which pretty much wipes out the speculative transfers of capitalism). In the FEC economy we apply this tax to transfers between members so that we as a collective can do very good and powerful things with it. For marketing reasons, we have renamed this tax to ‘community contribution’.

Commons

We at the FEC do not think that the government is the appropriate collective institution to manage things like banking, taxation and land rental. These can all be taken out of the hands of government. Government should be restricted to policy making in the political realm. What we call the commons is an economic collective. This economic collective does not have the argy bargy of the political life. Outside of the capitalist context, it is the principle of cooperation and mutual aid that pervades the economic life, and it will have a very different structure to government. Because the term ‘public’ is often associated with government, we prefer the term ‘commons’ in reference to this economic collective.

Community Contribution

‘Community contribution’ is in fact the same as a transaction tax as described elsewhere [see Article 2 in ‘Further reading’]. The reason we have renamed the tax is for marketing reasons as people recoil from the notion of paying an extra tax. Tax payments is in fact how we as individuals contribute to the community in order to fund things like public transport, welfare and a functional judicial system. So people should be proud in saying that they pay their taxes. The reason that we have an aversion to the word tax is brought about by corporations who have the ability to make their expenses cost deductible. They load up all costs of dubious things into their income-expenditure calculations that they can get away with not paying a lot of the taxes that are their due. The whole scam trickles down to the rest of the economy and tax avoidance/evasion becomes an acceptable sport. In a true transaction tax, no expenses are tax deductible.

What is a fractal?

A fractal is by one definition ‘An object whose parts, at infinitely many levels of magnification, appear geometrically similar to the whole’. Take the fern leaf as shown in this image:

The first image above is a graphic picture of a whole fern leaf. If we take one of the ‘branches’ of the leaf – as depicted in the boxed section – and examine its structure, we find that the ‘branch replicates in full the pattern of the original fern leaf. The boxed section of the first image, rotated and appropriately magnified as in image 2, show an identical pattern to the whole leaf. If we take yet another ‘sub-branch’ out of the fern in image 2 as depicted in the boxed section of Image 2, we find the same leaf pattern replicated again. And so on.

The Fractal Economy Cooperative takes its name from this feature of fractals – that the part replicates the whole. We believe that what needs to be done in the global economy is the same as what needs to be done in the national economies; and that it is what we intend to do in the fractal economy. This means that we policies in a number of places that should also be practised in the national economy in order to make it a socially just and environmentally sustainable economy: direct democracy in the realm of policy making, direct individual participation in the allocation of public/commons spending; all the practices that make up for what we call commons banking, a new taxation system (which we call ‘community contribution’ for marketing reasons); support for cooperatives over share ownership of companies; a return to common ownership of land effected through the banking system.