TEIKEI is a community-supported supply network.
As participation, responsibility, and complexity grow, the question arises
how organizational and structural efforts can be fairly balanced
without falling into conventional wage, commission, or profit logics.
The following reflections describe initial considerations
for a possible cooperative classification of this practice.
They serve as orientation and shared understanding
and represent no final regulation.
The credits and compensation shares used at TEIKEI
are not income and not remuneration for a market service.
They serve the internal balance of community-borne efforts,
particularly for:
This balance is systemically designed.
It is not performance-based in the market-economic sense
and not tied to individual sales figures, revenues, or profit expectations.
The partial currency used at TEIKEI is not money in the classical sense,
but an internal accounting unit.
It:
Partial currency makes it possible
to balance responsibility and engagement within the network
without introducing individual invoicing,
employment relationships, or market-typical remuneration logics.
A clear example is the private organizer of a TEIKEI Pickup Point (pickup location).
A person provides:
This activity is not commercial,
but a community contribution to local supply.
For this effort, the organizing person receives
an internal credit within the TEIKEI network.
This credit:
Specifically, it can be used, for example:
This logic opens an important social space:
People who do not have much money,
but can contribute time, reliability, and organizational skills,
gain access to high-quality food.
The balance is not achieved through money,
but through participation within a shared system.
The TEIKEI Agora provides the necessary tools for this:
This way, a private initiative
can become a stable pickup location.
If an initiative develops further,
there is the possibility
to gradually evolve from a private #TEIKEIPickupPoint
into a #TEIKEIShop.
This transition consciously marks the shift:
The structures are designed
so that both paths are possible
without mixing the logics.
TEIKEI connects two deliberately separated levels:
The economic area
In the TEIKEI Agora, real transactions take place:
orders, deliveries, invoices, and payments.
This area follows the applicable legal and tax framework
and forms the operational economic engine of the network.
The cooperatively conceived balance area
Organizational, logistical, and community efforts
are not individually invoiced,
but balanced through internal credits and partial currency.
This separation is central.
The internal balance does not replace economic transactions,
but internalizes community value creation
that would otherwise fragment into many individual settlements.
A cooperative offers a suitable legal framework
to anchor this practice long-term
in a clear, transparent, and comprehensible way.
In a cooperative structure:
The cooperative would not introduce this practice anew,
but legally stabilize and secure an already lived logic.
TEIKEI thus consciously takes a different path
than conventional trade, platform, or commission models.
Compensation here does not mean
pricing services or distributing profits.
But rather:
These considerations are part of an open learning and clarification process.
Whether, when, and how a cooperative will be founded
emerges from shared understanding –
not from a finished model.
No more.
But also no less.
One level higher: TEIKEI Cooperative
Author: Felix Schröder, with the help of AI (ChatGPT)
Creation: written by Felix Schröder › formatted in Markdown by ChatGPT › published by Felix Schröder › layout adjusted by Claude
Created: 2026-01-30 · Last updated: 2026-04-21 · Questions or feedback? support@teikei.us