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What is a Demand Coop

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Re: What is a Demand Coop

#111

Post by 9rx »

saghm wrote: post #109
9rx wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we were drowning in software jobs the way you describe, why would anyone tolerate having such awful coworkers at their office instead of finding somewhere better? I am not sure I follow your thinking here. We would be (or at least would have been until recently; the market is much less clear now) drowning in software jobs if businesses were only willing to hire the "MLB superstars" of the tech world. We have nev…

> You may work together, but would you want to start a business with them? That is what a union ultimately is, after all: A group of people who have come together to want to sell labor under an organization instead of individually. My livelihood already depends on their work, though, because they far outnumber me! (I've never worked at a company with two or fewer total people working for it). I'd argue that if you've…

> The question then becomes whether you think that the only reason they manage to not cause everything to crash and burn is because they have far less relative power to the people who sign the paychecks

The question is how much do you trust your employer to weather storms. If a business is going to crash and burn if the people you work with move on to new roles at other companies then you're in a bad place trying to bet your life on that business. However, if you trust that the business stakeholders will keep things moving even as people come and go then the people you work with don't really matter.

Going into business with the people you work with is quite different. If they decide to back out of being business partners, everything falls on you and you alone. You have to trust yourself to not screw everything up when times get hard. And, well, if you had that trust in yourself and desire to deal with it you'd already be the business owner yourself. One becomes an employee exactly because they don't want to have to deal with all of those headaches. You need to have a great deal of trust when you are the owner that you don't need if someone else is the owner.

> I'm incredulous that you think that the people who are currently the stakeholders care more about your circumstances

They couldn't care less about your circumstances. They care about themselves, though, and if they let things run wild their business will fail. That would not be in their interest. In a union, you become the employer, so to speak. You have to put your time into ensuring that things don't run wild.

If you are surrounded by good people, like you and MLB players are, then you don't have to worry about things going wild so much. Good people can be reasonably trusted. But that is a privileged situation. Not everyone is nearly as fortunate as you are.

> If I accepted the premise that the waters hadn't be sufficiently poisoned by constant bombardment of messages like yours over the past century

I get that you have no idea what I'm talking about, as evidenced by the non-sequiturs you keep replying with, but how does a pro-union message poison the waters? Are you purposefully posting this nonsense in an effort to diminish unions?

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#112

Post by bonsai_spool »

9rx wrote: post #111
saghm wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may work together, but would you want to start a business with them? That is what a union ultimately is, after all: A group of people who have come together to want to sell labor under an organization instead of individually. My livelihood already depends on their work, though, because they far outnumber me! (I've never worked at a company with two or fewer total people working for it). I'd argue that if you've…

> The question then becomes whether you think that the only reason they manage to not cause everything to crash and burn is because they have far less relative power to the people who sign the paychecks The question is how much do you trust your employer to weather storms. If a business is going to crash and burn if the people you work with move on to new roles at other companies then you're in a bad place trying to…

> In a union, you become the employer, so to speak. You have to put your time into ensuring that things don't run wild.

Not really! You can hire for this role—your union can hire an attorney, an accountant, an HR professional, whatever you collectively decide with your peers.

However, without a union, you have no way to reliably access information that would reveal whether things are 'running wild'.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#113

Post by 7jjjjjjj »

lstodd wrote: post #68
bonsai_spool wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ICE can also do "exactly what you wish it to do" What? Unless you are Congress, you can't create ICE at your workplace. You can, however, create a union.

If stuff you want aligns with what ICE already does, then it does exactly what you wish it to do, no? What is a union? It is another social structure, exactly same as corps are.

A kingdom and a republic are also both structures, but I think there are some salient differences.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#114

Post by defrost »

arjie wrote: post #110
defrost wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is relative, I'm here on the forum and here in W.Australia. There's nothing preventing co-ops from operating in the US other than culture.

> Here is relative, I'm here on the forum and here in W.Australia. That's true. "Here" doesn't mean anything on its own. I gathered as much from your response. I was clarifying what I was curious about because clearly I'd attached my "in the US" in my original comment to the wrong phrase. > There's nothing preventing co-ops from operating in the US other than culture. Right, and this is why I was curious. It seemed t…

Yep, that's the US (sadly) where apparently any form of social policy, general cooperation, long term planning, etc. gets torn down under the guise of equating to communism.

Weirdly, CBH is almost equivalent to a US style company in many ways - just that the major shareholders are all equal voting co owners with skin (well, land) in the game.

Which is very different to what an IT / programmer collective might look like - the assets are the intangible skills and knowledge that members bring to the table.

We (Australia) also do Men's Sheds which are often co-op type structures - place for blokey types to hang and build stuff as they get older - some of their projects can get largish in scale.

* https://mensshedswa.org.au/

* https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/mens-sheds/about-mens-she...

There's certainly room and scope to drag a few NAS boxen and community services (photo archiving, free to air public broadcast mirroring and on demand streaming, drone mapping and GIS path maintaining, etc.) into local area Men's Sheds.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#115

Post by 9rx »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #112
9rx wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question then becomes whether you think that the only reason they manage to not cause everything to crash and burn is because they have far less relative power to the people who sign the paychecks The question is how much do you trust your employer to weather storms. If a business is going to crash and burn if the people you work with move on to new roles at other companies then you're in a bad place trying to…

> In a union, you become the employer, so to speak. You have to put your time into ensuring that things don't run wild. Not really! You can hire for this role—your union can hire an attorney, an accountant, an HR professional, whatever you collectively decide with your peers. However, without a union, you have no way to reliably access information that would reveal whether things are 'running wild'.

