Comments on: In praise of cooperative thinking

By: matthewslyman

matthewslyman — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:21:45 +0000

This article says it all:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/0 7/us-walnuts-diamondfoods-farmers-idUSTR E82609T20120307

By: lizzyfa

lizzyfa — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:17:51 +0000

Interesting article
…of course the John Lewis Partnership including the food chain Waitrose is a very successful enterprise in Britain and one of the retail businesses that I think is doing well even in this economic climate.
They combine excellence of quality ,reliability and good customer care along with value for money ..and the John Lewis brand is also renowned to be an ethical organisation with a strong social conscience .
It is my shop of choice for many items ..

By: MoneyPrinciple

MoneyPrinciple — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:48:08 +0000

This is an interesting article and I agree some healthy mix of the two approaches. However I don’t get the 17% US public workers issue (rather more in Europe of course). The purpose of the public sector in any society is to serve society. So the police, teachers, nurses etc who work for the state are in people-facing posts which need people. That is not to say they should not be 100% efficient and use the best business practices.

The purpose of the private sector, not-for-profit excepted, is to make a profit, not to employ people. They do employ people but that is in order to make a profit. So the idea that you can compare public and profit-making sectors is not really appropriate.

In the public sector, particularly since the 1980s in the UK, there has arisen the idea that the more you pay people, the better service you will get. However this only appears to apply to senior staff who seem to imagine they are running a big business. But there are no sanctions and the only stakeholder – the government – is relatively ineffective and easily persuaded of this myth.

Therefore I would like to see the John Lewis model applied to large swathes of the public sector.

By: LEEDAP

LEEDAP — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:43:13 +0000

I would like to see where @txgadfly and @OneOfTheSheep get their information. Seems like they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Accepting either of their arguments requires accepting their facts.

By: LEEDAP

LEEDAP — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:36:06 +0000

I like this approach. I’ve been recently thinking that it is the cooperation in the free market that creates efficiency. Where as it is the competition that weeds out inefficiency. Both are needed for balance and neither is effective for long on its own.

By: matthewslyman

matthewslyman — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 01:29:04 +0000

Excellent article – reminiscent of your piece about the German “social market” philosophy.

IT appears that Blood and Gore’s work on making capitalism sustainable is in harmony with what you’ve been thinking and writing about:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/1 6/us-sustainablecapitalism-idUSTRE81F1D0 20120216

LET’s hope for America’s and Europe’s sake that centrist politics form a resilient & growing consensus over the next decade.

By: BidnisMan

BidnisMan — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:10:25 +0000

Every man for himself will lead to a repeat of 2008. Every man for society will rebuild communist USSR. What is needed is something inbetween. The moment any community is more than 50 people it starts losing the sense of community. Any sort of structure should recognise this. Another thing – a system that works needs a way to keep business and government seperated.

By: OneOfTheSheep

OneOfTheSheep — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:54:25 +0000

“If profits were all that mattered for the economy, then more than a quarter of all American workers would not be employed by enterprises that function, often quite well, without profit motive – 17 percent by governments and another 11 percent by private, not-for-profit, organisations.”

The 17% of American “government” workers is far more than justified to accomplish government’s legitimate purpose with even average efficiency. When government earns it’s proper place in a meritocracy the present 17% should be about half that, and another 8+ percent will be contributing to the economy and not taking from it.

By: txgadfly

txgadfly — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:37:06 +0000

One of the major sources of failure for coops and credit unions in the USA is that they are too easily hijacked by financial tricks and maneuvers that leave the purported “owners” of the organization with greatly reduced or vanished equity and that leave “managers” with all the equity capital. And through maneuvers which are “legal” under American “law”. Such frauds in other countries land the perpetrators in prison rather than in the Hamptons.

The flaw is with corrupt laws and courts in the USA. Such corruption can be found easily abroad, but almost always in countries we refer to as “Third World”. As with most other American industries, organizations will find themselves treated better in other countries than by the American legal and financial industries. Losing organizational homes will deliver to Wall Street what it deserves. Who wants to deal with corruption and fraud that deprives you of your equity?