The Co-op That Wasn't
Just a short story about society.
March 21, 2025 - Davis Aurini
01:54
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| I would like to tell you a story about the workers co-op that wasn't. | |
| Once upon a time, there was a company whose driving principle was people power. | |
| They believed that what made them competitive, what made them the best, was that they had the best people, and the best people were being put in the best places. | |
| And so they decided that their company should become a co-op, co-owned by all the employees, because these weren't just peons on the payroll. | |
| These were active participants in the product that they were creating. | |
| But then one day, a new form of accounting software was developed. | |
| It was a procedure which relabeled all the employees as human resources. | |
| Now this was initially sold to the co-op as a more efficient way of organizing things. | |
| We're just going to pretend that everybody is a number, a fungible unit, and then we can keep track of everything so much more easily. | |
| It's going to be the same as before, but even better, now that we have this accounting system on top. | |
| And at first things seemed to work pretty well. | |
| But then, the people that worked with this accounting software started mistaking the simulation of the company where everybody was a human resource for the actuality of the company where it was talented individuals creating people power. |
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