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The profit motive drives enshittification. Consumer coops are immune to it.
The profit motive drives worker exploitation. Worker coops are immune to it.
For-profit corporations are the reason we have ridiculous levels of wealth inequality. Coops work against that.
The profit motive drives ecological exploitation and the externalization of costs onto the environment. Consumer coops respond to the voice of the community.
For-profit companies abandon their customers and close their doors when there isn't a way to monetize. Consumer coops work with their customers to ensure their needs are met
The stock market is a source of economic instability, market crashes, and, in worst-case scenarios, worldwide economic depressions. Coops don't participate in the stock market and are robust to economic instabilities.
#Coops
#Cooperatives
#StockMarket
#MarketCrash
#Recession
#GreatDepression
#MarketStability
I'm sure I've missed some other good points in this thread. (Feel free to add them!)
The main point is: WE ARE DOING CAPITALISM WRONG.
EDIT: I'm getting pushback on this point, so I'd like to clarify. I'm using "capitalism" as it is used in the typical 'Murican vocabulary. Please substitute "free market economy" if you know the difference between the two. I am 100% against extraction of wealth as passive income for wealthy people who contribute nothing. But if I say I'm against capitalism here in the US, people will assume I actually mean freedom and that I'm a dirty soviet.
#Coops
#Cooperatives
#Capitalism
#Socialism
#FreeMarket
#HumanDignity
#BestOfBothWorlds
With the simple change of encouraging and incentivizing cooperatives as a business model, we can solve the vast majority of the dystopian-level economic problems we are currently experiencing.
Ways you can help:
* Take your business to cooperatives.
* Work for a cooperative.
* Promote cooperative businesses.
* Promote the cooperative business model.
* Write your representatives about incentivizing cooperatives.
* Found a cooperative.
@hosford42 There is no doing capitalism right. There's plenty wrong with cooperatives, plenty of corruption within them, plenty of exploitation. They are an improvement, but they are not the answer you're looking for.
@comradeferret What do you propose as a tangible, pragmatic alternative? People are not going to suddenly become selfless and giving. This is at least a way to organize society that reinforces altruism and the public good instead of either actively reward selfish behavior, as our current system does, or counting on people to be nice and imagining it will work. It's also within reach, and is something we might see in our lifetimes. And who knows? Maybe if people see how well cooperation works because it's a normal part of life, they might consider taking it a step further.
@hosford42 We aren't looking for an idealist solution, we need to be materialistic, to change the material conditions of the working class. You don't change the world by somehow making people "better", you change it by changing class relations through revolution.
@comradeferret To me, that sounds very idealistic. The revolution is just an idea. Changing class relations is just an idea. I want to remove class from the equation as much as possible, and this is a clear step towards that goal. For-profit corporations are a way to continually regenerate and maintain the class divide. They are wealth extraction mechanisms. Coops put people on the same footing, regardless of their wealth or status, because there's only one share and one vote per shareholder, and any dividends paid out are divided equally among the shareholders, who are the very people the money came from. They are equalization mechanisms and are fundamentally egalitarian in nature. An egalitarian society is better, IMO, than one with altered class relations, because class cannot exist in a truly egalitarian society. And here we are with a real world, proven tool for moving towards that right here, right now, talking instead about revolutions that might or might not ever happen.
@hosford42 What no theory does to a comrade. Learn what idealism is, and what materialism is. Revolution is addressing the material conditions at hand; that is what makes it materialistic. Idealism is the notion that you can change the world just by changing people's thoughts and feelings, which is putting the cart before the horse.
And I get the feeling you've never interacted with a coop before in reality. That is not at all how they operate.
This is the sense of the word I'm using -- as opposed to the philosophical sense of the word:
"The adjective idealistic describes someone whose plans or goals of helping others are lofty, grand, and possibly unrealistic."
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/idealistic
I am attempting to address the material conditions at hand by getting more people on board with coops, which would be a real, positive change and is within my power to accomplish. Thoughts and feelings change behavior. Talk of revolution gets people worked up, but doesn't do much else. That's why I'm promoting real world changes people can make in their behaviors, and calling calls for revolution idealistic. People have to be in really, really shitty conditions before they revolt. I don't want to wait for that. I want to do something in my own lifetime to make things better.
