4,184 karma · joined April 13, 2009
Let that sink in.
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• Outside investment can undermine the Co-Op's autonomy (many don't allow it) • Raising capital is hard; usually you're bootstrapping (worker-owners must divert some of their income) • Sometimes worker-owners get caught up in the democratic process of collective decision-making and get frustrated
On the other hand:
• A real Co-Op is real community. They exist to support the humans through work. You're all in this together. You can be "kicked out" by vote, but when you do, you give up your share and all that share money accumulating is yours. • You are "The Man" in the worst and best way you can imagine If something is wrong with the company, you can change it. • No more perverse mgmt incentives.
The biggest Co-Op is the Mondragon. They are very successful, too.
But let me ask you a question. If I want to get your attention, which one of the following techniques will work best:
1) Write you a snailmail letter 2) Send you an email 3) Send you a text 4) Write it on a yellow post-it note on your refrigerator
The answer is 4. Because it's the most difficult to ignore and leverages our ancient human physiology. It's not an accident that Kent Beck (Author of "Extreme Programming: Embrace Change") used post-it notes stuck to a wall that had every story written on it that mattered to the team within eyesight of every developer.
The problem is that when we get together to put information into a Jira or a Trello or whatever, we're making THE TOOL happy. What matters is the state of the tool, not the state of the system you're working on.
Arguably, the most advanced "tech stack" for moving trains around rail systems today (at scale, with the highest safety rating) is based around the Sicas ECC electronic interlocking by Siemens.
However, this article is merely about the technology used for collection of fares for the NYC metro rail system.
And since trucking capacity has been maxed out in the US for quite a while (Amazon is the big mover for this situation, even before covid), you can bet this path dependence is biting us now.
So I am for new nuclear power projects because we will need generations of people that can steward the waste regardless. And it's important to keep the ability and technical expertise with these materials for centuries. If the industry is abandoned the risk of a mishandling the waste will increase every year.
So... that happening.
A state is considered intact if the government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. A state can become predatory if they abuse that legitimacy, but other than that, if the government loses its monopoly, you have what is referred to as a failed state.
I've never used commit comments to store important information about the systems I'm working on. OTOH I can see people working on Linux needing that a lot more than I do.
Feel free to twiddle if that floats your boat though. I will refrain from twiddling, thank you.