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

Mondragon as the new city-state

elysian.press

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 372 posts

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#41

Post by mikojan »

intalentive wrote: post #7

>If the model is a good one, detractors say it can’t be replicated outside of the Basque Country, and there’s some truth to that. The author doesn't speculate why, but I'd guess it's partly due to Basque ethnic solidarity. Mondragon sounds a lot like the kind of late 1800s / early 1900s syndicalism that later evolved into Italian fascism and German National Socialism. Of course, another big "collectivist capitalism"…

The importance of "leftist" fascism is overplayed.

"Socialism" back then, much like "Human Rights" today, was generally associated with what is morally right. It was not an ideology of extremist groups. Fascism "evolved" from socialism same as everybody and their mother evolved from it.

And because of its dominance, everybody tried to exploit it, too. So you called your organisation "National Socialist Party" and your heads of propaganda copied the rhetoric.

Also, libertarian socialism was nowhere as developed as in Spanish society at that time. This is not the most surprising society to generate Mondragon.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#42

Post by sweeter »

eightysixfour wrote: post #15
shafoshaf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure your economic terms are not what the consensus of professionally trained economists would say. >>>Locally-owned businesses. That's socialism. There is definitely nothing in the definition of socialism that says everything is locally-owned. Moreover, that can be a way to end up with things like Redlining and other institutional racial issues. >>>There is no value without labor. The great thing Marx did…

>>> Locally-owned businesses. That's socialism. >> There is definitely nothing in the definition of socialism that says everything is locally-owned. Moreover, that can be a way to end up with things like Redlining and other institutional racial issues. I read the OPs post as an example of propoganda (mega corp - capitalism, small company - socialism) not reality.

Same here. It's to display the hypocrisy of those in power who declare things in their favor as beneficial and those that are not beneficial as harmful and bad.

In reality it's almost the opposite, it's bootstrap capitalism for the little guys, and "socialism" and government handouts for the ultra wealthy. (I put socialism in quotes because this term is extremely commonly misused.)

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#43

Post by hansonkd »

m_ke wrote: post #29

It's a shame there's not a YC like incubator for tech worker coops, cut out the VCs and have milestone based funding in exchange for a percentage of future profits that would be reinvested in future projects.

Isn't that almost the opposite?

In a Co-op you put up your own money to buy into a co-op. This is the opposite of VC where an external party joins your org with money.

So a co-op model would only help to serve the already wealthy.

However, maybe it would be interesting to have a co-op for developer resources for example. As in companies or startups can buy into the coop in return for cheaper rates and more vertically integrated team augmentation.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#44

Post by intalentive »

prmoustache wrote: post #31
intalentive wrote: post #7

>If the model is a good one, detractors say it can’t be replicated outside of the Basque Country, and there’s some truth to that. The author doesn't speculate why, but I'd guess it's partly due to Basque ethnic solidarity. Mondragon sounds a lot like the kind of late 1800s / early 1900s syndicalism that later evolved into Italian fascism and German National Socialism. Of course, another big "collectivist capitalism"…

Now Basque country is not considered "the West"?

>"on a large scale"

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#45

Post by jszymborski »

cies wrote: post #34
m_ke wrote: post #29

It's a shame there's not a YC like incubator for tech worker coops, cut out the VCs and have milestone based funding in exchange for a percentage of future profits that would be reinvested in future projects.

It's inherent to the way a coop works that it's not possible to follow the same path. There is no 7% equity to be given, only the repayment of a loan. The coop model does not promote taking risk and hence have many fail, yet a few grow very quick. Another problem is law. At this point it favors the common ownership forms of business. Starting a coop is hence much harder than it should be. This is what i think where t…

I'm not a finance person, but my understanding is that co-ops more often raise capital with traditional loans.

While I believe you are correct that co-ops are not a great fit for the growth business strategy that VCs make their bread and butter on, I believe that on many metrics co-ops tend to be more sustainable than the corporate alternatives[0]. This means they are more likely to be around tomorrow to pay off a loan.

All this to say, it would be great to see more capital for co-ops in the form of traditional loans with favourable interest rates.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/social-enterprise-network/2014/m...

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#46

Post by wahnfrieden »

cies wrote: post #34
m_ke wrote: post #29

It's a shame there's not a YC like incubator for tech worker coops, cut out the VCs and have milestone based funding in exchange for a percentage of future profits that would be reinvested in future projects.

It's inherent to the way a coop works that it's not possible to follow the same path. There is no 7% equity to be given, only the repayment of a loan. The coop model does not promote taking risk and hence have many fail, yet a few grow very quick. Another problem is law. At this point it favors the common ownership forms of business. Starting a coop is hence much harder than it should be. This is what i think where t…

Are there countries with legal structures more friendly to worker coops?

