Last updated May 05 2026, see also our Code of Conduct shared with Garden3D [8].
<aside> 💡 → 📖 We based these principles on Elinor Ostrom’s seminal book, “Governing the Commons” in which she lays out eight design principles for common pool resources. While numbered, there’s no order of priority.
→ 📍 This is a living document; we will fail, we will make mistakes, and we won’t have covered every possible scenario that can and will happen. But with patience, good faith, common sense and trust, we hope to learn to govern ourselves, together.
→ 🌳 We hope this document feels accessible to all. Our references are not meant to intimidate, and you don’t have know them to get to know us! Please reach out if we can do better! Follow for updates.
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If you’re a member of post-office, the space is yours as much as ours, and ours as much as yours. A testing ground for sharing resources. A possible society at community scale. A prototype of collective futures.
In practical terms:
→ post-office is a space in Amsterdam, by and for members (and the public)
Everyone who makes the space possible through their membership fees (€36,65 a month which only go towards our costs, not profit) gets to decide what we use the space for: from co-working to socialising, from personal needs to private events to public talks, screenings, workshops and anything else.
→ post-office is not just a shared resource but a directly democratic one
Any member can have direct input at any time; not through a committee, or representative, but personally and immediately. Both the space itself and any surplus income, from member fees or otherwise, are shared resources that every member can use through continuous and directly democratic decision-making; see [3].
→ post-office is for practicing and cultivating freedom
Together we can be more free than by ourselves. With plenty of room for individual needs, post-office is above all a place for people to gather and ask, without profit incentive, what do we want? And how can we create that for each other?
In less practical terms:
As life continues to get more complex, costly and confusing — we need each other more than ever all while having less and less space to do so, both mentally and physically.
And yet, our futures depend on it. We can’t afford to wait on corporations or governments to safe us. We must figure out ways to start saving ourselves. Ways to co-operate. Ways to put all our skills, abilities and resources on a pile and discover what we can, and decide what we want, do with them — together.
So we may become our own tools against powerlessness.
So we may be more free together, than alone.
This is what post-office is ultimately for.
A place to practice, evolve and experience the co-operative values, tools and relationships we need for more democratic and free futures.
Ways we use the space:
[previous] — [overview] — [next]
Post-office believes in the mantra “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” In our case, post-office’ own ability is to provide space and resources, with its own needs being the total monthly costs of €2250 which includes rent, electricity, etc (see [4]).
At €40 per month every member contributes equally to these costs and so every member gets to decide equally what post-office is used for; both the space itself and any surplus resources (see [3] for how we decide that.)
The only additional cost is effort; the baseline membership fee gives access and the chance to have direct input on anything and everything. Using the space, changing the space (inc. these principles), organising events, having a say over other member’s events, deciding who else can join as member: it’s all possible and available, it just takes some effort.
The more you put in, the more you get out.
That doesn’t mean we believe every member has equal opportunity to make that effort, so we also aspire to the equality of unequals. See more below.