
Mondragon Corporation - taurath
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
======
patcon
There's a really inspiring federation of 40-ish tech worker co-ops in
Argentina called FACTTIC[1], who have been developing a neat process called
FIT[2] by which they share work amongst themselves via regular check-in calls.
It's almost like they're part of a big meta-company together that shared
opportunities based on their needs (e.g., who needs the money the most, etc.)

Here's a video of a presentation they gave on the format:
[https://agaric.coop/blog/show-and-tell-agaric-sharing-
work-o...](https://agaric.coop/blog/show-and-tell-agaric-sharing-work-other-
coops)

The most exciting part is that they're now trying to share the model with tech
worker co-ops abroad, and maybe even figure out how to build similar trust
between international co-ops.

Disclaimer: I'm a member of a new tech worker co-op in Toronto, Canada
(Hypha[3]), and have a big crush on FACTTIC.

[1]: [https://facttic.org.ar/](https://facttic.org.ar/) [2]:
[https://facttic.org.ar/fit/](https://facttic.org.ar/fit/) [3]:
[https://hypha.coop](https://hypha.coop)

~~~
iagovar
Could coops constitute, at least, a partial solution to ageism? Many of the US
commenters have expressed their frustration and experiences in this regard,
perhaps cooperatives can serve as a good quality alternative. Perhaps the
problem is that it seems a model that fits more with consulting than with a
product company.

~~~
patcon
Hm. Interesting. I mean, I'm biased, but I believe it could.

An analogy I'm trying with friends is that a worker co-op is less like a
company that does a specific thing, and more like a ship that sails where it's
members wish it to go. It might present as a solid "WE ARE A COMPANY THAT DOES
X", but it only does that so long as that serves its members. If the
destination doesn't serve the crew, they create a new destination, they don't
necessarily ditch crew members.

Also, the crew doesn't worry about the ship sailing away without them :)

------
irthomasthomas
I thought Chomsky's quote was interesting.

"Take the most advanced case: Mondragon. It’s worker owned, it’s not worker
managed, although the management does come from the workforce often, but it’s
in a market system and they still exploit workers in South America, and they
do things that are harmful to the society as a whole and they have no choice.
If you’re in a system where you must make profit in order to survive, you're
compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others."

~~~
jp555
Is the alternative 100% top-down central-managed solution to ensure no
externalization happens ever? In theory that's appealing (especial from the
view from Chomsky's academic ivory tower), but then in practice every time
it's been tried it hasn't worked well at all.

Chomsky is smart, but not very useful because "In theory there's no difference
between theory and practice, but in practice there is" \- Yogi Berra

~~~
tsimionescu
Chomsky is anti-centralization, he is an anarchist (anarcho-syndicalist).

In general, his ideal end-goal world would include smaller states with more
direct control by the populace, with worker-owned and worker-managed
corporations, with free markets of goods and services between different
corporations and different states, and of course freedom of movement. Strong
environmental control would be almost implied if the people doing an economic
activity were in charge of decisions and were also directly impacted by the
effects of those decisions. Localizing and letting corporations be small would
also put a natural cap on inequality, though democratically run states could
impose additional safeguards where needed (minimum wages, estate taxes, non-
discrimination clauses etc.)

~~~
CountSessine
I do wonder sometimes how different Chomsky's career and his academic work
would have been if he'd been required to take a course in game theory while he
was an undergraduate.

~~~
danharaj
I guarantee you Chomsky knows more about game theory than you.

------
tasogare
In France, in the game industry, there is Motion Twin:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Twin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Twin)

"Motion Twin is run as an anarcho-syndicalist workers cooperative with equal
salary and decision-making power between its members."

Also, this is where the Haxe programming language was created.

~~~
simongray
> In August 2019, Motion Twin spun off a new studio, Evil Empire, composed of
> Dead Cells developers who wanted to continue its development while Motion
> Twin moved to a new project. Evil Empire is run by Motion Twin's former head
> of marketing and is not run as a cooperative, particularly because the
> company wanted to scale beyond ten employees. Motion Twin continues to
> participate in Dead Cells decisions.

Spawning more small cooperatives when faced with financial success is a pretty
nice alternative to a traditional growth strategy.

