San Francisco's housing bubble is collapsing under its own weight - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/san-franciscos-housing-bubble-collapsing-under-its-own-lopsidedness-2016-8 <comment><USER3> The title is very misleading. If San Francisco's housing bubble was really "collapsing under its own weight" _prices would be falling_ , and he's provided no indication that's the case.

Yes, teachers can't afford to live in SF unless they're bringing in a lot of equity from somewhere else. They're probably doing the same thing everyone else without at least a mid-six-figure household income is doing - <USER2> from the East Bay.

</comment><comment><USER4> The author's numbers don't add up:

* "In San Francisco, the median house price – half sell for more, half sell for less – is $1.37 million"

* "The monthly mortgage payment for the median house in San Francisco, after a 20% down payment and at the prevailing rock-bottom mortgage rates, is $6,740 per month"

Bankrate.com says the average (not rock bottom) 30-year fixed-rate jumbo mortgage is about 3.9% today (August 17th). Wellsfargo.com actually quotes an APR of 3.6% on a 30-year jumbo, which corroborates as that's probably closer to rock bottom.

Using Google's mortgage calculator, a 30-year mortgage @ 3.9% on a principal of approx. $1.1m ($1.37m - 20%) comes to a monthly payment of approx. $5,200.

The quoted figure couldn't have been inclusive of taxes, because in the next paragraph he emphasizes that monthly payments would be even more with tax and insurance. But in any event, the rate in SF is about 1.18% (at high end) which brings a monthly mortgage + tax to approx. $6600 (rounded up).

I don't mean to contend with his main point, but it's sloppy and disingenuous to fudge and exaggerate these numbers. It also calls into question his other numbers. And as a rhetorical matter there's hardly any need as nobody disputes the severity of the situation.

Maybe I missed something. But even so, San Francisco offers other options. For example, it's one of the few places in the country where a bank will finance the old common law form of ownership, tenancy in common (TIC). TIC is similar to a condo, but you own the building in common with the other tenants, and use collateral contracts to stipulate that each tenant is limited to occupying his portion of the property.[1] This happened because San Francisco restricts the number of condo conversions each year, so lawyers and banks revived the TIC concept as a sort of legal hack. A TIC unit will sell for considerably less than a comparable condo.

[1] A condo is the reverse: each owner has title only to his unit, and contracts and other entitlements are used to spread responsibility for maintenance of shared spaces and the building as a whole.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it makes sense to expect the median mortgage to be for the median home. For one, all cash sales would appear in the latter data set but not the former.

<comment><USER4> That's a good point. But in that case the author's phrasing is very misleading. "The monthly mortgage payment for the median house in San Francisco" implies he's calculating the payment from the median price he quoted in the previous sentence.

But maybe he's making the same assumption regarding whatever source he's relying on.

<comment><USER5> Fair.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacker Monthly #17 Free iPad-Optimized Edition [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-issue17-ipad.pdf <comment><USER2> What does it mean for it to be iPad-optimized? I skimmed it very quickly, but it looked just like any other issue of HM.

<comment><USER3> Looks like it is rendered to a page size that is intended to fit nicely on the device's screen at the default zoom/dpi settings without significant borders and have the text at a comfortably readable size. Look at the print preview in Adobe's reader with page scaling turned off and you'll see the difference. The other editions I've looked at would print nicely at A4 size, if this was printed like that the text would probably seem too large.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you considered making an iOS 5 Newsstand version of the magazine?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. In fact, somebody from Apple contacted me about that. Won't be that soon though (especially, need to figure a way to integrate with the current subscribers database).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice to see that someone actually writes in the title that it's a pdf file.

THANK YOU.

I don't care that if members here want to give me - for speaking my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why would this be tagged [scribd]? I always thought that "scribd" would denote a link to a scribd.com page with the document, but this is a direct link to a PDF.

<comment><USER7> the [scribd] tag is actually a link to the PDF on scribd, the main headline itself is direct to the PDF.

<comment><USER6> Oh thanks! Never noticed that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is other hacker monthly isssus always free to download?

<comment><USER3> No. The first few were and a couple of specials have been. but the rest are $3 in digital form.

All the content is originally sourced from HN (though some of it may have seen a little editing before being sent to print) and the sources are linked to from the HM contents pages. So for instance the page for last month's edition (which had no free variant at all) can be found at <http://hackermonthly.com/issue-16.html>, and each of the articles in the contents list is a link to the original HN post (and comments) which in turn links to the original content.

So you have a choice:

1\. buy the print versions and have a nice printed magazine to read on the loo

2\. buy the cheaper nicely (and relatively consistently) arranged digital version to read on your preferred device for that sort of thing, or print pages of yourself

3\. just used the contents pages as a free curation service pointing you to some articles that are considered particularly good, which you can read as you like and print if you want to take a copy away from computing devices (though you may need to tweak the originals to print nicely, which is done for you if you buy either of the above)</comment></comment>


Harold Bloom: Anti-Inkling? - <AUTHOR> https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/5203/harold-bloom-anti-inkling/ <comment><USER2> It's worth providing the context in which CS Lewis praised 'A Voyage to Arcturus:' it's in a list of what he considered the best mythopoeic fiction. The quote below is from Lewis' essay 'On Science Fiction,' available e.g. in his collection 'Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories'

> Specimens of this kind [of fiction], at its best, will never be common. I > would include parts of the _Odyssey_ , the _Hymn to Aphrodite_ , Much of the > _Kalevala_ and _The Fairie Queene_ , some of Malory (but none of Malory's > best work) and more of _Huon_ , parts of Novalis's _Heinrich von > Ofterdingen_ , _The Ancient Mariner_ and _Christabel_ , Beckford's _Vathek_ > , Morris's _Jason_ and the _Prologue_ (little else) of the _Earthly > Paradise_ , MacDonald's _Phantastes_ , _Lilith_ , and _The Golden Key_ , > Eddison's _Worm Ouroboros_ , Tolkien's _Lord of the Rings_ , and that > shattering, intolerable, and irresistible work, David Lindsay's _Voyage to > Arcturus_. Also Mervyn Peake's _Titus Groan_.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lindsay's "A Voyage to Arcturus" is available at Project Gutenberg: [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1329](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1329).

<comment><USER4> Lindsay coins terms for two new colors, jale and ulfire but you'll need to be on Arcturus to see them. An amazing and far-reaching fantasy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Tolkien, Lewis and Williams actually flatter the reader's Narcissism, while morally softening the reader's Promethianism. Lindsay strenuously assaults the reader's Narcissism, while both hardening the reader's Promethianism and yet reminding the reader that Narcissism and Promethianism verge upon an identity. Inkling fantasy is soft stuff, because it pretends that it benefits from a benign transmission both of romance tradition and of Christian doctrine.

Bloom is a good critic and possibly the most well-read person ever, but he's not a particularly good writer. What does this sentence mean? Does Bloom even know? I'm skeptical

</comment><comment><USER6> >Given these swerves, gaps, and evasions, it starts to look as if it was actually the Inklings, and especially Lewis, who got under Bloom's skin.

