Now at @[email protected]Feb 10, 2023

When a car is repaired after a crash, the GDP goes up.

When a fruit or vegetable is grown only to be thrown out by a supermarket as food waste, the GDP goes up.

When you replace a phone that still works because of planned obsolescence, the GDP goes up.

When you throw out a perfectly good coat because it's no longer fashionable, and buy a new one in this season's style, the GDP goes up.

When a bridge has to be replaced because it wasn't built right, the GDP goes up.

When a piece of packaging is manufactured only to be thrown away straight away, the GDP goes up.

When a site needs to be decontaminated because chemicals weren't stored correctly, the GDP goes up.

In each case, society has no more usable wealth than it would have had if the car didn't crash, the vegetable wasn't grown, the phone wasn't replaced, the old coat was still being worn, there was less packaging, or the chemicals were stored correctly. Yet the GDP goes up.

Meanwhile, most of the wealth that is generated ends up in the top one percent's pockets.

The truth is that GDP isn't a useful measurement. It's just a convenient one.

#economics #politics #gdp #auspol #ukpol

Show threadRAMΞNJVNKIΞ🍜Feb 10, 2023

@ajsadauskas Someone told me the proper term for it once but I forget what it is, but economic health really SHOULD be measured by how much money churns within society.

As in, how many times a dollar (or whatever) circulates around and how quickly.

The hoarding of wealth is useless to 99% of society, money constantly churning through everyone, means everyone is earning and spending and would be a much better metric, and still meets the whole "capitalism need to buy/sell."

Show threadAaronApr 4, 2023

@RamenJunkie @ajsadauskas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money

Velocity of money - Wikipedia

Show threadAaronApr 4, 2023
@RamenJunkie @ajsadauskas It can be argued that the sudden drop in the velocity of money had a major hand in the severe impact of the Great Depression on the average person. Suddenly money wasn't flowing by, so there was nothing to temporarily siphon off for local employment and consumer purchases. Often this is chalked up to a drop in the money supply, but I think the mechanism of action of reduced money supply is reduced money flow.
Show threadAaronApr 4, 2023
@RamenJunkie @ajsadauskas Interestingly, a common approach to mitigate the effects of reduced access to money was to pool it locally in a smaller sub-economy. It's possible to write IOUs with people you trust, barter instead of purchasing, or, in a more organized approach, establish a cooperative bank (credit union) that enhances mutual aid within a community.
Show threadAaronApr 4, 2023
@RamenJunkie @ajsadauskas I think that if more businesses were cooperatives, we would see a major decrease in inequality, and a major improvement in economic stability thanks to monetary flow being mostly localized within a community.
Show threadNow at @[email protected]

@hosford42 @RamenJunkie I definitely agree that co-operatives and credit unions are a great way to reduce inequality.

For anyone reading this who isn't familiar with co-ops, there's broadly four different kinds: consumers co-operatives (where the members are the customers of the co-op), workers co-operatives (owned by workers) and farmers or producers co-ops (where the people who supply the raw materials own the co-op).

The big advantage is that there's no shareholders or investors creaming profits off the top.

Any surplus funds are either reinvested, or (depending on what type of co-op it is) are returned to the customers (so they effectively buy the products at cost price), the workers, or the farmers (so they get the full value of the products they create).

The best known example of a consumer co-op is the Cooperative Group in the UK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Co-operative_Group ). It was founded by a group of coal miners called the Rochdale Pioneers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_Society_of_Equitable_Pioneers ) back in 1844, and is still going strong nearly 180 years later!

#coop #cooperative #ConsumerCooperative #RochdalePioneers #economics

The Co-operative Group - Wikipedia

Apr 5, 2023 at 12:13amWeb
Show threadAaronApr 5, 2023
@ajsadauskas @RamenJunkie (Pretty sure they are not coal miners anymore. They have definitely branched out, at the least.)
Show threadNow at @[email protected]Apr 5, 2023
@hosford42 @RamenJunkie LoL you're quite correct they've well moved past just serving coal miners.
Show threadChristian RoselundApr 5, 2023
@ajsadauskas @hosford42 @RamenJunkie Don't forget Spain's Mondragon, which is a federation of worker-owned co-ops that even make solar panel manufacturing equipment. https://www.mondragon-assembly.com/
Show threadNow at @[email protected]Apr 5, 2023

@croselund @hosford42 @RamenJunkie Mondragon in Spain is a fantastic example of worker-owned co-operatives.

And you also raise a really important point about federations of co-operatives, because that's where the economy-transforming magic really starts to happen.

For the uninitiated, just as a group of farmers, consumers, or workers can form a co-operative, likewise a group of co-operatives can form a co-operative.

In some cases, these co-operatives of co-operatives, known as co-operative federations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_federation), can provide shared services or advocacy on behalf of the member co-ops.

More interestingly, they can also become co-operative wholesale societies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-operative_wholesale_society ) and provide group buying services for member co-ops, and even start manufacturing for themselves.

Taken to its natural limit, the term for an economy where all production is managed through co-operatives is called a "Co-operative Commonwealth".

For people interested in learning more, a good starting point is the rundown on Wikipedia about Cooperative Economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-operative_economics and Cooperative Federalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_federalism_(economics).

#Economy #Economics #Coop #Cooperative #Cooperatives #Business #Mondragon #RochdalePioneers #Socialism #Anarchism #Capitalism

Cooperative federation - Wikipedia

Show threadAaronApr 6, 2023

@Radical_EgoCom

This is reminiscent, to me, of what you were saying about bottom-up governance. A step in the right direction? Better than nothing?

Show threadAaronApr 6, 2023
@Radical_EgoCom From my own perspective, this seems like a violence-free path to the vision you were describing, which makes me much more inclined to be on board.