
New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web - psim1
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-neighbors-build-cheaper-way-to-connect-to-web-11565100000?mod=rsswn
======
woah
Shameless plug: My company Althea ([https://althea.net](https://althea.net))
is making router firmware that makes it easy to people to set up incentivized
mesh networks in their communities. It allows routers to pay each other for
bandwidth which means that everyone hosting a node earns money for the packets
they forward.

We have 2 networks live, one in rural Oregon and one in Medellin, Colombia.
Also, 4 more networks people are currently pre-registering subscribers for in
their communities, for example
[https://althea.net/hilltop](https://althea.net/hilltop).

~~~
stefan_
It is quite shameless, here is an awesome volunteer run basic service project,
and this is a Blockchain rent-seeking VC startup.

Ironically I went back to the 2015 thread and found much the same "shameless
plug", minus the Blockchain.

~~~
dpatru
> It is quite shameless, here is an awesome volunteer run basic service
> project, and this is a Blockchain rent-seeking VC startup.

You're implying that there is something shameful with providing a market for
connectivity which allows for people who can't afford to work for free to
participate. What is shameful about this?

~~~
robert_foss
Taking attention from a free community project to market your for profit
company certainly isn't a purely altruistic thing to do.

~~~
strider12
theres still a monthly fee for free. weird right.

------
CodexArcanum
I've been very intrigued by their efforts for some time now. Last time I read
about NYC Mesh, it sent me down a rabbit hole of research into mesh networks
and what it takes to found an ISP. I'd love to replicate their efforts in
NOLA, but the legal and technical hurdles are tricky!

When I had looked into it, these resources had been helpful for research:

Wireless Networking in the Developing world --
[http://wndw.net/](http://wndw.net/) \-- A useful guidebook on the tech needed
for large scale community mesh networks

Guifi.net --
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net)
\-- A huge wireless mesh in Spain, there's a linked economic report in the
references that's very good but may be unavailable at the moment. It may have
been, or be contained within, "The Cook Report on Internet Protocol" Volume
XX1, No, 12 & XXII, No 1 March April 2013 ISSN 1071 - 6327. The report is very
long and covers quite a bit of the social and technical challenges faced by
Guifi.net

~~~
SouljaSlim504
Hey there codexarcanum,

My partner and I are NOLA based programmers / lawyers who have been
researching this matter for a few years. We own the domain nolamesh.net and
would love to work with you to navigate the political / legal / business
issues to deploy a similar network in the New Orleans metro area. Please reach
out to us at nolalawcorp@gmail.com and let's set up a meeting.

~~~
rotred
your website is down

~~~
dacur
>own the domain

------
rndgermandude
There were (maybe still are) tons of such mesh networks run by small
commercial operators in Germany's rural areas, usually using directional radio
to create connections between villages and then meshing all the wifi consumer
routers to span wifi over the village. They did that/do that because the major
commercial providers (i.e. Telekom) weren't exactly fast laying fiber to these
villages.

A buddy of mine used to run such a network spanning 3 villages with about 400
customers a bunch of years back. I seem to remember one of the directional
antennas was strategically placed in some church tower.

They ran this as a two people operation. Extreme weather also was a problem
for them, and they essentially learned network design by trial and error,
starting out as a fully bridged network where everybody was in the same
10.0.0.0/8, NATed to the outside. They fixed that later. Customers only got
like 3-4MBit/s from this mesh, which wasn't exactly fast but not too shabby
either back then, especially considering the only alternative those villagers
had was ISDN speeds (128kbit/s max I think). No LTE yet either.

They weren't alone either. There was a huge number of such operators who
shared knowledge etc.

Once he started negotiating with those villages to lay fiber and provide DSL
service all of the sudden the Telekom started fibering up "his" villages.

~~~
leesalminen
My home internet in the Rocky Mountains, USA is delivered via mesh-WiFi
provided by one of my neighbors. It's a really cool system actually- the
towers are battery/solar operated and some can only be accessed via horseback.
Covers ~500 homes.

5mbps down/2mbps up is what I get for $79/month, and I've learned to live with
it. The only other option is satellite internet with restrictive usage caps.
We used to have another competitor in the space but after big floods in 2013
they exited our area.

~~~
sq_
Does your connection maintain 5mbps/2mbps consistently? Or do you experience
ups and downs in terms of speed?

