On Tue, 01 May 2007 22:31:12 -0500, Michael Potter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." - Edmund Burke _______________________________________________ HCoop-Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://hcoop.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hcoop-discuss
