[HCoop-Discuss] Financial situation

[Aaron Hsu]

On Tue, 01 May 2007 22:31:12 -0500, Michael Potter <mpotter at hcoop.net>  
wrote:

> On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 09:51:12PM -0400, Nathan Kennedy wrote:
>> Here I think you are off-base.  If I understand it correctly you fear
>> that HCoop's current "power structure" is planning on leveraging their
>> incumbency and system knowledge into paid positions for themselves.

[...]

> Probably a better word would be 'perplexed." Hcoop was advertised as a
> cooperative, but from what I can see some of the planning is more
> corporate in nature. For example, corporations grow as fast as
> possible to stay ahead of their competition, but cooperatives tend to
> implode when they grow quickly, or they revert to a more authoritative
> structure. Another issue is that when taking in members rapidly, poor
> screening of applicants and rapid changes in group makeup can cause
> instability.
>
> Also, there's the question of unequal member contributions. Note
> Principle 3 here:
>
> http://www.ica.coop/coop/principles.html
>
> This is why I ask questions. Are we a co-op or a standard top-down
> organization?

I believe that there are some here who may disagree with you on what the  
definition of a Cooperative is. I for one, consider a cooperative in this  
context to be an organization composed of voluntary members who are come  
together to establish and provide a service to said members. To me, the  
most important principle of a cooperative is that the primary goal is to  
provide services to its members without regards to profits or gain.

This being said, I feel that the choice of government, and the level of  
contribution of each member, can and should be the choice of the  
cooperative, and not set in stone as a true democracy, a form with which I  
personally disagree. Additionally, a cooperative should have equal  
representation among its membership, which means that the governing power  
of each member ought to be equal. In the choice of governance HCoop has  
chosen, which is a representative republic (or something like this), each  
member should be guaranteed the rights to vote in equal standing with  
every other member on the member's representatives. Any member should also  
be guaranteed a certain right to service and benefits inside the coop.  
However, it is not, imo, desirable to demand that every member be required  
to contribute to the coop equally with every other. If this were actually  
the case, and we chose, by principle, to make every member equal in every  
way, it would require not only equal monitary contributions, but also  
equal contributions of technical skill, social effort, and time. In other  
words, if complete equality is desired between all members so that every  
member is holding up an equal weight of the coop, each member should be  
expected to do something of equal value to what every other member does  
within the coop. I think you see why this is not the way coops work.

In other words, if members are not expected to contribute equally in all  
areas of the coop, they should not be expected to contribute equally  
monitarily. Of course, an increase in monitary contribution should not be  
mandatory unless that user is buying something with that money that others  
are not going to be getting.

As for your concerns about organizational stability, if this coop were run  
as a true democracy, you would have a point, as a true democracy is  
subject to wide fluctuations and confusion with rapid demographics  
changes. However, in a representative government, this can be mitigated to  
some degree because decisions affecting the stability of the coop are not  
determined by a majority vote, but are placed in the hands of the board,  
which has been duly elected by the membership to make these decisions.

As for the nature of the future plans, all I have seen thus far is a  
desire to improve services on the part of the Board.

-- 
Aaron Hsu <aaron.hsu at sacrificumdeo.net>
"No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he  
could do only a little." - Edmund Burke