They’re literally all around you. A credit union is a cooperative, the Associated Press (AP) is a cooperative, there are a number of electric companies that are cooperatives which I’ve been a part of. Land 'o Lakes for gods sake is a cooperative! Even Texas has housing and brewery cooperatives! I don’t know why you’re being so combative, If you took 10 seconds to look it up you would know. Either you’ve been grossly misinformed by someone or your perceived notions need educated.
Land O’Lakes was founded on July 8, 1921, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, by representatives from 320 cooperative creameries as the Minnesota Cooperative Creameries Association.
This isn’t a new, fanciful, or dreamy thing. It’s a very real system that benefits everyone at the company including CEO’s.
“Workers in employee-owned firms tend to be more cooperative and interested in the firm’s performance, and display a greater willingness to work hard, which generally leads to reduced employee turnover, improved productivity, better pay, and increased job security.”
While cooperatives are well-known in many European countries, Americans may not realize that this model of organizing also has deep roots here. Cooperatives undergirded the early stages of U.S. capitalism, with communities establishing electrical cooperatives, insurance mutuals, and dairy cooperatives as alternatives to government bureaucracies and conventional firms alike. America’s early unions founded hundreds of industrial cooperatives to protect workers’ rights and share the gains of industry more equitably.
If you want to have a real conversation about co-ops I’m here for it. If you’re just going to respond with a snarky comment and nothing to back it up but anecdotal observations then I will not waste anymore time continuing further.
You’re either woefully uneducated with a bitter attitude or just a troll. Either way, your complete refusal to even perform a 10-second google search to confirm or refute your claims shows you’re not willing to accept any new information outside of your completely-incorrect viewpoint. Have a good and lonely life so others can be spared from your ignorance.
For everyone else, successful and long-lasting communes do exist. There are a wide variety of “Alternative Lifestyle” or “Intentional Communities” out there. It basically boils down to, “what are your motivations and prospects for joining such a community?”. From wiki “The multitude of intentional communities includes collective households, cohousing communities, coliving, ecovillages, monasteries, survivalist retreats, kibbutzim, hutterites, ashrams, and housing cooperatives.”
With a 30-second search I located this page with over 946 communities signed up (many across the U.S.) that you can register with if you’re interested. These types of communities have a wide-range of goals or how they operate, such as Living Energy Farm’s technology driven mandate “We are an intentional community farm and sustainable technology research, development and education center. We serve as a viable demonstration that a fulfilling life is possible without the use of fossil fuel. Our mission is to serve as an example and actively promote lifestyles and technologies that are truly sustainable, and to make these sustainable technologies accessible to all persons regardless of their income or social position.” All the way to the other side of the spectrum which the above commenter probably perceives all communes to be (Awake-In Heart Healing Center), “The driving force of our vision is to bring back unity, generosity, and community, as well as helping the next generations thrive using natural principle of wisdom.” I personally prefer somewhere in the middle like the European Eco-village template. Just search “eco village community” on youtube and pick a video that looks interesting to you to start your journey.
If articles are more your style, he’s an excerpt talking with a commune that’s been around for over 40 years.
Would-be members used to contact Bergholt Hall, one of Britain’s longest standing farming communes, at the rate of 70 or so a year: 50-something empty nesters looking for companionship; 30-something couples in pursuit of an idyllic upbringing for their children; 20-somethings keen to erect a yurt on the hall’s rolling Suffolk pasture. Since the Covid lockdowns, however, Hodgson admits, it’s been “bonkers”. “We had 70 applications in April and May alone.”
It’s a pattern echoed across the UK, with communes reporting being inundated by new applicants of all ages, driven by the Extinction Rebellion movement and its focus on low-carbon living and, more recently, by the glimpse that lockdown has offered of simpler, less consumption-driven, lifestyles.
There are more than 400 such “intentional” communities across the UK. Many are cohousing set-ups, in which residents live in individual dwellings with a few common areas and domestic functions; others are based upon a lifestyle or worldview (spiritualism, gender non- binarism, veganism) and feature a variety of communal labour arrangements and facilities.
A surprising number are longstanding country communes, such as Bergholt Hall, founded in the heyday of the 1960s and 70s back-to-the-land and self-sufficiency movements. It was an era when an ideological generation of “diggers” (named after the 17th-century English communards) sought to challenge notions of the sanctity of the nuclear family and opt out of “the grab-game of straight society” (as hippy bible Oz magazine put it in a 1968 article on the first London digger commune).