I interact with coops regularly. Not sure why you would assume that.
@hosford42 I assume that because you have this idea of coops that isn't reality. They pay the same, engage in the same market manipulation. They're just more transparent about it and less monopolistic. They're an improvement, not a solution.
"Idealism" here is not the definition you gave.
If you're saying revolution isn't tangible, then you're already not spearheading anything of worth, to be honest. It's the only choice we have, and if you're against that, you're against change.
> "Idealism" here is not the definition you gave.
It certainly was when I used the word. Sorry we don't agree on language usage. We can try to understand each other, or we can not. I like the first option.
Please make the revolution tangible for me, because when I hear people talk about it, I'm always left wondering what the heck I could possibly do short of violence (which I'm not on board for). Meanwhile I am working on tangible changes and you are saying I'm against change. What change? I told you the change I'm trying to make, in specific terms. You don't like my approach? Fine. We disagree. But I don't even know what you're plan is, much less what the actual steps are youre taking, so how can I get on board and join in with that "change"? I don't see any actual changes happening from anyone who advocates revolution. I just hear a lot of tough-sounding talk. What are you *doing*? Share, because I'm all for it.
@hosford42 I brought up the word. You contradicted me saying that actually, it's revolution that's idealistic — using your own definition. That isn't valid.
If you're not on board with violence, that's too bad, because capitalists inflict it every single day on millions, billions of people. 10 million die per year worldwide from preventable causes, if capitalism were to die. And you won't even raise a fist against that because you're against violence?
Cooperatize businesses. Seize the means.
@comradeferret It's not valid for me to think you were using the word one way when you meant it another? I'm not a mind reader. I told you what I meant. You can tell me what you meant. But don't invalidate my intentions. They're mine and they're valid.
How are you going to seize the means? You and what army? Go ahead and do it, if it's so easy. Set an example for the rest of us. Be the change, and all that jazz. They'll just ignore you, or arrest you, and then they'll take everything from you and use you as an example of why we shouldn't act out.
The rubber has to meet the road somewhere. Your wheels are spinning at a hundred MPH but they're in the air. But go ahead and criticize me for creeping forward but actually having some sort of ETA.
@hosford42 No, because I told you the definition, and you said "well that's not my definition", even though it was me using the word.
Again, it requires organization. Organization that we don't have, because everyone is so idealistic, focused on non-violent, reformist means to bring about change. Means that have never in history worked, anywhere on the planet, whereas revolution has to the point that the US needed to send in the army to stop it. You're doing nothing voting with your dollar.
@comradeferret I used the word too. Then you told me my definition was wrong and I needed to learn what it meant. Did you forget that part? It's still sitting there for you to reread it if you want.
I'm not stopping you from organizing. Start your organization. I might even join it. In the meantime I can still do what I'm doing.
@hosford42 You used the word after I did. You can't say, "No, this word that you used actually applies to what you're saying, not what I'm saying — because I'm using a different definition."
@comradeferret I told you how I *took* your word. The conversation had already unfolded. Do I have to go back and rewrite every post, or can you accept that we misunderstood each other? What's the point in even continuing this discussion?
@hosford42 I defined it. I'm really not sure why this is so confusing. If you're saying you were incorrect in throwing it back at me, that's fine, but just say that so we can stop being confused.
@comradeferret I have no idea who was right and who was wrong. It doesn't matter to me if we know what happened and why, and we are good. So for whatever grievances you have, whether real or imagined (I genuinely don't know which and don't want to reread because I'm super frustrated and need to walk away) I apologize. I'm good if you are.
@comradeferret I can't see those emoticons but I'm assuming they're positive. Glad we are good. Stepping away for a while now.
@hosford42 Oh, sorry. Yes, we're good 
@hosford42 Also, saying you'd like to ignore class is no different — indeed, worse — than saying you'd like to ignore gender or race. It's a social reality. Ignoring it is just perpetuating the problems it causes. Become class conscious, otherwise you're just another liberal dreaming of a happy world where people can just stop being mean to each other because it's the right thing to do.
@comradeferret I never said anything about ignoring class. I'm talking about destroying it. You can't destroy something and ignore it at the same time.
