It would not work in the ways of communism but in the ways of like a co-op store we have today but on a much larger scale.
Can it work? Many co-ops today are sucessful,can a government and a society at large be able to implement this?
I’m not really knowlegable on such things so can you tell me the pros and cons of such a way of life? And give me examples of such places where they have tried to implement it and has failed.
Since most of us have no idea, I suspect, about what you are talking about, could you please elucidate the nature of the co-op store?
Well businesses working together in a co-operative than the usual lets-make-as-much-money-out-of-these-suckers and competing to the death. Instead, a co-opertaive of private owned stores which work together than against.
How do they resolve disputes? What happens if one store doesn’t produce its fair “share”, however that is defined?
IIRC, co-op businesses are usually agricultural or produce some other comodity or indistinguishable product. The advantage is that together they can exert some market pressure and take advantage of economies of scale. This is diferent from a cartel where a group of similar businesses try to limit production in order to fix prices (ie OPEC). Such an arangement is usually unstable because the participants tend to cheat and produce more on their own (ie OPEC).
I’m not sure how such a business model applies to a government. Governments role is typically creating and enforcing laws, public safety, fixing the roads and other public infrastruture and national defense. Where does a co-op fit in here?
IIRC, co-op businesses are usually agricultural or produce some other comodity or indistinguishable product. The advantage is that together they can exert some market pressure and take advantage of economies of scale. This is diferent from a cartel where a group of similar businesses try to limit production in order to fix prices (ie OPEC). Such an arangement is usually unstable because the participants tend to cheat and produce more on their own (ie OPEC).
I’m not sure how such a business model applies to a government. Governments role is typically creating and enforcing laws, public safety, fixing the roads and other public infrastruture and national defense. Where does a co-op fit in here?
What characterises a co-operative business, at least as I understand it, is that it is owned by its customers. Thus a dairy co-operative is owned by the farmers who also supply milk to it. The theory is that it either pays the farmers a higher price for their milk and makes no profits, or it pays the market price and rebates the profits to the farmers as dividends. Either way, the farmers keep the profits which a commercial dairy would keep for itself.
This is a producer’s co-operative. You can also have consumers co-operatives which buy (say) groceries in the market and sell them to members at cost, or sell them at the usual retail price and remit the profits as dividends or discounts.
Co-operatives are not inconsistent with competition. A co-operative dairy will compete with other dairies, including other co-operative dairies.
Where a co-operative differs from other businesses is that it cannot be assumed that what the shareholders want is profit maximisation. Because they are also the customers they have other objectives. The owners of a dairy co-operative may want it to buy and sell on the largest quantity of milk it can, rather than the quantity which will maximise its profits. The owners of a consumers’ co-operative may want it to buy the best or freshest groceries, or organically-produced groceries, or whatever, rather than the groceries which give it the highest profit margin.
A democracy is already a co-operative government in this sense. It is “owned” by the citizens to whom it supplies services and with whom it interacts in other ways. And the citizens interests as taxpayers in maximising the effiency of government is balanced by their interest as citizens in getting the quality of government services that they want.
IIRC, co-op businesses are usually agricultural or produce some other comodity or indistinguishable product. The advantage is that together they can exert some market pressure and take advantage of economies of scale. This is diferent from a cartel where a group of similar businesses try to limit production in order to fix prices (ie OPEC). Such an arangement is usually unstable because the participants tend to cheat and produce more on their own (ie OPEC).
I’m not sure how such a business model applies to a government. Governments role is typically creating and enforcing laws, public safety, fixing the roads and other public infrastruture and national defense. Where does a co-op fit in here?
Strange how you keep posting that?
Here’s a good link on Co-ops
http://www.wisc.edu/uwcc/
Might help the discussion a bit.
As far as cooperative government, it sounds to me more like a direct democracy. Obviously works better on a smaller scale. But the possible arrangements, interconnections, and cooperations between smaller governments need be explored and developed.
Perhaps your thinking of communalism.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bookchin/CMMNL2.MCW.html
I don’t know how common they are in the States, but here in Ontario at least there are plenty of co-ops:
When I was in high-school, my mom worked for an organization that helped plan and build housing co-ops.
Each development is owned by a corporarion whose shareholders are the tenants. The tenants elect officials of the co-op board, who make the decisions necessary to run the co-op (“shall we get new windows this year because the builder put in crappy ones that lasted less than ten years?”). The shareholders pay monthly “rent” payments, and from that money the corporation pays the required taxes, financing charges, builds up a reserve fund for repairs, etc.
I guess in corporate structure a co-op apartment building is not that different from a for-profit apartment building… but since the tenants are the owners and are in control of the corporation, they have all the say–and all the responsibility–in the affairs of the corporation.
Two of may parents served as president of our co-op at different times. At the time the co-op was built (1978), the federal government offered 50-year mortgages to co-ops, which cut their yearly financing costs considerably.
Co-ops are not as prominent as they once were in Ontario. The last few provincial govenments have been “neo-conservative” and have not supported them. The concept of public cooperation seems to have faded somewhat from the public view.