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> Co-ops disintegrate when the people involved can't agree on the way to spend the money. That's because currently most co-ops are either run by hippies, or el

> Co-ops disintegrate when the people involved can't agree on the way to spend the money. That's because currently most co-ops are either run by hippies, or else exist only as tax dodges. But there's no reason they can't be run as dictatorships, the only real requirement is that the majority of the wealth generated gets captured by the people creating it. As the tools for running co-ops get better, we'll see more examples of ones that are better run.

nostrademons 9y ago
Isn't a co-op that's run as a dictatorship basically a corporation? The whole point of having wealth is that you can choose how you spend it. If one person chooses how to spend it, you don't actually have the wealth, they do, and it's not much of a co-op. If multiple people choose how to spend it, then you run into all the coordination-of-disparate-interest problems common to co-ops, communes, clubs, and other social ventures.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  > Isn't a co-op that's run as a dictatorship basically a corporation? In double-entry land, the ownership of labor is diluted every time new capital is contributed. Obviously people contributing capital should get rewarded, but the fact that causality only runs in this direction is super broken. Whereas in triple-entry land, capital can get diluted every time you add new labor. This works because the technology allows labor to be viewed as an asset rather than as an expense. Accounting innovations like this are kind of boring, but economically it's probably still the most important invention since double-entry was popularized in 1494.
  - arkades 9y ago
    You are making references - “triple entry” - that seem to take for granted familiarity with certain concepts. Can you unpack that a bit?
    - Alex3917 9y ago
      Triple-entry is the intellectual idea that blockchain enables as a technology. It refers to the idea of cryptographically authenticating entries in a ledger, which makes double-entry accounting scale in terms of the auditing costs. Currently business owners keep track of whether they are making or losing money by entering each transaction into a spreadsheet (or something similar), as per the rules of double-entry accounting. But each of those entries needs to get audited by a human third-party, which costs money. With blockchain much of the auditing work gets pushed onto computers, so you can audit trillions of rows for the same cost as auditing a few thousand spreadsheet rows without blockchain. This means you can create more complex types of businesses. In practice, it means you can create businesses where the incentives of the stakeholders are aligned in more efficient ways.
    - thesehands 9y ago
      I would assume double entry land to refer to the current system we operate today, and triple entry land would refer to a system where transactions occurred in crypto currency. Triple entry is well laid out here: http://iang.org/papers/triple_entry.html http://iang.org/papers/triple_entry.html And point to the fact that transactions between two parties are digitally signed by a third party, thereby creating a third record
CPLX 9y ago
> That's because currently most co-ops are either run by hippies, or else exist only as tax dodges. There are over 7,000 Co-Op buildings in New York City representing many, many billions of dollars in real estate asset value.
mycall 9y ago
> That's because currently most co-ops are either run by hippies, or else exist only as tax dodges. Maybe in the U.S., but there is between 1 and 2 billion people working in coops. You just don't know about it since corps don't want people to know there is another, probably better way, to run a business.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  > there is between 1 and 2 billion people working in coops Owner co-ops or worker co-ops? E.g. there are over a hundred million Americans who are members of co-ops, and millions of Americans who work for co-ops. But the number of Americans who actually work for worker co-ops (as opposed to owner co-ops like REI or Ace Hardware) is only a few thousand.
  - mycall 9y ago
    I thought all worker co-ops are owner co-ops? I see "membership" used in all of the numbers I find, so I guess workers counts are much smaller -- but there are tons of them in S.E. Asia.
    - Alex3917 9y ago
      To give an example, ShopRite is a co-op in the sense that all the store owners make purchases together to drive down costs, but from the worker's perspective it's no different than working at any other store. This is an owner co-op, because the owners of each store are working together so that each owner benefits. A worker co-op is like what Twitter is trying to do, where they are holding a shareholder vote next month to determine if the employees can buy out the business from the owners and run it for their own benefit.
mikeash 9y ago
Is that really true? Searching around, I can't find anything talking about what a co-op is that doesn't mention member control as a big part of it.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  So that's correct to the extent that when most people think of co-ops, they think of the seven principles or whatever. Which makes sense, because the labor movement has had a huge influence over what co-ops today look like. I think though that an equally valid alternative vision is what's laid out by the Howey Test, where the value of a token needs to come from the network participants rather than from a central party or a promoter. This naturally leads to a situation where the most successful co-ops are the ones that best incentivize their members to create value, e.g. by giving them ownership for creating value. This is the great race that's currently happening in the space as companies are fighting to figure out how to best do this, since every single industry is ultimately going to get reimagined and every sector of the economy is up for grabs. Over time we'll likely see a hybrid between the minimalist game-theory driven co-ops (e.g. FileCoin) and the principles of labor-movement-style co-ops, as they make sense and as they're (re)proven to actually incentivize people.
gowld 9y ago
If the owners don't have a say in management, it should be a divideng-paying joint-stock corporation, not a co-op. The only reason to form a co-op is to share control, or for management to create an illusion of ownership (as in grocery store co-ops)

nostrademons 9y ago

Isn't a co-op that's run as a dictatorship basically a corporation? The whole point of having wealth is that you can choose how you spend it. If one person chooses how to spend it, you don't actually have the wealth, they do, and it's not much of a co-op. If multiple people choose how to spend it, then you run into all the coordination-of-disparate-interest problems common to co-ops, communes, clubs, and other social ventures.

