wklauss
Joined 14 years ago
Joined 14 years ago
I'd say so. Not on all the branches of the cooperative, but it generates over €11 billion in annual revenue and employs more than 70,000 people with a very stable business. It might be a bit tricky to gauge success when the rewards and incentives aren’t quite the same as in your typical capitalist company, though.
In his science fiction novels, Kim Stanley Robinson frequently incorporates the Mondragon economic model to explore post-capitalist, worker-owned, and cooperative societies. I'd say KSR is a decently well-known S/F writer, so at least some westerners (and I'd assume many in this site) have already some idea of it. But I'd say it's true that it's easy to romanticize these kinds of singular situations and brush over the problems they might have.
Like others have pointed out, if phones can certify using batteries with 1000 cycles of charge above 80%, they'll also be exempt, so this will likely only affect very cheap models.
Going back to a pre-ACA system won't lower premiums that much. Medical costs have risen in the last decade, same as any other goods or services, and the way US healthcare is structured, with hospital and doctors negotiating with a profit driven middleman (insurance companies) makes it almost impossible to change the rising premiums.
US healthcare will continue to be a mess until there's a universal healthcare system or single payer system similar to any other developed country on earth.
But the reality of it is that it's probably still to early to say if these devices will have mainstream appeal. I see a lot of people saying "well, i no longer need to take the phone out my pocket", but that has been the case for a couple of years with smartwatches, for example, and it has not meaningfully changed our dependency from the smartphone or the smartphone market dynamics that much.
Again, DOGE operates from the premise that the federal government is bloated. Although this is a very popular message, I'd love to see some more objective data to support this and I doubt that CDC or USAID are the agencies where the bloat is. Like I said, their actions seem vindictive and careless. Also, likely to result in legal cases that will drag for years and end up costing taxpayer more than the supposed savings.
The main con is that once you fire the workers that you thought you didn't need (but that you did indeed need) hiring them back becomes more expensive and a lengthy process. Some of the firings are already causing chaos in vital teams among several agencies and have forced DOGE to try to reverse course (bird flu monitoring, nuclear response...).
And that's not to mention the dire situation you put the people you are firing in. Laying off people from their jobs is never "an experiment" unless you are willing to suspend every trace of empathy.