~~~
leftyted
The quote clearly says that the new company is "not run as a cooperative".

~~~
simongray
You're right. Not sure how I managed to completely misread that.

That's a lot more boring then.

------
hooverlunch
There are lots of small tech worker coops in the U.S. and Canada. See
[https://techworker.coop](https://techworker.coop).

I co-founded one, Sassafras Tech Collective, in Ann Arbor. It's been an
amazing journey. I don't think I could ever go back to working in a non-
democratic workplace.

~~~
kortilla
Can you speak to the downsides of a democratic workplace? How do you avoid the
pitfalls of a union where people end up getting compensated for things like
seniority instead of skill?

~~~
nickbauman
A union is not a coop, so the forces are not the same at all.

Furthermore, it's not clear that "seniority" would trump "skill" in a co-op,
either. Or that the opposite is true of a more "traditional" workplace.

The job of each worker-owner is, in part, to help other worker owners
developer their strengths to their fullest for the benefit of co-op.

An employee-owned co-operative corporation (EOCC) governs as form of direct
democracy. In my experience, your biggest obstacle is going to be collective
decision-making. How well you do that is a test of the people in the co-op.
Consider: management is just another skill, not a rank. You don't have a boss.
_You have people who are counting on you._ Management serves at the pleasure
of the worker-owners.

~~~
pinkfoot
> You don't have a boss.

Unless everyone can make equally large payments on behalf of the company, you
most certainly have bosses.

Find those people. They are the bosses. Everything else is theatre.

~~~
hooverlunch
SamBam nailed it. For us, any large expenses must be approved by consensus of
the whole group. For larger coops, they would need approval of a
democratically elected and recallable board of directors.

------
neuw84
Hi,

greetings from a worker that work at Ikerlan (a research/technological center
part of the corporation). We are a second degree cooperative. Formed by
workers and companies that we work for. You can see things that we do at
[https://www.ikerlan.es/en/](https://www.ikerlan.es/en/)

Happy to answer to questions if I can :)

~~~
justinclift
Seems to be many open positions for IT staff:

[https://www.ikerlan.es/en/job-offers](https://www.ikerlan.es/en/job-offers)

~~~
neuw84
Yes, We have some IT positions right now. My current position is Artificial
Intelligence team leader on the ICT area and we are seeking for Full Stack
engineers/researchers and Data Scientists.

Moreover, we also offer always the possibility to do a PhD in different
domains. (power converters, batteries, embedded electronics, safety critical
systems, wireless technologies, IoT , AI, etc). In my team we have 4 PhD
students right now in collaboration with different universities.

------
fasouto
There's another interesting (but way smaller) cooperative in Spain: Igalia
[https://www.igalia.com/](https://www.igalia.com/)

They work in open source projects and are big contributors to Chromium/blink,
WebKit, V8, Vulkan, etc...

~~~
iagovar
They look small-ish though. I wonder if there's any big coop software company
out there.

~~~
abathologist
My suspicion is that the worker-owned cooperative model, especially if it
emphasizes the more important worker self-directed part, will tend towards
much smaller units of self-organization. I predict we will see confederations
and networks of smallish coops, and I suspect this is for the best.

------
cies
From the article:

    
    
        At Mondragon, there are agreed-upon wage ratios
        between executive work and field or factory work
        which earns a minimum wage. These ratios range
        from 3:1 to 9:1 in different cooperatives and
        average 5:1. That is, the general manager of an
        average Mondragon cooperative earns no more than
        5 times as much as the theoretical minimum wage
        paid in their cooperative. For most workers, this
        ratio is smaller because there are few Mondragon
        worker-owners that earn minimum wages, because
        most jobs are somewhat specialized and are
        classified at higher wage levels. The wage ratio
        of a cooperative is decided periodically by its
        worker-owners through a democratic vote.
    

Afaik this is the biggest worker coop in existence. Does anyone know of any
sizable examples of this ownership-model in tech?

edit: added "worker" to "coop" (as I'm not interested in non-worker coops)

~~~
nickbauman
Does it matter if it's large? I was just talking to a friend who started a
small company, merged with a bigger company and thought he had done everything
right. After a few years, he regretted selling the company. Small is
beautiful. We learned this as children. Challenge the mantra of size and
growth.

~~~
donmatito
it matters but not in the sense that everybody should aim for a super large
corporation.

It matters because it validates that cooperatives can grow very large, and
refutes the claims such as "yes it's nice, but of course it works only for
small ventures and could never grow)

