141–150 of 291 posts
There are lots of small tech worker coops in the U.S. and Canada. See 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.
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Second degree? how does that work ?
Hi, a second degree cooperative is owned by 50% by workers and the other 50% from other cooperatives that are usually our clients. As we are a research center, is a way to have a "close relationship" with those companies and to focus our research into their areas of interest or develop new prototypes for them.
You do pass the ALL Rochdale principals?
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> It's been an amazing journey. So you sold it, eh?
Heh, you can't sell a worker coop. One of the key defining features is a "de-mutualization" provision in the founding documents. You can only sell your own share, which has, in our coop, a fixed value of $1,000. And you can only sell that share back to the coop.
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…
While of course companies that operate in a non-market system and could take into account negative externalities, such as systemically important PRC or NorK SOEs, would never exploit workers or create bad working conditions - at home or in South America...
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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
Is the alternative to bank robbing a top-down central-managed solution? No, we simply penalize the behavior. We could do the same and penalize exploitation by corporations. Hold individuals accountable. Extreme fines. You may argue this would be complicated, but so is a lot of existing legislation surrounding international trade.
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.
So a lot of companies paid. Even if they had no sympathy for the criminals.
But there were other companies that didn't need much "convincing". Was this one of that kind? I have no idea.
Edit: oh, these are the owners of Eroski. I remember they were in the news a long time ago exactly for that. I don't remember how the trial ended, but some guy was definitely charged.
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…
I don't understand why would anyone think that it can. This is not just my opinion but an opinion of famous capitalists (for example Buffett or Soros).
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Forcing no profits is central management at it's very worst - Setting prices causes many downstream derangements to markets. A complex interconnected system will adapt in unforeseeable ways, causing novel externalities for which we have no built up immunity. Ask a soviet.
Forcing profits is bad too. Just look at Boeing to see where the naked pursuit of profits can lead. It literally kills people.
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Wait a minute, you state something that Chomsky never said (the "alternative 100% top-down central-managed solution") , and then call him "not very useful" for this fake statement? He's not saying Mondragon is bad, just that within capitalism, these solutions are still fucked on the long term. If you really want to judge him on his real-world solutions, then take at look at Michael Albert's Participatory economics th…
I questioned, not stated. I mean that I find him too theoretical - His thinking is all very smart and appealing but useless in practice.
Fake easy-solutions are good to make you feel better before work, but it prevents you from going into deep thinking from which real solutions may emerge.