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Comment by AlexTWithBeard | Hacker News Reader

I believe in them as well, but... but where are they?

With all the benefits of hard working people and without stupid, greedy managers standing in their way, co-ops should be literally everywhere!

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Co-opts are ripe throughout the agricultural sector, but they do have to fight hard to maintain those positions because short-sighted corporate competitors undercut the co-opts pricing with unsustainable practices. Often it is cheaper to pump farmland for all it is worth until the topsoil is depleted and thin, then just buy up different farmland from struggling small farmers who got undercut from the unsustainable practices. While the depleted farmland either gets sold off to developers or gets put into a wildlife program where they get paid rent by the government to leave it fallow.

So it is still a battle between people looking for short personal profits against those who are seeking long-term sustainable profits. There is no associated extra costs for depleting farmland or practicing unsustainable farming methods so assholes will continue to abuse it as long as they make money on it.

Unless these corporate competitors are stupid, then taking a short sighted approach means the returns from not exploiting the future are too low. The problem is not corporations, but the regulatory structure around farming where the true value of the future is not correctly valued. If these corporations made more money not exploiting the future than exploiting it then they would act in the long term interest.

I can't name any tech companies who do it, but I've seen in traditional businesses (the kind that don't lose VC money for years). They just aren't really the companies you're going to read about on here or cnbc.

Some tech companies kinda do it by paying employees in stock. The highest paid employee at Amazon only makes $150,000 cash, while the company creates shares of stock to fund the rest of their compensation. Those are actual shares that get taxes as income, not options.

Since Amazon doesn't participate in stock buy-backs, like most tech companies do, most of the salaries are actually funded by stock holders in the dilution of their shares.

Is that really the case? Let's say Amazon paid all salaries in cash. Also, for simplicity let's says employees view cash and stock compensation as perfect substitutes. Then the addition compensation has to be funded by Amazon - if it won't do so from cash from operations or debt, it has to come from raising equity: Which in effect is the same as paying employees in stock.

Unique example but REI Co-op has been pretty successful.

I believe REI has the same model as MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) in Canada. In order to buy from them, you must be a member, which costs like than $10 once, and profits are distributed between all members. Something like that.

You don't need a membership to buy from REI, but you do miss out on the profit sharing and other perks if you are not a member.

Bob's Red Mill

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