Comment by Shoue | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Shoue | Hacker News Reader

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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.

Have a wonderful day =)

>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?

Best of luck =)

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.

Have a glorious day =)

> 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.

May you find a path to happiness =)

did you read the paper they shared?

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.

Enhance your calm =)

sounds like nearly every job i've had while working for capitalist enterprises =)

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.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXj0AGuh4c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFveSUmh9U

I have yet to see anything significantly differentiating in populations of Homo sapiens.

Be well, be happy, and be wise... =)

that study is about overpopulation? worker coops have nothing to do about what you're talking about. but if you wanna go down that path, to counter: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutua...

>that study is about overpopulation

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. =)

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