Is he crazy or visionary? The sourdough baker who's bread I have bought almost every Saturday he's baked it in Newcastle is trying to convert his new cafe bakery to a co-operative, and his enthusiasm is something to behold. Three months ago Warwick Quinton created the Sourdough Baker Cafe in Hunter St West, opposite Spotlight, and he's glowing with plans to form a co-operative of people passionate about food, about local food production using local ingredients, about sustainability before profit, and the idealism of it all shocks me. Does that mean, I asked him as I bought my Saturday loaf, that instead of putting the profit in his own pocket he'll be distributing it among members of the co-operative? Yes, he said, and I was lost for words.

The maths is neat. The co-operative's capital will be provided by 18 shares at $5000 each, and that can be paid in money or in labour, and at the end of each 12 months the profit will be distributed among these investors. That profit will be what's left of one third of the turnover after paying fixed costs. At the end of each day one third of the day's turnover will be distributed among the day's workers according to how many hours each has worked. And the final third will pay for materials.

Warwick (sourdoughbaker.com.au) says a co-operative is more transparent than a company, which is itself a form of co-operative, and that a co-operative's primary purpose is the common good rather than the bottom line, but it's too much for me I'm afraid. Perhaps it's because I didn't play team sport as a child (or as an adult), perhaps it's because I'm no visionary. Do you, like me, prefer profit in the pocket over the common good every day? Or have I missed the boat to the new social order?