Imagine if Amazon was run as a cooperative, and the money generated by the workers went to them instead. Amazon could literally hire 10 times as many people, and have each employee work 1/2 a day a week while getting the same salary they get now. The only reason that's not happening is because a guy named Jeff takes the lion share of the profits.
@yogthos On the other hand, could a cooperative build an enterprise attracting so many customers as Amazon?
@kravietz I really don't see why it couldn't, and even if not I still don't think that would justify Amazon
If it could, why it didn't? That's the first question I'm asking myself in those endless discussions where a popular but inferior X is compared to unpopular but allegedly superior Y...
@kravietz because US is not set up to facilitate cooperatives? The whole system is designed to foster businesses owned by the capitalists. Take a look at percentage of cooperatives in US, it's tiny, and getting things like start up loans is intentionally far more difficult for cooperatives.
Seems a bit weird to assume that the reason Amazon isn't a co-op is for any other reason.
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.
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.
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.
Have you ever been to Belarus?
I was and I can tell you exactly how that "vibrant economy" looks on the ground.
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 (ΠΎΠ±ΡΠ΅ΠΆΠΈΡΠΈΡ) 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 I haven't, but I have heard from others who have, and other ex-soviet places are doing a lot worse.