Loomio
Wed 24 May 2017 12:45AM

Why ARGO needs to be a non-profit?

DU vr00n Public Seen by 352

Our ever evolving existential discussion on why ARGO is and needs to be a non-profit.

DU

vr00n Wed 24 May 2017 1:09AM

A digital tsunami is in the works for the world's cities, municipalities, and public services.

The combined forces of Silicon valley, Wall Street, Private equity and an increasingly hostile national government painted through a lens of efficiency threatens the bedrock of public institutions through rent-seeking and metering the use public resources for private gain.

We have seen this with the shocking rise of Uber, a digital service that rightly offered what people wanted, a super simple way to connect people with rides. In doing so, Uber, in many cases undermined, subverted and perverted transit institutions. This is not new.

In 2008, the great financial crisis was caused because greed turned away from good and perpetuated a financial system that uprooted communities and nations.

In the 1990s, ENRON under the odd moniker of "Ask Why?" subverted California's energy markets and made off with billions while vulnerable Californians suffered.

The New York Times published a series titled "Bottom Line nation" reporting in detail how Private equity firms are taking over local water and healthcare systems in many small urban communities and in the name of "efficiency" causing untold human costs.

On the other end, computing megacorps are gaining more ground in controlling individual choices and destinies first on the internet and later in the physical world

Publicly owned systems in all the above cases were painted as inefficient and incompetent. This needs to change.

ARGO is meant to serve as a vanguard in this respect and offer an option for public service delivery that is open, transparent, digitally native, and adapting to changing beneficiaries' needs while catering to the right users, those who administer public resources.