Alex3917 9y ago
> Isn't a co-op that's run as a dictatorship basically a corporation? In double-entry land, the ownership of labor is diluted every time new capital is contributed. Obviously people contributing capital should get rewarded, but the fact that causality only runs in this direction is super broken. Whereas in triple-entry land, capital can get diluted every time you add new labor. This works because the technology allows labor to be viewed as an asset rather than as an expense. Accounting innovations like this are kind of boring, but economically it's probably still the most important invention since double-entry was popularized in 1494.
- arkades 9y ago
  You are making references - “triple entry” - that seem to take for granted familiarity with certain concepts. Can you unpack that a bit?
  - Alex3917 9y ago
    Triple-entry is the intellectual idea that blockchain enables as a technology. It refers to the idea of cryptographically authenticating entries in a ledger, which makes double-entry accounting scale in terms of the auditing costs. Currently business owners keep track of whether they are making or losing money by entering each transaction into a spreadsheet (or something similar), as per the rules of double-entry accounting. But each of those entries needs to get audited by a human third-party, which costs money. With blockchain much of the auditing work gets pushed onto computers, so you can audit trillions of rows for the same cost as auditing a few thousand spreadsheet rows without blockchain. This means you can create more complex types of businesses. In practice, it means you can create businesses where the incentives of the stakeholders are aligned in more efficient ways.
  - thesehands 9y ago
    I would assume double entry land to refer to the current system we operate today, and triple entry land would refer to a system where transactions occurred in crypto currency. Triple entry is well laid out here: http://iang.org/papers/triple_entry.html http://iang.org/papers/triple_entry.html And point to the fact that transactions between two parties are digitally signed by a third party, thereby creating a third record

CPLX 9y ago

> That's because currently most co-ops are either run by hippies, or else exist only as tax dodges. There are over 7,000 Co-Op buildings in New York City representing many, many billions of dollars in real estate asset value.

mycall 9y ago

> That's because currently most co-ops are either run by hippies, or else exist only as tax dodges. Maybe in the U.S., but there is between 1 and 2 billion people working in coops. You just don't know about it since corps don't want people to know there is another, probably better way, to run a business.

Alex3917 9y ago
> there is between 1 and 2 billion people working in coops Owner co-ops or worker co-ops? E.g. there are over a hundred million Americans who are members of co-ops, and millions of Americans who work for co-ops. But the number of Americans who actually work for worker co-ops (as opposed to owner co-ops like REI or Ace Hardware) is only a few thousand.
- mycall 9y ago
  I thought all worker co-ops are owner co-ops? I see "membership" used in all of the numbers I find, so I guess workers counts are much smaller -- but there are tons of them in S.E. Asia.
  - Alex3917 9y ago
    To give an example, ShopRite is a co-op in the sense that all the store owners make purchases together to drive down costs, but from the worker's perspective it's no different than working at any other store. This is an owner co-op, because the owners of each store are working together so that each owner benefits. A worker co-op is like what Twitter is trying to do, where they are holding a shareholder vote next month to determine if the employees can buy out the business from the owners and run it for their own benefit.

mikeash 9y ago

Is that really true? Searching around, I can't find anything talking about what a co-op is that doesn't mention member control as a big part of it.

Alex3917 9y ago
So that's correct to the extent that when most people think of co-ops, they think of the seven principles or whatever. Which makes sense, because the labor movement has had a huge influence over what co-ops today look like. I think though that an equally valid alternative vision is what's laid out by the Howey Test, where the value of a token needs to come from the network participants rather than from a central party or a promoter. This naturally leads to a situation where the most successful co-ops are the ones that best incentivize their members to create value, e.g. by giving them ownership for creating value. This is the great race that's currently happening in the space as companies are fighting to figure out how to best do this, since every single industry is ultimately going to get reimagined and every sector of the economy is up for grabs. Over time we'll likely see a hybrid between the minimalist game-theory driven co-ops (e.g. FileCoin) and the principles of labor-movement-style co-ops, as they make sense and as they're (re)proven to actually incentivize people.

gowld 9y ago

If the owners don't have a say in management, it should be a divideng-paying joint-stock corporation, not a co-op. The only reason to form a co-op is to share control, or for management to create an illusion of ownership (as in grocery store co-ops)