A freudian twist

<comment><USER7> Plainly not true. Bloom just particularly despised them for their neo- Christianity, which makes sense as he was a jew, most of whose family was massacred in the holocaust.

<comment><USER8> I don't think it's as plain as you do. That he despised their religious views doesn't mean they didn't influence him and his work, even against his will and preference — in fact, in a way that accords with (my understanding of) Bloom's own views on how influence operates.

I'm also not sure how his family's death in the Holocaust is related to Bloom's view of the Inklings' Christianity; Christianity was at most peripherally involved in that particular instance of persecution, as I understand it.

<comment><USER9> I think it's unfair to even say "at most peripherally involved". There should have been greater opposition to hitlers rise to power (such as the Catholic Church treaty with hitlers Germany), but that's about it.

If Bloom had religious objections it was probably more to religion in general.

Maybe, at a stretch, he didn't like that Lewis' wife converted to Christianity before she married him. Lewis' stepsons were (are) Jewish. Lewis kept a Kosher house for at least some period of time for his stepsons. His Jewish stepsons inherited his estate after his brother passed away.

<comment><USER10> "We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity [...] in fact our movement is Christian."

\-- Adolf Hitler

<comment><USER8> I don't agree that Lee is trolling. I think he is mistaken in putting any trust in Hitler's religious propaganda — it was certainly to his benefit to curry favor with Christians — but there's no trolling in quoting the man himself.

If you look at the changes Adolf Hitler made in the churches of Germany, it becomes clear that his idea of good religion, or at least _useful_ religion, was far removed from any previously-practiced Christianity, his opinion notwithstanding.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I assumed that steve19 probably doesn't understand what "trolling" means, but didn't think it would be useful to debate it.

I think we need to make a distinction between Hitler's personal religion, which although he was raised a Christian, was some crazy amalgam that he mixed up himself, and the faith of essentially every SS member and ordinary German citizen who closed their eyes to the brutality visited upon the Jewish minority: they were all Christians. Hitler may not have remained, personally, a Christian, but the Holocaust was only possible because of the way that Christians were trained to think about Jews. In my own lifetime, in the United States, I've heard Christians seethe with hatred against the "Christ killers"; imagine 1930s Germany. Martin Luther, the founder of German protestantism, wrote obsessively about how vile and filthy the Jews were, that their synagogues should be burned, their property seized, and even that they should be slaughtered. The Holocaust was a systematic, literal prosecution of Luther's program for the Jews. Hitler and the top Nazi officials frequently quoted Luther, and Hitler admired him in his autobiography. If the Nazi movement and the Holocaust were not Christian, why were the Jews, then, in particular, the targets?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ETA for Apple Watch - <AUTHOR> http://www.macstories.net/ios/eta-brings-travel-times-and-traffic-status-to-apple-watch/

<comment><USER2> Let me be honest - this is a great idea ruined by over-designing and under- thinking.

First, the nitpicking - the font. Why? My favorite apps are always the ones that stick with simple system fonts. Was there a reason to move away from the default? And then there is the needless display of units, as though we would expect you to show seconds (or days, I guess?).

Second, the Apple Watch app. This would immediately make me a buyer if it were better thought out. The watch app forces me to choose one destination for my 'glance'. So when I'm at home, I have to switch to show work, and when I get to work, I have to switch again to show home. That's friction. No thanks. What is the point in telling me that I'm 0 minutes from home?

This is just my personal assessment, but I wouldn't spend my $2 on this. There needs to be some brains behind it, hell I'd probably pay you the $2 even if you stuck with the font and design, if it was just smarter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the honest feedback, I posted it in a public forum so can't ask for anything else. It's a shame you think not a lot of thought has gone into that app but nothing I'll say will change your opinion on that.

Just to quickly address a couple of your points: \- the app is localised so we deal in minutes, miles and metres hence the display of units. We don't want to add confusion when we're providing important info. \- definitely agree with you on the 0 minutes thing. I saw that on Federico's screenshot. The app should've switched and indicated he was at the location - we're investigating this one. \- also agree with switching on and off glances - we've got some improvements on this coming in a future version.

Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts (and for creating an account specifically for the purpose).

Cheers Anthony

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure, I'm one of the two that built this app. Federico wrote a insightful and balanced review on the app over at MacStories. Keen to hear feedback from the HN community on having ETA on their wrists!</comment>


Ask HN: Copy of "The Electrical Tabulating Machine" by Herman Hollerith (1894) - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a free copy of "The Electrical Tabulating Machine" by Herman Hollerith, published in 1894. The JSTOR entry is at http://www.jstor.org/stable/2979610
I'm thinking this should be in the public domain by now but I can't seem to find a copy of it.
Can anyone make this available as a free resource? <comment><USER2> Any university library will give you a day card and you can view or print this. The library of congress might have it?</comment>


Habits vs. Goals: Benefits of a Systematic Approach to Life - <AUTHOR> https://fs.blog/2017/06/habits-vs-goals/ <comment><USER2> You need goals to know which habits to develop, and habits so you achieve the goals. It's not one or the other, you need both.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, values determine goals, goals determine habits. The only thing I've felt that stayed with me consistently in life is my outlook, values and philosophy on the world. In an ever changing world, these keep me anchored, so that even when i drift too far, i'm brought back. Everyday we are bombarded with productivity porn, goals, and all that jazz, but none will ever stick if they aren't in line with what YOU really believe and want. The only way to achieve in this world is to discover who you really are, what makes you tick, and what you want, then i think you will automatically do what is necessary to achieve those goals.</comment></comment>


The Biology of Music: Why we like what we like (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2009/12/14/the-biology-of-music.html <comment><USER2> Direct link to paper: [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0008144)</comment>


Jack Ma: the biggest mistake was founded Alibaba - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am8b1GiIgd0 <comment><USER2> This is a really interesting comment to make. Perhaps more people in his position feel this way. I assume that in North America at least, saying you regret being wildly rich and successful would be met with negativity. So even if you hated it, you would be expected to own the role. A lot of famous musicians sing about how they miss being anonymous, perhaps we all have it backward. I always kind of surmised that media was a bad place to look for role models, because a happy person would probably never seek out media. Maybe there are amazing small business owning role models out there who we never hear about, but who have incredible marriages, families, meaningful work and enduring satisfaction with life. Who knows.</comment>


Ask HN: Chrome autplay policy has YouTube whitelisted? - <AUTHOR> For work I have to use a site that has an embedded YouTube video as a "cover image".  It always plays automatically and bugs me a lot.
I double checked chrome://flags and autoplay policy is set to "Document user activation is required."  Reloading the site with the focus in DevTools the video still plays.
Went to Chrome Canary, doublechecked chrome://flags and it also autplays there with no interaction.
I'm very disappointed if Google/Chrome is whitelisting YT videos embedded on third party sites while every other service needs to work without autoplay.
And yes I know I can use plugins, other browsers and FAX - this is about the apparent whitelisting of YT from the policy. <comment><USER2> I don't know if they are or not but I do know that the autoplay, with user activation required, does not apply to sites you frequently visit and play videos on (they track behavior and potentially allow auto play). If you're a YouTube user then that policy likely allows all YouTube videos to play immediately. I recently ram into this and dig through the flags and some code to figure out why I couldn't get autoplay to work on a site I was building.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input mneil. That's why I installed and tested with Chrome Canary - latest version, and no data in the profile. Same result and never visited YT with Canary. To make sure I should setup a clean VM and test again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Clean Ubuntu install with Chrome also autoplays the embedded YT video with autoplay policy set to user interaction.</comment></comment></comment>


Social tagging and voting was invented at Xerox PARC... 15 years ago - <AUTHOR> http://datastrategy.wordpress.com/2007/06/27/social-tagging-and-voting-was-invented-at-xerox-parc-15-years-ago/

<comment><USER2> Xerox PARC: The reality of tomorrow, yesterday!

