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Mondragon Corporation

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Re: Mondragon Corporation

#251

Post by 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...

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.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#252

Post by mindcrime »

EGreg wrote: post #233
tsimionescu wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I know Chomsky. I went to meet him in MIT several years ago, when I was looking for advisors to Qbix. (Also met Tim Berners-Lee and his team at what was then known as Solid - a similar project to Qbix). The guy responds to email at 2am btw, quite cool for an 85 year old. As I see it, open source technology IS the great decentralized of power. We just need people to build Good open source software. My personal passion…

Technology decentralizes power.

I would have agreed with that statement at one time. Now I'd qualify it to read "Technology can decentralize power." Unfortunately, it can also do the opposite. I'm at a point now where I'm torn on the question of whether or not technology inherently tends one way or the other. But in either case, I'm now convinced that human nature is much more a factor in the centralization / decentralization of power than technology.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#253

Post by dls2016 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #224
allworknoplay wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is your point?

That Chomsky's ideal end-goal is unrealistic because it is inherently dynamically unstable. Small worker-owned cooperatives plus a free market is an ecosystem ripe for larger worker-owned cooperatives to create incentive structures that let them dominate the market, which lets them grow, which is a positive feedback loop in that incentive structure.

As opposed to the current US system where large shareholder-owned corporations dominate the market, which lets them grow, which is a positive feedback loop in that incentive structure?

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#254

Post by glitcher »

chishaku wrote: post #172
glitcher wrote: post #153

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?

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.

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.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#255

Post by shadowgovt »

monadic2 wrote: post #249
shadowgovt wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Chomsky's ideal end-goal is unrealistic because it is inherently dynamically unstable. Small worker-owned cooperatives plus a free market is an ecosystem ripe for larger worker-owned cooperatives to create incentive structures that let them dominate the market, which lets them grow, which is a positive feedback loop in that incentive structure.

Tbh I do not think Chomsky has written on his ideals the way others have, much of his positions are extrapolated from his critiques on other states (please correct me if I am wrong). However he has positively identified himself as an anarchy-syndicalist. There are multiple ways an anarchist society might respond to a corporation growing too large: convincing its workers to split or find work elsewhere to avoid econom…

> There are multiple ways an anarchist society might respond to a corporation growing too large

I agree, but I believe a firm past a critical mass of size can defend against all of them, and defense breeds the resources for further defense.

> convincing its workers to split or find work elsewhere to avoid economic collapse

Unlikely if the firm's size lets it offer better life than alternatives

> seizing its assets and forcibly splitting or shuttering its operations

Hard if a firm's size grants it the ability to challenge monopoly on violence

> denying it use of supply chains, of debt if the market has currency, etc.

No longer possible if the firm is large enough to have vertical integration

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#256

Post by dls2016 »

jp555 wrote: post #145
dls2016 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't Tort do that already?

I actually don't know. This is based off my own observation of the set of things for which one can end up in jail. Once you really think about the things in that set (shoplifting vs. wage theft) it's impossible to believe the system isn't rigged. To be fair, governments and militaries have always been used to protect the interests of the wealthy. But evidence suggests things have changed radically for the worse since the 70s (in my US-centric view).

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#257

Post by TaylorAlexander »

dls2016 wrote: post #253
shadowgovt wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Chomsky's ideal end-goal is unrealistic because it is inherently dynamically unstable. Small worker-owned cooperatives plus a free market is an ecosystem ripe for larger worker-owned cooperatives to create incentive structures that let them dominate the market, which lets them grow, which is a positive feedback loop in that incentive structure.

As opposed to the current US system where large shareholder-owned corporations dominate the market, which lets them grow, which is a positive feedback loop in that incentive structure?

Thank you. So often when I talk about solutions people say “it won’t work” because of some problem they’ve identified. They completely miss whether the current system also has that problem and whether the proposed situation at least represents an improvement. I can’t solve every problem nor do I claim to! All human systems will have difficulties. But some systems are set up structurally to be more exploitative than others.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#258

Post by shadowgovt »

dls2016 wrote: post #253
shadowgovt wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Chomsky's ideal end-goal is unrealistic because it is inherently dynamically unstable. Small worker-owned cooperatives plus a free market is an ecosystem ripe for larger worker-owned cooperatives to create incentive structures that let them dominate the market, which lets them grow, which is a positive feedback loop in that incentive structure.

As opposed to the current US system where large shareholder-owned corporations dominate the market, which lets them grow, which is a positive feedback loop in that incentive structure?

Yes. The system that currently exists is very realistic, by definition.

To be clear, I'm criticizing the notion that small worker-owned / worker-managed corporations and a free market are an inherently stable structure (because free markets will favor consolidation). I'm not against large worker-owned / worker-managed corporations, and I think they could be a significant improvement on the ecosystem of shareholder-owned corps we find in the US.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#259

Post by abawany »

wwatson wrote: post #180

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 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/ . If you want more information (or even if you just want to rigorously debate…

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

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#260

Post by shadowgovt »

leto_ii wrote: post #196
golemotron wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's where it falls apart. Systems tend to aggregate to seek efficiencies of scale.

I tend to not agree with this line of thinking. This may be the case when you subject a company to financial market pressures by listing it on the stock exchange, but I don't think it's a natural imperative. Many companies do just fine without growing to enormous proportions, being acquired, acquiring others etc.

In a world of low-friction exchange of information and goods, small firms are competing with every large firm that can touch their market. What you're describing (companies doing just fine without growing to enormous proportions) is the status quo until a Wal-Mart rolls into their market, in which case they tend to be consumed by the mega-firm that leverages economies of scale (and occasionally monopoly) to drive prices down.

A free market, lacking counter-pressure to maximizing firm size, favors large firms, and large firms becoming larger is a positive feedback loop. Note that this is an idealized model and there's plenty of room for counter-pressure in reality (can the large firm actually pull demand away from the smaller firm, or does the smaller firm have a leg-up in e.g. customer relations that the larger firm can't compete with?).

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