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Hm, how is a cooperative / mutual-aid-like financial/organizational structure imposing artificially lower prices? The profit is absorbed by the members in-kind
by yourapostasy 11y ago
Hm, how is a cooperative / mutual-aid-like financial/organizational structure imposing artificially lower prices? The profit is absorbed by the members in-kind in the form of lower shelter costs in exchange for the responsibilities of shared ownership, and as the shareholding owners it is their right to take out profits in the form they mutually agree upon. Just because the profit is not capital and not in the norm of conventional land owners, I don't see these Wohngenossenschaften are artificially decreasing prices. The Wohngenossenschaften are smarter capitalism, squeezing out more inefficiencies.
- yourapostasy 11y agoTo add to my comment since I can no longer edit, I see nothing incompatible between cooperatives and capitalism, even if the end result is cooperatives "destroy" the profit margin of profit-seeking equivalent enterprises offering the same goods and services. Cooperatives doing this are commoditizing the cooperative owners' complements, to borrow a concept from Joel Spolsky.
- majewsky 11y agoSeconded. I live in a housing cooperative in Germany (the biggest one in the state actually), and as far as I'm informed, the main reason for their low rents is that they fully own their buildings, whereas most private property owners need to pay off their property credits, and corporate property owners additionally need to generate profit for their shareholders. This is not to say that the housing cooperative does not generate a modest profit, which is then used to build new affordable housing, or to modernize existing properties for modern energy efficiency laws.