</comment><comment><USER3> They also invented the mouse and original Mac interface. And they haven't cashed in on anyone.

<comment><USER4> Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse -- not Xerox.

And while Xerox PARC originated a lot of the modern windowed/wysiwyg/menued GUI, to say they 'invented' something as specific as 'the original Mac interface' is also misleading.</comment></comment>


IMDb closing FTP site with free data - <AUTHOR> https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/imdb-data-now-available-in-amazon-s3 <comment><USER2> FTP is a shit protocol so good riddance, see [http://mywiki.wooledge.org/FtpMustDie](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/FtpMustDie)

However if the other comment about less data being available it's a bit of a bummer, but FTP should die nonetheless.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> They are replacing it with S3, but reducing a lot the shared data, and you have to pay S3 to access it.</comment>


Guido:The 996 Work Schedule Is Inhumane - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/gvanrossum/status/1111628076801236993 <comment><USER2> In case someone is wondering what 996 means: Expected hours of work are 9 AM to 9 PM, six days a week.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system)

I think that's far past the point of being productive.

People's brains just can't function at a high level for so many hours. Maybe a lot of the time is spent socializing, like Japanese salarymen do (e.g. having drinks or eating dinner together).?

</comment><comment><USER3> Link to actual article: [https://www.scmp.com/tech/start- ups/article/3003691/develope...](https://www.scmp.com/tech/start- ups/article/3003691/developers-lives-matter-chinese-software-engineers-use- github)

</comment><comment><USER4> A great wsy to use his celebrity. Very interesting to read through the tweets and see what people on that schedule have to say about it.

<comment><USER5> I don't think Guido's Twitter has much influence in China.</comment></comment>


Welcome to the software interview - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jjperezaguinaga/welcome-to-the-software-interview-ee673bc5ef6 <comment><USER2> That was freakishly familiar. >_<</comment>


An Alternative Approach to Archiving Blog Posts  - <AUTHOR> http://freemontpost.com/calendar/view

<comment><AUTHOR> Most likely not a perfect solution, but thought I'd share it anyway :)</comment>


AT&T to Face EFF Class Action for Selling Customers' Location to Bounty Hunters - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43j99g/eff-hits-atandt-with-class-action-lawsuit-for-selling-customers-location-to-bounty-hunters <comment><USER2> I initially thought the EFF was suing for publicity, knowing that the mandatory arbitration provisions and class-action waivers were likely to stand.

However, they do have some legs to stand on, since California's supreme court ruled in 2017 that injunctive relief could still be sought under an arbitration agreement. [1]

Of course it's likely that this ruling wouldn't be held up by the Supreme Court, which has consistently upheld/defended arbitration agreements, but one can dream.

[1][https://www.drinkerbiddle.com/insights/publications/2017/04/...](https://www.drinkerbiddle.com/insights/publications/2017/04/california- supreme-court)

<comment><USER3> I don't see how the FAA is within Congress's commerce clause power.

<comment><USER4> It is one of the greatest blunders of the constitution. Nowhere near enough thought went into limiting the power. Granted, the commerce clause is almost _the whole purpose of the federal government_ , but it's nonetheless far too broad.

 _Everything_ is interstate commerce.

<comment><USER5> Plenty of stuff isn't interstate commerce. The expansion of Federal Commerce Clause powers is the result of a more expansive application of the Necessary & Proper Clause.

Which is why the recent FAA decisions are absurd on their face. Even _if_ you agreed with the 1940s era precedent expanding Federal _powers_ it's still trivial to reject application of the FAA to most commercial transactions. The FAA expressly limits itself to interstate commerce. And an expansion of federal powers doesn't in any way, shape, or form require or even suggest that a court should reinterpret the settled application of previous statute, _particularly_ when the text, intent, purpose, and history of that statute was quite obviously circumscribed to a particular class of commercial transactions.

<comment><USER6> Almost everything _can be interpreted as_ interstate commerce (and is!) I believe what the GP is saying is that, in light of this, a more prescient constitution would have restricted Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce, breaking that down into many small powers and no default blanket assumption of power beyond those.

<comment><USER5> Example: The growing or even selling of marijuana is _not_ interstate commerce. No court has ever said it constitutes interstate commerce. It's only been deemed to _possibly_ substantially effect interstate commerce, except when the particular product or participants are actually crossing state borders.[1] But that interpretation alone doesn't get you to the interpretation that the Federal government can regulate it; it's literally two steps divorced from interstate commerce. It's the Necessary & Proper Clause that was used to encompass activities involving marijuana.

Saying that everything can be interpreted as interstate commerce is misleading, and if it intended as a critique of constitutional law has the effect of suggesting that nothing can actually be done to change it as a practical matter, when that's just not the case. The Necessary & Proper Clause by its nature provides poorly defined boundaries, which means it's far easier to limit extensions than if the definition of interstate commerce had literally been made expansive--which, to reiterate, has remained much the same since the expansion of Federal powers began in the late 19th century and arguably even since the 18th century.

I grudgingly agreed with the argument that Obamacare was a valid use of Federal Commerce Clause power (as extended by the Necessary & Proper Clause) because of the precedent of Gonzales v. Raich from 2005 when _two_ conservative justices agreed with the logic above with four other liberal justices. But Gonzales was _new_ case law. At the time they could have legitimately and reasonably drew a line that said such activity was too far removed from interstate commerce. But they didn't. Apparently even for a justice like Scalia they'd prefer to complain that "everything is interstate commerce" rather than draw meaningful--and _obvious_ \--distinctions. But Scalia (along with Kennedy) didn't, not because it would overturn precedent-- it was an unanswered question--but because he didn't want to throw the FDA and the War on Drugs in particular into disarray.

So when Obamacare came around and Scalia was apoplectic about Roberts siding with upholding the law (albeit on a tax theory), all I could do was roll my eyes.

My point being: let's be honest and fair about this stuff. By pretending that these extensions of Federal power are a fait accompli, then that's precisely what we'll get. Not because it's _true_ , but because we're just being lazy. Even if one is committed to existing precedent, there will come a day when we see pressure to extend Federal power further, probably in entirely unpredictable ways. Honesty and vigilance will matter.

