On Mon, Apr 30, 2007 at 08:34:22PM -0400, Nathan Kennedy wrote: > In my view cooperatives and businesses are mostly overlapping sets. We > are a cooperative and a business--a cooperative business. According to > our founding document (articles of incorporation), we are incorporated > as a nonprofit corporation for the purpose of "provid[ing] Internet > hosting services for the mutual improvement of its members ..." In > other words, we are a business sans profit motive. As the old credit > union saw goes, "not for profit, not for charity, but for service." The > cooperative or business angles may be more or less important to one > member or another. But a lot of the same principles that are required > for business success carry over to cooperatives. <SNIP>
This rather highlights some confusion of purpose. A consumer cooperative exists to provide its members with goods or services, using combined buying-power to lower costs. Savvy choices needs to be made, like in any other area of life, but that doesn't make it a business. Even a worker co-op's purpose is to provide its members, all of them, with a benefit: jobs. These are also businesses and need to be run as such, but Hcoop isn't a worker co-op. A standard business exists to make money for its owners, usually just a few in power. The faster they grow, the more money is made. All want to appear warm and fuzzy, but it's about money and power. Which are we, exactly? I can't tell. It's looking more and more like an entity designed to provide jobs for a few people. How big do we need to get to pay salaries? IMO, too big, too fast. -- Michael Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ HCoop-Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://hcoop.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hcoop-discuss