@hosford42 Cooperatives do nothing to destroy class. The existence of a cooperative in an industry doesn't stop the owning class from owning anything or anyone. It's just another competitor, and a generally negligible one unless it, too, engages at similar levels of exploitation and manipulation.
@comradeferret If we keep pushing until all successful businesses are cooperatives, what then? Who is the owning class? The workers and customers will own all of it. That makes them the owning class. Who do they own? Themselves. As it should be.
Cooperatives are significantly more robust to economic instability. They don't require profit to exist. That's why there are so many credit unions which were founded during the Great Depression. They aren't flashy and in your face like standard corporations, so they are kind of invisible and seem negligible and inconsequential, but they are actually pretty major players.
@hosford42 Exactly. But you don't make businesses into cooperatives by creating new cooperatives, or supporting existing ones. You make them into cooperatives by forcibly removing the business owners. That is the only way to do so. Otherwise, you're just adding water to a poisoned well, hoping that if you do so enough, you'll be able to drink from it again one day...long as the poisoner doesn't do anything about it.
Organize with revolutionary groups and don't eschew violence as a means.
@comradeferret It's not water to a well. It's more like good bacteria in your gut microbiota. They push out the bad ones by starving them for resources. Businesses eventually cease to exist when they cease to do business. In that way, they are like living things. They can be killed.
@hosford42 So you're just hoping that somehow you can change people's minds enough to shop at cooperatives, despite being poorly marketed, more expensive, less prolific, etc. than large corporations, who themselves own the system, own the lawmakers, and can ensure they always remain on top, and that this will just starve businesses of resources rather than give them more potential subsidiaries, outlets, and supply chains to manipulate for their own profit.
@comradeferret @hosford42 Consumer Cooperatives are often cheaper! Utility Cooperatives are actually quite common, but it's often the way an economy is setup from tax and other filings that impact formation of coops aside from general ignorance. Spain does a great just encouraging worker coops and Sweden has a good job with nearly a quarter of rentals being housing coops. The Nordic countries are pretty Syndicalist. I definitely prefer direct collective ownership compared to indirect.
@hosford42 You keep saying coops don't have profit motive, but they 100% do. They're still a capitalist entity.
@comradeferret Who gets paid when they make a profit? Either the people doing the paying, or the people doing the work. Not some outside investor of capital. Coops can exist in a capitalist system, but they are not capitalist and do not require capitalism in order to exist. They do require the market to exist, and money, but that's not capitalism. If what you're taking issue with is their dependence on the existence of money and the market, let's focus on that instead.
@hosford42 They do not require capitalism to exist, but coops under capitalism are capitalist. They are profit driven, and there are different ways in which that profit is distributed. There is a coop where I live that is a grocery chain; it still pays minimum wages, charges high prices, and everything else. They are not a magic bullet.
@comradeferret The possibility for profit is not the same as being profit-driven. The word "driven" implies some sort of incentive or intentionality.
Consumer cooperatives, upon making a profit, cancel that out by redistributing the money equally to everyone who contributed to that profit throught their purchases. There is no incentive for a consumer cooperative to overcharge its customers, because they'll just get that money back as a dividend later.
Worker cooperatives, upon making a profit, cancel that out by redistributing the money equally to everyone who contributed to that profit through their labor. There is no incentive for a worker cooperative to underpay its workers, because they'll just get that money back as a dividend later.
If you want to address both at once, there are hybrid models where both consumers and workers are members. In any case, nobody is making a profit in the capitalist sense.
@hosford42 There is most definitely a profit incentive. Do you think that there isn't because, what, coops are just nice people who don't care about money, in a world that kills you if you don't have enough of it?
Again, you have a very rose-tinted view of cooperatives. They don't work like this in reality. One of the largest grocery chains in my city, and the largest taxi company, are both cooperatives, and neither are any better to their workers or customers than anyone else.
@comradeferret Of course they care about money. But what does it matter if I take money out of *my own account* and then put it back into *my own account*? You keep skipping over that part. Any so-called profit of a cooperative goes directly back to the very people it came from. Who is motivated to steal their own money?
