Freelance or Small Business, what about Cooperative?

The Web Design Business Kit, by Brendon Sinclair, provides good advice, at least in the free sample chapters.

It does however, set up an absolute two-choice approach: freelancing, or owning a small business.

Not a token nod to a collective, co-operative form of organization? Equality, liberty, fraternity? And this from an Sinclair, who appears to take the view that work-or-starve is its own sort of slave labor in the introduction summary:

We've seen that a tiny minority of people have the self-belief and motivation to take the plunge and say goodbye to their unfulfilling wage slavery. [...]

We've looked at the differences between freelancing by yourself and setting up your own business to employ other people.

Let's state, for the record, that it is perfectly possible to start a web design and development business that is neither freelancing nor intended to make wage slaves of other people.

The Agaric Design Collective proves that much.

Back to the good advice part, and the obvious web development, co-operative, and new business resources convergence...

Sinclair's words, and the fact that his kit is in its second edition, are testament to the need for good advice and as much, ah, derived experience as possible for people starting a business. Project management practices, accounting, invoicing conventions, money management in general, marketing techniques, taxes, legal rules, and a huge amount of other knowledge and information required to start a business (especially a collective) that is not easy to come by.

What is more natural for cooperatives and collectives than to collaborate on gathering, establishing, and sharing such knowledge and experience?

And what better way to let people know about the option to form collective, show the value and power of co-operation, and give the information to form a co-operative all at the same time?

Naturally, this will need a web site (and there must be some like this out there), feel free to contact Agaric with suggestions.

This could be a major part of PowerToExchange.