@croselund @hosford42 @RamenJunkie Mondragon in Spain is a fantastic example of worker-owned co-operatives.

And you also raise a really important point about federations of co-operatives, because that's where the economy-transforming magic really starts to happen.

For the uninitiated, just as a group of farmers, consumers, or workers can form a co-operative, likewise a group of co-operatives can form a co-operative.

In some cases, these co-operatives of co-operatives, known as co-operative federations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_federation), can provide shared services or advocacy on behalf of the member co-ops.

More interestingly, they can also become co-operative wholesale societies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-operative_wholesale_society ) and provide group buying services for member co-ops, and even start manufacturing for themselves.

Taken to its natural limit, the term for an economy where all production is managed through co-operatives is called a "Co-operative Commonwealth".

For people interested in learning more, a good starting point is the rundown on Wikipedia about Cooperative Economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-operative_economics and Cooperative Federalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_federalism_(economics).

#Economy #Economics #Coop #Cooperative #Cooperatives #Business #Mondragon #RochdalePioneers #Socialism #Anarchism #Capitalism

@hosford42 @RamenJunkie I definitely agree that co-operatives and credit unions are a great way to reduce inequality.

For anyone reading this who isn't familiar with co-ops, there's broadly four different kinds: consumers co-operatives (where the members are the customers of the co-op), workers co-operatives (owned by workers) and farmers or producers co-ops (where the people who supply the raw materials own the co-op).

The big advantage is that there's no shareholders or investors creaming profits off the top.

Any surplus funds are either reinvested, or (depending on what type of co-op it is) are returned to the customers (so they effectively buy the products at cost price), the workers, or the farmers (so they get the full value of the products they create).

The best known example of a consumer co-op is the Cooperative Group in the UK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Co-operative_Group ). It was founded by a group of coal miners called the Rochdale Pioneers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_Society_of_Equitable_Pioneers ) back in 1844, and is still going strong nearly 180 years later!

#coop #cooperative #ConsumerCooperative #RochdalePioneers #economics