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Mondragon as the new city-state

elysian.press

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Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#341

Post by bagful »

rglullis wrote: post #319
eszed wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier (both psychologically and financially) for users to budget for $x per period - with an explicit or implied promise that it won't ever be more than that - and it's easier for the org to plan for y users at $x, than it would be for either to adjust to paying / chasing $z period. It's a fairly common pricing strategy, which offers stability to both clients and organizations surviving on shoestring budgets an…

If you want to be protected against unexpected costs, you buy insurance, you don't overpay "just in case". All I am saying is that the coop (at least cosocial.ca) is not more capital and resource efficient than any good old service provider. We are talking here at a 250% price difference for less functionality. How would you justify that for orgs on a shoestring?

What is insurance if not “overpay[ing] ‘just in case’”? What does paying a middleman benefit you in this situation?

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#342

Post by eyeewuw4wsu »

kragen wrote: post #196
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood. I said if someone has heard the term "anarcho-syndicalist", there is a very high chance it's from the Holy Grial. Not 99% of people in the world are familiar with the term.

you're still overestimating how much you know about the world, by a lot. in the spanish-speaking world, for example, anarcho-syndicalism is much better known than monty python (though, not among programmers, because they speak english and write python). and i'm guessing that monty python isn't that widely known among arabic speakers, russian speakers, and chinese speakers, while anarcho-syndicalism is a significant h…

[dead]

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#343

Post by thiagoharry »

jujube3 wrote: post #98
cooolbear wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice try, but getting 10,000 people to dig holes (e.g. gigantic infrastructure projects) ends up costing much more than what it takes for "one guy" to "design a microchip"

Sure, it costs more, and everyone agrees on that. Where we disagree is whether it provides more VALUE. The LTV says that it does by definition, because labor = value, and therefore more labor = more value. You may choose to disagree. Just as modern economists disagree with the LTV.

You are completely wrong. This stupid example of digging holes is dismissed even in the first chapter of Das Capital if I'm not mistaken. First because if you do not provide use value (like digging useless holes), you cannot produce exchange value. Second because what really matters is the social necessary labor to dig the holes, assuming that there is a market for this. You will just waste money paying people to dig holes if we live in a world with technology to use backhoe excavator.

Economy is not a natural or exact science. There is a mainstream. But this does not mean that there is no valid inquiries and theories outside mainstream.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#344

Post by pier25 »

ladyanita22 wrote: post #24
user-one1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basque country is one of the richest regions in Spain, which is already a highly developed country. Not sure what you are talking about.

I'm from Spain, so I'm quite sure of what I'm talking about. Spain might be a highly developed country, but its gdp per capita is not too high compared to the likes of Germany, UK, France, Denmark, US, et al. Basque country is, again, rich because it has an special tax treatment and could be considered a tax heaven to some extent.

You’re cherry picking. Why don’t you compare it with any country in latam, Africa, or Asia?

Spaniards tends to have this idea that Spain is a shithole when it’s really one of the best countries in the world.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#345

Post by rglullis »

bagful wrote: post #341
rglullis wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to be protected against unexpected costs, you buy insurance, you don't overpay "just in case". All I am saying is that the coop (at least cosocial.ca) is not more capital and resource efficient than any good old service provider. We are talking here at a 250% price difference for less functionality. How would you justify that for orgs on a shoestring?

What is insurance if not “overpay[ing] ‘just in case’”? What does paying a middleman benefit you in this situation?

What I am saying is that part of entering a contract with a service provider is insurance, e.g, SLA.

The middleman (in the case, the business providing hosting services) also has a vested interest in pricing risk properly and in reducing the costs of accidents.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#346

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

trhway wrote: post #88
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a bit premature to speak so generally about collectivism. It's quite possible that the USSR failed for reasons that do not apply to Mondragon. Maybe once we've seen a few hundred of these come and go it'll be time for a general theory of their kind.

>It seems a bit premature to speak so generally about collectivism 2B people spent better part of 20th century doing the experiments, killing tens of millions of those who didn’t completely shared the ideas of the collective, and you think it is premature? General theory is in the Das Kapital. So far the things have worked as described. People by mistake ascribe happiness to the outcomes calculated there while there…

Compulsory participation is quite a separate thing. Everyone who works at Mondragon could just go work somewhere else if they wanted.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#347

Post by nickpinkston »

anthk wrote: post #337
nickpinkston wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also don't speak much Spanish there, as the Basques have their own ancient unique language (a non-Indo-European isolate actually) and culture due to their mountain isolation and resistance to everyone, even the Romans. The people I worked with there all spoke English. You might try reaching out to these guys if you want to visit. They actually get a lot of visitors, and there's a whole tour program I did when I…

We can perfectly speak both fine. At least the ortography it's 97% the same.

Oh yea, I don't mean the Basque people don't speak Spanish, just that they prefer Basque.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#348

Post by jujube3 »

Aloisius wrote: post #163
greenie_beans wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misinterpretation of the labor theory of value. I understand it like this: I am a capitalist and my money goes to pay labor to create a thing that I sell in a market. The workers create thing in the production process. I have captured a portion of the labor's true value based on the market, bringing me profit - what Marx called "surplus value." I turn around and reinvest that profit into another busi…

That seems awfully.. tautological.

It's not tautological because it assumes that __management contributes nothing.__ Management's decisions about what to build in, how to build it, etc... are worth __nothing__ to Marxists.

Related: when Marxism was actually implemented, they had big problems with not building the right things, and building the things they did build poorly. For example a factory was assigned the task of building N pounds of nails a day, so they just built one giant nail that weighed N pounds (and was totally useless) rather than buliding what was needed. Because it turns out, management is actually needed and useful.

[And so are price signals, but let's take baby steps here!]

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#349

Post by jujube3 »

thiagoharry wrote: post #343
jujube3 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it costs more, and everyone agrees on that. Where we disagree is whether it provides more VALUE. The LTV says that it does by definition, because labor = value, and therefore more labor = more value. You may choose to disagree. Just as modern economists disagree with the LTV.

You are completely wrong. This stupid example of digging holes is dismissed even in the first chapter of Das Capital if I'm not mistaken. First because if you do not provide use value (like digging useless holes), you cannot produce exchange value. Second because what really matters is the social necessary labor to dig the holes, assuming that there is a market for this. You will just waste money paying people to dig…

The market does not always choose to use the maximum amount of automation for everything. For example, a small business may rationally choose to wash dishes by hand rather than paying for a dishwasher. Are their meals more valuable (because more labor intensive) than the big restaurant across the street that does own a dishwasher?

You are the one defending the LTV, not me. If value = labor, but not when that would be silly, it's a bit like saying F = ma, but not when that would be silly. No serious scientist would accept this formulation. You would be laughed out the room.

After millions of deaths, environment devastation, and political repression, Marxism deserves to be laughed out of the room as well. I hope it will be, some day.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#350

Post by jujube3 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #331
WalterBright wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marxism is just one of many utopian schemes that do not work. I do not need to study every perpetual motion machine design to dismiss them. It's their job to show that they work. What amazes me is the people who desperately cling to Marxism despite its 100% failure rate. How can they make a career studying it and never notice its history? Do you notice that nobody has been able to point to a Marxist success story, af…

> I do not need to study every perpetual motion machine design to dismiss them. It's their job to show that they work. What amazes me is the people who desperately cling to Marxism despite its 100% failure rate. Maybe if you bothered to try to understand the perpetual machine that everyone’s bought into then you wouldn’t be so amazed by people buying into it all of the time

Maybe he understands it better than you.
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