Anarchoblogs

His "public asset fund" has very similar intentions, I think.

Let me comment on the concept as you have presented it:

For what it is worth, government ownership is not going to be very popular, and is unnecessary. Why do we need the government to own the assets? If we can turn the property and capital over to the government why can we not instead turn those assets directly over to workers' cooperatives with funds collected by the government. Why do we need the government to administer? They merely need to facilitate.

Secondly, we must be vigilant and careful about Capitalists selling or otherwise ceding obsolete capital assets to workers. ESOPS are a good idea for workers, but have disadvantages. They don't deal withe physical/economic realities of local disinvestment and they do not address the issues associated with Corporate/Union partnerships in damaging sectors such as military contracting, alcohol and tobacco production and distribution, etc.

Let me clarify, if not reiterate, the definition of a Bank is that it is investor owned. By contrast savings banks and credit unions are depositor owned.

Among the purposes of an equity union is to evolve us away from an investor "class", non-workers who live off capital gains and dividends. Rational and purposeful (for meeting community needs and reasonable wants) Equity participation, sharing, and granting would replace speculative equity investing, equity trading, and lending (usurious by definition and certainly in practice).

In essence, the main purpose of an Equity Union system would be to evolve the private sector into a quasi-public One.

We also need to abolish the Federal Reserve. Let the Treasury make direct allocations to community equity unions instead of allocating financial capital to Investor owned banks.

Please pass this communication on, if you deem such appropriate.

Let me know what Dave thinks of my ideas, and by all means encourage him to contact me directly.

Thanks for writing.

Take good care.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
wiserunion@earthlink.net

The current Capitalist dominated system is dysfunctional both from an equity/fairness and economic and natural resource sustainability perspective.The dominant paradigm in Capitalist financial business operations uses something called the discount rate…

Continue reading at Peoples' Equity Union …

The equity union(s) are not to replace credit unions, but to work in concert with them.

The role of the Equity Union is to alter the allocation purposes and priorities of the Investment "Class" (i.e. the owners of Banks and Corporations and Traders on Wall Street and similar venues).

While credit unions primarily make mortgage loans, car loans, consumer loans, and and in some special cases loans to small businesses, an equity union (with an account in a community development credit union) would specifically be dedicated to making equity grants, equity participation, and equity sharing allocations to community betterment organizations (CBOs).

When a financial organization makes a loan, it has first claim on net revenues. In other words, before a workers' cooperative or a traditional sole proprietership, partnership, or corporation can pay themselves, they must first pay back the interest (and eventually principal) on the loan.

In an equity union participation (as differentiated from an outright grant), any dividends to the equity union participants would be paid back subsidiary to the interests of the worker owners or community/worker owners of the CBO firm. The arrangement would be negotiable. If the negotiation calls for no dividends, whatsoever, then that would be called equity sharing.

Equity shares/participations in a CBO could not be traded and could only be bought back by the members of the Equity Union at par value. In other words, no capital gains would be allowed.

>Quote:Originally posted by TerraSapient>Well said, and I agree with you on most of your >points. However, what we need to do and >>what people are willing to do rarely align (coming >from the historical perspective)..Mike Morin replies:People are like…

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The Mondragon model is an excellent one. It was actually established based on the basic principles of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), which evolved from the early cooperative communitarian/socialist and mutualist theorists and organizers who have been proposing and campaigning and yes fighting back (against Institutionalized Violence and Oppression) for centuries.

In its more recent history, Mondragon has strayed somewhat from some of its ideals due to its need to integrate into a larger Capitalist economy, which eschews externalities (social and environmental values, goals, and concerns). However, it's conception, early success, and its peaceful and productive response to historical antagonisms are instructive and exemplary.

I concur with Ivan that the active promotion of artisanry would be an important part of all economic development initiatives and folks following the Mondragon Operating Guidelines of Person Centered, Cooperation, Continual Improvement, and Community Commitment would help ascertain that such would occur.

Reading the article and assessing the economic realities brings to mind issues of economic paralysis associated with the inflated costs of doing business (the inflated costs of real and capital assets) and the difficulties associated with replicating the Mondragon success in today's very different economic environment.