~~~
leesalminen
It’s mostly consistent except for 7-9PM weekdays. I set up some special QoS
rules that I can toggle on/off on my LAN to make my phone feel decent enough
during those hours...shh don’t tell my wife! ;)

~~~
sq_
Ah, a classic home router admin move: "I'm gonna QoS all of your traffic into
oblivion so that I can download my cat videos".

More seriously, I'm impressed at that consistency. I've always heard that that
type of connection tends to be iffy, so it's interesting to know that my
preconceptions may have been wrong.

------
brenschluss
As someone who is on NYC Mesh - it’s amazing. I can’t explain the feeling you
can get of pointing an antenna at a distant building and getting a ping. So
great!

~~~
portmanteaufu
How was your onboarding experience? I'd love to join the mesh, but I'm pretty
far from the supernodes. If you live in an apartment, did you have any issues
running the wires into the building?

~~~
mlrtime
I think this is the big hurdle or most people in Manhattan:

To get connected to NYC Mesh, you’ll need a line of sight from your rooftop or
balcony to one of our supernodes or hubs. Check our map to see if you're in
the network coverage zone. And if you’re not yet in range, keep checking back
as our network is always expanding, or volunteer to help us grow towards your
neighborhood.

So this means that if you are in a condo you can't use it?

------
dang
A month ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20320212](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20320212)

2018:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861748)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978544)

2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10052261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10052261)

~~~
CodeSheikh
I applaud Brian Hall's dedication to NYC Mesh.

~~~
BrianNYC
Thanks!

------
elektor
There's a map of community-owned networks, more than 750 communities across
the United States have embraced operating their own broadband network

Map here:

[https://muninetworks.org/communitymap](https://muninetworks.org/communitymap)

~~~
cr0sh
It really bothers me to see nothing going on in the Phoenix, Arizona region,
where I live.

I'm planning on getting my Technicians HAM license sometime soon (I took one
of the online practice tests "blind" and scored an 80 - so with some study it
shouldn't be a problem).

Maybe after that if I can find some like-minded people nearby...

~~~
robocat
A HAM license doesn't help you: you cannot legally use the amateur radio bands
to transmit an internet connection.

I suspect the Amateur HAMmers would detect and enforce that: I imagine there
are HAM goonsquads.

~~~
dsd
I thought the rule was no encryption. They theoretically have an entire ip
block available.

~~~
ajosh
The rules also prohibit commercial communications (i.e. pecuniary interest).
There are some limited exceptions which depending on your use may be enough.

That said, ham radio is a fun hobby regardless. If you are into IP stuff on
ham radio, it's not too hard to get an ip on the ham IP block /8.

Amateur radio does have a tradition of self enforcement which is part of my
the FCC continues to grant privileges. People practice RDF for fun but I know
people who have used to to find people intentionally interfering with other
stations.

------
Eric_WVGG
Vice had a good feature on this last month.
[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paj8z8/a-diy-internet-
net...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paj8z8/a-diy-internet-network-has-
drastically-expanded-its-coverage-in-nyc)

------
josh2600
Who does the backhaul for these networks? If it's regular ISPs, aren't all of
the participants just violating their ISP terms and conditions?

~~~
thechut
NYC Mesh pays for a backhaul. I assume that this use is covered in the ToS,
but it isn't just a normal residential internet connection.

NYC Mesh pays for it through donations. Last I checked they were trying to
setup a 501c3 to manage this, unsure of the status though.

~~~
josh2600
Do you know what band they broadcast on? Is it the innovation band?

~~~
buildbuildbuild
Most people connect over Ubiquiti airMax AC, which is 5ghz. Large hubs connect
using airFiber, typically 24ghz.

------
avodonosov
What is impressive here, that it's a "mesh" or that it's a volunteer for
driven?