~~~
q3k
But the answer to that shouldn't be "here's an example of a large one" but
"why do you care so much for growth, it's fine to be small".

~~~
donmatito
No it shouldn't (even if I agree with your sentiment about company, growth and
probably life in general). People interested in coop model have a legitimate
interest in proving that it can work for various business size

------
wwatson
We have a software cooperative in Austin Texas (vulk.coop). We also have a
monthly virtual (using zoom) and in-person meetup group
[https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-
operatives](https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-operatives) if you want
to know more about software cooperatives. There are papers on cooperatives
found here: [https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-
operatives/about/](https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-
operatives/about/). If you want more information (or even if you just want to
rigorously debate) about organic entities, worker owned entities,
cooperatives, etc., I would join that group.

~~~
abawany
I am a member of the meetup and like the fact that most of the discussions are
held online to enable remote attendance.

------
aurbano
I did some freelance work for their University's Engineering Faculty in ~2014
and it was pretty cool, reading up on them here now I can see how their coop
nature influenced their research, as a lot of it was about making sure that
workers and management both felt important and appreciated.

My work was on some "business simulators" for a management course they were
preparing.You would first pick what kind of response you'd like from your
employees or clients (i.e. "passion" \- they would consider their project
worthwhile, back the vision, realize that people are key... ) and then you'd
be able to control 15 management parameters (like job security, management
transparency, salary range, leadership style, training... ) then you'd see a
chart with the output and even see "thoughts" that your employees would
probably have.

------
ollybee
In the UK there is Suma wholefoods being notable for being the largest equal
pay cooperative in Europe with a turn over of £40 million.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suma_(co-
operative)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suma_\(co-operative\))

~~~
jarofgreen
Also in UK Food, [https://www.unicorn-grocery.coop/](https://www.unicorn-
grocery.coop/) in Manchester is pretty cool.

------
christkv
They even run their own university.
[https://www.mondragon.edu/en/home](https://www.mondragon.edu/en/home) for
people who want to do their degree there and then I guess have a path into the
company itself ?

~~~
neuw84
If you study on the university by itself I would say that is easier to have a
"first contact" with the companies that form the Corporation. However, were I
work, more than 70% of the work force have studied outside Mondragon
university.

------
pg_bot
The reason why Mondragon was able to grow to its current size is their credit
union Caja Laboral. Under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco "people's
savings banks" were allowed to offer higher interest rates than competing
banks. Therefore local citizens would deposit their funds in Caja Laboral,
which would fund more cooperative businesses.

There's nothing special about the region or the culture, if you artificially
favor a certain type of business structure then you will get more it.
Mondragon is a classic case of incentives at work.

~~~
kgwgk
And what about the rest of the country where credit unions also exist but we
didn’t get more (at least not that much) of that type of artificially favoured
business structure?

~~~
pg_bot
I would argue that you did get more across the country, but the question is
why is Mondragon more successful.

The other benfit they had was the isolation of the Basque region in Spain
during the 1950s. They weren't served by railroads and the region itself is
quite mountainous, so for regular people they tended to be the only game in
town. In fact, their slogan at the time was "savings or suitcases". In other
places credit unions would compete with each other so you couldn't establish a
dominant position in the way that Caja Laboral did. Liberalization of the
banking industry in Spain during the 1970s tended to level the playing field
further. So you have the right mixture for a single dominant cooperative in
Mondragon.

------
sudoaza
Went to a talk given by them once. They have cool things like a maximum ratio
between the highest and lowest salary. They've done some huge projects in the
past like energy turbines and the likes.

~~~
anthk
I am from Bizkaia and I'd love to work there, but as I had no luck on
Derio/Zamudio neither, I am skeptical.

------
yochaigal
I've visited Mondragon, both the city (and the region) as well as many of the
co-ops themselves.

I did a small slideshow/presentation for those interested:
[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EFgwKNLgRgQQf8Kv236_...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EFgwKNLgRgQQf8Kv236_vUzUMzyOavQZdT2ABxn8m0g/edit)

------
kgwgk
It’s worth noting that only 40% of the group employees are owners.

