[jodacola]

> It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality.

Quite the opposite - for me, anyway.

FWIW, as a Westerner, I find the Mondragon Corporation to be fascinating and something I've read a lot about because there's no way we've figured out the ideal sort of setup for a business (or government, or any sort of human organization, given appropriate context) in the year 2026.

We have a lot to learn, and while "different" doesn't always mean "better," I strongly believe being exposed to "different" is necessary for us to devise novel approaches to human organization.

[amunozo]

Same thing, being Spanish the Basque Cooperatives movement is fascinating. Do you have any recommended read about it?

[lo_zamoyski]

These arrangements lean into "third way" and distributist economics. You might find John Médaille of interest. He's written some books[0] about the subject, some articles[1], and given a talk at Google[2].

In the US, the American Solidarity Party[3] draws from distributism, for instance.

[0] https://a.co/d/05BxSNZ9

[1] https://distributistreview.com/archive/an-introduction-to-di...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PtStipIsc

[3] https://www.solidarity-party.org/

[christophilus]

“Flee to the fields” is a great read, too.

[amunozo]

Thank you!

[ikurei]

I had a couple of eye-opening conversations about this the last time I was in San Sebastian. Not everyone there loves Mondragon as much as we think, some see it as a closed club that makes it arbitrarily hard to get a job with them depending on your connections. I met some workers unhappy of their hiring practices and I think their starting working conditions. No idea if they were fair or just resentful.

I still admire Mondragon and wish there were more companies like it, but now I try to remind myself that most characterizations from the outside are surely lacking in nuance.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

Yeah the problem with co-ops is that every new employee means reduced profit-sharing for existing employees. Ironically, companies in SV actually have a nice solution to this problem: Employees get equity, but newer employees get less than older employees. So from the perspective of old employees, it still makes financial sense to hire new employees, because the old employee equity becomes more valuable.

In technical econ terms, the marginal profit of new employees is typically below the average profit of existing employees. A profit-maximizing business only cares that the marginal profit is positive, and will hire until there is no additional profit to be made. A co-op is incentivized to keep average profit per employee high, which can mean reducing headcount in order to keep the average strong. So that's why co-ops can have a sort of exclusive club feel to them.

SV is actually an interesting example which proves how employee ownership can drive prosperity, but the typical co-op crowd doesn't want to talk about it because it's too capitalist-coded. In a way, SV companies show that employee ownership is not some sort of instant cure for everything which ails capitalism.

[Jolter]

What is ”SV” in this context? Silicon Valley? (Not a US resident, and I’ve never heard of any software cooperatives from there.)

[0xDEAFBEAD]

Yes, SV=Silicon Valley. Startups aren't co-ops (the term "co-op" implies employee governance for example). But employee compensation is heavily loaded towards equity or stock in the employing firm. If you're an early hire at a unicorn, you can make serious money off your ownership share in the company. It helps align the incentives of the employees and management. Press coverage of Silicon Valley doesn't usually mention it, but employee ownership is a huge part of the culture.

[jinjin2]

There is a really interesting article that goes into the origin and modern development of the Mondragon Cooperative here: https://open.substack.com/pub/ellegriffin/p/mondragon-as-the...

[mcbishop]

> As a rule, the highest-paid workers at Mondragon cooperatives earn only six times more than the lowest-paid workers.

And I bet these salary-capped co-op leaders are still appropriately capable / qualified. The U.S. billionare situation is ugly.

[gigatree]

The most recent video I could find about this was from like 7 years ago, very weird

[oceanhaiyang]

Maybe try a book instead of YouTube. Not weird as it probably isn’t something that would get clicks

[gigatree]

Disagree. Many less interesting things than a large functioning modern collective get millions of views.

[shimman]

Any particular books you'd recommend?

[hmmokidk]

Probably whatever George Orwell wrote after he picked up a gun and fought on their behalf.

[FarmerPotato]

In Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell narrates just how little fighting there was. It was trench warfare where both sides had precious little ammo and guns that couldn’t shoot straight. He sat in the mud at the front rotting with the rest. Apart from a few days in cities, hospital recovery, and a desperate last few weeks.

He had to flee the country because his chosen party was purged. He survived a street battle. Then made a final visit to many of his comrades in prison.

Don’t presume that his views were shared with those who had influence.

He had admiration for his comrades in arms, especially the mess hall staff. He was on the workers side, but he was in the banned party, of the losing side of the war.

Above all, Orwell saw through the propaganda at home and the rest of the worlds deliberate misunderstanding of the whole situation. For instance, he saw that France had a tacit agreement with the Soviets to slow-walk supplying arms to the Nationalists, to ensure French financiers had protected investments in Spain’s railroads. And every newspaper outside Spain reported like Fox News.

[kgwgk]

Orwell had been dead for several years when a Catholic priest started those cooperatives.

[ponector]

Zombie soldier summoned by Catholic priest to fight for cooperatives.

[jagged-chisel]

Let’s not confuse “romanticism” with “intrigue.” Things can be interesting and intriguing without being ideal targets.

[snapplebobapple]

Because the only certainty is there is no ideal sort of setup, just a set of probably decent options for the current conditions, which are highly changeable. The only thing that is certain from a benefit maximization perspective is there are a lot of companies much larger than minimum efficient scale that we should probably antitrust out of existence to increase competition

[Squeeeez]

There are aspects about cultures which can be fascinating, not (only) because they are foreign and new, but because dedicated and intelligent people have been improving them for generations, centuries even. I have a friend who is from Korea and who is a wood worker, and we have compared the different approaches to what, in the end, solves the same problems. Not everything can be incorporated into the other way of doing things, but I have found it eye-opening. My brain still tries to find ways, comparing, like a constant ping. Maybe one needs to dedicate 100% to the new way for a while to understand it fully before a genius brain would be able to find the spark how to meld both methods into a single improved Way of Doing Things (tm).

[rjzzleep]

Wait, how can you as a Korean say these things as if you're different, given that Korean companies are essentially the same?

[jdw64]

Korean companies are no different, but the author only singled out 'Japan.'

[rjzzleep]

I responded to the wrong post. I meant to respond to the parent("korean"/"as an east asian")

[Scrapemist]

He is not Korean

[lonelycompiler]

How are you drawing that conclusion? He mentioned in several comments on this thread that he is Korean…?

Genuinely curious.

[netcan]

This is a good approach.

That said... It's hard to deny the romanticization and projection point above.

Beer goggles can be a mind expanding POV, but you need to be aware of it or you just end up being wrong for silly reasons.

A sober look at different is a good thing. Ooh... I agree that better and more advanced org concepts are likely still to be developed. But Otoh...