If anyone wants to talk about cooperatives then feel free to contact me or reply to this message. It’s an interesting topic and I believe a sustainable way to exist on this planet if instituted large scale. Want to work off the land and help the direct community? There’s a place for you. Busy working and just wish to contribute financially while living in the community? There’s a place for you. Want to start up a company that your passionate about? Imagine having a community with a plethora of talents to help you and that you can equitably share income with! You can form a cooperative business within a commune and bring in workers from outside the community to share in your prosperity.
The possibilities are endless, the outcome is fair and sustainable. With enough cohesion you can combine with other businesses to form a mega-cooperative like the Land O’Lakes example above. The only thing stopping you is individual greed, which we’ve seen how that’s played out so far in our history.
List them. Show me how many of them work.
They’re literally all around you. A credit union is a cooperative, the Associated Press (AP) is a cooperative, there are a number of electric companies that are cooperatives which I’ve been a part of. Land 'o Lakes for gods sake is a cooperative! Even Texas has housing and brewery cooperatives! I don’t know why you’re being so combative, If you took 10 seconds to look it up you would know. Either you’ve been grossly misinformed by someone or your perceived notions need educated.
List of cooperatives (not even close to being a complete list)
Energy Cooperatives
Food Cooperatives
Land O’Lakes
This isn’t a new, fanciful, or dreamy thing. It’s a very real system that benefits everyone at the company including CEO’s.
source
If you want to have a real conversation about co-ops I’m here for it. If you’re just going to respond with a snarky comment and nothing to back it up but anecdotal observations then I will not waste anymore time continuing further.
I was specifically asking for communes and you show me coops that still have capitalist gain in mind. Delusional
You’re either woefully uneducated with a bitter attitude or just a troll. Either way, your complete refusal to even perform a 10-second google search to confirm or refute your claims shows you’re not willing to accept any new information outside of your completely-incorrect viewpoint. Have a good and lonely life so others can be spared from your ignorance.
For everyone else, successful and long-lasting communes do exist. There are a wide variety of “Alternative Lifestyle” or “Intentional Communities” out there. It basically boils down to, “what are your motivations and prospects for joining such a community?”. From wiki “The multitude of intentional communities includes collective households, cohousing communities, coliving, ecovillages, monasteries, survivalist retreats, kibbutzim, hutterites, ashrams, and housing cooperatives.”
With a 30-second search I located this page with over 946 communities signed up (many across the U.S.) that you can register with if you’re interested. These types of communities have a wide-range of goals or how they operate, such as Living Energy Farm’s technology driven mandate “We are an intentional community farm and sustainable technology research, development and education center. We serve as a viable demonstration that a fulfilling life is possible without the use of fossil fuel. Our mission is to serve as an example and actively promote lifestyles and technologies that are truly sustainable, and to make these sustainable technologies accessible to all persons regardless of their income or social position.” All the way to the other side of the spectrum which the above commenter probably perceives all communes to be (Awake-In Heart Healing Center), “The driving force of our vision is to bring back unity, generosity, and community, as well as helping the next generations thrive using natural principle of wisdom.” I personally prefer somewhere in the middle like the European Eco-village template. Just search “eco village community” on youtube and pick a video that looks interesting to you to start your journey.
If articles are more your style, he’s an excerpt talking with a commune that’s been around for over 40 years.
source
If anyone wants to talk about cooperatives then feel free to contact me or reply to this message. It’s an interesting topic and I believe a sustainable way to exist on this planet if instituted large scale. Want to work off the land and help the direct community? There’s a place for you. Busy working and just wish to contribute financially while living in the community? There’s a place for you. Want to start up a company that your passionate about? Imagine having a community with a plethora of talents to help you and that you can equitably share income with! You can form a cooperative business within a commune and bring in workers from outside the community to share in your prosperity.
The possibilities are endless, the outcome is fair and sustainable. With enough cohesion you can combine with other businesses to form a mega-cooperative like the Land O’Lakes example above. The only thing stopping you is individual greed, which we’ve seen how that’s played out so far in our history.
You linked to cults. Kinda cringe bro.