this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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Free and Open Source Software
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Don't get me wrong... I am all for FOSS and I avoid walled gardens, but people have a hard time remembering to take the trash out to the street on the right day. Spending time driving garbage trucks monthly in the local waste management Co-op is not going to fly well. That problem gets solved using money... homeowners are taxed and the local government either hires garbagepeoples directly, or more often they hire a company that takes care of the problem.
Upshot there is money rather than co-op ownership, and frequently for-profit contractors win the day over government ownership. Contractors supply GaaS, we just have to get the bin to the street. So the equivalency here is the need for the public institution known as city government to retain ownership of the waste management system. Not quite "the people", since getting co-op volunteers is, well, erratic at best. And there are a ridiculous number of people out there who are vehemently against government management of actual organizations like this. I am for it, but over and over I see "privatization" win elections.
So I am not seeing how pitching this as "stupidly obvious" will win when "obvious" means hiring a contractor nearly every time.
Why not? I'm a member of a local co-op that does exactly that sort of thing. It's not actually garbage collection but close enough in every way in which it might be relevant here. Members (basically everyone who lives in the area and wants their trash collected) pay a fee. That goes to covering all costs, including hiring one direct employee for the one job (driving the truck) that can't be filled by volunteers (who handle management, accounting, et cetera.) There is no government bureaucracy involved except in setting basic regulations that the co-op legally needs to observe. No taxation is required. There are no profits. Nobody gets rich off of the arrangement. Anyone can opt out if they're capable of finding other alternatives, but nobody does because that would be crazy. The co-op has reliably done a good job for decades.
It's great. I suspect that replacing all municipal services (including e.g. "last mile" telecoms) with co-ops like this would make things better for everyone.
I would say you are lucky. I lived in my college town for 20years and it started out chock full of co-ops in the 80s and by the time I moved away they were all hardly recognizable or gone. Food co-ops, housing co-ops, internet co-ops... all mutated away from shared labor or were replaced by sole ownerships.
My wife works for an employee-owned engineering company, but they are anything but FOSS in their culture.
I hope these intermediate management structures that combine expertise and collective ownership grow more. But it still isn't a slam-dunk that should be assumed to be the stupidly-obvious approach unless such organizations compete with the grifters... and then their success won't be due to the fact that they are using FOSS but that they present a track record of success as an organization.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to all the food co-ops that used to be around, but since I'm in Canada it's probably just the same thing that happened to all the small independent grocers: They got squeezed out by the monopoly and monopsony power of the tight little cartel that now controls the whole market.
I'd say it's pretty obvious that other things being equal, it's generally better to run things cooperatively, just like it's stupidly obvious once you stop to think about it that free software is the right way to go. But it's not the only consideration, it's no guarantee of success, and the forces opposing it are strong.