It's not quite as bad in Sweden, look at the graph at the bottom of this article by John Burn-Murdoch[0] for a glimpse into we're faring compared to other European countries, and also how other European countries don't necessarily have it as bad as the UK or even Sweden.
Yeah, Brexit is a factor, but it's also one of many and it's important we tackle all of them. The private finance initiative (PFI) in the early 00s, is another[0]. Our government's lack of funding is also another ("The UK has spent around 20 per cent less per person on health each year than similar European countries over the past decade")[1]. Privatisation has been linked to not treating otherwise treatable deaths[2], so that's likely another. Then there's unwillingness and delay in many areas, to tackling air quality by reducing local pollution from car wheel breakage (linked to bad health)[3] by building more cycling infrastructure so that people don't have to be afraid of getting hit by a car[4] (and actually end up cycling). And disincentivising unhealthy diets[5] that are linked to hospital admissions, and amusingly urban planning like more cycling lanes can help people exercise without even really thinking about it like people already do in the Netherlands.
Depending on what type of video you're watching (pay depend on variables), your one view is probably worth a whopping $0.01. At that point you might be better off asking nicely for Patreon subs, considering about 0.5-2% of your followers convert to Patreon subs (and tiers usually start at or above $2), instead of annoying your viewers with horrible ads. Even creator-made shoutouts to products are more pleasant than the jarring built-in YouTube adverts, and that's before you consider that they're immediately skippable. And when you consider all the awful things advertisers are forcing YouTube to do in order to make the platform better for themselves and worse for users, it gets even more spicy.
Funnily, it is generally true given that net resource transfers to the global south have been negative for most countries... with the big exception being China[1], so China has benefited off global trade deals like these, but their income inequality isn't exactly something to look up to either (but despite that, they manage to beat the US on this stat). The other poor countries are mostly falling behind in a relative sense, and have been since the 80s, so we should certainly be thinking about disincentivising borderline slave labour because right now it isn't worth it for those countries, they simply aren't benefiting off doing it.
But also, we are moving (slowly) in the direction you'd likely prefer: Norway and Germany are now doing supply chain due diligence[2]. Hopefully we continue moving in that direction so we can push the floor up and perverse human rights violations become more of a thing of the past.
Cooperatives have a higher survival rate, both in general and during crises.
> A 2013 report published by the UK Office for National Statistics showed that in the UK the rate of survival of cooperatives after five years was 80 percent compared with only 41 percent for all other enterprises.[5] A further study found that after ten years 44 percent of cooperatives were still in operation, compared with only 20 percent for all enterprises.
> A 2012 report published by The European Confederation of cooperatives and worker-owned enterprises active in industry and services showed that in France and Spain, worker cooperatives and social cooperatives "have been more resilient than conventional enterprises during the economic crisis".[47]
True, but coops are also more selective about firing and hiring. So if you're a bad fit, you're less likely to end up in a coop, and if you do end up there, you will have more stable employment because coops generally don't fire people during crises, they collectively cut their salaries by a certain percentage, or give up yearly bonuses, and when things get good again, they reinstate their old salaries or bonuses.
Cooperatives aren't nonprofit entities – they can be, sure, but many of them are profit-driven.
The claim that cooperatives act irrationally (and the implication that they're less efficient) requires some factual data to back that claim up, otherwise it's just that – an anecdotal claim. Here's academic data to dismiss those claims:
> Labor-managed firms are as productive as conventional firms, or more productive, in all industries, and use their inputs efficiently; but in several industries conventional firms would produce more with their current input levels if they organized production like labor-managed firms. On average overall, firms would produce more using the labor-managed firms’ industry-specific technologies. Labor-managed firms do not produce at inefficiently low scales
Source: Fakhfakh, F., Pérotin, V., & Gago, Mó. (2012). Productivity, Capital, and Labor in Labor-Managed and Conventional Firms: An Investigation on French Data. ILR Review, 65(4), 847–879. doi:10.1177/001979391206500404
Similar results were also found to hold in an older study by Craig and Pencavel in 1995.
> Cooperatives aren't nonprofit entities – they can be, sure, but many of them are profit-driven.