Years ago all Minsk was covered by volunteer maintained local ethernet
networks, I was accessing internet through one. Today most of them are bought
out by commercial providers, some turned into providers themselves.

~~~
agent008t
In Russia it was the same. Because the existing infrastructure (i.e. phone
lines) was so poor, back in early 2000s people were just connecting the
apartment blocks in their communities with ethernet cables.

You could then pay for Internet traffic or enjoy local neighbourhood network
resources for free. People would build local websites, chat rooms, message
boards, fileshares, gaming. It was pretty good for the time and I was
surprised to find that in the UK/US there had not been such a development,
perhaps because of better pre-existing infrastructure.

------
tiles
Are there similar efforts to follow in other cities? e.g Boston, SF

~~~
thwythwy
Comcast & AT&T cast SF's into oblivion:
[https://www.fastcompany.com/90319916/the-anti-competitive-
fo...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90319916/the-anti-competitive-forces-that-
foil-speedy-affordable-broadband)

~~~
psim1
If I understand it correctly, the two ways that incumbents are able to kill
these efforts are through lower costs and through infrastructure restrictions.
Emitting radio waves is both cheaper and lower-infrastructure than laying
fiber. The question in my mind is whether the quality holds up.

~~~
thwythwy
You forgot pay the opposition party to demagogue. Lobbying has a higher ROI
and they can keep treating internet service as a luxury good instead of a
commodity.

------
keithnz
I'm kindda surprised internet affordability is even a blip on the radar in NY
compared to housing affordability. Though I'm 100% supportive of the
philosophical basis on creating the network.

------
stonejolt
There is also [https://freifunk.net/](https://freifunk.net/) for many major
cities in germany

------
newman8r
There's a lot of good amateur radio mesh nets around as well - I'm in the
process of setting up an antenna to join one in Orange County
[https://sites.google.com/site/orangecountymeshorganization/h...](https://sites.google.com/site/orangecountymeshorganization/home)

~~~
kawfey
We're also setting up an AREDN mesh in St. Louis, MO. Most of the fun for me
is getting access to skyscrapers and installing and troubleshooting the
network equipment and antennas. I'm not really sure what we're going to do
with it once it's actually up. We might host a meet up on it via mumble every
once in a while...post some files for hams to enjoy...but for me it's like,
"cool, now what?"

~~~
dylz
Mumble uses TLS for everyone and every connection. Is this allowed per Part
97?

------
Doubl
I live in a peripheral area of Europe and this is how we get our internet
since 12 years from a co-op. Our speed is lower 10 Mb download and a lot less
upload but it's good enough.

------
TheSoftwareGuy
Can anybody explain how this works? like on a technical level?

~~~
na85
From their docs, it looks like they're deploying a series of neighborhood-
scale mesh networks, each with at least one "supernode" which acts as gateway
to other supernodes and the meshes behind them, and possibly also to the
internet. All the supernodes themselves are meshed together as well, each with
its own private ASN.

~~~
dustfinger
> and possibly also to the internet.

That is an excellent point. Mesh nets may be vulnerable to being monitored
over the internet. I have not read the article, but I hope these groups are
building privacy into their protocol.

I have wanted to build something like this for decade now. It is inspiring to
hear about their success.

~~~
na85
Well, if you're using TLS it shouldn't matter if someone is monitoring, right?

~~~
dustfinger
Do these mesh networks support TLS? Even if they do support TLS, it might be
possible for a node on the mesh to successfully carry out a SSL strip attack.
Or aggregate leaked metadata from the requests that pass through it. I am not
familiar with these mesh networks, there may be many lurking attack vectors if
the creators are not particularly concerned with privacy / security.

~~~
cortesoft
TLS is layer 7, so any network will support it.

~~~
dustfinger
I wasn't making the assumption that their mesh was based on TCP. I should
really just read the article and linked materials, but I am trying to ingore
that temptation since I am supposed to be working :-P

~~~
na85
I think it's very poor etiquette to make assumptions about the contents of the
article while advertising the fact you haven't read the article.

~~~
dustfinger
By that line of reasoning it _might_ be good etiquette to make assumptions
about an article and the contents of an article provided that one does not
include a disclaimer about not reading the article :-P

I did make the disclaimer that I have not read the article for the sake of
transparency and humility. I probably will later this week, but the only spare
time I have has been spent responding to this thread :-P

------
musicale
This is interesting - it says that they are connected to an internet exchange
point (IXP), which means presumably they are their own AS and don't pay for
peering. It makes them basically a peer of Verizon, etc..

