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What is a Demand Coop

cahootzcoops.com

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Re: What is a Demand Coop

#91

Post by DeonRob »

thatcat wrote: post #67
alecco wrote: post #65

I've seen many co-ops fail. They never address the long-tail nature of productivity, perhaps to not offend people or because most people can't admit it or even understand it. Popular loudmouths take power. Quiet competent people leave. Co-op slowly dies. This negative cycle is even more pathological in co-ops than in a normal corporation/for profit. I hope some day someone figures a better way.

do you think neutral ai moderation and time limits on discussion would have the desired effect?

I believe this is the right solution and the one cahootz is proposing. The Coop AI moderator can be fed goals in the json and a unstructured charter that anyone in or out of the coop can see. Then before decision are made you would be required submit a proposal. This would allow the most and least significant member access to the funds on a more equal basis.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#92

Post by pjc50 »

dzink wrote: post #84

You’ve described a corporation. Think of YC companies - equity owned by early employees. Controlled by “someone senior”. And if things are going good more friends are invited to join in, multiple companies start owning equity within each other and you back new incomers by directing demand towards their products. The difference between that and a coop is that in a corporation there is some legal standing to enforce th…

Eh, I think this is where it's important to distinguish between different types of corporation. The very point of going through YC is to trade ownership and control for external capital: the capital ends up in control of the business. Other types of corp other than "limited liability with shares" are possible.

However the article describes something even looser. It's more like the opposite of a boycott, a loose buyer's group focusing on directing spending towards something positive rather than away from something negative.

> the people in power would just abuse the coops - theft, misdirection of resources towards “friends”

The US has recently seen a sharp uptick of this kind of thing, under the cover of law.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#93

Post by DeonRob »

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…

This idea is model after those consumer coops from JCCU to mondragoon to some other smaller american consumer coops. Our proposition is that the openly displayed set of the CO-OPs goals along side AI moderation may help with alleviating these issues

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#94

Post by esikich »

Hupriene wrote: post #48
esikich wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the company was in trouble and the adults understood that. They probably wanted to fight to make sure they didn't lose their 401ks or pension, or be able to hold onto some insurance so the c suite didn't gut the company and leave everyone high and dry. Sounds like you just generally didn't understand the situation, being a kid.

To be clear, those threats of violence were against me and my co-workers if we didn't vote to unionize.

Ok, well that is different.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#95

Post by arjie »

defrost wrote: post #20
arjie wrote: post #16

There seem to be a lot of enthusiasts of this kind of idea, and certainly there must be 100 people like this here on this forum in the US. Can they point me to one such one here that is high performance?

Plus or minus tiny details, the description from the article: A demand co-op is a cooperative that pools and directs the spending power of its members. Demand determines what gets built, who survives, and where wealth flows. Most communities already have enormous spending power, but because that demand is unorganized, the value created from it is captured by outside businesses and investors. A demand co-op coordinate…

Thank you for sharing. I'm also familiar with Mondragon in Spain as a cooperative - similarly an agricultural one primarily. When I said "here" in the sentences "...there must be 100 people like this here on this forum in the US. Can they point me to one such one here..." I was referring to the US.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#96

Post by bonsai_spool »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #90
bonsai_spool wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Did the union do exactly what you wished it to do in all cases? I.e. your perspective carried every single vote? That is the claim I was disputing. For the vast majority of union workers, this will not be the case. Even if it was true for you, it's not true for most.

Well the things I voted for passed because we did a lot of community-building before votes.

The better question is whether, when management does something, is that thing always in my interest. Obviously that is not the case. The union helps when management's actions are counter to that of the majority of workers.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#97

Post by saghm »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #82
zdragnar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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? Yes, it is a surprise! Because we're talking about very educated technical workers. It seems like top tech programmers are closer to pro athletes than factory floor workers from the perspective of their value to owners.

> It seems like top tech programmers are closer to pro athletes than factory floor workers from the perspective of their value to owners.

To me, the question is whether that will continue to remain the case in the absence of unions. It doesn't seem at all implausible to me that 50 years from now, tech programming might much more closely resemble factory work if there's no mechanism for pushing back against it.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#98

Post by duped »

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,…

> the union boogeyman you may have seen on TV

Around me the union boogeymen are the police and teachers unions. Ultimately the issue is a professional political class decoupled from reality that extort local government.

However there are also the unions for artists (think actors, television writers, theater, etc) which do a very good job stabilizing pay and standards for safety without interfering with the flexibility of businesses to hire who they want or labor to work where they want to. Within reason.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#99

Post by duped »

saghm wrote: post #41
Hupriene wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only experience with unions was as a low level employee while I was in high school. It consisted of certain employees trying to drum up willingness to unionize through a combination of unrealistic promises and threats of violence. The company I worked for at the time was in trouble and went out of business before the unionization effort came to a vote. I don't know how representative my experience was, but it defi…

> 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…

> both of which famously have powerful unions.

It depends. The NFLPA is famously powerless. Domonique Foxworth (former NFLPA President) has long argued it should decertify and reorganize as a trade association because it doesn't work like a traditional labor union.

Re: What is a Demand Coop

#100

Post by 9rx »

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…

> I'll never understand why so many tech workers are so strongly against the idea of unions.

Tech attracts a lot of "undesirables", for want of a better word, and there is no great way to separate them from the quality people you'd actually want to have a union with. The MLB union works exceptionally well because the business naturally screens out anyone who isn't in the upper echelons of baseball society. Try advocating for a baseball union that includes the MLB down to every small town B-league team and you'd get the same pushback.

The trouble is that there is no MLB of tech. Anyone random yahoo who no more than the smallest amount of motivation to work in tech is pretty much guaranteed a place in it (at least that was the case up until recently). Even at companies that like to boast about only hiring the best end up with lots of the dregs all the same. The need for tech workers is larger than the number of quality people. When there is a social division then the desire to associate goes out the window.

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