# P-0002 — What does joining early actually get you? **Class:** Constitutional and economic **Status:** **DEFERRED TO A MEMBER DECISION** · NOT ADOPTED · NOT LEGALLY REVIEWED **Version:** 0.3 — supersedes the declining-multiplier draft of 28 August 2026 **Raised by:** founder-steward, 28 August 2026 **Deferred by:** founder-steward, 28 August 2026 **Decides:** the first 100,000 sealed places, by ratification **Drafted by:** agent, under the [Agent Build Contract](./AGENT-BUILD-CONTRACT.md) > Nothing in this document is proposed for adoption. It is the working file > for a decision that has been handed to members, and it stays open until > there are enough of them to make it. --- ## 1. The decision, and who is not making it The founder-steward has declined to set the economics of OURS. > *"This is such an important decision for forming the community that myself — > founder — cannot decide it for as large network as we plan."* That is the whole of section 1, and it is the most consequential thing in this file. Two prior versions of this document proposed structures. Both were withdrawn. Not because the arithmetic was wrong, but because the authority was. There are five people in the ledger. Any distribution rule written now would be one person's guess, dressed as an institution, binding a million people who never saw it proposed. A cooperative whose surplus rule was set before its members arrived is not a cooperative. It is a company with an unusual founding myth. ## 2. What replaces it **Simulations, then ratification.** 1. **OURS builds economic simulations that members run themselves.** Not a published table to be trusted — a model a person can drive, changing the assumptions they doubt and seeing what falls out. The point is that disagreement becomes testable instead of rhetorical. 2. **No economic instrument is adopted before at least 100,000 places are sealed.** That is a large enough sample to be a real constituency rather than a founder's circle, and small enough to be reachable. 3. **The first 100,000 ratify it.** Under the published decision process, with the simulations, the legal review and the dissent in front of them. Until all three have happened, the honest public answer to *"what do I get financially?"* is **nothing is decided, and nobody has decided it for you.** ## 3. Why 100,000 and not 10,000 or a million 100,000 is the founder-steward's stated threshold and should be read as a floor, not a ceremony. Below it, the deciding group is small enough that a motivated faction can be most of it. Waiting for a million means the rule that governs a million people is written after almost all of them have already committed under no rule at all. If the number changes it changes in public, with a receipt, before the vote — never during one. ## 4. Working material, not proposals Everything below is input for the simulations. None of it is a recommendation. It is kept because it is the record of what was tried and what it showed. ### 4.1 The version that had to be withdrawn Version 0.1 proposed a fixed Founding Cohort — the first 10,000 places — taking 35% of distributable surplus forever. Modelled at the scale OURS is actually aiming for (100M members, €8B annual surplus): > Each of the first 10,000 would receive **€280,000 per year**, forever, for > having arrived early — **3,500× the claim of an ordinary member.** A landlord class of 10,000 collecting rent from 100 million people, which is a precise description of the thing OURS exists to replace. **This is the strongest argument in the file for not letting one person decide.** It was written in good faith by the same process that would have shipped it, and it took modelling at scale — not judgment, not values — to expose it. A rule that looks fair at 10,000 members can be indefensible at 100 million, and no amount of care at the drafting desk substitutes for running the numbers. ### 4.2 The version after it Version 0.2 replaced the fixed cohort with declining multiplier bands — 8× for the first 100,000 places, 4× to 1M, 2× to 10M, 1× after — against a fixed 40% pool. | Members | Surplus | Pool | Place #1 /yr | Newest /yr | Ratio | First 100k hold | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | 100,000 | €10M | €4M | €40 | €40 | 1.0× | 100% | | 1,000,000 | €100M | €40M | €73 | €36 | 2.0× | 18.2% | | 10,000,000 | €1B | €400M | €143 | €36 | 4.0× | 3.6% | | 100,000,000 | €8B | €3.2B | €228 | €28 | 8.0× | 0.7% | Better behaved: the early premium caps at 8× and the founders' share shrinks as the network grows. Still one person's choice of four arbitrary band edges, and someone is always #100,001. ### 4.3 The finding that survives both **A cooperative dividend will never be a golden ticket.** €228 a year at full scale is not life-changing, and no distribution rule makes it so. Any structure that makes early members rich is extracting from later members or from the enterprise, and at that point OURS is a startup with unusual marketing. The large number for a member is not the dividend. It is **what stops being taken**: | If OURS replaces… | On annual activity of… | A member stops paying | |---|---|---| | the app store toll (30%) | €100,000 | **€30,000/yr** | | the freelance marketplace (~20%) | €60,000 | **€12,000/yr** | | the marketplace fee stack (~15%) | €200,000 | **€30,000/yr** | | the booking commission (~17%) | €300,000 | **€51,000/yr** | That is available to every member rather than only early ones, and it is a **discount rather than a return** — which is why it is not a security in any jurisdiction. Nobody has ever been prosecuted for charging their customers less. Whether the simulations confirm this is exactly what the simulations are for. ## 5. What earliness buys today, decided and in force These are in [Founding Right 0.1](./FOUNDING-RIGHT-0.1.md) and are **not** economic: 1. A permanent number that is never sold, transferred or reassigned. 2. An equal ballot on Constitution 1.0 and on the first mission. 3. Priority of claim on what gets built — early notices set the build order. 4. For places 1–100,000: **the ratification of these economics.** Point 4 is the one this document creates, and it is the honest answer to *"why now?"* Not a larger share. A vote on whether there are shares at all. ## 6. What remains refused regardless of what members decide These are constitutional and are not on the table for the vote: - No purchase of a place, at any price, at any tier. - No transfer, sale, gift or inheritance of a place. - No secondary market, and no OURS-operated venue for one. - No extra governance weight bought by any means. One member, one vote. - No payment for referrals, impressions or unretained signups. A ratification that breached any of these would not be a member decision. It would be a different institution wearing this one's ledger. ## 7. What must exist before the vote 1. **The simulations**, published, runnable, with their assumptions editable and their source readable. 2. **Securities review** in the intended jurisdiction on the specific question: does a free, non-transferable, participation-based surplus share constitute an offering? 3. **Cooperative-law advice** on whether member classes of this shape can exist in the chosen entity form. 4. **Tax treatment** across likely member countries. 5. **A published answer to "what if there is never any surplus,"** written so a person can read it before they act. 6. **A human-assurance process stronger than possession of an email address**, with correction and appeal. A ratification vote is worth exactly as much as the confidence that voters are distinct people. ## 8. What can be said publicly today That the economics are **undecided**, that they will be **decided by members rather than by the founder**, that no instrument exists, and that a Founding Right carries no claim on revenue, surplus, treasury or assets. Saying more than that would re-take the decision this document exists to give away.