It's a bit of a reminder of what the internet actually is - a bunch of
networks connected together. If you make your own network, negotiate or
purchase a piece of the IPv6 address space, and convince someone to connect to
you and exchange BGP routes then you are part of it.

I wonder how hard it is to join an IXP and how much it costs?

~~~
buildbuildbuild
IX costs vary by region but in NYC you can expect around $700/m for a 10g port
as a startup. Transit costs over an IX port are much higher than
crossconnecting directly to a provider, but IX ports are convenient and save a
lot of bandwidth cost if you’re good at building relationships.

The network engineering world is very different from software. Relationships
are everything and the pricing very opaque. Often pricing and lists of “who is
in the building” are even behind NDA. If you are an “eyeball network” (more
downloads than uploads) your transit costs will be much cheaper if you know
how to negotiate, for example.

~~~
_-david-_
>$700/m

Is that $700 a minute, month or something else?

~~~
buildbuildbuild
Month. Yikes that would be expensive otherwise!

------
Wowfunhappy
> Spectrum said it also offers a slower $15-a-month connection to eligible
> low-income families and seniors.

For what it's worth, the plan is called "Every Day Low Price Internet", and
there's no formal eligibility requirements. Spectrum doesn't advertise the
plan, but you can see it listed at:
[https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/ratecard.html](https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/ratecard.html)

For $15 per month, I get 3 mb down / 1 mb up. The price never changes, there's
no hidden fee, no bundle crap etc.

Even as a heavy internet user, I'm very satisfied. It's plenty fast enough for
general web browsing, and I let larger downloads run overnight. I can't stream
videos above 720p, but I can just wait for them to download in the background
with youtube-dl. I also have a script that autodownloads new Youtube videos
while I sleep.

Fios is available in my apartment, but for $50 more per month, it's not worth
it. If I wasn't in a rental apartment I would seriously consider NYC Mesh, but
I'm not. (I'd also be a bit concerned about latency.)

\---

Edit: Actually, looking at the rate card again, the article was likely
referring to "Spectrum Internet Assist", which is still $15 a month but offers
30 down / 4 up—but with eligibility requirements:
[https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/spectrum-internet-
as...](https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/spectrum-internet-assist)

------
mrhappyunhappy
I worked as an IT tech in a school district with 9 buildings, each connected
by directional antenna. The speed wasn't great but certainly usable enough,
even for video. This was back in 2000 and the guy maintaining the network
learned it all on his own as far as I can tell. Weather was a problem for the
network as outages were fairly common. We had an outside tech who would come
out to fix the radios once in a while. Overall it got the job done, but
eventually the district ponied up for a fiber connection to at least a few of
the larger buildings. I helped lay new wiring for most of the buildings.

------
skataz
Reminds me of this:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan_Network)

------
spacecowboy17
What if every household enabled an open "guest" SSID on their Wifi router?
Wouldn't it have a huge positive impact of giving access to people who can't
afford mobile data or home internet?

~~~
dahfizz
You'd lose bandwidth and gain liability. Not a winning proposition.

~~~
mattr47
Not an issue really for liability.

[https://openwireless.org/myths-legal.html](https://openwireless.org/myths-
legal.html)

~~~
dahfizz
Your link just makes me more comfident that I don't want to run an open WiFi
network.

Most of their defense is based on the assumption that you have all the same
protections as a network operator. However, as the article points out, this
has never been tested in court. So you might be fine, and you might go to
jail, we don't know.

And even if you do get network operator status, there are still legal notices
and copyright systems you have to comply with.

And thats all just copyright. That article doesn't deal with more serious
online crimes.

If the FBI finds someone downloading child porn from your network, you will be
arrested. You will have to convince the police that it was someone else. Even
if you don't end up with any serious penalties, that's a hell of a lot more
hassle than I'm willing to put up with.

------
maximente
can any Manhattan users here share their experiences? especially if more upper

~~~
BrianNYC
We haven't reached much past 14th St yet. We are working on some big projects
uptown.

------
Seb-C
I love this idea and concept, and I hope it will work well and expand. But if
such a concept were to work and expand to big cities, I wonder what will
happen to people living outside big cities...

While I don't know anything about the US market, I also wonder what is the
motivation to make this project at home instead of mobile-based. Since we all
have super-powerful computers in our pockets, it seems to me that we could
have an easier similar solution using a smartphone mesh, especially in big and
crowded cities?

