article=Cooperative
A Cooperative (quamsavetha, "Sum of treaties") is an organizational body consisting of individuals linked by mutual treaties in order to reach the same goal. A cooperative is always bound to a certain purpose.
This article will also deal with the term Great Cooperative (quampaksavetha).
1 Qualifiers
1.1 Voluntary Membership
1.2 Statement of Intention
1.3 Membership Treaty
2 Evolution
2.1 Multilateral Savets
2.2 The Cooperative as Entity
2.3 Great Cooperatives
2.4 The Great Cooperatives as sovereign entities
2.5 The "Robber Cooperatives"
3 Hierarchy
3.1 Equal vs. Node
3.2 Subsidiarity
4 List of Cooperatives
An entity must meet several criteria to be egilible for the term "cooperative".
A copperative must not force other entities to become or stay members of the Cooperative. However, it is usual that members have to accept certain time limits when leaving the Cooperative, or to be obliged to pay a "release sum", as the cooperative will often "invest" into a member and time limits prevents individuals from exploiting the cooperative. Likewise, it is common that the cooperative cannot expel members without reasons and have to regard certain limits. However, most cooperatives are allowed to expel their members in case of serious offense.
A cooperative usually has a clear statement of intention - it needs a reason to exist.
Cooperatives are negotiated into existence, and every member therefore has treaty defining his rights and duties. Due to the fact that Cooperatives can span last for thousands of years and offspring is born into the context of the cooperative, these are part of the cooperative with a preliminary membership or are part of the membership of their parents. Whenever offspring reaches the mature age, it has to join the cooperative. Usually, they do not automatically become a member, while it is common that offspring that lived within the context of the Cooperative has to be given membership it is part of the parental membership treaty that their offspring is guaranteed approval. Hasvativa traditionally denied non-sentients membership, killing or abandoning their mentally impaired offspring and expelling members who had lost their sentience beyond recovery.
While treaties between two parties - savetha - were most likely quite common for the Hasvativa since the earliest stages of development, the harsher conditions of the regions whereto the Hasvativa expanded from the Savannah of the south made necessary to develop further modes of cooperation. Other than the Beige Hasvativa (see: Races of the Hasvativa) of the south, the grey mountain race began to live in small villages based on limited division of labor. However, when the blue race evolved and claimed the northern temperate zones, they need to rely even more on cooperation, as their skin color offered no more natural camouflage within the green lands of the north. Groups formed that agreed to hunt as a team and share the prey, as well as other forms, like to dam a river to create an artificial lake and use it as fishing ground.
The dam cooperative is usually the most prominent example within Hasvativa literature about cooperatives, and there is indeed evidence that these cooperatives existed up to the time of the Great Cooperative of Hakalinat.
While a group of hunters was easy to handle as it could form or break up quickly, building a dam was a great task that needed knowledge and a strategy - not only to build the dam, but to maintain it also. At this time, the cooperative became a distinct entity with a set of rules to which the members agreed upon joining. Due to this new nature, Cooperatives began to exist for longer times, and as soon as the concept spread further and the Hasvativa became accustomed to it, Cooperatives existed for generations.
When the Cooperatives where widely known and in place, some of them began to work together. Now Cooperatives came into existence that did not consist of individual persons anymore, but other cooperatives. These were then called "Great Cooperatives". The term Great Cooperative later became a synonym for any multilayered Cooperative with several levels of hierarchy.
The Hasvativa never developed natural paternalistic structures, as they had no sense of family or society to begin with. Therefore, for a long time they had no sovereign government, not even common law. The Great Cooperatives developed away from pure partnerships of convienience to sovereign bodies that took care for a certain region and enforced their standards. While for a long time, the Hasvativa had no concept of abstract rights like intellectual property rights or deeds for distant land; it was the Great Trade Cooperative of Hakalinat that began to establish and guarantee these rights within her territory. Also, for a long time, the Hasvativa had no common law and jurisdiction. The Great Cooperatives began to set standards like outlawing the killing of another Hasvativa and persecuted offenders. By the time Hakalinat had become a major city, the Great Cooperative of Hakalinat was effectively the government of a city state. The Defense Cooperative of Hasva that organized the resistance against the Umaatin invasions was in reality a very strict government that exerted a great deal of force upon its members, with the Development Council reigning with nearly dictatorial powers.
The governmental Cooperatives of the late planetary Hasvativa culture vanished with the onset of spatial exploration. Government was at first provided by the Klaatian Alliance, but out of the reach of the Klaatian Alliance, new powerful Cooperatives developed. However, they where too specialized as compared to their historic counterparts; they defined themselves again more by purpose and not by territory. Therefore, neither of the Great Cooperatives became powerful enough to ursurp sovereign powers.
Instead, they concentrated on gaining monopolies in their respective fields. Soon enough they forced every competitor into their ranks or pushed them out of business. Many of the later Cooperatives can be compared to terran Mafias; at this time, the term of the Robber Cooperative was coined. Resistance against these bodies ensued and raised steadily until people actually began to fight the cooperatives, with the most prominent and successful group being the Judgement.
The equal type is the oldest type of Cooperative and also the less practical, limited to only small organizations. Within an equal type, all members have one treaty shared by all members. These Cooperatives are simple, like "We shall hunt together and share what we catch".
Within a node type cooperative, there exist some sort of a central hub like a council of elders, an elected council or even a single person or entity. These are authorized to act in the name of the cooperative, and whoever joins the cooperative, has to gain the approval of the central node, or, within Great Cooperative, respective subnodes. It is in the end not important how this node legitimates itself; most likely the node will have to answer to the members of the cooperative in a democratic fashion, but it is also possible that the cooperative is governed by a single person. The members of the nodes are commonly refered to as Administrators or First Ones, as they are traditionally seen as merely administrative entities that do not "rule" or "command" the cooperative.
Great Cooperatives usually have a hierarchic cell structure with a central administration at the top. There are several ways how the power within the Great Cooperative is distributed - in general, whether it is top-down or bottom-up.
Within a top-down cooperative, the central administration yields most power and can directly give commands to lower structures. The cooperatives of the spatial Hasvativa were mainly top-down cooperatives. Within a bottom-up cooperative, the lowest cells yield most power, leaving the central administration only a few fields where they can actually make decisions. Usually, they also cannot give orders across several levels of hierarchy. This is usually the model between different cooperatives that are equally strong and only want to cooperate within a certain limit, like several city states agreeing to form a cooperative in order to further the quality of the roads connecting them.
There existed a lot of cooperatives in between both extremes. An example is the Great Cooperative of the Jarepatitava, that gives power over certain fields to their central administration and retains certain right at lower levels. Typical for the GCJ is that high level administrators can only give orders to their subordinates, but not to the subordinates of their subordinates, ie. a planetary administrator can give orders to a continental administrator, but not to the administrator of a city.