[2] AFAIU, using telecommunications in the transaction is a separate crime. It's not the buying/selling, per se, but the use of interstate infrastructure to conspire to buy/sell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> PSA: remember to periodically donate to EFF if you can and care. I'm sending them about 25% of my continuous donation budget:

[https://supporters.eff.org/donate](https://supporters.eff.org/donate)

<comment><USER8> I like donating what I call "The Orwell Tax". $19.84 per month (or year, if you can't afford monthly).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I didn't realize they did this until I heard about it in a Reply All episode. [https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply- all/awhk76/135-robocall-...](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply- all/awhk76/135-robocall-bang- bang?utm_source=gimletPlayer&utm_medium=copyShare&utm_campaign=gimletPlayer)

No way would I have consented to them selling my location data.

</comment><comment><USER10> Disgusting. We are all subsidizing spyware (mobile phones).

</comment><comment><USER11> I could not figure out why this is not considered personal information. Is the data anonymized or has a phone number attached to it?

</comment><comment><USER12> Don't forget the aggregators like 3cinteractive

</comment><comment><USER13> Why would the lawyers choose _this_ hill to be the hill they live and die upon? I feel like you're going to have a tough time garnering sympathy for this specific case.

<comment><USER14> Protecting civil liberties generally means defending unsympathetic characters. They always are chosen first, and they must be defended before the precedent is set. By the time encroachers move on to sympathetic characters, it's too late. The encroachment has been normalized, it is in fact normal, and the liberty was lost already.

That's not my original thought, but I can't find the original quote. I think it's from the ACLU, from some occasion when Jewish lawyers were defending free speech of neonazis or something.

<comment><USER15> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie)

Is the case you're looking for. On its face, ACLU defended Neonazis.

A deeper reading is that the ACLU defended the first amendment's rights of speech and of peacably assemble and redress grievances.

History: Skokie was a destination for many Jewish peoples who came from the death camps in Germany in WWII. Choosing this site for the march was intentional. However, the march wasn't actually done.</comment></comment></comment>


Mozilla Chief Steps Down After 1 Week - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-chief/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Executives%20and%20Management&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body <comment><USER2> This is absurd. I've been following the news for over a week. I still don't understand the outrage. Heck, I doubt Mozilla even did, because Eich posted a reassuring statement and people still aren't happy.

Besides, he never said he hated same-sex couples. Supporting Prop 8 was a bad decision, but the vitriol directed at Eich is a non-sequitur. There's varying opinions on varying sides of the debate, so why is Eich singled out for having one?

People can hate Eich. I frankly don't care what anyone thinks of him. But it's so _boneheaded_ that someone would need to step down from a CEO position just because he supported a bill. It's scary. And remember, Eich isn't just "some guy"; he was CTO of Mozilla for years and invented JavaScript.

The whole situation is kind of pathetic.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a good thing. And I strongly disagree with the idea that none of his political beliefs should be taken into account when determining whether he should be the CEO of Mozilla.

When it comes to personal/political beliefs, there is a line. Having beliefs that go beyond that line means it will (should) affect your professional life. But people draw that line at different places, meaning that, in aggregate, you don't know where the chips will fall in situations like Eich being the CEO of Mozilla. Some people draw the line in a place, such that supporting anti-gay marriage legislation is acceptable, others do not.

I think few people would be surprised if there was an uproar upon the revelation that the CEO of Mozilla (or any company) was a supporter of, say, the KKK. Most everyone would agree that that's an unacceptable "political" belief, such that he should be not be the CEO.

So the question isn't whether Eich's beliefs should be an issue. The question is whether supporting anti-gay marriage legislation goes beyond the line of acceptability. And the public has spoken pretty clearly here. Good for them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Gay marriage opinion is the grounds for changing CEO. How about immigration opinion? Animal rights opinion? Climate change opinion? Political views?

<comment><USER5> Sorry but I have to agree with this. If the purpose of the role is to be the CEO of a company dedicated to open source software then his religion, personal beliefs, and his lifestyle choices should have no bearing on being a CEO. That includes both people who are for AND against gay marriage. We aren't supposed to discriminate on any front when hiring someone so what makes this different?

<comment><USER6> If he doesn't like gay marriage, he doesn't have to get gay married. But contributing a significant amount of money to take away that option from someone else is wrong. And to believe it's his right to take that option away is wrong.

I have a same-sex partner, Brendan is willing to work and make a real effort to take away our recognition. To unmarry our children's parents. To eliminate our shared benefits, and impair the other 1148 rights conferred by marriage.

I am not happy that my money and time might go towards his salary and to further empower his views, so it's a logical decision for me to boycott his company. Many others feel similarly.

To be fair, at any point he could have said "My views have evolved, and I no longer think it is my right to deny others marriage.". He chose not to.

<comment><USER5> Actually, in a free democracy, it is his right to go against others beliefs and to contribute campaign money to those who hold similar beliefs to himself. That's what makes this country so great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mozilla is a political organisation not just a pure commercial entity. It has supporters and a community not just customers and the CEO needs to retain the support and trust of that community. A CEO with controversial political views would be a risky choice for this post whatever the subject).

</comment><comment><USER8> After seeing all this, I wonder what would it take to get the people behind 'the right to marriage' to get the same reaction to 'the right to privacy' \- which is an arguably more expansive provision that protects literally 100% of the population?

<comment><USER9> I agree with your sentiment, and I'm not being facetious when I say the answer is "a single human being who can be held up as the enemy." The government seems to be protected in this scandal by its very ubiquity and pervasiveness. There is no one we can force to step down, no building we can shutter, no single computer we can turn off that will restore our privacy.

<comment><USER8> It's sad that for "change" to happen, it often requires someone to hate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's done is done. But now that Mozilla rid itself one of its best assets, what's do prevent a rival like Microsoft or Google to hire Eich and have him work on their products?

<comment><USER11> I doubt any company is chomping at the bit to hire Eich after this fiasco, regardless of his technical competencies.

<comment><USER8> The irony of this happening in SV where everything is a supposed "meritocracy" :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ummm... so what does gay marriage have to do with browsing the web? FAIL

<comment><USER13> Building a web browser requires that you employee people, some of whom may be gay. Alienating that entire group of people, and the majority of others who support them, can certainly put a damper on their motivation to keep that browser pushing along at full speed.

Definitely not FAIL, this is a big win for Mozilla and civil rights.

<comment><USER14> And ... the users. They thought they had the company swung; but there were boycotts and actually-disgusted end users happening.</comment></comment></comment>


Mondragon Corporation - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation <comment><USER2> There's a really inspiring federation of 40-ish tech worker co-ops in Argentina called FACTTIC[1], who have been developing a neat process called FIT[2] by which they share work amongst themselves via regular check-in calls. It's almost like they're part of a big meta-company together that shared opportunities based on their needs (e.g., who needs the money the most, etc.)

