@kravietz there are plenty of cooperatives of all kinds out there however. Unsurprisingly, most of them exist in places that have infrastructure to help cooperatives get up and running.

It's kind of strange to me that you don't consider the obvious answer to your question.

@yogthos In #uk I'm using at least 2 food coops, #coop mobile operator and would love to switch to a electronics and books trading coops.

Food coops work well and I'm ready to pay slightly more.

Phone coop has IT portal like in 2000's and ridiculous data plans.

The other coops... don't exist.

@kravietz of course they exist, Mondragon is a great example of a large scale coop that focuses on high techhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

There are also plenty of smaller coops doing tech stuff. Myself and my friends have a coop where we do software development.

@yogthos

Ok, but this Mondragon looks like a classic "guild of professionals" that work in B2B environment.

I also operate in a kind of a infosec consulting coop, but that's also B2B and very narrow field.

I'm wondering why there's no consumer-facing coops that sell books and are able to deliver them in a few days?

@kravietz I could ask why there aren't any real competitors to Amazon in general though.

The way capitalism works on paper we should see a robust ecosystem of companies all doing what Amazon does as opposed to a single monopoly.

So, why do we see giant megacorps in every sector, instead of many companies competing.

@kravietz in case of Amazon the answer is that they use their money to aggressively destroy any competition. They buy up companies, and use anti competitive practices to give themselves an advantage.

And, all large companies use these same tactics. Microsoft, Monsansto, IBM, etc. They all do the same thing because they're so big that they're impossible to regulate now.

@yogthos

This part is easy: because it's more effective to run a large enterprise, either private or state-owned. All enterprises naturally tend to grow through merger or acquisitions (capitalist), or nationalisation (socialist).

In socialism everything was a single state-owned enterprise and there was no competition, which was seen as wasteful by Marxian economy.

They later re-introduced it but concealed under name of "socialist emulation".

@kravietz state ownership doesn't preclude competition though, USSR had plenty of competing design bureaus for examples.

I do think that straight up competition is wasteful though. It's much more efficient to have friendly competition and share the findings from each approach.

Also, worth noting that USSR beat US in many tech areas, so clearly the system produced better results in terms of research and invention on limited funding.

@yogthos

As you remember, we can continue this argument for hours, but I disagree.

The problem is that progress in USSR was very narrowly directed: into defence industry.

At the same civilian production was severely underdeveloped and consumer good either weren't there or their quality was utter crap and well behind anything produced in the West.

Classic economy of shortage...

@kravietz sure, but you also have to remember that NATO was pretty much designed to bankrupt USSR.

That part worked, but now US is stuck with a giant war machine that's become a huge part of their economy and it's bankrupting them as well. So, a bit of a Pyrrhic victory there if you ask me. :)

Look at how US infrastructure is unraveling now due to lack of funding, in a lot of ways it's already worse than USSR.

@yogthos It's just as true as saying that USSR was designed to bankrupt/destroy the West.

Remember the Soviet "Догоним и перегоним" poster I posted here some time ago? ;)

This *was* battle of ideologies, where each one claimed to be superior and used any means to destroy the other one.

@kravietz it was practically always the West escalating the arms race and USSR following though.

And I agree that it was a battle of ideologies, but my point is that the victory the West achieved came at the price of creating the war machine that has a life of its own now.

And it looks like US is likely to go the way of USSR in the coming years.

@kravietz I really think the future is starting to look pretty grim for humanity.

Large areas around equator are already becoming unlivable, it's possible that billions of people are going to have to migrate within decades.

Now consider places like India, China, and Pakistan who all have nukes. I think a nuclear war is a very likely scenario there as the climate continues to break down.

@yogthos Why do you think I've been always into speleology? ;)

@kravietz living in caves eating fungus is a pretty likely scenario for the survivors :)

On the other hand global nuclear war will solve both the population problem and counteract global warming, so there that I guess?

@yogthos

There's no such thing as "world population problem", scientifically.

That's an idea pursued in 60's by elitist circles like Ehrlich and Club of Rome who preferred to keep their California mansions not "contaminated" by "human pest" from developing countries. I have a copy of Ehrlich "Population bomb" on a shelf here, that's his language.

"Population carrying capability" etc were just ideas to support this contempt towards less privileged.

@kravietz sure, I think the real issue is that wealth is being concentrated with the tiny amount of the population, and these people are psychopaths and are guilty of crimes against humanity in a very literal sense.

Fossil fuel industry has spreading misinformation about the climate change for many years. Billions of people are going to be affected by their actions in the coming decades, and we're looking at human suffering at an unprecedented scale going forward.

