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What is a Demand Coop

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Re: What is a Demand Coop

#71

Post by thrownthatway »

vlovich123 wrote: post #52
thrownthatway wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The most valuable resource is trust. Follow closely by the trust-structures to deal with the ramifications of the primary trust-relationship being broken. That is to say, the most fundamental rule is contract law.

I think you missed when I said that contract law is for when things have gone completely off the rails or for very expensive decisions. Most day to day operations are managed through societal norms and pressures. Contract law would be a poor fit. And by the way, honoring and enforcing contract law between third parties to yourself itself is a societal norm.

You’re wrong. Sorry about it.

In most jurisdictions anyone would want to live in, a handshake deal is as good as a contract.

Additionally, and again in any jurisdiction anyone would want to live in, when you purchase a durable good you’re entering into a contract with the seller and / or the manufacturer with regard to the advertised claims of the product and any warranted considerations.

Also, consumer items usually come with some guarantees, for example that your baby spinach didn’t kill you or result in harm to a gestating foetus, and so on and so forth.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#73

Post by tialaramex »

pjc50 wrote: post #70
Aurornis wrote: post #4

> In many existing demand cooperatives, such as rotating savings groups, there is often a trusted central coordinator — frequently an older community member — who helps maintain accountability and keep the interests of the group aligned. Aligned with what? Whenever a central position is formed with power over something, even if it’s only a steering power, it will be sought out by power-hungry people and manipulated.…

This sort of thing had a huge social movement in the UK in the 1800s, and parts of it still survive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Co-operative_Group , for example. The trick is that it doesn't "feel like" a co-op, for most customers it's just a normal shop with an unusual ownership structure. The financial co-operatives, the building societies, fell victim to "carpetbaggers" in the 90s who encouraged members to…

Not all the mutuals were destroyed by carpetbaggers. There are dozens (though smaller than the big famous ones from the 1980s) today. Some instituted "anti-carpetbagger" rules to make themselves unappetising.

For example if the Society decides anybody who became a member fewer than ten years before the vote can't benefit from a demutualization effort then it forces would-be carpetbaggers to plot this implausibly long game where they all agree to join in, say, January 2017 and then vote to tear the society to pieces in February 2027 having now all met the ten year rule. But in reality in 2026 when you send those "Everybody ready?" notes around to remind them of what to do in 2027 you'll find a bunch of your fellow plotters got money trouble meanwhile and had to quit, or found Jesus and changed their minds or died, or whatever else and so this plan falls apart.

Edited:: Also, I remember voting (as a young adult) against this because it's obvious what happens next. We didn't find out later, the usual idiots claimed they didn't know what would happen because admitting that they knew and did it anyway makes it obvious just how stupid they are.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#74

Post by bonsai_spool »

kortilla wrote: post #49
saghm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These days I definitely believe that something needs to take up the role of fighting for the rights of labor, but I remain skeptical that unions, at least as they exist in the US, are the right tool for the job. What would you say are the highest salaried professions in the US outside of management/executive roles that would obviously not be a part of unions? I think most Americans would probably list athletes and…

> 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…

The salaries for top players would have increased, sure! But there’s no reason to think the minimums would have, and an obvious supporting point is that there have been several strikes that occurred during the contract negotiations

Also, we forget the price fixing scandal in big tech. Programmers should probably all be making over 1M+ (thorough there probably would be fewer jobs).

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#75

Post by bonsai_spool »

kortilla wrote: post #50
bonsai_spool wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no such thing. There really is! I've been in three unions, every place I worked. The first and third one existed beforehand, while I helped start the second. A union is a group of people—and like any group, your influence is what you make it to be.

You were in charge of all of the union decisions in all 3? That’s good for you but not representative nor possible for everyone joining a union.

Not in charge, I didn’t say that. But I voted in all, while I did have a bigger role in the second one

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#76

Post by bonsai_spool »

swaits wrote: post #42
bonsai_spool wrote: post #3

Essentially, we need more unions - I'm not sure we have to invent new names for these things. These won't be your parents' unions, or the union boogeyman you may have seen on TV—the union can do exactly what you wish it to do. I've been (unintentionally) part of two union drives in my own life and have seen friends in an unrelated field participate in a third. They make perfect sense in moments like our current one,…

That’s not what this is. Nor do we need more of them.

Arguably, we do - at least the 8k people being fired at Meta and the 7k being told to drop everything and work on AI likely did need one.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#77

Post by rainingmonkey »

lstodd wrote: post #66
abujazar wrote: post #64

The post is written like as if consumer coops is a radically new idea (spoiler: they're everywhere in Europe). Unfortunately they have long since succumbed to the same mechanisms as their competitors and have a tremendous power concentration in top leadership, with directors making ridiculous salaries. On paper though, e.g. Coop with a 25 % market share in Norway is owned and controlled by about 1 million of its cust…

Hah, so this. USSR had it formalized in form of PotrebCoop, literally consumer cooperative in 1921.

Consumer cooperatives go back to at least 1844

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_Society_of_Equitable_...

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#80

Post by zdragnar »

saghm wrote: post #31
bonsai_spool wrote: post #3

Essentially, we need more unions - I'm not sure we have to invent new names for these things. These won't be your parents' unions, or the union boogeyman you may have seen on TV—the union can do exactly what you wish it to do. I've been (unintentionally) part of two union drives in my own life and have seen friends in an unrelated field participate in a third. They make perfect sense in moments like our current one,…

I'll never understand why so many tech workers are so strongly against the idea of unions. I've yet to encounter a criticism that doesn't essentially stem from criticism of blue-collar unions, and regardless of whether I agree with those criticisms or not, almost none of them seem to be universally true of unions. People seem to be worried about either a small minority of vocal outliers driving the policy or collecti…

You're comparing unions that cover short-term contracts (film production, MLB) with "blue-collar unions" that represent hourly or salaried long-term employment contracts.

Is it any surprise that people who work as salaried employees would presume a union at their workplace would be structured and behave more like a "blue collar" union than not?

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