Peter and Barbara

Within a Cooperative community, working bees and suchlike are really great for giving occasional assistance on special projects, but aged and infirm people need routine help with things that require physical strength and mobility; things such as shovelling shit from one pit (composting toilet) to another (compost heap).

Or mowing the grass. Or lugging heavy dustbins up a pretty steep slope.

Or just doing the shopping, when their left arm has seized up so they can't turn a steering wheel and/or their right foot is so sore it hurts to press the car's brake pedal.

 Or when they can barely walk at all.

In Australia, myagedcare.gov.au is a government office set up to help aged people, but apparently there is a waiting list up to 3 years long for home care (designed to relieve the taxpayer burden of providing aged care services), so you can't expect miracles.

Symbiotic Investment Fund

One of the most safe and solid forms of superannuation investment is real estate.

Inflation never stops, and house prices generally rise with it - indeed, over the long term, they rise a little faster than general inflation, as noted by economist Thomas Pikkety in his famous book.

Aged Cooperative members reliant solely on state pensions can't afford to pay their fellow members to do the heavy lifting for them; but they do have a substantial asset: their house.

If you want to invest for your own retirement, there is no better thing to invest in than an aged fellow member's house Investment Fund, by lending them money, secured by their house, at eg a fixed interest mortgage rate similar to that eg Commonwealth Bank charges for house loans (currently 4.5% per annum), and receive your payoff when their house is sold by the executor of their Wills to pay off their outstanding debts.

Investment Fund money can be used by the house owner to pay for things they need, such as new batteries etc for an ancient and creaking solar power setup so that they won't every now and then run out of electricity.

Or to pay other members to routinely do things that don't require special skills, but do require physical strength and endurance, such as shovelling shit from one pit to another.

Any Investment Fund deposits would be made official, through the auspices and record books of a third party - the Cooperative's official Investment Fund manager - so your money would be safe.

Literally, as safe as houses.


Work for Credit

There are plenty of you who are fit and healthy and can work for money.

You could work for yourself, for cash in hand, paid out of their house Investment Fund. or by turning your time now into future money, by "loaning your labour" - at an appropriate dollar value hourly rate - to your neighbours, as your own investment in your own future, receiving the same interest rate on that dollar value as anyone lending cash to an investment fund would receive.

Here's how it could work: Someone whom both house owner and workers trusts is given - at no pay for him/herself - the simple responsibility of deciding how much a task is worth (either on a time+materials or fixed-cost basis, the two ways standard commercial contracts operate) and signing off on the task when the work is done.  The dollar value of that work and its completion date are then noted in a diarised set of accounts - the house Investment Fund - which records who has invested what and when in the house.

Interest earned accumulates regularly, in just the same way that a bank updates its customer accounts.  It's a very simple calculation, exactly the sort of calculation that electronic spreadsheets were invented to do, so the Investment Fund manager has little to do other than just deciding how much a piece of work is worth, which itself is a very simple calculation.

But it is important that the one doing the deciding is an independent third party, to ensure fair play.

Then, when the house is eventually sold, all investors (both cash investors and work for credit investors) receive payment from the house's Investment Fund (in just the same way that a company's debtors are paid off when the company is wound up).

Much necessary work actually adds value to a house, so even if you are purely self-centred, it's still in your interest to work now for money later.

Surely it's better to work - for the same money - for your needy neighbours than for the profits of some fat cat business owner capitalist in Main Street?

There will be some among you who will baulk at the very idea of Cooperative members becoming capitalist investors, or selling their time to other members, fearing that it might undermine the concept of working bees, or inflate Cooperative house prices - but it wouldn't do either.

Please think about it.

It doesn't take much - just an hour or two a week - to make an enormous difference to the quality of life of someone who's past it, who's not as strong as they once were (especially when they still think they still are!). Someone like you too will eventually, one day become, because time doesn't wait for anyone.

Of course, elderly people are generally cautious; one such lady i spoke with on this subject remarked that she "doesn't want to make a booboo" - a sentiment which i fully endorse. In her shoes, i would feel exactly the same and have exactly the same reservations and concerns.

So the whole thing would need to be officially managed carefully and openly, by people with honesty and integrity, who have the trust of the entire Cooperative community, and on top of that, have the house Investment Fund accounts they manage regularly audited by an independent professional-quality auditor, or it wouldn't fly at all.

And that would be a great shame, for you would have missed an opportunity to improve your own lives, your children's future lives and the lives of your aged fellow members in need right now, all at one and the same time.

It's just a bit of paperwork; it's not complicated; it's not risky for anyone (not unless your accountant runs off with the money like Robert Maxwell did with his employees' pension fund....)


Dotting i's and Crossing t's

Impact on inheritance: to most people, their home is more than just a pile of bricks, or fibreboard, or mud.  It has sentimental value to them; as do their own children, so it is common for a dying person to will that the house of which they are so fond stays in the family.

That's all good and reasonable - but it's not rational.

Except for Stately Homes and inherited titles such as Duke of this or that, most children don't give a fig about their parents' house - to them it's just a source of money which they'd rather spend on a flashy car or to pay off their gambling debts.

When children are really children, they do indeed have as much emotional investment in their parents' home as the parents themselves - but as soon as they reach puberty, teenagers want nothing more than to have their own space, away from the prying eyes and controlling hands of their parents.

That's all good and reasonable too - and, moreover, it IS rational!

So when a parent leaves a house in their Will to a child or children, what they really are leaving is not the soft subjective sentiment, but the hard, material, objective, dollar market value of that construction.

So if an heir wishes to reside in the house they've inherited, it is only fair that they should be obliged to pay off any debts that house owes to others, before they get the right to move in, even if they're already living there as dependents.

That's fair enough, isn't it?


Wide Eyes

At one point, i considered whether it might be a good idea to have a single Cooperative-wide Investment Fund, but decided against that, because investment in a particular house should not exceed that market value of that house, and with lots of different houses being invested in all over the place, it would be easy to lose track of what is really going on.

So one house, one fund, is better.

On the other hand, there are lots of large-price things that people don't need all the time - things such as a tractor, or a small fleet of cars to do the shopping, or a satellite internet connection and a few computers to use it - so it makes sound economic sense for such things to be cooperatively-owned and shared on a community-wide basis.

Even cheaper things such as portable generators, hedge trimmers, chainsaws, and stuff like that, cost significant money and are better being maintained by a Cooperative workshop than rusting away in people's sheds.

And the same goes for leftover bits and pieces from construction projects (or superannuated cars and caravans and shoes your kids have grown out of, or old clothes you never wear any more - anything, whatever) - they could be donated to the Cooperative, or sold at their current market price, to be bought by other people who want them.

That sounds like a Cooperative would be acting as a bank (and as a charity shop or pawn shop), a source of finance, a hub of commerce - and that's exactly what it would be.

Wouldn't you like to be part-owner of a bank? :)