@yogthos

Caves aren't particularly friendly places to live with average 4-8°C and 100% relative humidity.

But this might be not even necessary in long term, read this https://www.quora.com/What-happened-to-the-radiation-that-was-supposed-to-last-thousands-of-years-in-Hiroshima-1945

Not that I'm encouraging nuclear conflict, but you have to be prepared for everything granted the amount of aggressive idiots at power...

@kravietz indeed, tangentially this is a fantastic book :) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/164154.A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

@yogthos I've read it like 20 years ago ;)

@kravietz yeah it's been a while here too, absolutely loved it though

@yogthos @kravietz Global overheating and economic tyranny on a **global** scale are only part of the horrors coming down the road. (As much as I sympathise with @yogthos on the ecomomic ideology, I think it's all very much a moot point now — the oligarchs are well beyond the control of any system of laws and really couldn't care less about the imminent suffering of living beings. Many of these people are actually, seriously, extropians, which is about as nasty a millennial suicide cult as one could imagine.) We also have the long-term effects of pollution in all three domains, earth air and water; much faster sea level rise and changes in ocean chemistry than generally discussed; shifts in climate patterns; and the wholesale collapse of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity. Yes, we can expect mass migration, and soon. We can also expect infrastructure collapse, epidemics, food shortages, and politics that make present autocracies look mildly amusing. Local use of nukes, sure; we're already seeing chemical weapons. There will be industrial pollution events. There will be freak genetic engineering efforts like the one in China. There will be stupid efforts to geoengineer. There will be a lot of selfish wealthy people pulling up the ladders to save themselves. There will be a great deal of pointless religion; we already have quite a bit of millennarian craziness driving foreign policy in the USA.

Many of my academic colleagues who understand how serious the situation is are deeply depressed. I'm trying hard to find tools and narratives that help humans and other people keep struggling to rescue what we can. It seems to me many other people here are doing the same. Distributed communication systems are part of that. The fediverse (like UUCP or Fido before it) can run across radio modems between isolated nodes, if we need that. Dance, people: dance like you mean it, and don't stop until we find a better way for all living things.

@yogthos

This is simply not true, Bolshevik's objective was *always* a world revolution, spread by any means available, be it military force, propaganda or sabotage. USSR was created literally by forcefully conquering republics split from Russian Empire, including Baltics, Ukraine, Caucasus etc with classic scenario being small Bolshevik party "requesting support of mighty Red Army". In 1920 Bolsheviks tried to conquer Poland this way, but lost.

@kravietz look at the history of escalation though, NATO practically always drove the arms race with USSR responding reluctantly, and look at NATO expansion over the years.

It's pretty clear who was more eager to spend money on the military there.

@yogthos

The history of escalation started in 1917 with Bolshevik promising violent world revolution and pursuing it at all means.

> look at NATO expansion over the years

It's countries *asking* desperately for NATO protection from openly imperialist Soviet Union, and then Russia.

This is precisely the sentiment most of Eastern Europe had in 90's while Russia - who just finished bloody intervention in Afghanistan - started another bloody intervention in Chechnya and threatened Baltics etc.

@kravietz we've talked about this before, I'll point to Latin America as an example of what US has been doing during that time, and it's a lot worse than what Eastern Europe in the 90s. Pinochet and the Contras are good examples.

And not defending what soviets did here, just pointing out that NATO is just as guilty of all kinds of atrocities.

@kravietz @yogthos

if there were a "Euro-cooperative" that sold the same genuinely useful items from mainland Europe and China that matched the level of customer service from Amazon I'd use it straight away.

All the bad things about Amazon and other capitalist tech firms are true - OTOH here in the UK they consistently deliver goods on time and have stock, which many other (similarly capitalist) businesses struggle to do.

@yogthos

We have a global market, they *could* have appeared in any other large economy like EU.

Yet they didn't, the closest to Amazon like Alibris however offer significantly inferior delivery times and service (first hand experience, I did switch to Alibris purely for ideological reasons).

P.S. not arguing, more of trying to understand it...

@kravietz still exactly the same problem though, most of EU is very much focused on fostering traditional style businesses as opposed to coops. If we lived in a world where cooperatives were the norm, then Amazon would've most certainly have been a cooperative instead.

@yogthos

UK has a very strong coop traditions and EU has multi-billion programs for fostering *any* kind of startups you wish.

Yet, there are few globally recognized brands that started here, not to mention being coops.

@kravietz well that's interesting because one of the things Labor is campaigning on is making UK more coop friendly.

For example, one of the platform promises is to provide workers with first right of refusal when the company is sold.

