This will be my last post about Making Mondragon, a book I have just read about the Mondragon cooperative complex (prior posts: I, II). I read the book hoping to clear up some confusions I had about how cooperative businesses could successfully handle certain problems. Here I address how Mondragon deals with cooperatives when they… Continue reading How Mondragon handles cooperative failures
Author: Matt Bruenig
Policy Shop: Ignore the Stock Market, the Economy Is Not Back
New post at policy shop. Excerpt: Of course the fixation on stocks is rather predictable. All sorts of people hold stock, but the wealthy especially. According to the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances, while 17.9 percent of all families have stock holdings, 52.4 percent of those in the wealthiest 10 percent of families do so.… Continue reading Policy Shop: Ignore the Stock Market, the Economy Is Not Back
How Mondragon stops workers from selling out
I am reading Making Mondragon right now, trying to answer some questions I have about how a cooperative business can succeed. Earlier I posted about the way Mondragon handles the owner part of the worker-owner mix, which answered my question regarding how you can manage the problems caused by incoming and departing employees. Here I… Continue reading How Mondragon stops workers from selling out
Adventures in consensus
Some people like to use consensus decision-making processes. Some like it so much that they have declared that all other decision-making techniques are oppressive. When people are first confronted with the idea of needing unanimous support to approve of decisions, hypothetical problems immediately occur to them. What if you can’t get unanimous agreement? What do… Continue reading Adventures in consensus
College price discrimination is impressively effective
The College Board has figures for the median debt levels of people graduating college broken down by their family’s income. The full graphic with spreadsheet is at the College Board site, but here are two of them: The bars on the left are for graduating students with family incomes of less than $30k. Moving right,… Continue reading College price discrimination is impressively effective