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Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

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Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#151

Post by ranguna »

fimdomeio wrote: post #65
ranguna wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! Mind sharing the co-op name? I'm living in Portugal right now and I'm thinking about switching careers, so I might give that a look.

I'm part of Cooperativa Integral Minga in Montemor-o-Novo. We we're the first one in Portugal in the concept of Integral Cooperative (took some inspiration from Cooperativa Integral Catalana). In Portugal there's now a few coops based on the same general principles. Rizoma Coop In Lisbon, Regenerativa in S. Luís, Cooperativa da Terra in Aljezur, A Geradora in Trancoso, Coop. Cápsula in Leiria, Húmus in Madeira (in pr…

Awesome!

Will look at all those, thanks for getting back to me!

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#152

Post by pkphilip »

fimdomeio wrote: post #27

I'm currently part of the administration of a co-op. It's in Portugal and it's a Multisectorial co-op, meaning instead of being focused on one type of activity we do anything as long as we have a member with that skillset. We are an agregation of freelancers and small businesses that go from small scale farming, to web development or architecture. The coop serves as a way to have a lot of the nice things of a bigger…

Will be very interested in hearing the details. We are setting up a coop for small farmers and those in the agri-tech sector

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#153

Post by cercatrova »

zozbot234 wrote: post #149
cercatrova wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The labor theory of value has basically never been shown to work, while the subjective theory of value, however many its flaws, has been shown to work and bring us the world we see today.

The labor theory of value is approximately true when capital intensity is low, however.

True, in a commune or something like that, it does work. I think though once we hit Dunbar's number, then it breaks down and we need a subjective value based market.

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#154

Post by leethaxor »

zozbot234 wrote: post #149
cercatrova wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The labor theory of value has basically never been shown to work, while the subjective theory of value, however many its flaws, has been shown to work and bring us the world we see today.

The labor theory of value is approximately true when capital intensity is low, however.

It's never true. It's like a broken clock - it's right 2 times a day. When the conditions are exactly correct, it seems like the labor theory of value is true - but it's not. Consider a simple example - food production. Nothing changes about the labor necessary to produce it but that doesn't mean you won't have to sell your produce way under price (or let it rot) if you and other farmers make too much of it.

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#155

Post by felurx »

majewsky wrote: post #70
spuz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the difference between a cooperative like you describe and a startup where employees are given shares?

In a startup, employees usually don't really have much influence even if they have shares, because each successive funding round dilutes the existing shares. Also, there's some significant differences in how shares work between cooperatives and corporations (at least in Germany, where I live). In a corporation, you get one vote per share, and shares can be freely traded once given out. In a cooperative, you only one…

Which "Rechtsform" would a cooperative be in Germany?

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#156

Post by yogthos »

cercatrova wrote: post #148
yogthos wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're worried about rent seeking wait till you find out how a traditional business works. The owner of the company takes all the profit, and then pays out a small portion of that profit to the workers doing the work in form of wages. On the other hand, in a coop the profit is shared fairly amongst the people actually doing the work. It's frankly incredibly that somebody thinks this is a worse model of compensatio…

The labor theory of value has basically never been shown to work, while the subjective theory of value, however many its flaws, has been shown to work and bring us the world we see today.

Yeah, subjective theory of value brought us the world where a handful of individuals have more wealth than over half the world population, while the rest live in shit.

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#157

Post by yogthos »

leethaxor wrote: post #154
zozbot234 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The labor theory of value is approximately true when capital intensity is low, however.

It's never true. It's like a broken clock - it's right 2 times a day. When the conditions are exactly correct, it seems like the labor theory of value is true - but it's not. Consider a simple example - food production. Nothing changes about the labor necessary to produce it but that doesn't mean you won't have to sell your produce way under price (or let it rot) if you and other farmers make too much of it.

The question isn't about the amount of labour needed to produce food, it's regarding who collects the profit from the labour that is done. Not sure what point you were trying to make with food production there.

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#158

Post by leethaxor »

yogthos wrote: post #157
leethaxor wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never true. It's like a broken clock - it's right 2 times a day. When the conditions are exactly correct, it seems like the labor theory of value is true - but it's not. Consider a simple example - food production. Nothing changes about the labor necessary to produce it but that doesn't mean you won't have to sell your produce way under price (or let it rot) if you and other farmers make too much of it.

The question isn't about the amount of labour needed to produce food, it's regarding who collects the profit from the labour that is done. Not sure what point you were trying to make with food production there.

The labor theory of value has nothing to do with collecting profits and isn't concerned with who gets it. It argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of "socially necessary labor" required to produce it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value)

My point is that value is actually not determined by "socially necessary labor" but by supply and demand, even within a commune. The food you produce will rot if you and others produce too much of it = it has no value, and nobody collects profit (not even in the form of social capital) because everybody lost any possibility of selling for a good price by producing too much.

On the other hand during a shortage people will start valuing food much more than they previously did, gradually paying higher price as they have less of it - again totally disconnected from the "socially necessary labor" required to produce it.

Most importantly - the value of most if not all things is subjective and different based on time, place, etc. Even within a commune - some people simply don't like peppers, so even though you put a lot of work into them they have no value to these people (which will quickly change once there's a food shortage).

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#159

Post by yogthos »

leethaxor wrote: post #158
yogthos wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question isn't about the amount of labour needed to produce food, it's regarding who collects the profit from the labour that is done. Not sure what point you were trying to make with food production there.

The labor theory of value has nothing to do with collecting profits and isn't concerned with who gets it. It argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of "socially necessary labor" required to produce it. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value ) My point is that value is actually not determined by "socially necessary labor" but by supply and demand, even with…

Of course it has to do with profits and who gets it. That's the whole context for introducing the theory of value in Kapital, which one of us actually read while the other evidently skimmed a wikipedia page.

Labour theory of value is not in anyway at odds with the idea of supply and demand. In fact, the whole idea of value in Kapital is derived from supply and demand.

The labour theory of value states that the inherent value of a commodity is directly related to the combination of labour and cost of the machinery needed to produce the commodity. This is what acts as the foundation for the value that the market assigns to the commodities. The market value doesn't just appear out of thin air, it's rooted in material costs of production.

To put it bluntly, you have an infantile understanding of the subject you're attempting to debate here.

Re: Fired? Why cooperatives might be your next career choice in tech

#160

Post by Lutger »

ilyt wrote: post #80
Lutger wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the commercial success of coops, your premise that the main reason for work is money does not hold up to scrutiny. If merely adequately compensated, money turns out to be really low on the list of things that actually motivates people.

Okay but coop also doesn't automatically mean your happiness in work will grew. Some people will be perfectly happy working in a team with manager shielding them from most of the office politics vs pretty much having to take part in politics in coop

Of course, a shitty coop is worse than a well managed corp. All I'm saying is that money isn't top priority for a lot of people.
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