Again, the West is capitalist through and through. I don't think it's fair to claim that coops have the same opportunities here.

@yogthos

You speak of West like there was some other countries blooming with coops ;)

These changes don't seem to be - pun intended - game changers. It's easy to start a run a coop in UK, just like any other business. Red tape is close to zero.

@kravietz well not strictly coops, but take a look at Belarus, they mostly kept the soviet model and have a pretty vibrant economy that's doing better than most ex soviet states.

@yogthos

Have you ever been to Belarus?

I was and I can tell you exactly how that "vibrant economy" looks on the ground.

@kravietz I haven't, but I have heard from others who have, and other ex-soviet places are doing a lot worse.

@yogthos

Ok, so I can tell you first-hand that the first experience when you enter Belarus by train is middle-aged women smuggling raw meat under their coats from Poland to Belarus. Agriculture is ineffective (still very much kolkhoz style) which leads to higher consumer prices.

Living blocks (общежития) and general infrastructure (roads etc) are in poor state, obviously underfunded.

One huge difference as compared to Russia is lack of visible corruption.

@kravietz well can't speak to this personally so I'll take your word for it :)

@kravietz but that does seem to be quite at odds with even what Bloomberg is reporting about it https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-27/belarus-s-soviet-economy-has-worked-better-than-you-think

@yogthos Ever heard the expression "Potemkin village"? ;)

Also read the paragraph starting with "Lukashenko's exception is now under threat".

@kravietz I mean the article is from Bloomberg, they've also been saying China's a paper tiger that's about to fold for decades, that's not really working out either. :)

@kravietz @yogthos I'd like to understand more why coops like Migros (2.2 million member) and Coop (2.6 million members) are quite alike to any corporation you can name... maybe it's a scalability issue?

@saper @kravietz I suspect so, people tend to naturally organize into hierarchies, and large scale organizations tend to have similar structure to them.

I don't necessarily see that as a problem. What's important to me is ensuring that everyone in the organization has a vote about the overall direction of the organization, and that profits are shared fairly amongst the workers.

@yogthos @kravietz coops are not about sharing profit among the workers.

@saper @kravietz there are obviously many aspects to cooperatives, but for me worker representation and profit sharing are the key ones

@yogthos @kravietz well... that's simply not true, sorry.

@saper @kravietz what would be your definition then?

@saper I join @yogthos question

@kravietz @yogthos cooperative is built to pursuit **members** business interests; not workers. There are workers' cooperatives, where members are doing the work, but this is just one of the forms of the cooperatives.

Building cooperatives, consumer (purchasing) cooperatives seems to be most common forms.

@saper @kravietz pursuing members interests is what I refer to when I talk about worker representation. Maybe we're just using different terminology here.

I see a coop as an organization where everybody owns a percentage of it, and they have a say in what they work on, how they work, and when they work.

I see everybody in a coop as a worker. People just happen to have different roles, but I don't see some roles as being strictly more important than others.

@yogthos @kravietz sorry, but that's wrong. Let's not waste time on terminology. If you think that #cooperative model is something worth pursuing, I'd have a look at the real examples of cooperatives run for example in Europe (those I have mentioned, cooperative banks, insurance companies etc.).

For banks, for example, one big disadvantage of a small cooperative bank (like many in Germany) is that single fraud case can nuke 10 years of members' efforts.

@saper @kravietz can you explain what specifically you think is wrong?

@yogthos @kravietz worker != member

@saper @yogthos

Corporations show many pathologic behaviours but they *are* effective.

I made my largest leap in career - I mean evolving from a stereotypical introvert nerd to an IT professional who can actually talk to people and be understood - while working for multinationals. They suck at other things though.

That last factor - distribution of enterprise's income - is probably what I'd like most about coops.

@kravietz @saper we can say the same thing about totalitarian dictatorships though :)

And you also have to ask what specifically they're efficient at. For example, corps have efficiently destroyed our ecosystem creating a real possibility humanity might go extinct in the near future.

Just because this was done efficiently, doesn't mean that's desirable.

@kravietz @saper this is a great article on the subject by the way https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-danger-to-civilization-isnt-ai-its-runaway

@yogthos @saper

Not defending multinationals, consumers are just equally complicit in destroying the ecosystem. Multinationals would be nothing without consumers *preferring* their products over cleaner alternatives.

@kravietz @saper of course, but that's precisely the problem humans aren't good at thinking about the big picture, and we tend to do what's convenient in the short term.

What we see now is a necessary outcome of what happens when you just leave things to market forces without any overarching planning.

Not gonna matter whether capitalism feels more liberating or not when we all go extinct.