Here's a video of a presentation they gave on the format: [https://agaric.coop/blog/show-and-tell-agaric-sharing- work-o...](https://agaric.coop/blog/show-and-tell-agaric-sharing-work-other- coops)

The most exciting part is that they're now trying to share the model with tech worker co-ops abroad, and maybe even figure out how to build similar trust between international co-ops.

Disclaimer: I'm a member of a new tech worker co-op in Toronto, Canada (Hypha[3]), and have a big crush on FACTTIC.

[1]: [https://facttic.org.ar/](https://facttic.org.ar/) [2]: [https://facttic.org.ar/fit/](https://facttic.org.ar/fit/) [3]: [https://hypha.coop](https://hypha.coop)

<comment><USER3> Could coops constitute, at least, a partial solution to ageism? Many of the US commenters have expressed their frustration and experiences in this regard, perhaps cooperatives can serve as a good quality alternative. Perhaps the problem is that it seems a model that fits more with consulting than with a product company.

<comment><USER2> Hm. Interesting. I mean, I'm biased, but I believe it could.

An analogy I'm trying with friends is that a worker co-op is less like a company that does a specific thing, and more like a ship that sails where it's members wish it to go. It might present as a solid "WE ARE A COMPANY THAT DOES X", but it only does that so long as that serves its members. If the destination doesn't serve the crew, they create a new destination, they don't necessarily ditch crew members.

Also, the crew doesn't worry about the ship sailing away without them :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought Chomsky's quote was interesting.

"Take the most advanced case: Mondragon. It's worker owned, it's not worker managed, although the management does come from the workforce often, but it's in a market system and they still exploit workers in South America, and they do things that are harmful to the society as a whole and they have no choice. If you're in a system where you must make profit in order to survive, you're compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others."

<comment><USER5> Is the alternative 100% top-down central-managed solution to ensure no externalization happens ever? In theory that's appealing (especial from the view from Chomsky's academic ivory tower), but then in practice every time it's been tried it hasn't worked well at all.

Chomsky is smart, but not very useful because "In theory there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is" \- Yogi Berra

<comment><USER6> Chomsky is anti-centralization, he is an anarchist (anarcho-syndicalist).

In general, his ideal end-goal world would include smaller states with more direct control by the populace, with worker-owned and worker-managed corporations, with free markets of goods and services between different corporations and different states, and of course freedom of movement. Strong environmental control would be almost implied if the people doing an economic activity were in charge of decisions and were also directly impacted by the effects of those decisions. Localizing and letting corporations be small would also put a natural cap on inequality, though democratically run states could impose additional safeguards where needed (minimum wages, estate taxes, non- discrimination clauses etc.)

<comment><USER7> I do wonder sometimes how different Chomsky's career and his academic work would have been if he'd been required to take a course in game theory while he was an undergraduate.

<comment><USER8> I guarantee you Chomsky knows more about game theory than you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In France, in the game industry, there is Motion Twin: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Twin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Twin)

"Motion Twin is run as an anarcho-syndicalist workers cooperative with equal salary and decision-making power between its members."

Also, this is where the Haxe programming language was created.

<comment><USER10> > In August 2019, Motion Twin spun off a new studio, Evil Empire, composed of > Dead Cells developers who wanted to continue its development while Motion > Twin moved to a new project. Evil Empire is run by Motion Twin's former head > of marketing and is not run as a cooperative, particularly because the > company wanted to scale beyond ten employees. Motion Twin continues to > participate in Dead Cells decisions.

Spawning more small cooperatives when faced with financial success is a pretty nice alternative to a traditional growth strategy.

<comment><USER11> The quote clearly says that the new company is "not run as a cooperative".

<comment><USER10> You're right. Not sure how I managed to completely misread that.

That's a lot more boring then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are lots of small tech worker coops in the U.S. and Canada. See [https://techworker.coop](https://techworker.coop).

I co-founded one, Sassafras Tech Collective, in Ann Arbor. It's been an amazing journey. I don't think I could ever go back to working in a non- democratic workplace.

<comment><USER13> Can you speak to the downsides of a democratic workplace? How do you avoid the pitfalls of a union where people end up getting compensated for things like seniority instead of skill?

<comment><USER14> A union is not a coop, so the forces are not the same at all.

Furthermore, it's not clear that "seniority" would trump "skill" in a co-op, either. Or that the opposite is true of a more "traditional" workplace.

The job of each worker-owner is, in part, to help other worker owners developer their strengths to their fullest for the benefit of co-op.

An employee-owned co-operative corporation (EOCC) governs as form of direct democracy. In my experience, your biggest obstacle is going to be collective decision-making. How well you do that is a test of the people in the co-op. Consider: management is just another skill, not a rank. You don't have a boss. _You have people who are counting on you._ Management serves at the pleasure of the worker-owners.

<comment><USER15> > You don't have a boss.

Unless everyone can make equally large payments on behalf of the company, you most certainly have bosses.

Find those people. They are the bosses. Everything else is theatre.

<comment><USER12> SamBam nailed it. For us, any large expenses must be approved by consensus of the whole group. For larger coops, they would need approval of a democratically elected and recallable board of directors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hi,

greetings from a worker that work at Ikerlan (a research/technological center part of the corporation). We are a second degree cooperative. Formed by workers and companies that we work for. You can see things that we do at [https://www.ikerlan.es/en/](https://www.ikerlan.es/en/)

Happy to answer to questions if I can :)

<comment><USER17> Seems to be many open positions for IT staff:

[https://www.ikerlan.es/en/job-offers](https://www.ikerlan.es/en/job-offers)

<comment><USER16> Yes, We have some IT positions right now. My current position is Artificial Intelligence team leader on the ICT area and we are seeking for Full Stack engineers/researchers and Data Scientists.

Moreover, we also offer always the possibility to do a PhD in different domains. (power converters, batteries, embedded electronics, safety critical systems, wireless technologies, IoT , AI, etc). In my team we have 4 PhD students right now in collaboration with different universities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's another interesting (but way smaller) cooperative in Spain: Igalia [https://www.igalia.com/](https://www.igalia.com/)

They work in open source projects and are big contributors to Chromium/blink, WebKit, V8, Vulkan, etc...

<comment><USER3> They look small-ish though. I wonder if there's any big coop software company out there.

<comment><USER19> My suspicion is that the worker-owned cooperative model, especially if it emphasizes the more important worker self-directed part, will tend towards much smaller units of self-organization. I predict we will see confederations and networks of smallish coops, and I suspect this is for the best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the article:

        At Mondragon, there are agreed-upon wage ratios
        between executive work and field or factory work
        which earns a minimum wage. These ratios range
        from 3:1 to 9:1 in different cooperatives and
        average 5:1. That is, the general manager of an
        average Mondragon cooperative earns no more than
        5 times as much as the theoretical minimum wage
        paid in their cooperative. For most workers, this
        ratio is smaller because there are few Mondragon
        worker-owners that earn minimum wages, because
        most jobs are somewhat specialized and are
        classified at higher wage levels. The wage ratio
        of a cooperative is decided periodically by its
        worker-owners through a democratic vote.