For example I know Germany has structures like works councils that are foreign to us in N. America (though this is not a worker coop structure). However these structures historically arise from labor movements, not from top-down planning from authorities or electoral politics, which takes more than thinking up a design for a better society without considering who and why it would be implemented

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#47

Post by jmyeet »

RHSeeger wrote: post #16
jmyeet wrote: post #4

There is no value without labor. This was recognized by everyone from Karl Marx to Abraham Lincoln to Adam Smith. Smith even conceded that profit was impossible if workers retain their surplus value, which is exactly the point. I bring this up because that's what capitalism is: draining the surplus labor value from workers to the capital-owning class. In feudalism, the artistocracy and th emonarchy extracted that val…

> There is no value without labor. While this is generally true, it's also not the entire equation. For example, there's no gain without risk. - When I work for someone else, I am offloading some of the risk to that person/owner. When someone starts a company and hires other people... if the company goes belly up, the founder loses their investment; the workers find another job. - When I rent from someone else, I am…

> When I work for someone else, I am offloading some of the risk to that person/owner.

Workers generally risk their lives or simply injury. Owners "risk" capital. I put that in quotes because our government is typically set up to rescue failing businesses and by that I mean bailing out the owners. If the business fails, the owner simply has less money or they have to become a worker.

So who is really taking a risk here?

> When I rent from someone else, I am offloading the risk of owning a property to someone else.

We shouldn't treat housing as an investment vehicle. It is shelter and necessary to live. Every level of government is subordinate to the cause of increasing property prices as society increasingly views housing as a vehicle to build generational wealth.

The majority of housing in vienna is state-owned (so-called "social housing"). Any kind of state housing has been successfuly propagandized as a "slum" ("project") but there's no need for that to happen. The UK, prior to Thatcher coming along and dismantling the whole thing, almost completely got rid of landlords simply by being the buyer of last resort for owners that wante dto sell.

> None of this justifies people making insane amounts of money while others are starving

Our economic system is predicated on withholding basic needs for profit.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#48

Post by intalentive »

kmeisthax wrote: post #40
intalentive wrote: post #7

>If the model is a good one, detractors say it can’t be replicated outside of the Basque Country, and there’s some truth to that. The author doesn't speculate why, but I'd guess it's partly due to Basque ethnic solidarity. Mondragon sounds a lot like the kind of late 1800s / early 1900s syndicalism that later evolved into Italian fascism and German National Socialism. Of course, another big "collectivist capitalism"…

I've heard this story ever since I was a shit-eating Ron Paul voting right-libertarian. The whole "collectivist success requires ethnic purity" argument. I don't buy it. It is, inevitably, either an excuse to destroy functional collective institutions, an excuse to advocate for ethnic cleansing, or both.

To elaborate on my previous comment: if you want people to be less individualistic and more community-minded, and especially if you want economic organization to be more cooperative, decentralized and bottom-up, then people are going to need to feel a deep sense of buy-in and belonging, and you don't really see that in an undifferentiated mass of atomized "consuming and producing units".

But you do see it among the Amish, and the Basques, and the Boers, and in the kibbutzim, and in families generally, because kin relations are meaningful among humans and elsewhere in the animal world.

And I'm not arguing that "collectivist success requires ethnic purity", just noticing a correlation. Where you see apparent altruism in economics -- including nepotism in hiring -- you tend to find kin relations.

Probably the game theorists and evolutionary psychologists have it figured out.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#49

Post by m_ke »

cies wrote: post #34
m_ke wrote: post #29

It's a shame there's not a YC like incubator for tech worker coops, cut out the VCs and have milestone based funding in exchange for a percentage of future profits that would be reinvested in future projects.

It's inherent to the way a coop works that it's not possible to follow the same path. There is no 7% equity to be given, only the repayment of a loan. The coop model does not promote taking risk and hence have many fail, yet a few grow very quick. Another problem is law. At this point it favors the common ownership forms of business. Starting a coop is hence much harder than it should be. This is what i think where t…

Yeah I'd imagine it would have to be a single holding company that has members join, instead of investing for equity.

So as an example you could have hypothetical opensource.coop that funds open source projects like signoz or posthog, giving the team a year of runway in exchange for a cut of future profits, with follow on funding if certain milestones are reached.

Same could work for "indie hackers" or boostrappers, merge a few successful companies into a holding company that shares office space, accounting, legal and etc, and reinvests a fixed % of profits to seed new projects that apply to join.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#50

Post by CPLX »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #14
jmyeet wrote: post #4

There is no value without labor. This was recognized by everyone from Karl Marx to Abraham Lincoln to Adam Smith. Smith even conceded that profit was impossible if workers retain their surplus value, which is exactly the point. I bring this up because that's what capitalism is: draining the surplus labor value from workers to the capital-owning class. In feudalism, the artistocracy and th emonarchy extracted that val…

> There is no value without labor. is this a serious statement?

Not only is it serious, it’s the central argument of all political systems since there have been political systems.
Post reply on HN