[mrguyorama]

In my state, all the lobster fishing people have a "co op" to jointly decide how to manage the public resource of the fish in our waters so that they can come together and make the kind of conservation decisions together, and create some force to prevent anyone from defecting and catching everything in a down year. This gives them more stability year to year and a little bit of possible price fixing.

Just don't call it a union.

[InitialLastName]

> Just don't call it a union.

Of course not. The more accurate word is "cartel" (note: I see management of a shared resource as a perfectly legitimate justification for cartel behavior).

[mulmen]

Why is a private organization managing a public resource? Shouldn’t a government agency do that?

[ipaddr]

How do they stop rogue operators?

[mrguyorama]

Since it's literally a good old boy network, probably with threats and violence or maybe they have legal backing? I don't know the legal details, I just know they set the rules and they voluntarily reduce fishing seasons to keep stock at healthy levels.