One of the keys to the community wide success of Mondragon was was the Community Commitment Principle which states that among the mission of the Organization is "to create jobs and create community wealth (equity) are the irrevocable requirement of our community vocation". They did this by earmarking a percentage of revenues from successful workers' cooperatives to the start-up of new workers' cooperatives.

So where and how do we find and create the successful workers cooperatives willing to share in a like manner?

Good questions, Bob.

To reach a eutopian (good place) socialist reality, it would be highly advantageous for every neighborhood village to have a local equity union, and it is important that each local have extensive inter-community relations, especially with the other neighborhood/villages in their region (defined as metropolitan area transposed on a watershed).

All deposits and donations in-kind would be voluntary (and members can participate to whatever extent they care to) and all equity union funds would be dedicated to community betterment programs and organizations consistent with the principles of the cooperative communitarian ecological economic redevelopment plan. Recipients of equity sharing/participation would be required to be workers' cooperatives or community/worker hybrid cooperatives (as a transition vehicle from the status quo to the desired).

The incentive is primarily altruistic and socialist, because it is the right thing to do. While equity unions are starting out, depositors would be at an acknowledged disadvantage relative to the traditionalist Capitalist game of exceeding the hurdle rate, that is getting a better return on their "investment" (equity union shares are participation SHARES (literally) and not investments) than the assumed discount rate. With the Capitalist system failing, such could be viewed as not a disadvantage but a social equitable participation in an inclusive, equitable, needs based, wellness-oriented, humane, peaceful, and sustainable culture. An advantage of values over monetary "value". An advantage of quality of life over a quantified standard of living.

When Equity Unions are the standard operating system, real ecological economic redevelopment will replace abstract concepts of economic "growth". Equity sharing and participation will replace equity speculation, equity trading, and lending.

I'm not from Pittsburgh, nor have I ever been there, but I suspect that it is like so many of urban areas in the Northern US, a place with much in the way of hollowed out, and for most intents and purposes abandoned residential and industrial districts overrun by now declining suburban sprawl which feeds into overactive and overzealous medical institutions and establishments and has built their gliitering steel-girded towers where a fraudulent Capitalist middle class and aristocracy carry on the chrade of trading paper, more likely in this day and age bytes and megabytes.

So what can a reformed Socialist economy do for an area that has no legitimate base remaining?

I suggest to you that there is much work to be done rebuilding the human environment in preparation for the long or precipitous decline in the fossil fuel age. We must move all communities towards relocalization of basic needs and it is imperative that we, as a nation, set goals such as reducing automobile usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years in order to free the remaining precious fossil fuels for more important applications such as home heating, cooking, and electricty for necessary applications (do we really need so much lighting?).

The keys to this massive energy demand side rebuilding program are the walkable neighborhood (i.e. rebuilding and/or retrofitting all neighborhoods with village centers so that most can get the things they need within walking distance of their homes) and the deliberate, planned, needs directed, cooperative and inter-community control of the production and distribution supply chains for all the peoples needs.

The first part of the solution proposed in the previous paragraph is nothing new. It has been an architectural/urban planning mantra called "new urbanism". Many speculative developments based on these principles have failed in the last generation. The reason? There are two, the irrationality with the way the profit-motivated economic system allocates resources, and the lack of affordability for most.

We get "mixed use" redevelopments in which the commercial sectors are irrelevant to the needs of the gentrified clientele. They almost always build parking garages so that the bourgeoise residents of new urbanist projects can ignore the lack of available necessities in their neighborhood and are still "free to vote in the marketplace".

We all know that Socialism is Labor employing capital to meet the needs of the people, starting with those most in need. The allocation of resources to evolve to such a eutopia (good place) has to be rationally distributed in a principled manner.

It can be done, but before a plan can be implemented (realized), it needs to be conceived, developed, communicated, and accepted (recognized).

