Davis Aurini - The Co-op That Wasn't
Aired: 2025-03-21
Duration: 01:54


=== People Power Co-op (01:50) ===

[00:00:04]  I would like to tell you a story about the workers co-op that wasn't.
[00:00:12]  Once upon a time, there was a company whose driving principle was people power.
[00:00:20]  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.
[00:00:33]  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.
[00:00:45]  These were active participants in the product that they were creating.
[00:00:52]  But then one day, a new form of accounting software was developed.
[00:01:00]  It was a procedure which relabeled all the employees as human resources.
[00:01:08]  Now this was initially sold to the co-op as a more efficient way of organizing things.
[00:01:15]  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.
[00:01:23]  It's going to be the same as before, but even better, now that we have this accounting system on top.
[00:01:32]  And at first things seemed to work pretty well.
[00:01:36]  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.