Corporations are refrigerators

Re:Corporations are refrigerators by breakyerself on Monday July 21, 2014 @01:06AM (#8062553)

I honestly don't know why we need corporations at all. All they do is make a small number of rich people richer. I'd be happy to see the corporation phazed out in favor of cooperatives.

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Re:Corporations are refrigerators by ZeroGravitas on Monday July 21, 2014 @04:09AM (#8062911)

Strange to find you downvoted.

I just finished reading a brief history of the cooperative movement in the UK. I was amused by the various parallels to Free Software: the explicitly utopian premise, the entrenched interests fighting with FUD, the originators being laughed at as kooks and nerds, the startling success of the model that rapidly made it "normal" in many industries.

Much like (social) darwinism, too much has been made of competition compared with cooperation in business, in both cases against all evidence (families, herds, the fact that we are ourselves built from cooperating organisms, or on the business side that you have far more suppliers, customers and employees than competitors), because it suited some people with power to justify their actions.

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Re:Corporations are refrigerators by mercer on Monday July 21, 2014 @05:14AM (#8063023)

> I just finished reading a brief history of the cooperative movement in the UK.

I'd love to read this. Can you point me in the right direction?

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Re:Corporations are refrigerators by ZeroGravitas on Monday July 21, 2014 @06:28AM (#8063148)

It was an educational graphic novel produced the by CO-OP group in the UK:

http://www.co-operative.coop/our-ethics/our-plan/co-operativ...

You can read the whole thing online in a (slightly) animated Flash version.

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Re:Corporations are refrigerators by mercer on Monday July 21, 2014 @07:31AM (#8063258)

Thanks! I thought I'd have to go find a book in one of those book-buildings. Much appreciated!

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