> Not really! You can hire for this role—your union can hire an attorney, an accountant, an HR professional

Your solution to avoid becoming an employer is to... employ people? Oh boy.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#116

Post by bonsai_spool »

9rx wrote: post #115
bonsai_spool wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a union, you become the employer, so to speak. You have to put your time into ensuring that things don't run wild. Not really! You can hire for this role—your union can hire an attorney, an accountant, an HR professional, whatever you collectively decide with your peers. However, without a union, you have no way to reliably access information that would reveal whether things are 'running wild'.

> Not really! You can hire for this role—your union can hire an attorney, an accountant, an HR professional Your solution to avoid becoming an employer is to... employ people? Oh boy.

> Your solution to avoid becoming an employer is to... employ people? Oh boy.

Being in a union is not being an employer, anymore than calling a plumber is becoming a contractor.

And, even were that true, are you happy to accept your paycheck until every week until the severance pink slip lands on your desk? That is the alternative confronting knowledge workers today.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#117

Post by 9rx »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #116
9rx wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not really! You can hire for this role—your union can hire an attorney, an accountant, an HR professional Your solution to avoid becoming an employer is to... employ people? Oh boy.

> Your solution to avoid becoming an employer is to... employ people? Oh boy. Being in a union is not being an employer, anymore than calling a plumber is becoming a contractor. And, even were that true, are you happy to accept your paycheck until every week until the severance pink slip lands on your desk? That is the alternative confronting knowledge workers today.

> Being in a union is not being an employer

Uh, you absolutely become an employer when you start employing people.

> anymore than calling a plumber is becoming a contractor.

Why would you become a contractor by calling a plumber? The plumber is the contractor in the equation (with some assumptions about the plumber's willingness to engage in a transaction).

> are you happy to accept your paycheck until every week until the severance pink slip lands on your desk? That is the alternative confronting knowledge workers today.

Accept a paycheck or start your own business (or retire, I suppose) are the only choices that have ever been present. What is the quip about knowledge workers intended to add?

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#118

Post by bonsai_spool »

9rx wrote: post #117
bonsai_spool wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your solution to avoid becoming an employer is to... employ people? Oh boy. Being in a union is not being an employer, anymore than calling a plumber is becoming a contractor. And, even were that true, are you happy to accept your paycheck until every week until the severance pink slip lands on your desk? That is the alternative confronting knowledge workers today.

> Being in a union is not being an employer Uh, you absolutely become an employer when you start employing people. > anymore than calling a plumber is becoming a contractor. Why would you become a contractor by calling a plumber? The plumber is the contractor in the equation (with some assumptions about the plumber's willingness to engage in a transaction). > are you happy to accept your paycheck until every week unt…

> Why would you become a contractor by calling a plumber?

Exactly! I pay dues to a union. Those dues can go towards paying someone who knows how to run a union.

I pay money to a plumber who knows how to plumb things.

I'm neither an employer or a contractor in either setting.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#119

Post by [deleted] »

saghm wrote: post #88
kortilla wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think that the union isn't demonstrably an effective tool for having achieved huge increases in salaries for players across the board at both the highest and lowest skill levels, I'd argue the burden of proof is on you, because you'd be arguing against the obvious interpretation of the history in the decades following the establishment of the union. The burden is on anyone to make a claim in either direction…

> How do you know the salaries wouldn’t have increased just due to baseball popularity and demand for good players? For starters, baseball is not nearly as popular today as it has been in the past, but salaries have not decreased. But more fundamentally, we do have a demonstrative example of great outcomes for players with the union, whereas we don't have a counterfactual of what would play out. Since you're the one…

[deleted]

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#120

Post by 9rx »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #118
9rx wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being in a union is not being an employer Uh, you absolutely become an employer when you start employing people. > anymore than calling a plumber is becoming a contractor. Why would you become a contractor by calling a plumber? The plumber is the contractor in the equation (with some assumptions about the plumber's willingness to engage in a transaction). > are you happy to accept your paycheck until every week unt…

> Why would you become a contractor by calling a plumber? Exactly! I pay dues to a union. Those dues can go towards paying someone who knows how to run a union. I pay money to a plumber who knows how to plumb things. I'm neither an employer or a contractor in either setting.

> I pay dues to a union. Those dues can go towards paying someone who knows how to run a union.

Making you the employer. Dues are not a social or legal entity in and of themselves. There needs to be a human in the loop and in this hypothetical case that person is you.

> I'm neither an employer or a contractor in either setting.

Right. Under the common lexicon, the plumber is the contractor. Contractors are service providers, not service recipients. You, in this hypothetical case, are the one receiving a service from the plumber. Nobody would ever think you would be a contractor in this setting. It remains unclear why you keep repeating this obvious tautology.

And this is why tech people don't want to get into unions with other tech people. The unfortunate reality is that they let anyone become a tech worker.

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