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Great doku. Well beyond the usual left/right paradigm purported by the media (especially in the US), or the nanny state vs market radicalism paradigm (especially here in these forums). Alternatives exist. Think outside of the box. :)

http://img.youtube.com/vi/-obHJfTaQvw/0.jpg  
The Mondragon Experiment - Corporate Cooperativism (1980) FULL
 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-obHJfTaQvw)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

I don't believe I've ever stated that cooperatives wouldn't, or shouldn't exist. I have suggested that they're usually not as efficient as other company structures (with good evidence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mackey_(businessman))), or that they're not a good way to organize an entire society (again, with good evidence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)) but as long as it's voluntary, I have no problems with whatever way people choose to organize themselves.

What a world we live in.  Where you are called you can only be non-radical if you obey a bunch of liars (I think most people consider politicians liars).

Throwing around the word radical isn't an argument.

OTOH, if you and a bunch of other people want to have a collective I've got no problem with that.  Can I opt out?

I don't know what John Mackey did or didn't try. But if he wants to be a boss, well, yes, he obviously isn't much compatible with a cooperative model.

Maybe he'd have a much harder time to find willing employees (is he a choleric ass? :P) if the cooperative model was better known (especially in the US) and more widely implemented.

Mondragon pretty much respects the Dunbar number, they never grow their units (departments) above a certain size.

Also in the Basque region there are actually lots of such cooperatives, so plenty of places and possibilities for workers to go, to accommodate for structural and technological changes.

Jobs and humans come first in this culture, just laying people off is inefficient for a society if you think about it. Lots of talent and productivity wasted. So essentially they give them help and support to find something new in that case, they have a sophisticated points system which records their talents and experience, which is compatible between these cooperatives. This is much easier to do than in a highly competitive environment, although these cooperatives also compete to a degree (they buy stuff not necessarily from each other but from wherever the price is right, i.e. also from the world market).

It's not that he "wants to be a boss," it's that in his experience, food co-ops were run by a bunch of idiots, so he decided to start his own company. I think it probably has more to do with the types of people likely to work in Co-ops here in the US, and those likely to work in them in the basque region, than anything inherent in the organizational structure.

It sounds like the Mondragon have the right idea, and like I said, as long as nobody has a gun to their head, I don't really care how they decide to organize themselves.

Does this have anything to do with the Milagro Beanfield Wars?

Bring on the landwirtschaftliche Genossenschaft!