A tech consultancy cooperative works exactly like most non-profits: they don't post a profit and distribute everything as salaries. The "non-profit" part is for the entity, not the people running it.
Many have taken issue with William Forster Lloyd's assertion: "tragedy of the commons is a situation in which individual users, who have open access to a resource unhampered by shared social structures or formal rules that govern access and use, act independently according to their own self-interest and, contrary to the common good of all users, cause depletion of the resource through their uncoordinated action in case there are too many users related to the available resources."
Rule by consensus is messy, inefficient, and ultimately prone to failure in commercial settings without slave labor.
I am not suggesting you are wrong for interjecting off-topic straw-man arguments, but your naive input lends credibility to the observations on human nature.
>I am not suggesting you are wrong for interjecting off-topic straw-man arguments, but your naive input lends credibility to the observations on human nature.
I find that comment odd, given that they cited papers that directly spoke about the functioning of coops. Conversely, your comment mentioning the tragedy of the commons seems very off topic. Could you explain more how it relates?
In this case YC is a shared resource, and two accounts segued a thread about personal experience in an attempt to defend an unrelated issue they presented themselves.
Again, if you have specific examples of functional firms outside subsidized communist regimes, it would be more relevant.
> In this case YC is a shared resource, and two accounts segwayed a thread about personal experience in an attempt to defend an unrelated issue they presented themselves.
I'm afraid I don't follow. The commenter above cited papers concerning the topic (coops/labor managed companies). You made a comment about personal experience (nonprofit politics) and then also equated it with the tragedy of the commons (which seems as if you conflated nonprofits with coops and the commons- i.e., three things that appear adverse to private profit). It seems as if you are shifting the goal posts now in a way that means we aren't going to understand each other, which is a shame.
Most coops tend to be registered as nonprofits in my part of the world for tax reasons, and others have an elected board which distributes earnings though a share structure to members.
You have failed to provide data to explain the context of your input. Thus, still remain off-topic, and orthogonal to the line of observations corroborated with other members experiences.
As initially inferred, unaccountable individuals that normally get away with cowing people tend to destroy shared environments which should be otherwise sustainable in theory.
I agree without relevant data your perspective may be beyond comprehension.
Off-topic Rhetoric about productivity is unrelated to observations of political nastiness from covert narcissists responsible for polarizing toxic environments.
Talented people with options tend to identify such situations, become disenchanted with being exploited, and eventually leave.
Less Off-topic, as some political theories mistakenly assume theoretical efficiency in control of supply and demand resolves most problems. For these individuals Compliance and Conformity definitions are conflated (which is factually incorrect.)
That is the surprising part... it is not that simple. It does however allude to an inevitable decline under theoretically ideal living conditions, as rates of aggression and stupification increase.
You may be amused by the highlights from the paper, and how it closely resembles numerous punitive subcultures. =)
That's an odd critique considering coops exist to solve the friction between unions and businesses by building the democratic control into the business itself, avoiding the need for a union.
Especially when you consider all the union busting tactics used by leadership at traditional businesses – how are you even supposed to form a union when they won't let you? Coops come at that from a different angle: you get democratic control, straight up. Don't like your leadership if you choose to structure the business that way? You can actually vote them out of their role.
"Especially when you consider all the union busting tactics used by leadership at traditional businesses – how are you even supposed to form a union when they won't let you?"
Even when you manage to form a union, companies have ways of screwing you over.
Case in point was the recent successful unionization of a Starbucks location in Seattle you might have heard about on the news. Starbucks' reaction? They just closed that location.[1]
If you have broad support from the employee base, “they” can’t block a union certification election. If you’re having trouble forming a union, you’re probably struggling at the “get employees to want your union” step in the process.
You should let Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart and similar know this. Their union busting tactics are widely documented (including shutting down locations starting to form a union).
They do know this. Many of their tactics are specifically directed at “make the employees not want the union”. Some of those tactics are under-handed, even despicable, but it’s safe to say that they know this and act in accordance.
Firing everyone in a store in the process of unionizing isn't "make employees not want the union", it's retaliating against those that do and instilling fear in the rest.