~~~
Arkhaine_kupo
The number of non owner employees is also growing. The numbers used to be much
higher when they had Fagor but they fired most of the work force when it went
bankrupt in 2013 and the buying company only opened 700 jobs to replace the
old plant. Now a ton of their business is their supermarket branch in Eroski
and most are temp workers with obviously no owner rights.

~~~
iagovar
I always see the same faces in all the Eroskis in my city, are you sure most
of them are temp workers?

~~~
Arkhaine_kupo
By contract many are. At least in Bizkaia last time I asked is kinda how they
got around giving them voting rights. I wonder if now they are giving them
contratos indefinidios (full contracts) with no voting rights. But I do know
most still cannot vote, and now only 40% have voting rights since Fagor went
broke in 2013

~~~
neuw84
I think this is more related to each company status (and laws). Eroski almost
broke and is in "survival mode" right now.

As I know the general objective is to be around 60-70%.

~~~
Arkhaine_kupo
So if they get rid of eroski and just privatise it, you think they can go back
to 70%? I think lagun aro still not up there in terms of people with vote
rights, no?

But you work there so you probably know better

~~~
neuw84
Well I think the main idea is sanitize it first (at least they are trying)
then I suppose that they will be able to "add" more people to the cooperative.
From Lagun Aro I do not have exact numbers sorry but I know that the main idea
is to have +-60%. For example, right now in my company we are at 50% of people
with vote rights because an unprecedented grow in last years (went from 250 to
340 workers in 4 years) with the idea to go back to 60% little by little
depending on market conditions.

Here are some positive links about Eroski from spanish newpapers.

\-
[https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2019/05/23/companias/...](https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2019/05/23/companias/1558610554_459774.html)

\- [https://www.larazon.es/economia/eroski-cierra-2018-con-
benef...](https://www.larazon.es/economia/eroski-cierra-2018-con-beneficios-y-
reduce-su-deu-BC23475703/)

------
Pfhreak
I'm surprised that more disaffected tech folk aren't starting their own coops.
People in companies like

Especially in places like Seattle and San Francisco, where there are strong
lefty communities. I wonder if we'll see the folks who get frustrated with the
policies of Google/Amazon/etc splinter off to form coops.

~~~
scrollbar
Yeah. I had been trying to do it for awhile but there's surprisingly little
activity around here in our sector (Oakland/SF tech)

My partners of the consultancy we founded last year decided to go this route.
There aren't many great local examples to learn from so we're kind of figuring
it out as we go. Obviously B2B tech/software/consulting is very different than
for example Arizmendi, a local cooperative bakery.

If anyone else is interested or involved in coops in the Bay Area, please let
me know and I'd be happy to meet up.

kyle@greendata.ai

~~~
Pfhreak
Right? I look at Seattle and think "There should totally be a thriving tech
coop scene here".

But I think it's because of risk -- leaving a FAANG to found a tech coop is a
risk. Why give up $400k/year for a moonshot?

------
caffed
Shameless plug :-)

Democracy at Work Institute:
[https://institute.coop/](https://institute.coop/)

------
zackmorris
Does anyone know the best state(s) in which to base a cooperative? Delaware,
Nevada and Wyoming are the best for corporations, the main goal being to avoid
corporate income taxes:

[https://www.legalnature.com/guides/top-states-for-
incorporat...](https://www.legalnature.com/guides/top-states-for-
incorporation-delaware-nevada-and-wyoming-explained)

Related to that, is there something to be said for basing a
cooperative/corporation in your home city/state specifically to bring in tax
income for schools, infrastructure, police, firefighters, etc? What about
nonprofit corporations, is this a nonissue for them?

In Boise, ID (where I live), HP and Micron/Crucial have enjoyed tax breaks for
years as an incentive to be based here. But people have speculated that those
breaks made it harder for other tech companies to compete here, because their
tax burden lowered the wages they could offer. That may have set back the
startup scene here for many years. It also potentially raises residential
property taxes since someone has to pay for those incentives, and that's
become a major issue as more people move here.

I worked at HP for a year as a contractor 15 years ago and it was wonderful,
so I'm not disparaging them. I'm just curious to see what others think of this
issue.

------
mojuba
There's a "sister" concept of this called steward-ownership, promoted by this
German organization:

[https://purpose-economy.org/en/](https://purpose-economy.org/en/)

They have a lot of interesting materials and case studies (Bosch, Zeiss and
others).

Basically you can form an LLC the majority of which will be owned by the
employees and will also guarantee that the company can never be acquired.
There are a few schemes that can attract investments on special fixed terms,
such as redeemable shares with 3x return.

This type of companies live much longer on average, according to some studies,
and are also more stable and less prone to economic crises.

Anyway, fascinating stuff. I'm seriously considering steward ownership for my
next company now.

