Hacker News Reader

Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

I think the co-op structure makes more sense if your business is local.

For example, I’d love to have a local alternative to Uber/Doordash that was a co-op owned by the drivers and the customers together. 95% of my taxi trips and food delivery are within my home town. I’d love to support a company owned by the drivers who live here, instead of a massive multinational.

Co-ops are pretty successful in many European countries. In Finland, both the largest bank and largest grocery store chain are national co-ops owned by customers. It’s a model that can scale far, even though the big co-ops do develop internal politics very similar to any traditional corporation.

View on HN

I agree with the idea of supporting local non-huge businesses that still (need to) for their customers. But I think the coop concept works for more spread-out organizations as well, especially when it comes to digital services. As you mentioned, some big organizations like banks and grocery stores (that operate country-wide or even internationally) exist in Europe. There are also remote-first design/tech cooperatives around.

I’ve heard of such models, but the problem is apparently maintaining quality (from the people I know who have tried this).

Drivers often need firing. How would a co-op approach that?

“Drivers often need firing.” – is that a given fact or would a small coop perhaps do better selection and/or training of drivers to create a high retention? This is a recurring scheme of cooperatives as well: longevity and people-centric thinking. While the standard business might toss out people without thinking twice, coops might approach these kinds of issues with more creativity and resourcefulness.

If you don't have a large pool, you can't provide convenience.

When I order an Uber, I want it now. I won't be waiting 1hr for it.

As a counterpoint, living in a remote area, scheduling a ride 1h in advance is a lot better than not having a ride at all; that would be plenty to e.g. drop my car off at a mechanic / pick it up, without begging for rides.

> would a small coop perhaps do better selection and/or training of drivers to create a high retention?

This is wishful thinking. They might reduce the amount of firings needed, but you can't spot in advance all the people who will slack off or cause problems given the chance. Not unless you're a literal god.

It’s not just about hiring people who care to begin with, but caring for the business is much more natural if you’re a co-owner and can directly benefit from the organization’s success. Compare that to the gig economy where workers are worn down, paid as little as possible, and thrown out at a whim. In worker-owned businesses, workers are more motivated and more retained (there are also studies around this, afaik).

That "caring" a coop member has gets prioritized after addiction, health issues, family obligations, and so on.

You still need a mechanism for dealing with workers that e.g. just don't show up. You also need that mechanism for co-owners of an LLC, and so on.

That literally does not address my point at all. By including words like "more" rather than "always" you're basically admitting that there are non-zero circumstances where workers don't care or don't stay, which is all the point I made. You could justifiably quibble with "often", but you absolutely will not get away without a firing process.

I’m not saying these problems are non-existent in co-ops, but that the underlying attitude and mechanisms (co-ownership, more communication on eye level, generally smaller scope) help making co-ops more robust for these situations of “mismatching expectations”. Of course, people might need to leave or get kicked out of co-ops for various reasons and there are ways to manage that as well.

It’s also not a competition about who can win the argument: I think we’re both making our points and it seems like you have a more pessimistic (realistic?) idea of who the workers are. My experience with co-ops is anecdotal, of course.

> Drivers often need firing.

Do they? The taxi companies in my small tourist town don't seem to have problems with reliable drivers. Makes me think that there is a retention problem with Uber-style work environments more than an inherent problem with people who drive for a living.

Let me speak as someone who was a delivery driver for over 10 years for an array of different restaurants.

With advent of ubiquitous GPS navigation came a wave of some the dumbest most functionally inept people I have ever encountered. There was a time when you had to be able to read a map and plan routes. But as soon as GPS showed up, anyone who could drive and enter and address in their phone was good to go making way more than other high school dropout work.

The biggest issue though is drug addicts. Lots and lots of drug addicts. It's an easy money job that you can smoke up/snort up/shoot up while doing. These guys are shameless and will be high off their ass driving around.

Co-ops, employee owned businesses, and credit unions are antithetical to American ruthless capitalist exploitation. They are economically "inefficient" since they don't maximize the exploitation of their customers.

Also, what good products do any of these groups make (besides credit unions which are superior to traditional banks)? Sure I can go to winco for cheap groceries, but REI isn't exactly the bastion of quality that its buyers pretend it is (their stuff is cheap crap).

The sad reality is that if you, the customer, want a good product, you want the company who makes it to exploit its workers. This is also the real reason why unions died in America. All the US car companies are unionized and that famously caused US company workers circa the late 70s and 80s to be literally drunk/high on the job all the time (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Assembly) Meanwhile most Japanese car factories aren't unionized, and you get literally the most reliable and best fit/finish in the industry from doing it.

Fwiw- REI is not a workers coop, it is owned by its customers who have a say in the operation in proportion to how much they spent. So in theory at least your interests are aligned.

I'll also add that if the excess profits are going to shareholders than I do not care about the labor savings a company gets by exploiting their workers.

"In fact, there are about 30,000 co-ops in the U.S., which account for more than $3 trillion in assets, more than $500 billion total revenue, and more than 2 million jobs, according to figures from the National Cooperative Business Association."

https://www.businessinsider.com/co-ops-business-plan-2011-10

Reply on news.ycombinator.com