You might not like the methods (and in some cases, they are not legal), but I think that’s exactly what it does. Fear makes (some) people not want the union.
Firing pro-union employees also obviously directly reduces the number of employees who are pro-union.
Normally with union done right, you would have voice in management. Problem is all you see is non-working unions ( union busting etc also from sibling comments)
Thats why I commented union done good from the beginning.
> I got the distinct feeling I was being sold something while reading it, and the last paragraph confirmed it.
You mean the last paragraph where they _volunteer_ to have coaching sessions with people? "Selling" usually implies an exchange of money or an expectation of something in return, but there's no product here – the author is offering their time for free to help others start or join cooperatives. Is it fair to dismiss that as "being sold" something?
I think so. Plenty of companies offer product samples or free services upfront. But even if you think the author has no specific “sales” goal with the article, self-promotion still seems to be its main objective.
> Plenty of companies offer product samples or free services upfront
Sure, but a startup using VC money to offer you something for free is very different from "I will personally volunteer to help you".
Also the entire point of sharing articles is that they're being read, so there isn't any way to avoid implying they're doing "self-promotion" – should people just stop writing and sharing articles?
Sometimes people aren't after some self-serving goal, and I think it's a little dangerous to think everyone is – charities exist. Cooperatives are more ethical businesses because they build democracy into their structure unlike traditional businesses, why would I assume whoever is talking about them isn't just hoping to see more of that in the world? Or do we reduce that to "that's just the author being selfish again"?
I might be inclined to agree with your points if the article weren’t mostly fluff, as stated in my original comment. The reason I read it was because I was genuinely interested in how this specific approach works in practice and how it applies to tech, but there was little actual information and a lot of what seemed like corporate cult-speak.
Perhaps the article is devoid of insightful content to such an extent that we were both forced to interpret its author’s motivations based on our preconceived notions of the idea they’re discussing. You believe they’re genuinely seeking to improve worker’s rights, and it just looks like another hustle to me.
One thing I can say for certain is that I did not get much from the article, and I suspect there will be comments that are shorter yet far more insightful than the article a few hours from now.
I think you're biased against cooperatives which made you uber-critical of the article. I did not find it to be "fluff."
Many of the engineering blogs shared on HN have a "by the way, we are hiring"[0] stinger, or a promotion of the author's startup's product as a solution to the engineering problem described by the post, or if its a benchmark, then the entire post would be promoting their product as the superior product. This article no worse than others wrt self promotion.
0. Maybe not so much now, but perhaps we'll see an uptick of "I'm looking for my next move, if you're hiring, contact me."
Not really, systems affect our behaviour. We created the system that is our current market economy, and we have the ability to construct new systems that encourage better behaviour. For example, studies show that cooperatively ran businesses are more ethical and more stable:
> [...] Additionally, "cooperative banks build up counter-cyclical buffers that function well in case of a crisis," and are less likely to lead members and clients towards a debt trap (p. 216). This is explained by their more democratic governance that reduces perverse incentives and subsequent contributions to economic bubbles.
> The cooperative banking sector had 20% market share of the European banking sector, but accounted for only 7 per cent of all the write-downs and losses between the third quarter of 2007 and first quarter of 2011. Cooperative banks were also over-represented in lending to small and medium-sized businesses in all of the 10 countries included in the report.
> [...] in France and Spain, worker cooperatives and social cooperatives "have been more resilient than conventional enterprises during the economic crisis".
> Public trust in credit unions stands at 60%, compared to 30% for big banks and small businesses are five times less likely to be dissatisfied with a credit union than with a big bank.
In other words, this behaviour doesn't happen everywhere. It's specific to certain types of businesses.
> Public trust in credit unions stands at 60%, compared to 30% for big banks and small businesses are five times less likely to be dissatisfied with a credit union than with a big bank
All organizations seek to accrue power and revenue - even “non profits”.
I saw it from one of the local credit unions I worked at in college…
1. First it was a credit union for a few large companies
2. Then it redid its charter to become a “regional credit union”
Indeed. This is why some (relatively few) organizations are designed to limit growth. Not all credit unions have the problem of growing to serve other customers.
[0] https://archive.is/t6tSb