~~~
nickbauman
This is another form of cooperative, especially in early stage. Once the
cooperative gets established, you eventually want to become a C Corp to be
able to manage investments for your employees and plan on an orderly
succession.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Your confusing the coop with the company here - worker coop structures can get
complex.

eg abc.coop may 100% own abc.com, the employees of abc.com will be members of
abc.coop

------
antr
I wouldn't hold Mondragon Corporation to a very high standard. Back in 2005-06
the company I worked in was intending to acquire Mondragon's wind turbine
business (Ecotecnia). This was finally acquired by Alstom.

During the due diligence we saw the high level of political corruption, and
terrorism financing Mondragon was involved in. Very distrubing. Once we saw
this, we stopped looking at the acquisition.

~~~
youdontknowtho
Terrorism? Edit: looking at your comment history I'm going to go with them
supporting other left wing groups as your "terrorism"?

~~~
antr
Comment history? Left wing groups terrorists? Please enlighten us with your
research.

~~~
youdontknowtho
You're an investor, it says so in your profile. Most of your comments have a
fairly standard pro-markets anti-regulation view point. I was extrapolating
that to be conservative but you could also be a liberal pro-markets type. So,
my bad.

After doing some cursory googling, it looks like you were probably referring
to the ETA. I would like to hear more about the terrorism and corruption, if
you feel like going into it.

I have to admit, though, as an investor you and I see the world very very
differently. If you don't mind me disagreeing with you I will try not to make
any more assumptions.

~~~
antr
You're mixing your views and opinions with facts.

All I can tell you is that our legal/compliance team did reach out to
authorities.

As you can imagine, I won't entertain your ideology discussion when I'm
refering to facts.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
You're coming across in a axe-to-grind uninformed manner.

You make a claim like "Mondragon invests in terrorism" and you had better back
that up.

------
jwaldrip
I found out about Mondragon after watching
[http://ownershipeconomy.net/](http://ownershipeconomy.net/) and learning more
about distributism.

------
LatteLazy
Does anyone know how you become an employee-owner (or cease to be one) at
Mondragon? Is it a matter of buying in or length of service or are some roles
owners and other roles just not?

~~~
TheNorthman
[https://drpop.org/mondragon-how-do-you-become-a-
member/](https://drpop.org/mondragon-how-do-you-become-a-member/)

> The path to becoming a member of one of the cooperatives begins much like
> any other employment relationship – a position must be available, and the
> individual needs to be the right person for the job, as well as pre-disposed
> to cooperation. Once that is established, the worker is hired into a six-
> month contract as a temporary employee, much like the provisional period for
> many employees in a conventional enterprise.

> Depending on the proven suitability of the employee for the job and the
> availability of long-term work in the company, a good employee may be
> proposed for membership, or in cases where long-term work is not yet
> available, offered a renewed contract (for no more than three years). In
> some cases, “unsuitable” workers, who just don’t work out, may be asked to
> leave.

> Once membership is mutually accepted, the worker has 36 months to contribute
> his or her initial capital share of €15,000 , which represents the system’s
> minimum annual salary. This can be amortized through salary deductions, or
> in some cases borrowed from a bank as “capital to work.”

> At any given time at least 80% of the workers of any Mondragon cooperative
> must be full-fledged members.

~~~
LatteLazy
Perfect thanks.