I'm not saying cooperatives are perfect. I'm saying they aren't designed from the very ground up to steal money from people. They aren't a panacea to poor decision-making, disagreements, or selfishness. But they don't actively reward and reinforce and propagate it. There will be improvements someday that I have not even thought of yet. But what I can see right here, right now, is that they are better than the alternative, and we can start making changes immediately and incrementally to make the world we live in better. The perfect is the enemy of the good. I'm not going to wait for that when I can do something now.
@hosford42 No, profit doesn't go back into where it came from. I shop at the coop all the time. I get nothing back. Nor do the people I know who work there. Profit is made, and it is kept. You have a very rose-tinted view of coops that I have never in my life heard of in the real world.
Also, something being worker owned is not the same thing as being owned by the working class. Having a group of people own a business is still private, profit-driven industry.
@comradeferret Sounds like you're not a member of that coop. If it were a consumer coop and you were a member, any profit would go back to you. Also, you'd have to be a member to shop there. But they probably wouldn't return any profit to you, because they'd be targeting operating at cost, not "making money". Which is the point.
@hosford42 I am a member. The 'profit sharing' is in the form of sales and rewards, not dissimilar from other businesses, to the degree that people can't even tell the difference — except that the coop is twice as expensive. Must have high operating costs.
@comradeferret Sorry they aren't all perfect. We should abandon them and support the corporate overlords because you don't like one of them. /s
I'm done with this conversation. You are on the attack and I'm not here for it.
@hosford42 Nor, again, does a cooperative's existence prevent anyone's exploitation. You could open up a hundred such grocery stores, and it wouldn't stop Loblaws from doing the evil shit it does. It wouldn't even put a dent in their business. Indeed, the most it would do is give Loblaws another outlet to exploit for its own profit, as they do with their many subsidiaries and production chains. It is not a solution. It stops nothing.
If you want a solution: Cooperatize Loblaws.
@comradeferret If you read the rest of the original thread, you'll see that, among other things, I suggest as a practical action, pushing government to incentivize the cooperative business model. I also suggested supporting and working for coops over standard corporations -- to increase their market share.
I would have listed, "Force all businesses to be converted into dual consumer+worker cooperatives immediately," if I thought that was a practical course of action, but I know that won't happen in my lifetime. So I asked myself, what can get us closer, if we can't jump straight to the solution? If there isn't an action we can take right now to make things better, we are just blowing hot air.
@hosford42 Again — you're a reformist. You think that you can just convince the ruling class to start being nicer and hand over their power to the working class. They won't. The government is a bourgeois government. They don't care; it's built into their very class structure to not care about anything that does not maximize their profits.
This is a solution we can jump into, if people organize and stop imagining that things will get better if you vote with your dollar.
@comradeferret Yep, I'm a reformist. You're a revolutionary. I don't think we'll see eye to eye on this. We are using different tools to work towards the same end. I don't think yours will work. You don't think mine will work. Maybe it's best if we leave it at that, and keep things cordial. I would recommend, though, that if you want people on board for your approach, get specific. Make it something actionable, with results and a timeline. I'm rooting for your success, even if I'm trying to get there a different way.
Co-ops, and other forms of social enterprise (using business models and methods for common benefit, not private gain) are I think best thought of as market-oriented but anti-capitalist organisations.
Co-ops are anti-capitalist in a number of ways, if you consider the primary characteristics of capitalism to be the appropriation of profit leading to capital accumulation, and wage-labour. Neither of these takes place in, say, worker co-ops in either the same way, or to the same extent as in remote shareholder capitalism. Generally, return on external capital is limited and worker-owner-managers are not just wage-slaves - they effectively profit-share.
Nor does the fact that they are market-oriented make them 'capitalist' - markets have existed in almost all, if not all societies - including, incidentally, the Soviet Union. It does however raise some issues, particularly with regard to climate-ecological breakdown, because co-ops obviously are, to some extent, incentivised to compete and grow.
But the most important point here surely is that there isn't a single 'answer' - different organisational forms are good for different people and purposes.
@comradeferret @hosford42 I hard disagree that Worker Cooperatives are Capitalist. They are the very antithesis of Capitalism as Capitalism is the indirect or externalized control and ownership of capital such as labor and land. A worker cooperative is momentarily motivated yes, but a key distinction is that a worker cooperative's workers can't easily externalize or diminish policies that would hurt their environment like an investor or CEO could. Stakeholder alignment is the point.