Afaik this is the biggest worker coop in existence. Does anyone know of any sizable examples of this ownership-model in tech?

edit: added "worker" to "coop" (as I'm not interested in non-worker coops)

<comment><USER14> Does it matter if it's large? I was just talking to a friend who started a small company, merged with a bigger company and thought he had done everything right. After a few years, he regretted selling the company. Small is beautiful. We learned this as children. Challenge the mantra of size and growth.

<comment><USER21> it matters but not in the sense that everybody should aim for a super large corporation.

It matters because it validates that cooperatives can grow very large, and refutes the claims such as "yes it's nice, but of course it works only for small ventures and could never grow)

<comment><USER22> But the answer to that shouldn't be "here's an example of a large one" but "why do you care so much for growth, it's fine to be small".

<comment><USER21> No it shouldn't (even if I agree with your sentiment about company, growth and probably life in general). People interested in coop model have a legitimate interest in proving that it can work for various business size

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We have a software cooperative in Austin Texas (vulk.coop). We also have a monthly virtual (using zoom) and in-person meetup group [https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co- operatives](https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-operatives) if you want to know more about software cooperatives. There are papers on cooperatives found here: [https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co- operatives/about/](https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co- operatives/about/). If you want more information (or even if you just want to rigorously debate) about organic entities, worker owned entities, cooperatives, etc., I would join that group.

<comment><USER24> I am a member of the meetup and like the fact that most of the discussions are held online to enable remote attendance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I did some freelance work for their University's Engineering Faculty in ~2014 and it was pretty cool, reading up on them here now I can see how their coop nature influenced their research, as a lot of it was about making sure that workers and management both felt important and appreciated.

My work was on some "business simulators" for a management course they were preparing.You would first pick what kind of response you'd like from your employees or clients (i.e. "passion" \- they would consider their project worthwhile, back the vision, realize that people are key... ) and then you'd be able to control 15 management parameters (like job security, management transparency, salary range, leadership style, training... ) then you'd see a chart with the output and even see "thoughts" that your employees would probably have.

</comment><comment><USER26> In the UK there is Suma wholefoods being notable for being the largest equal pay cooperative in Europe with a turn over of £40 million. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suma_(co- operative)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suma_\(co-operative\))

<comment><USER27> Also in UK Food, [https://www.unicorn-grocery.coop/](https://www.unicorn- grocery.coop/) in Manchester is pretty cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> They even run their own university. [https://www.mondragon.edu/en/home](https://www.mondragon.edu/en/home) for people who want to do their degree there and then I guess have a path into the company itself ?

<comment><USER16> If you study on the university by itself I would say that is easier to have a "first contact" with the companies that form the Corporation. However, were I work, more than 70% of the work force have studied outside Mondragon university.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The reason why Mondragon was able to grow to its current size is their credit union Caja Laboral. Under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco "people's savings banks" were allowed to offer higher interest rates than competing banks. Therefore local citizens would deposit their funds in Caja Laboral, which would fund more cooperative businesses.

There's nothing special about the region or the culture, if you artificially favor a certain type of business structure then you will get more it. Mondragon is a classic case of incentives at work.

<comment><USER30> And what about the rest of the country where credit unions also exist but we didn't get more (at least not that much) of that type of artificially favoured business structure?

<comment><USER29> I would argue that you did get more across the country, but the question is why is Mondragon more successful.

The other benfit they had was the isolation of the Basque region in Spain during the 1950s. They weren't served by railroads and the region itself is quite mountainous, so for regular people they tended to be the only game in town. In fact, their slogan at the time was "savings or suitcases". In other places credit unions would compete with each other so you couldn't establish a dominant position in the way that Caja Laboral did. Liberalization of the banking industry in Spain during the 1970s tended to level the playing field further. So you have the right mixture for a single dominant cooperative in Mondragon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Went to a talk given by them once. They have cool things like a maximum ratio between the highest and lowest salary. They've done some huge projects in the past like energy turbines and the likes.

<comment><USER32> I am from Bizkaia and I'd love to work there, but as I had no luck on Derio/Zamudio neither, I am skeptical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've visited Mondragon, both the city (and the region) as well as many of the co-ops themselves.

I did a small slideshow/presentation for those interested: [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EFgwKNLgRgQQf8Kv236_...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EFgwKNLgRgQQf8Kv236_vUzUMzyOavQZdT2ABxn8m0g/edit)

</comment><comment><USER30> It's worth noting that only 40% of the group employees are owners.

<comment><USER34> The number of non owner employees is also growing. The numbers used to be much higher when they had Fagor but they fired most of the work force when it went bankrupt in 2013 and the buying company only opened 700 jobs to replace the old plant. Now a ton of their business is their supermarket branch in Eroski and most are temp workers with obviously no owner rights.

<comment><USER3> I always see the same faces in all the Eroskis in my city, are you sure most of them are temp workers?

<comment><USER34> By contract many are. At least in Bizkaia last time I asked is kinda how they got around giving them voting rights. I wonder if now they are giving them contratos indefinidios (full contracts) with no voting rights. But I do know most still cannot vote, and now only 40% have voting rights since Fagor went broke in 2013

<comment><USER16> I think this is more related to each company status (and laws). Eroski almost broke and is in "survival mode" right now.

As I know the general objective is to be around 60-70%.

<comment><USER34> So if they get rid of eroski and just privatise it, you think they can go back to 70%? I think lagun aro still not up there in terms of people with vote rights, no?

But you work there so you probably know better

<comment><USER16> Well I think the main idea is sanitize it first (at least they are trying) then I suppose that they will be able to "add" more people to the cooperative. From Lagun Aro I do not have exact numbers sorry but I know that the main idea is to have +-60%. For example, right now in my company we are at 50% of people with vote rights because an unprecedented grow in last years (went from 250 to 340 workers in 4 years) with the idea to go back to 60% little by little depending on market conditions.

Here are some positive links about Eroski from spanish newpapers.

\- [https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2019/05/23/companias/...](https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2019/05/23/companias/1558610554_459774.html)

\- [https://www.larazon.es/economia/eroski-cierra-2018-con- benef...](https://www.larazon.es/economia/eroski-cierra-2018-con-beneficios-y- reduce-su-deu-BC23475703/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm surprised that more disaffected tech folk aren't starting their own coops. People in companies like

Especially in places like Seattle and San Francisco, where there are strong lefty communities. I wonder if we'll see the folks who get frustrated with the policies of Google/Amazon/etc splinter off to form coops.

<comment><USER36> Yeah. I had been trying to do it for awhile but there's surprisingly little activity around here in our sector (Oakland/SF tech)

My partners of the consultancy we founded last year decided to go this route. There aren't many great local examples to learn from so we're kind of figuring it out as we go. Obviously B2B tech/software/consulting is very different than for example Arizmendi, a local cooperative bakery.

If anyone else is interested or involved in coops in the Bay Area, please let me know and I'd be happy to meet up.

<comment><USER35> Right? I look at Seattle and think "There should totally be a thriving tech coop scene here".

