Since this is supposed to be a rationalist blog, are you familiar with the concept of not writing your bottom line first? Because I don’t get the impression that you are investigating a question impartially, carefully weighting all evidence. Instead, it seems like you have already made your conclusion (coops are the best), and your article is mostly about why we should ignore the evidence to the contrary.
There are a few more suspicious things in the text that a careful reader might notice, for example you mention that “the number of worker coops in the US has tripled in the last decade”, but you avoid mentioning approximately what kind of numbers are talking about here. It is a huge differences whether there were thousand coops in 2015 and three thousand coops in 2025… or only one coop in 2015 and three coops in 2025. And the fact that you avoid mentioning this makes me suspect that it’s more similar to the latter.
Another suspicious things is that your statements seem too general. The world is usually not like that. I would find it more credible if you said something like “coops are more likely to succeed in industry X, and less likely to succeed in industry Y”—it would show that you have some actual data, and that you are willing to admit problems. Nothing in your text seems like this.
I am sympathetic to the idea of coops, but it seems to me that your articles are mere propaganda. Is there a reason why a person who actually wants to know the truth whatever it may be should read them?
Thanks! This is the kind of specific data I would like to see. Exact numbers, split by industry.
(Also, for a fair comparison, how did the number of non-coops change in the last decade? I mean, in theory it is possible that the number of all kinds of companies have tripled.)
1300 coops employing 7000 people, that’s like 5 or 6 people per coop. So it can simultaneously be “over thousand coops operating in USA” and “you don’t know anyone who works in a coop, and neither does anyone in your bubble”.
I know that large coops are possible. I mean, there is Mondragon… and… uhm, I am not sure if there is any other. That would be another interesting data point. And the question is, do other coops fail to grow because they don’t want to, or because there is a problem they can’t solve (in which case, what is the specific lesson they should learn from Mondragon)? EDIT: After reading other comments, I suspect the problem is “don’t know how to scale”.
I am a bit tired of the excuse “it is difficult because the capitalists hate you”, because that’s what I kept hearing in my childhood every time there was a shortage of toilet paper. And now I think the actual cause of the problems was the ignorance of the basic laws of economics, rather than foreign spies. And I get similar vibes from this article: a lot of excuses, no critical self-reflection.
Since this is supposed to be a rationalist blog, are you familiar with the concept of not writing your bottom line first? Because I don’t get the impression that you are investigating a question impartially, carefully weighting all evidence. Instead, it seems like you have already made your conclusion (coops are the best), and your article is mostly about why we should ignore the evidence to the contrary.
There are a few more suspicious things in the text that a careful reader might notice, for example you mention that “the number of worker coops in the US has tripled in the last decade”, but you avoid mentioning approximately what kind of numbers are talking about here. It is a huge differences whether there were thousand coops in 2015 and three thousand coops in 2025… or only one coop in 2015 and three coops in 2025. And the fact that you avoid mentioning this makes me suspect that it’s more similar to the latter.
Another suspicious things is that your statements seem too general. The world is usually not like that. I would find it more credible if you said something like “coops are more likely to succeed in industry X, and less likely to succeed in industry Y”—it would show that you have some actual data, and that you are willing to admit problems. Nothing in your text seems like this.
I am sympathetic to the idea of coops, but it seems to me that your articles are mere propaganda. Is there a reason why a person who actually wants to know the truth whatever it may be should read them?
It looks like it’s ~1300 now: link, employing ~7000 people and generating ~$550 million in annual revenue.
That’s “worker coops” excluding agricultural coops, of which the USDA said in 2023 that there were about 30,000.
Thanks! This is the kind of specific data I would like to see. Exact numbers, split by industry.
(Also, for a fair comparison, how did the number of non-coops change in the last decade? I mean, in theory it is possible that the number of all kinds of companies have tripled.)
1300 coops employing 7000 people, that’s like 5 or 6 people per coop. So it can simultaneously be “over thousand coops operating in USA” and “you don’t know anyone who works in a coop, and neither does anyone in your bubble”.
I know that large coops are possible. I mean, there is Mondragon… and… uhm, I am not sure if there is any other. That would be another interesting data point. And the question is, do other coops fail to grow because they don’t want to, or because there is a problem they can’t solve (in which case, what is the specific lesson they should learn from Mondragon)? EDIT: After reading other comments, I suspect the problem is “don’t know how to scale”.
I am a bit tired of the excuse “it is difficult because the capitalists hate you”, because that’s what I kept hearing in my childhood every time there was a shortage of toilet paper. And now I think the actual cause of the problems was the ignorance of the basic laws of economics, rather than foreign spies. And I get similar vibes from this article: a lot of excuses, no critical self-reflection.