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Comment by kerkeslager | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if I'm wrong, but even cooperatives are basically assumed to be profit-seeking entities, no?

Depends on the co-op (if it is something like Mondragón, it wants to "seek profit" so that it can survive; credit unions "seek profit" to pay their expenses, etc) - they will all have a goal but that goal may not be cash money in the pocket; a co-op could have the goal of making a grocery store available to the community; the co-op "profits" on the difference between buying and selling, but the "profits" go to pay for labor, land, etc, and anything in excess of that (+ rainy day fund) gets rebated back.

And some co-ops are just a standard shareholder business where the shareholders are the members (credit unions are usually setup this way) so if they DO extract profit somehow or by accident, they just return it to the members. This has happened with credit unions when they unexpectedly get a windfall for some reason.

By the way, if you're interested in cooperatives have a look at the Mondragon Corporation, it's a fascinating success story.

Minor pedantic point: there is sometimes a distinction made between profit and surplus, where the former is a surplus that is allocated wholly at the whims of the employer/capitalist. In this sense of the word, cooperatives are not necessarily profit-seeking, as the decision of what to do with the surplus is democratically (rather than dictatorially) controlled.

Even more pedantic, but surplus allocation is typically determined by the board of the co-op. While it's probably generally true that this functions a bit like a representative democracy, I have definitely been a member of (and worked for) cooperatives where the board is not exactly aligned with the membership about how to allocate surplus funds. Typically this comes when the co-op's board wants to make a capital investment for long-term growth when the membership may want their discount/dividends/whatever-the-organizations-payout-structure-is more than they care about expanding the scope or mission.

Assumed by whom? There are plenty of money-losing entities.

You're correct

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