~~~
ohples
Are you talking about turning smartphones into mesh network routers? I would
imagine this would kill your battery rather quickly.

Also, it would probably require rooting the phone to install the necessary
routing software.

There are a whole host of other reasons but those two are the easiest to
explain.

------
unnouinceput
Quotes:"The Mesh maintains a “super node” antenna and 31 hubs throughout lower
Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn that collectively serve about 350
residences."..."“Plus the people are nice,” she said. “It’s a great
community.”

Yeah, 350 is less then a block of customers for Comcast or Verizon. When only
few people are involved everything is great, try to scale this bigger then
you'll the real shit go down. It's human condition, individually we are smart,
but when in large groups we're stupid.

~~~
c3534l
Does it _need_ to be scaled up beyond a community of neighbors?

~~~
dredmorbius
If you want to offer this as an alternative to more than 0.004% of the
population of New York City, yes.

Either larger groups or more of them, or both.

------
d2mw
I'm curious about how these things are expected to scale..

1000 subscribers, dedicated support person

5000, ???

10000, ???

At some point these community efforts must grow back into a company again,
right? And the cycle repeats

~~~
boramalper
> At some point these community efforts must grow back into a company again,
> right?

(a) Not necessarily, it might turn into a non-profit organisation, a
cooperative, or something “akin”.

(b) Nothing wrong with companies either. Although I (and many others) would
prefer option (a), a _fairer_ company that respects its customers’ needs and
rights is very welcome!

------
Causality1
Interesting. I wonder what equipment they're using for $110 that gets a high-
bandwidth data signal over multiple city blocks without running afoul of the
FCC's limits for broadcast power and signal strength. At certain frequencies
those can be remarkably constraining, low enough you can easily exceed them
with a twenty dollar wifi adapter and a ten dollar yagi antenna.

------
flexie
Wow! Is $66 really considered cheap internet these days?

I pay around $14 monthly for 100 Mbps connection from a corporate internet
provider (which typically gives me around 20 Mbps download and upload when I
test). No installation fee and free equipment. Same internet, but from a
different country. Is the internet connection in the NYC Mesh really that much
faster?

------
akrymski
That's all great IF you live in a new building that has ethernet throughout. I
live in central London where there's fiber on my street and yet I can only get
ADSL @ max 8MB/s. I'd happily pay some office next door to share their gigabit
fibre with me over wifi. Why hasn't anyone solved this?

------
WrtCdEvrydy
Damn, I wanna make something like this happen in Miami.

I wonder how expensive a 10GB uplink from Terremark would set me back.

~~~
buildbuildbuild
NYC Mesh survived on a gigabit uplink for a very long time. Go for it.

------
jotto
some context on the primary ISP in NYC: 1 year ago (2018-07-27) Spectrum got
"kicked out of NYC":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17628906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17628906)

then in April 2019, managed to avoid getting kicked out by agreeing to
expansion and paying a fine: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2019/04/charter-avoids-g...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2019/04/charter-avoids-getting-kicked-out-of-new-york-agrees-to-new-
merger-conditions/)

------
known
Similar to [https://www.liveport.com/](https://www.liveport.com/)

------
known
[https://archive.is/kvDUb](https://archive.is/kvDUb)

------
kennethh
Anyone know what hardware these Mesh networks use?

------
numbers
Is there something like this for San Francisco?

~~~
wmf
[https://www.monkeybrains.net/](https://www.monkeybrains.net/)

~~~
jquery
I can’t recommend them enough, I get 70/70 Mbps symmetric on average, going as
high as 100/100+. I only wish they didn’t have a soft monthly data cap of
1.5TB. Only $25/month after the installation fee of a satellite on your
dwelling.

FTTH would be faster but San Francisco doesn’t seem that interested in wiring
fiber to SFHs.

The network doesn’t seem to have an issue with fog or rain (my home might be
in a particularly good spot for it).

