Journal of a Grassroots Economist

Journal of a Grassroots Economist

The Constitution Ahead of Ownership

Dee Hock’s Chaordic Genius and the Evolution of Cosmo-Local Credit

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Will Ruddick
Mar 03, 2026
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TLDR: This is a deep dive into how Dee Hock designed Visa as a chaordic constitution that allowed competitors to cooperate, how ownership gravity later reshaped that system, and what we must build differently if we want a planetary credit network that cannot be quietly captured.

By the late 1960s, U.S. banks were racing to build general-purpose card netw…

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