That all seems fair. I wonder how many people are put off by the 15k buy in?
That's about 500 euros a month for 2.5 years. That's a lot for many workers
imho. I wonder if its tax deductable...

~~~
yochaigal
They don't pay for it all at once. They get a loan from the co-op bank
(Laboral Kutxa).

------
agmontpetit
This is a video about co-ops and Mondragon:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKbukSeZ29o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKbukSeZ29o)

The quality isn't great, though.

------
Arkhaine_kupo
So some thing that are a bit less glamorous than described on the article is
that one reason this works so well is because of the conditions of the place
it runs in. This coop comes from the basque country, a northern autonomous
region of Spain. It is a fairly rich area, with a huge port and industrial
past and a pretty tight knit community.

This generates an environment that allows for certain things to happen. One is
an area less prone to economic recessions, with higher wage equality and a
more egalitarian and humanistic approach to business. On the negative side
though there is an insidious xenophobia that permeates the area. Essentially a
lot of the ads they run (for example for their supermarket brand Eroski) do so
on a platform of "its better because its basque". Like basque cows, basque
cheese etc. Many of our companies brag about "we only hire local people", so
music festivals for example have all the staff hired locally rather than
having an open hiring process or allowing bands to bring their staff.

This is a bit of a double edged sword where we are creating a bit of a local
maximum for the basque country economy at the expense of a worse average for
everyone else (assuming market conditions can create Nash equilibriums). Now I
do believe Mondragon has done some fantastic stuff, but they are not without a
fault and they also exist thanks to an environment that allows such conditions
to exist and do the work they do.

~~~
AshamedCaptain
To advertise something as "it's better because it's basque/$COUNTRY" is not
xenophobic at all. First, because by that definition then almost everyone
would be (e.g. french). Second, because there are actual objective benefits of
sourcing local products (e.g. environmental).

I also really doubt what you explain is universally applicable as it looks to
be a very large corporation anyway.

~~~
Arkhaine_kupo
Its better because its local is not xenophobic, its better because its from
within some made up geographical boundries is.

There are tons of objective reasons to promote local products, we have
incredible soil and weather, we have a historical tradition of shepherding and
sea faring. But none of that is promoted, its the "its from here" with vague
connotations.

It is a large corporation that has had a huge trouble expanding outside the
local area of influence. Eroski has been a huge supermarket in the basque
country for decades and has never hold more than a minimun influence in spain
(despite other supermaket chains like Mercadona appearing much later and now
dominating the country). Fagor grew steadily to 5,600 employees and then went
bankrupt leaving all but 700 unemployed when a company from elsewhere bought
the remains. The university has 4 thousand students and most are basque.

They are massive but they are massive because they have a huge influence on a
very rich part of spain

~~~
leftyted
"Buy local" is not xenophobic.

Everyone knows that "buying local" is about supporting local jobs/industry.
There's nothing xenophobic about caring more about your neighbors than some
people you'll never meet thousands of miles away.

If it is to be a meaningful term, xenophobia has to be about fear or hatred.
It can't mean "favoring local over non-local".

~~~
spaintech
Sure, but in this region it’s more like buy my local good for you product,
sure it’s a little more expensive but.... “OR ELSE”... Many have been driven
out of their town or even killed (yes that is what I said) if you go against
the status quo in the Basque region. Mondragón would not exist for not for the
Basque cause... and most likely (it’s been their financial arm) the Basque
cause would not have existed with out Mondragón.

------
glitcher
Wow that is quite a lot of employees, but this excerpt came across a bit odd
to me:

> At the end of 2014, it employed 74,117 people... > By 2015, 74,335 people
> were employed

So the increase of 0.29% over a brief although somewhat ambiguous period of
time is supposed to tell me what?

~~~
chishaku
That in 2014, there were 74,117 employees and in 2015, there were 74,335
employees.

