[satyrnein]

You don't think the local water co-op would raise water rates 10% to give themselves 10% raises? Unless literally every user is an owner, there will always be the incentive to extract as much from the general public as possible to distribute to the owners. Same with unions, they exist to benefit their members, not the general public.

[repiret]

Typically in utility co-ops, every utility user is an owner. My local power company is a co-op. I get a vote on who is on the board. I get a dividend from time to time. They waste an inordinate amount of money on feel-good marketing crap just the same.

[TaylorAlexander]

Yes I am saying it would be a user owned cooperative. These are common. Not all users would be workers, but workers would be part of the same community and users would vote on pay packages. If the pay is so low workers quit and quality suffers, they will vote to pay them more.

[ClumsyPilot]

At the moment, all the power rents with capital. It would be nice to have some variety

[ahepp]

Wasn't the claim that an employee owned cooperative wouldn't raise prices to seek a higher profit?

[TaylorAlexander]

The article is about nudges. In that context, the more you align the users with the owners of the co-op, the fewer nudges move the product away from the users. Depending on opportunities to change the structure, this effect can be very strong. For example in a utility co-op, a structure already in use in some places, the owners are literally the users and they wouldn’t raise rates on themselves. Note that isn’t employee owned. If you had an employee owned manufacturing facility, they’re less likely to pollute local waterways as they’d be polluting themselves.

The status quo alternative is elite ownership of the utilities and manufacturing facilities, where those individuals receive a large share of the profits which they can use to insulate themselves from environmental pollution or cost of living concerns.

The fact that co-ops aren’t absolutely perfect in all cases is not strictly a knock against them. The status quo is particularly troubled.

[TaylorAlexander]

Agreed.