Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 311 posts

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#221

Post by greenie_beans »

rybosworld wrote: post #217
greenie_beans wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok, well you have no idea what you're talking about, so if you think that a coop is capitalism, then i'm gonna use that ignorance to my advantage, and convince everybody that coops are capitalism. psyop coops on the capitalists. thanks for the great strategic idea!

My guess is that someone who thinks private, for-profit businesses are socialist, will not gain much traction convincing anyone of anything. But best of luck! If you can explain to me how a co-op, which is a privately owned, and for-profit business structure, is not capitalist, I am all ears. P.s. Definitions are important. Hand waving them away as "semantics" is a common trick of the ignorant.

lol keep on arguing on the internet about stuff you don't know anything about, comrade. and use poor debate tactics, like "Every unicorn I know thinks leprechauns are real." will really get you far in life.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#222

Post by greenie_beans »

thesuitonym wrote: post #42
rybosworld wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co-op is not a socialist model at all. It's just an alternative corporate structure.

It's the workers owning the means of production, in what way is that not socialist?

ignore him, he's got hacker news debate bro vibes.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#223

Post by greenie_beans »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #134
greenie_beans wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are there any books you'd recommend to learn more about this history?

Any part you would be interested in particularly? I just grew up there, so most of it was less books and more just personal experience. But there are no few resources, books, shows or documentaries about the area.

most curious to learn more about the civil war.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#224

Post by Collisteru »

I wonder why co-ops are so comparatively rare in the US, even though everybody seems to like them (customers and employees).

It could just be tradition and the effects of history. But then why did US history create more shareholder corps while European history created more co-ops?

It could be that US investors are less willing to invest in co-ops. But then, why? Is there something about them that makes them less competitive? Why are they ostensibly worse in the US than in Europe?

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#225

Post by rybosworld »

greenie_beans wrote: post #221
rybosworld wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that someone who thinks private, for-profit businesses are socialist, will not gain much traction convincing anyone of anything. But best of luck! If you can explain to me how a co-op, which is a privately owned, and for-profit business structure, is not capitalist, I am all ears. P.s. Definitions are important. Hand waving them away as "semantics" is a common trick of the ignorant.

lol keep on arguing on the internet about stuff you don't know anything about, comrade. and use poor debate tactics, like "Every unicorn I know thinks leprechauns are real." will really get you far in life.

Multiple people here have told you that your understanding is incorrect. Now you've resorted to straw man so... I think deep down we all know who is talking out of their behind.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#226

Post by InitialLastName »

mgaunard wrote: post #27
jmyeet wrote: post #20

For all the fearmongering of the Red Scare, this is what socialism looks like. Socialism is an industrial co-op like this where workers are fairly paid for their labor. Capitalism is Walmart where all profits are captured by a handful of shareholders and executives, being subsidized by the Federal government through food stamps to employees and decimating local economies to the point where they're left with dollar st…

In my experience, people would rather be employees paid in cash whose amount is agreed ahead of time than partners where they're paid depending on the company's profits.

Doesn't that depend on how profitable the company usually is? I know plenty of people in the finance world who, if paid only their salary, would be searching for a different job.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#227

Post by monknomo »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #129
Ericson2314 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C-suite compensation, especially stock-based, is often in part to ensure management loyalty to shareholders vs other things. Worker board membership means management once again has competing loyalties, but now de jure . That means it is not worth it to the share holders to pay the extra "ransom compensation", in addition to workers probably outright being against it. I would thus expect C-suite compensation to go dow…

"ensure management loyalty to shareholders" Everyone's pay is to keep them, isn't it? Nobody is loyal beyond being paid. Do CEO's really provide so much 'extra' benefit to justify the premium? Is their loyalty in particular worth paying so much for? I'm just not seeing how 'ransom' is needed. Isn't growing a healthy business supposed to be the goal for CEO and Board? And if employee owned, it is same. The only reason…

I think the question is who is the business healthy for, and who is the c-suite and up loyal to?

It is possible, and even likely, that a healthy business differs in some material ways for a CEO+board than its employees, though I also expect there are also overlaps

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#228

Post by usrusr »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #15
usrusr wrote: post #11

It's an amazing success story (even if surely not without any bad spots), it makes me happy just knowing that it exists. But I do wonder how much of its workability hinges on Basque nationalism rechanneled into something more useful than nationalism usually is. If that nationalism also had something like an independent state as a default outlet, the balance between cohesion and corruption creep might shift just enoug…

> But I do wonder how much of its workability hinges on Basque nationalism rechanneled into something more useful than nationalism usually is. Basically none, it does not hinge on that. If anything basque nationalism hurts the proyect more than it helps. Many of the workers in the basque country came "to disrupt" basque nationalism. So many of the old workforce in Mondragon is not basque born. there was a civil war i…

Thanks, the part about that area being an industry hotspot after the civil war was completely new to me. From my German perspective, Spanish history with all its disconnect from the three "big stories" of the twentieth century almost feels like from a different timeline!

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#229

Post by Workaccount2 »

sangnoir wrote: post #175
dh2022 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whom $2,300 / year is meaningful is, dare I say, hard to answer question. Most of the people for whom an additional $2,300 / year is meaningful pay little to no taxes. However, a large chunk of these people also get Earning Income Credit. These people would lose at least part of this credit if their income increases. This question I believe can be answered by the bi-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office…

> For whom $2,300 / year is meaningful is, dare I say, hard to answer question There were many articles written on the impact of the 2021 Advance Child Tax Credit (up to $1,800 per child over a 6 month period). The impact was very significant on lower-income families - which makes sense because for those earning less than $40,000 per year, that amount is more than the amount in one's paystub.

And how many JPmorgan employees fall into that category?

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#230

Post by greenie_beans »

rybosworld wrote: post #225
greenie_beans wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol keep on arguing on the internet about stuff you don't know anything about, comrade. and use poor debate tactics, like "Every unicorn I know thinks leprechauns are real." will really get you far in life.

Multiple people here have told you that your understanding is incorrect. Now you've resorted to straw man so... I think deep down we all know who is talking out of their behind.

two people, you and some other guy who is also wrong and doesn't know the 7 principles of coops based on his comment (you still haven't argued about how those principles are capitalist, so pretty sure the onus is on you anyway). there are plenty of examples in the other comments on this post supporting my opinion. being a contrarian doesn't mean you're right.

and re: strawman, i just met you at your level after you used the logical fallacy: "Every unicorn I know thinks leprechauns are real." it was pretty clear at that point that you weren't going to have a reasonable conversation. i apologize for not pointing that fallacy out directly and instead i said, "well you have no idea what you're talking about". i could've been more graceful with that, or just ignored you.

anyway, thank you for sharing your (wrong) opinion about whether or not a coop is socialist.

Post reply on HN