Given the size of the company, I imagine this data exists in a tabular format
and someone was just converting to a (maybe imperfect) natural language
representation of the data.

~~~
glitcher
My point was they appeared to be providing an observation about the change in
size over time, but the wording around the time frame is so ambiguous it could
mean anything between one day and one year, plus the magnitude of the change
didn't appear to be significant. In other words, those 2 statements in
combination provide little to no extra value in understanding the
organization.

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usrusr
While I do have a strong soft spot for the dreamy leftist ideal of worker
cooperatives (and I'm happy and impressed that an example as big and long-
living as Mondragon exists), I've recently started to find the much less
anticapitalistic concept of b2b buyer cooperatives far more interesting.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DATEV](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DATEV)
for example is doing just fine and feels as corporate as it gets (interviewed
there once).

What's so interesting about b2b cooperatives? Recently we have seen the rise
of market/directory platforms in fields where the network effect is so strong
that it's impossible to sustain real competition for long and once they are
effectively monopolistic they can squeeze entire industries dry at will,
degenerating into pure rent seeking. Poster child example: there cannot be a
second booking.com, the closest they have to competition is airbnb.

A buyer cooperative with the explicitly defined mission to just run the
platform at low cost would be the perfect antidote and a massive improvement
for everybody in the buying sector (those that purchase directory listings)
and their customer base. It wouldn't even be an impediment to innovation
because frontends could still be a multitude of conventional for-profits,
they'd just not compete in listing breadth (they'd all get the same offers
from the coop backend). Works roughly like that in the airline industries,
despite multiple competing backends. The big difference: those backends are
(were?) owned by airlines, not by outsiders trying to maximise value
extraction.

------
EGreg
There is also REI Collective in the USA

Real socialism is:

Mitchell Lama Housing Cooperatives

Food Cooperatives

Credit Unions

Employee Owned Companies

I define socialism as collective ownership of the means of production. By that
broad definition, the public stock market — a quintessentially capitalist
institution — would also be socialist, since corporations own most of the
means of production in this country. So the definition needs to be refined a
la Richard Wolff ... namely, DEMOCRACY inside an institution is socialism. One
person - one vote. The extreme opposite of that is one share one vote where
one person has so many shares that whatever he says goes:

[https://medium.com/swlh/facebook-investors-cant-remove-
mark-...](https://medium.com/swlh/facebook-investors-cant-remove-mark-
zuckerberg-and-that-s-a-problem-f07d3ce7e113)

All of us who run a startup probably begin in a capitalist structure, but
could be encouraged to transition to a socialist structure by giving employees
more voting power once the business is thriving:

1\.
[https://amp.ft.com/content/8a70b692-0967-11ea-b2d6-9bf4d1957...](https://amp.ft.com/content/8a70b692-0967-11ea-b2d6-9bf4d1957a67)

2\. [https://www.hrcapitalist.com/2020/02/cards-against-
humanity-...](https://www.hrcapitalist.com/2020/02/cards-against-humanity-
buys-small-company-makes-it-employee-owned.html)

I specifically thought to choose the domain “hr _capitalist_ ” for their
comments on this move to socialism:

 _”Cards of Humanity is doing an acquihire with a twist with this acquisition
- they found a troubled company for sale, and believed in the talent that
existed. BUT - this form of acquihire transfers wealth to the talent not
directly to their bank account, but by giving them ownership in the company.
That 's a powerful retention tool, and if for some reason they can't make it
work, the talent is sure to remember that Cards gave them a chance to save the
company and turn it around through their investment and subsequent transfer of
ownership. Moving acquired talent to ownership positions is a powerful play.”_

This is what capitalists had to say about a move to socialism in this case.

I would argue that socialist institutions (much different than state-
capitalism or its near-synonym: state-socialism) are preferred to capitalist
ones, in the marketplace.

People form lines around the block stretching for years to get into the
Mitchell Lama housing cooperatives in NYC. They have far lower costs than
landlord-owned buildings, and yet the same level of facilities or better. They
are effectively nonprofits, because they are run by and for the cooperators.
Few vacancies because many people don’t want to leave, unlike the high
turnover and 12%+ vacancy rate in privately owned buildings. I suspect credit
unions vs banks are similar.

Workers in a company would not vote to ship their own jobs overseas or do
massive layoffs.

So do I advocate libertarian socialism? Yes. I want to see more institutions
be democratically governed, like many universities are close to it, etc.

Note: SOCIALISM is different than SOCIAL DEMOCRACY which is typically done on
a city or state level to tax capitalist organizations and give public services
and universal safety nets to everyone.

However, socialism isn’t a panacea. Newcomers are still hazed and treated just
like countries treat peniless immigrants. So we need social democracy too.
Perhaps one day social democracy will take place on a global level. (We are
working on that at intercoin.org)

Finally... I should say there are better systems than socialism and
capitalism, that involve UBI AND COLLABORATION rather than HUNGER AND
COMPETITION. They are primarily gift economies found in the information space,
and include:

Science

Open Source Software

Wikipedia

The Web

Cryptocurrency (as it was originally intended, ie scalable tech not the
monolithic blockchain crap) was going to let the network be owned by
participants and even VCs loved it for a hot second until the non scalability
killed it (we’re working on that too).

Wikipedia vs Britannica

Web vs AOL

Science vs Private Alchemy

WebKit vs IE

You get the idea. Who wins? Hint: not the capitalism.

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totallyunknown
It's time for a browser extension that filters out random Wikipedia articles
on HN..