But I think it's because of risk -- leaving a FAANG to found a tech coop is a risk. Why give up $400k/year for a moonshot?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Shameless plug :-)

Democracy at Work Institute: [https://institute.coop/](https://institute.coop/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Does anyone know the best state(s) in which to base a cooperative? Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming are the best for corporations, the main goal being to avoid corporate income taxes:

[https://www.legalnature.com/guides/top-states-for- incorporat...](https://www.legalnature.com/guides/top-states-for- incorporation-delaware-nevada-and-wyoming-explained)

Related to that, is there something to be said for basing a cooperative/corporation in your home city/state specifically to bring in tax income for schools, infrastructure, police, firefighters, etc? What about nonprofit corporations, is this a nonissue for them?

In Boise, ID (where I live), HP and Micron/Crucial have enjoyed tax breaks for years as an incentive to be based here. But people have speculated that those breaks made it harder for other tech companies to compete here, because their tax burden lowered the wages they could offer. That may have set back the startup scene here for many years. It also potentially raises residential property taxes since someone has to pay for those incentives, and that's become a major issue as more people move here.

I worked at HP for a year as a contractor 15 years ago and it was wonderful, so I'm not disparaging them. I'm just curious to see what others think of this issue.

</comment><comment><USER39> There's a "sister" concept of this called steward-ownership, promoted by this German organization:

[https://purpose-economy.org/en/](https://purpose-economy.org/en/)

They have a lot of interesting materials and case studies (Bosch, Zeiss and others).

Basically you can form an LLC the majority of which will be owned by the employees and will also guarantee that the company can never be acquired. There are a few schemes that can attract investments on special fixed terms, such as redeemable shares with 3x return.

This type of companies live much longer on average, according to some studies, and are also more stable and less prone to economic crises.

Anyway, fascinating stuff. I'm seriously considering steward ownership for my next company now.

<comment><USER14> This is another form of cooperative, especially in early stage. Once the cooperative gets established, you eventually want to become a C Corp to be able to manage investments for your employees and plan on an orderly succession.

<comment><USER40> Your confusing the coop with the company here - worker coop structures can get complex.

eg abc.coop may 100% own abc.com, the employees of abc.com will be members of abc.coop

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wouldn't hold Mondragon Corporation to a very high standard. Back in 2005-06 the company I worked in was intending to acquire Mondragon's wind turbine business (Ecotecnia). This was finally acquired by Alstom.

During the due diligence we saw the high level of political corruption, and terrorism financing Mondragon was involved in. Very distrubing. Once we saw this, we stopped looking at the acquisition.

<comment><USER42> Terrorism? Edit: looking at your comment history I'm going to go with them supporting other left wing groups as your "terrorism"?

<comment><USER41> Comment history? Left wing groups terrorists? Please enlighten us with your research.

<comment><USER42> You're an investor, it says so in your profile. Most of your comments have a fairly standard pro-markets anti-regulation view point. I was extrapolating that to be conservative but you could also be a liberal pro-markets type. So, my bad.

After doing some cursory googling, it looks like you were probably referring to the ETA. I would like to hear more about the terrorism and corruption, if you feel like going into it.

I have to admit, though, as an investor you and I see the world very very differently. If you don't mind me disagreeing with you I will try not to make any more assumptions.

<comment><USER41> You're mixing your views and opinions with facts.

All I can tell you is that our legal/compliance team did reach out to authorities.

As you can imagine, I won't entertain your ideology discussion when I'm refering to facts.

<comment><USER43> You're coming across in a axe-to-grind uninformed manner.

You make a claim like "Mondragon invests in terrorism" and you had better back that up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I found out about Mondragon after watching [http://ownershipeconomy.net/](http://ownershipeconomy.net/) and learning more about distributism.

</comment><comment><USER45> Does anyone know how you become an employee-owner (or cease to be one) at Mondragon? Is it a matter of buying in or length of service or are some roles owners and other roles just not?

<comment><USER46> [https://drpop.org/mondragon-how-do-you-become-a- member/](https://drpop.org/mondragon-how-do-you-become-a-member/)

> The path to becoming a member of one of the cooperatives begins much like > any other employment relationship – a position must be available, and the > individual needs to be the right person for the job, as well as pre-disposed > to cooperation. Once that is established, the worker is hired into a six- > month contract as a temporary employee, much like the provisional period for > many employees in a conventional enterprise.

> Depending on the proven suitability of the employee for the job and the > availability of long-term work in the company, a good employee may be > proposed for membership, or in cases where long-term work is not yet > available, offered a renewed contract (for no more than three years). In > some cases, "unsuitable" workers, who just don't work out, may be asked to > leave.

> Once membership is mutually accepted, the worker has 36 months to contribute > his or her initial capital share of €15,000 , which represents the system's > minimum annual salary. This can be amortized through salary deductions, or > in some cases borrowed from a bank as "capital to work."

> At any given time at least 80% of the workers of any Mondragon cooperative > must be full-fledged members.

<comment><USER45> Perfect thanks.

That all seems fair. I wonder how many people are put off by the 15k buy in? That's about 500 euros a month for 2.5 years. That's a lot for many workers imho. I wonder if its tax deductable...

<comment><USER33> They don't pay for it all at once. They get a loan from the co-op bank (Laboral Kutxa).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is a video about co-ops and Mondragon: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKbukSeZ29o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKbukSeZ29o)

The quality isn't great, though.

</comment><comment><USER34> So some thing that are a bit less glamorous than described on the article is that one reason this works so well is because of the conditions of the place it runs in. This coop comes from the basque country, a northern autonomous region of Spain. It is a fairly rich area, with a huge port and industrial past and a pretty tight knit community.

This generates an environment that allows for certain things to happen. One is an area less prone to economic recessions, with higher wage equality and a more egalitarian and humanistic approach to business. On the negative side though there is an insidious xenophobia that permeates the area. Essentially a lot of the ads they run (for example for their supermarket brand Eroski) do so on a platform of "its better because its basque". Like basque cows, basque cheese etc. Many of our companies brag about "we only hire local people", so music festivals for example have all the staff hired locally rather than having an open hiring process or allowing bands to bring their staff.

This is a bit of a double edged sword where we are creating a bit of a local maximum for the basque country economy at the expense of a worse average for everyone else (assuming market conditions can create Nash equilibriums). Now I do believe Mondragon has done some fantastic stuff, but they are not without a fault and they also exist thanks to an environment that allows such conditions to exist and do the work they do.

<comment><USER48> To advertise something as "it's better because it's basque/$COUNTRY" is not xenophobic at all. First, because by that definition then almost everyone would be (e.g. french). Second, because there are actual objective benefits of sourcing local products (e.g. environmental).

I also really doubt what you explain is universally applicable as it looks to be a very large corporation anyway.

<comment><USER34> Its better because its local is not xenophobic, its better because its from within some made up geographical boundries is.

There are tons of objective reasons to promote local products, we have incredible soil and weather, we have a historical tradition of shepherding and sea faring. But none of that is promoted, its the "its from here" with vague connotations.

