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.
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.