------
quickthrower2
Wait, how can internet start from $66 in NYC of all places? Where a teeny bit
of extra cable can get the connection to hundreds of other subscribers? I
smell a rort.

~~~
shados
Doesn't NYC have a Times Warner monopoly for internet?

If so, that's why.

~~~
mynameishere
Doesn't appear so. Haven't you seen this cool, allegedly-correct FCC tool:

[https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/#/location-
summary?version=dec2...](https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/#/location-
summary?version=dec2017&lat=40.757846&lon=-73.978748&tech=acfosw&speed=25_3&vlat=40.75554214235714&vlon=-73.9790654494135&vzoom=13.093490849658636)

~~~
shados
Thats so cool! Learning about this made it worth being wrong.

------
jeffrogers
Guessing this violates many ISP ToS?

~~~
sethhochberg
NYC Mesh is their own ISP, they aren't piggybacking onto consumer ISP
connections.

------
srram
If rain effects it, it is millimeter waves. Probably some kind of LMDS (point
to multipoint) wireless network

~~~
BrianNYC
My quote was a bit out of context. I was talking about how if it rained my old
Time Warner Cable ("Spectrum") connection would go down for a day. This is a
known TWC problem in downtown Manhattan.

NYC Mesh is having a different problem with very heavy rain where two of our
high speed point-to-point connections (60GHz and 24GHz) will go down for like
20 minutes in very heavy rain. We're working on fixing this.

------
metafunctor
Aloha NYC!

------
hanniabu
This is a great use case for crypto. You can earn by supporting the network
and spend it to use the network. It helps the incentive layer. Those
supporting the network can pay for support personnel as they grow, or there
can be a network tax that goes towards this. You can also decentralize the
support personnel by rewarding people that successfully answer tickets and
offer a premium for when questions are answered within a certain amount of
time. These questions and answers would also be stored on-chain on a
sidechain.

~~~
untog
Why is crypto better suited to any of this than... money?

~~~
hanniabu
The tokens can be used for authentication. With money you'd need accounts,
auth for those accounts, somebody needs to manage those accounts, etc

~~~
untog
> With money you'd need accounts, auth for those accounts, somebody needs to
> manage those accounts, etc

Like... a bank? I mean, you're talking as if the infrastructure for paying
someone money in return for providing you with a good or service is a wild
west territory. It's, er, pretty well established.

~~~
hanniabu
Yes, but this way it can be decentralized along with the rest of the network,
otherwise you need some central entity to manage these accounts and payments
and you're back at square one where it basically becomes an ISP.

~~~
untog
There's still some centralisation to a network like this whether you like it
or not. The internet connection it uses has to be paid for somehow.

> you're back at square one where it basically becomes an ISP.

Well, a _non-profit_ ISP, which is an important difference. The non-profit
nature makes a much bigger difference to customers than the mesh nature of
distribution does.

------
tathougies
While I am in favor of increasing competition among ISPs. I don't see how
making it volunteer-based is actually good. All this does is take away
presumably well-paying jobs from those who need them. IMO, a for-profit
company developing a new mesh network would be more compelling. Not only would
it provide local jobs, but it would also drive down the cost of internet for
all. Somehow though, I feel this is a minority view.

~~~
ixtli
At a certain scale they will hire from the same pool as the ISPs. Labor is
never saved, it's just moved around. Cooperatives are _always_ better than
traditional for-profit companies because you dont have an executive class that
does nothing but soak up value generated by the laborers.

At very worst, this sort of volunteer operation will not change the
relationship the workers have with their labor and only change who's paying
them to do it.

~~~
tathougies
Cooperatives are for profit companies. I'm unsure why you think they're not or
why they did not fall under my definition of 'for profit' company.

That being said. Cooperatives do have executive classes and they do soak up
value from labor

Also traditional for profit companies would theoretically allow local
stakeholders to reap profits but I do agree that due to unjust sec rules about
accredited investors designed to protect the rich, this can not happen

~~~
ixtli
Well ok, but I never implied (or meant to) that co-operatives aren't trying to
generate profit for reasons that include less of that profit generation ending
up in the hands of people who do less, at least in the co-ops im familiar
with. They are more efficient than the predecessor organization style.

I definitely did imply that they had _no_ executive class, though, which is
wrong.

