> Maybe i’m a cynical capitalist, but I expect everyone to be operating in their own self interest.

Down to explore this with me?

I often wonder if this is self fulfilling. I'm not saying you're selfish, I mean, has capitalism trained people that all people are inherently selfish, and then, within this system where selfishness is rewarded, incentivized further selfishness and continued to sell this myth?

How much maintenance does capitalism take? If human nature is inherently selfish, and capitalism is a force of nature, a ground truth, the answer should basically be no maintenance, right? Is that reality though? It seems to me it takes a lot of maintenance, the myths of capitalism. Look at the incredible amount of resources the USA dedicated to fighting Communism, both explicitly (crossing swords with the Soviet Union) and in the background (overthrowing socialist leaders in south America, meddling in southeast Asia).

Is the key difference for me that led to me making a co-op (rather than a traditional geographic arbitrage agency) that I don't buy into the capitalist notion that humans are inherently selfish? Maybe I just happened to have the experiences that indicated to me that this isn't true, that humans are inherently mostly selfless and social, which led to me researching this and learning that history supports this notion of humans as social-first organisms.

When I tell people about my business, a lot of questions I get confuse me: "You don't require timesheets tracking granular work? How do you know people are actually accurately recording the hours and not 'stealing time?'" the answers are always basically, "because I trust my co-op members," and "I really don't care if people are 'stealing' from me." Capitalism teaches us to always "get ours," but as soon as you let go of that, if people trust me as a genuine actor, they seem to abandon these unnatural principles and work with me honestly, as humans naturally want to.

For your VC example, I mean, nobody will invest in us. Maybe that's the double edged sword - you stop playing within the rules of the game, people won't throw the ball your way anymore. There's no massive value to extract here. That probably limits our ability to rapidly develop some products to generate revenue outside of selling engineering hours. Maybe that's ok though, the business might grow more slowly but sustainably? And maybe that cements our reputation as "no really, actually a co-op that genuinely doesn't put profit first?" I don't know. We'll find out.

But for you, what do you think would happen if you started putting yourself forward as a non-participant, non-self-interested? The prisoner's dilemma equivalent of saying "I will always cooperate no matter what you choose," and then following through on that? Is there a sort of aversion to that knowing that someone might exploit this aspect of you at some point, where you might end up in a situation where your personal profit wasn't maximized?