It is a large corporation that has had a huge trouble expanding outside the local area of influence. Eroski has been a huge supermarket in the basque country for decades and has never hold more than a minimun influence in spain (despite other supermaket chains like Mercadona appearing much later and now dominating the country). Fagor grew steadily to 5,600 employees and then went bankrupt leaving all but 700 unemployed when a company from elsewhere bought the remains. The university has 4 thousand students and most are basque.

They are massive but they are massive because they have a huge influence on a very rich part of spain

<comment><USER11> "Buy local" is not xenophobic.

Everyone knows that "buying local" is about supporting local jobs/industry. There's nothing xenophobic about caring more about your neighbors than some people you'll never meet thousands of miles away.

If it is to be a meaningful term, xenophobia has to be about fear or hatred. It can't mean "favoring local over non-local".

<comment><USER49> Sure, but in this region it's more like buy my local good for you product, sure it's a little more expensive but.... "OR ELSE"... Many have been driven out of their town or even killed (yes that is what I said) if you go against the status quo in the Basque region. Mondragón would not exist for not for the Basque cause... and most likely (it's been their financial arm) the Basque cause would not have existed with out Mondragón.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Wow that is quite a lot of employees, but this excerpt came across a bit odd to me:

> At the end of 2014, it employed 74,117 people... > By 2015, 74,335 people > were employed

So the increase of 0.29% over a brief although somewhat ambiguous period of time is supposed to tell me what?

<comment><USER51> That in 2014, there were 74,117 employees and in 2015, there were 74,335 employees.

Given the size of the company, I imagine this data exists in a tabular format and someone was just converting to a (maybe imperfect) natural language representation of the data.

<comment><USER50> My point was they appeared to be providing an observation about the change in size over time, but the wording around the time frame is so ambiguous it could mean anything between one day and one year, plus the magnitude of the change didn't appear to be significant. In other words, those 2 statements in combination provide little to no extra value in understanding the organization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> While I do have a strong soft spot for the dreamy leftist ideal of worker cooperatives (and I'm happy and impressed that an example as big and long- living as Mondragon exists), I've recently started to find the much less anticapitalistic concept of b2b buyer cooperatives far more interesting. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DATEV](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DATEV) for example is doing just fine and feels as corporate as it gets (interviewed there once).

What's so interesting about b2b cooperatives? Recently we have seen the rise of market/directory platforms in fields where the network effect is so strong that it's impossible to sustain real competition for long and once they are effectively monopolistic they can squeeze entire industries dry at will, degenerating into pure rent seeking. Poster child example: there cannot be a second booking.com, the closest they have to competition is airbnb.

A buyer cooperative with the explicitly defined mission to just run the platform at low cost would be the perfect antidote and a massive improvement for everybody in the buying sector (those that purchase directory listings) and their customer base. It wouldn't even be an impediment to innovation because frontends could still be a multitude of conventional for-profits, they'd just not compete in listing breadth (they'd all get the same offers from the coop backend). Works roughly like that in the airline industries, despite multiple competing backends. The big difference: those backends are (were?) owned by airlines, not by outsiders trying to maximise value extraction.

</comment><comment><USER53> There is also REI Collective in the USA

Real socialism is:

Mitchell Lama Housing Cooperatives

Food Cooperatives

Credit Unions

Employee Owned Companies

I define socialism as collective ownership of the means of production. By that broad definition, the public stock market — a quintessentially capitalist institution — would also be socialist, since corporations own most of the means of production in this country. So the definition needs to be refined a la Richard Wolff ... namely, DEMOCRACY inside an institution is socialism. One person - one vote. The extreme opposite of that is one share one vote where one person has so many shares that whatever he says goes:

[https://medium.com/swlh/facebook-investors-cant-remove- mark-...](https://medium.com/swlh/facebook-investors-cant-remove-mark- zuckerberg-and-that-s-a-problem-f07d3ce7e113)

All of us who run a startup probably begin in a capitalist structure, but could be encouraged to transition to a socialist structure by giving employees more voting power once the business is thriving:

1\. [https://amp.ft.com/content/8a70b692-0967-11ea-b2d6-9bf4d1957...](https://amp.ft.com/content/8a70b692-0967-11ea-b2d6-9bf4d1957a67)

2\. [https://www.hrcapitalist.com/2020/02/cards-against- humanity-...](https://www.hrcapitalist.com/2020/02/cards-against-humanity- buys-small-company-makes-it-employee-owned.html)

I specifically thought to choose the domain "hr _capitalist_ " for their comments on this move to socialism:

 _"Cards of Humanity is doing an acquihire with a twist with this acquisition - they found a troubled company for sale, and believed in the talent that existed. BUT - this form of acquihire transfers wealth to the talent not directly to their bank account, but by giving them ownership in the company. That 's a powerful retention tool, and if for some reason they can't make it work, the talent is sure to remember that Cards gave them a chance to save the company and turn it around through their investment and subsequent transfer of ownership. Moving acquired talent to ownership positions is a powerful play."_

This is what capitalists had to say about a move to socialism in this case.

I would argue that socialist institutions (much different than state- capitalism or its near-synonym: state-socialism) are preferred to capitalist ones, in the marketplace.

People form lines around the block stretching for years to get into the Mitchell Lama housing cooperatives in NYC. They have far lower costs than landlord-owned buildings, and yet the same level of facilities or better. They are effectively nonprofits, because they are run by and for the cooperators. Few vacancies because many people don't want to leave, unlike the high turnover and 12%+ vacancy rate in privately owned buildings. I suspect credit unions vs banks are similar.

Workers in a company would not vote to ship their own jobs overseas or do massive layoffs.

So do I advocate libertarian socialism? Yes. I want to see more institutions be democratically governed, like many universities are close to it, etc.

Note: SOCIALISM is different than SOCIAL DEMOCRACY which is typically done on a city or state level to tax capitalist organizations and give public services and universal safety nets to everyone.

However, socialism isn't a panacea. Newcomers are still hazed and treated just like countries treat peniless immigrants. So we need social democracy too. Perhaps one day social democracy will take place on a global level. (We are working on that at intercoin.org)

Finally... I should say there are better systems than socialism and capitalism, that involve UBI AND COLLABORATION rather than HUNGER AND COMPETITION. They are primarily gift economies found in the information space, and include:

Science

Open Source Software

Wikipedia

The Web

Cryptocurrency (as it was originally intended, ie scalable tech not the monolithic blockchain crap) was going to let the network be owned by participants and even VCs loved it for a hot second until the non scalability killed it (we're working on that too).

Wikipedia vs Britannica

Web vs AOL

Science vs Private Alchemy

WebKit vs IE

You get the idea. Who wins? Hint: not the capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER54> It's time for a browser extension that filters out random Wikipedia articles on HN..</comment>


Red Hat Ceph 4: Easy-Peasy Installation - <AUTHOR> https://ceph.io/community/red-hat-ceph-4-easy-peasy-installation/ <comment><USER2> Really nice tool that makes Ceph even more accessible and easy to bring up.</comment>