OT: Atheist joke

Oh, jeeeeez! ROTFLMAO!

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
     It\'s what you learn, after you know it all, that counts.

"When I roar," says the lion, "the whole of the jungle trembles!"

"When I growl" says the bear," the whole of the forest quakes!"

"So what!" says the chicken, "When I cough, the whole world s**ts itself."

martin

Drudge had a funny headline yesterday:

FRENCH ANARCHISTS RIOT FOR JOB SECURITY

John

Well, anarcho-syndicalists wouldn't fit in a headline, and nobody in the U.S. realses that anarcho-syndicalists are a funny kind of non-communist socialist who believes in organising businesses as worker's co-operatives rather than as limited-stock companies, where the stake-holders and workes are dstinct and entirely separate groups with distinct and entirely separate interests.

There are still a few worker's cooperatives around - the Co-op Stores in the U.K. and the John Lewis Partnership - and they were doing fine when I last looked, but when the workers in Catalonia got uppity, early in the Spanish Civil war (the one that Franco won) and took over their companies from the Franco-supporting bosses, the legitimate anti-Franco central government treated the anarcho-syndicalist companoies as a bigger danger than Franco and shut them all down, despite the consequent loss of military production.

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Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

In the 1970's Berkeley was a hotbed of co-op businesses. The ideal was a business owned by all workers, with equal pay, say, and all that. Few have survived. A bakery around here is sort of that model...

named after a Basque labor organizer.

Their stuff is quite good, especially the scones and the exotic pizzas, like Yukon Gold Potato and Parmesan. They're closed on Monday, when they all meet in a circle of chairs and apparently talk all day.

The local garbage/rubbish collectors are known as "scavengers" here. For a hundred years or so, Sunset Scavenger was the big one, and was a co-op. Memberships were family things, like bar pilots, and everybody had to work the trucks now and then, regardless of main function. A few years back, they sold out to Waste Management Corp, the IBM of the US garbage industry, and most of the co-opers retired rich.

Coops are of course unnatural, for any number of reasons, which is why few can compete.

John

Coops worry the hell out of regular capitalists, who seem to go to some trouble to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about them.

Human being to seem to have evolved to live in co-operative groups of about 150 people. One or the other sex would get to move to some other group on reaching sexual maturity, but that would have been about it as far as job flexibility went. Co-operative businesses strike me as a lot less "unnatural" than proprietor-employee companies - though you'd have a hell of time setting one up and keeping it running in a rapidly evovling market requiring continuing technical innovation.

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Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I don't think so. A co-op is just one of many competitors, domestic and foreign, and usually not an important one. The co-op members like to claim they're being oppressed, when in fact they are usually being ignored, which is even more annoying.

Hardly. This is the Margret Mead fantasy [1]. Human society is universally heirarchial. That tribe of 150 had a boss, and he (almost always he) had a staff.

I think co-ops are dynamically unstable, which is why so few exist. But agreed, scones don't require a lot of technical innovation.

John

[1] I met her once. She was a wonderful, friendly, dynamic, and sort of beautiful old lady. Totally wrong, of course.

Hmmm. I really hate to add to a thread that started with a fairy tale but maybe you're talking about a different kind of "co-op" than I'm familar with. My computer is currently power by power from my electric co-op, which also is my ISP. We have 36,000 metered members,

counties, one of which is bigger than some states.

My water is supplied by another co-op that has over 3,500 meters.

All members are owners and vote for a board of directors, who in turn hire (and fire) managers. I can and do speak directly with the board or managers if need be and it gets results. Our government(s) should work so well.

There is also a hippy-dippy food co-op in town (I'm not a member) that has been thriving for thirty years or so.

Not a claim I've heard - maybe your co-ops are operating in a more oppressive environemnt.

There are many worse fates than being ignored. American socialists know about quite a few of them - involving Pinkertons, and similar groups who did seen to go beyond disdain.

Margret Mead didn't have access to the number 150.

(almost

So has a co-op. A group of 150, of which around a third are kids, gives you fifty males - not really enough to set up a police state. Some people would have been more influentual than others, but in a group of

150, persuasion is a lot more cost-effective than intimidation.

The Co-op Stores and the John Lewis Partnership have been running for a fair while now

says 75 years.

dates itself back to 1863. Dynamic instability is taking some time to manifest itself.

Even worse - gullible. A fatal flaw in an anthropologist. Not one that is visible in the local cognitive anthropologists.

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Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

In the 1970's vintage California co-op business (like Berkeley Bowl, the sorta-famous bowling alley converted into a co-op grocery store), all the owners were paid employees. Each had an equal share, and all made the same salaries, and all had equal voting rights in the management of the company. That is different from the typical rural electric company or cane mill sort of thing, where the members are mostly not employees.

I toyed around with the co-op idea for a while when I was considering starting my own company, buy wiser council ("don't be an idiot") prevailed.

John

No, go stuff yourself.

I suppose Sir Stuart has the same voting rights, and pulls down the same salary, as all the sales clerks.

That's a marketing gimmick; it fills a niche.

Certainly. If one does enough trials, any metastable phenomenon can be made to remain near balance for an arbitrarily long time. You can tease an LS74 flipflop to teeter between 0 and 1 for microseconds, if you try enough times. It's just very rare for this to happen, as in flipflops and in the two cases you cite.

John

(a). If you PERSIST in bottom posting, will you for the love of DeForrest learn to SNIP.

That would be "counsel".

Jim

Interleaved, it was. And you have my permission to snip it yourself, if you want to.

Since more than one person said it, it must be both.

John

Counsel is, by definition, plural.

Jim

Don't be an annoying dweeb. Nobody likes that.

John

In the small town in Northern Minnesota where I spent my early youth, nearly everything was co-operatively based: The power company, the store, the feed mill, the creamery. Some remnants of those organizations exist today. Most of this came out a large Finnish and Scandinavian community. Many have been assimilated into larger co-operatives and then slowly into the general corporate world. Credit unions and rural power companies still thrive here today as co-operatives.

To me, it is the ultimate business structure. It works to create a profit which is then distributed back to the shareholders - i.e. the community it serves. So I guess you can count me as one of those USD $ 10 word anarcho-syndicalists.

Blakely LaCroix Minneapolis, Minnesota

You might suppose that, if you were fixated on one form of co-operative organisation.

The same niche as the other supermarkets around Cambridge, when I lived there. In fact, it started off as a bulk buying gimmick, as you would have noticed if you'd read a few lines of the history page of the web-site.

Both the Co-op stores and the John Lew Partnership have survived through rather turbulent times. They aren't exactly convincing examples of metastability.

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Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

They aren't convincing examples of co-ops either. They are classic business structures, run by megabuck CEOs, boards of directors, accountants and attorneys. And their employees are just employees.

John