To place the payment burden on governments is not realistic or even optimal. What is needed is the recognition and commitment and dedication of and for the evolution of the private sector to a quasi-public one (working in coordination with Government safety-net, fostering, and facilitating capabilities). The vehicle for the economic/financial transition is an Equity Union. With such an Institution, equity sharing would replace equity speculation, equity trading, and lending.

That's enough for now. I hope that we can discuss and push the agenda forward. I will post a copy of this essay in the Discussion Section of this Group.

I don't call it "post-carbon" because all life is carbon based.

I call it post peak-oil and post fossil fuel. The lifestyles of the "Western" world is so melded to the use of fossil fuels for all aspects of luxury and survival and irrational interaction and it has arisen in the last three hundred years as an integral part of the Capitalist system which as an extension of Feudal and Imperialist Military hegemony has raped and squandered the North American continent and others in its colonialist pursuits.

I thought that the Capitalist system was reformable, but now I see what a virulent madness it is... Good planets are hard to find and we are almost through with this one. I am riding out my days in the belly of the Capitalist Imperialist beast. I still think an equity union is a superior idea for economic relations, but it will not be of the real world.

I look to the Moslem world for leadership and would recommend that they resist the decadent temptations of Western life. The US Imperialist goal of World Manifest Destiny has been a hard and violent ride. It is now almost over. The meaning of almost is not clear. 5 years? 10 years? 100 years? and there will most likely be no clear line of demarcation defining the end. They will go on with their inanity in an oblivious crusade of the ultimate paradox between evil and righteousness until there is no fuel to fire the ignitions for their chariots of luxury, for their fleets and chariots and thunderbirds and drones of war.

Perhaps the Evilest Empire of All Time, the USA, is very near defeat. Perhaps not. However long it takes to strangle the beast, I know that all that will be left is a squandered planet.

It is a shame, because with rational, equitable, humane, altruistic, education and action the overshoot of population and the scarcity of resource availability could conceivably be dealt with. Instead we are running full speed into the worst period of suffering that Man has and will ever face.

If I weren't so stir crazy from the deafening silence of an irrational people then I would be fretting about how my life will play out in the collapse.

I've tried to make positive contributions all my life, I will continue to try given any chance.


In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

I am a 57 year old Environmental Studies/Socialist Economist with a MBA who works full time in the reimagining of a paradigm of ecological economic redevelopment and seeks to organize people around the mission of a world unity and cooperation effort to altruistically and fully and peacefully meet the needs of people based on the fundamental principles of inclusion, equity, humanity, environmental/public health and wellness, sufficiency, towards relocalization, peace, and sustainability.

I have just said nothing new, only stated it differently.

I do not kid myself, we are so small as to be invisible - except among ourselves, We are up against over 400 years of the Capitalist Institutional Leviathan and we are beset with an exploding population running dry of productive faciltative resources that we are accustomed to.

At risk of understatement, we are working against huge odds.

Yet those of us who believe that the work is worthwhile must come together and work together to make the noble attempt(s).

Will you join with me?

Let's discuss.



In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

Washington politicos lack not only courage, but along with Labor “Leaders”, lack historical perspective.

We are in the decline phase of the Capitalist system. It is not cyclical phenomonon, it is dying, almost dead. So it is also that we have long passed, overshot, the limits of growth on a finite planet with finite resources.

If we have any hope to adjust, we must recognize these realities and overthrow the paper shackles of the puppets in DC. Labor leaders may be able to fill the void if they would adopt the radical perspective that challenges every given of the Divine Right of Kings/Divine Right of Corporations, Investment Banks, Banks, Bourgeoise Landlords and all the lackey politicians and media that follow in cue.

We need something completely different. A Peoples Equity Union dedicated to community betterment, meeting the needs of people in an inclusive, affordable, humane, equitable, artisan, sustainable, and peaceful manner.

We need a fundamental overhaul and reorganization of the economic system.

But without leadership, the idiots will get up tomorrow and do something all too similar to what they did today. Is it approaching nothing?

Get real, Trumka. Face the Dead Air, and get Radical, like REAL LABOR LEADERS OF THE PAST. It is our only hope.

In Peace, Friendwalkin’, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
Peoples’ Equity Union