The Young Can Make a Better World by Creating Business and Community Cooperatives
Keep it small and keep it cooperative
Big government, big corporations, and big unions are not going to take care of you, without you giving up creativity and many freedoms. Individuals alone no longer have power. You must each become an integral part of a team — a team in which each cooperates fully with one another and does not compete for power.
Each must take responsibility for a needed sector of a particular whole business. It may require some sacrifices or learning new skills or finding someone to add to the team to make it whole. When you get the team right, you reap the greatest rewards.
I struggled to do a fashion design and manufacturing business all myself in the 1960s and 1970s. At first, the workers were of the same generation as me, and we were like family and worked as a team, and shared profits. As the business grew I had to hire younger ones that I trained, and there became a division between them and me — power struggles. I could not take the pain of these new young workers and their desire for power. They received the money and wages they wanted. So, I decided to sell the business, profitably in the early 1980s.
Realizing my love of training and teaching I decided to design a course, “Fashion As A Business” and teach it at the Boston Center for Adult Education. With a group of students, we started an outside group. With what I had learned from my own business, I insisted we needed a cooperative and set up the Designers’ Business Cooperative. Each offered a skill beyond design ideas — because everyone has design ideas. Another concept was a Factory for Rent because each of us had some machinery and equipment that we could share and make an additional income by renting to others.
Unfortunately, the ideas were too ahead of their time, and power struggles ensued among the members. Again, I could not handle these struggles for power, and I left the new organization. One member tried to take over, but the new organization fell apart and dissolved.
Are you ready today, almost 40 years later, to cooperate and not compete for power?
Can you search and find teammates with skills in each of the needed parts of a business. I will list some generic parts in the fashion design and manufacturing business. However. A workshop I did at MIT, in 2004, revealed that they correlated with auto business (Ford), architecture, software business (Microsoft), etc.
Integral parts of a successful business: (Note, one may do many parts)
1. Idea expressed as sketch and sample/prototype with the first pattern
2. Production pattern for affordably producing many and maintaining quality
3. Selling in a market or preferably direct to consumer
4. Cutter of one and many
5. Production stitcher(s) of many
6. Presser and finisher of many
7. Shipper
We are seeing some steps toward cooperation now.
Brian Bergstein says in Boston Globe, 5.29.2022: “Columbia law professor Kathryn Judge thinks the Community Supported Agriculture model should spread to more parts of the economy. … This means setting aside public spaces where you're going to have craft fairs or art fairs … to allow more direct connections with consumers. [She also explains that too many middlemen] caused the erosion of American manufacturing and why the supply chain for everything from furniture to electronics is out of whack today.”
The “gig-workers” as “independent contractors” are steps toward independent businesses. But, like all small businesses, they must cooperate with one another for power and success. Katie Johnston, Boston Globe, 5.27.2022, “Gig worker question … is the focus of a contentious ballot question proposed for the fall. If it is approved, drivers would be formally established as independent contractors. … Many drivers are more concerned with protecting the freedom they have. … The sense of being their own boss is a big draw for drivers. … Collette Phillips, co-chair of the Independent Professionals Association wrote in Commonwealth Magazine, ‘The gig economy is a critical piece of the puzzle to help us close the racial wealth gap here in Boston once and for all.”
Kellen Browning wrote in the New York Times, on June 6, 2022, “Gig Workers … and the ballot measure in Massachusetts that would preserve the independent status of drivers. … Conor Yunits, leading the Massachusetts Coalition for Independent Work, said, ‘Many drivers did not want to be classified as employees because that would limit their ability to set their own hours, and the ability to be their own bosses.”
In the 1970s in my design and manufacturing business, I had some workers that wanted to be independent, even though they could choose to work in my factory as employees. I helped them by setting up a business for them and made it legal by helping them find other businesses, besides mine to work for. This is why I became a Small Business Consultant to help others after I sold my business.
Ben Tarnoff, who is writing a book, Internet for the People, wrote in the New York Times, on May 29, 2022, “The belief that the Internet is broken has become a new common sense. … To build a better Internet we need to change how it is owned and organized. Deprivatization aims at creating an Internet where people and not profit rule. … The site is a cooperative; you and other users govern it collectively… The board’s decisions are carried out by the local library who acts as caretakers of the community. … [Other cooperatives are a part] The Driver’s Cooperative is a driver-owned ride-hailing cooperative that opened in New York City. It has more than 6000 drivers and does hundreds of trips a day…. Deprivatization can help with [networks]. Across the country, hundreds of publicly and cooperatively owned ‘community networks’ are developing an alternative to the market-first model…. Charge less because they don’t exist to enrich investors; their rates reflect the prioritization of social needs, such as universal connectivity over profits.”
The young in the 20th century have always fought for change — to make a better world. It is increasingly important to make those changes in the world of business.
Are you ready today to cooperate and not compete for power?
Thank you for reading. If you wish to discuss this more, please contact me: shirley@pastpresentfuturebook.com