@digitalgreenery @hosford42 Cooperatives literally are private ownership of the means of production and the use of wage labour for profit. It's capitalism, it isn't a matter of opinion. They can operate as socialist, but with capitalist MoP, it's a capitalist operation.
@comradeferret @hosford42 How is collective ownership of the means of production Capitalist? A worker coop has no Capitalist ownership. If you want to add consumers in you can make it a worker consumer cooperative, but the whole point is that the workers get to directly benefit from their labor either way. Their is no way to own someone else's labor as capital and monopolize it like you can do with a stock market as you can only ever own your own labor in a Mutualist system.
@comradeferret @hosford42 That’s like saying Marxism is Capitalist because the state owns the capital and means of production like in authoritarian Capitalist systems like fascist regimes or oligarchy. The only real difference is that Communist systems gain Socialist control via voting. Anarchist systems have direct control over one's own labor rather than trusting a state, but there isn't a captial market, only a basic one. Private and Personal property are two different things.
@digitalgreenery @hosford42 ... Marxism is not "the state owns the MoP". What on earth are you even talking about? What does the distinction between personal and private property have to do with any of this? Are you just vomiting things out to try to mask the fact that you haven't read a thing about it an have no idea what you're talking about?
@comradeferret @hosford42 Do you know what you are taking about? Under your definition Anarchism would be Capitalist which makes no sense. Private vs personal property is central to differentiating between Capitalist and socialist markets.
@digitalgreenery @hosford42 If the means of production are owned privately and worked in exchange for wages, that is the definition of capitalism. If your idea of an anarchist society has this in place, it is indeed also capitalist.
And no, the distinction between personal and private property has nothing at all to do with markets. If it concerns production, then it is private property. If it doesn't, it isn't of economic concern.
@comradeferret @hosford42 "Private" ownership ≠ direct ownership. A Capitalist system is defined as ownership of another's labor in the form of capital that can be amassed. A worker cooperative isn't the same as private ownership in the Capitalist sense. The whole critic of capitalism is that it allows for someone to amass capital away from the workers. All workers have democratic control of their workplace and would be able to elect their management rather than a top-down control.
@digitalgreenery @hosford42 That's still what a cooperative does in a capitalist system. Labour is given in exchange for wages, using means of production that are privately owned — as opposed to owned by the public.
And the criticism of capitalism isn't that there are rich people, it's that people are exploited for that wealth which becomes imbalanced and causes class contradictions, which cooperatives do not solve
@comradeferret @hosford42 The Marxist notion of self exploition keeps it firmly authoritarian in my eyes as that would require a strong state to oversee workers and you lose self governance in the process as you have people in positions of power they can easily abuse. Centralization and Decentralization both have their problems which is why Mastodon uses Federation and why open standards work great. Mutualist style Federated Worker Consumer Cooperatives aligns stakeholders with direct ownership.
@digitalgreenery @hosford42 The Marxist notion of self-exploitation? In all my reading I've never come across this. The working class, by definition, does not exploit itself. I definitely recommend reading "On Authority" however. Authoritarianism is not a valid notion, and centralization is not comparable to social media.
@comradeferret @hosford42 It’s the whole notion that broke Socialism into Communism and Anarchism and was the whole debate between Marx and Proudhon. Also how is social media not directly comparible? The market is attention and you can either be on a centralized platform like facebook, decentralized rss feeds, or use a federated system like Mastodon. The domain is different, but the underlying structures are the same in both.
@digitalgreenery @hosford42 Centralization and decentralization do not mean the same thing in economics and political organization as they do in data. "Democratic centralism" doesn't mean you operate like Facebook. A "centralized economy" isn't bad because it means it isn't owned by the public.
@comradeferret @hosford42 As I said before, you have the same problems with centralization in any system. Centralization creates a single failure point. If the one service goes down, the entire system is. Centralization is nice because you can implement a lot of top down perspective and have it propogate out, but that can be a bad thing too. A federated system like in Mutualism would have the power of governace and organization would be spread out with open standards more like the EU.
@digitalgreenery @hosford42 What is the "one system" that goes down in centralism in the economic sense, praytell?