A roundup of the news, views and ideas from the main stream press and the blogosphere. Click on the headline link to see the full article.
Mondragon: Spain’s giant co-operative where times are hard but few go bust
Giles Tremlett, Guardian
… Visitors also find little of the new poverty sweeping through other parts of Spain, for up the steep slopes of what locals jokingly call the "sacred mountain" lies the headquarters of the Mondragon Corporation, the remarkably recession-proof company that Ormaetxea helped found in 1956.
There is little flashy about the offices of the Basque country’s biggest industrial company, but then there is nothing normal about what is now the world’s biggest workers co-operative … with global sales of €15bn (£13bn).
Whereas workers at other Spanish companies must answer to shareholder needs – often by sacrificing their jobs – that is not true at Mondragon, which acts as the parent company to 111 small, medium-sized and larger co-ops.
And as Spain struggles through double-dip recession, fierce austerity and 26% unemployment, this is one company that is not about to collapse. Nor has it shed many jobs, with the workforce remaining steady at around 84,000 people worldwide – about a sixth of them outside SpainT
(7 March 2013)
Two years old, but still relevant. Suggested by AM. -BA
Why I’m Saying Goodbye to Apple, Google and Microsoft
Dan Gillmore, Medium
I’m putting more trust in communities than corporations
… So why am I typing this on a laptop running GNU/Linux, the free software operating system, not an Apple or Windows machine? And why are my phones and tablets running a privacy-enhanced offshoot of Android called Cyanogenmod, not Apple’s iOS or standard Android?
… I’ve moved to these alternative platforms because I’ve changed my mind about the politics of technology. I now believe it’s essential to embed my instincts and values, to a greater and greater extent, in the technology I use.
… The tools I use now are, to the extent possible, based on community values, not corporate ones.
I’m not acting on some paranoid fantasies here. I’m emulating, in the tech sphere, some of the principles that have led so many people to adopt “slow food” or vegetarian lifestyles, or to minimize their carbon footprint, or to do business only with socially responsible companies.
(25 Feb 2015)
The meme of community spreads to high tech. -BA
8 Lessons American Progressives Can Take From Greece’s Syriza and Spain’s Podemos
Dan Cantor and Ted Fertik, In These Times
We could learn a few things from the way Syriza is standing up to the powers-that-be in European capitalism.
Lesson 3. Inequality is objectionable, but more fundamental is people being denied the things that they need.
In Greece it was possible to argue that austerity was preventing people from getting life’s basics like living wage jobs, health care, food and electricity. We need to identify sharply what people’s needs are—and just as sharply, why those needs are being denied.
Lesson 4. Draw a link between what working people need and what society as a whole needs.
Syriza convinced even many conservative Europeans that it deserved to be listened to because it was proposing policies that could credibly address a problem that many agreed on: the need to stimulate demand in Greece specifically and the Eurozone generally. We also need to demand stimulus in the U.S.
Lesson 5. Have a program. Say what you will do—don’t get dragged into debates about how you will do it.
Syriza convinced voters that it was going to take action to end austerity. Incessantly, the Right, the media and the European elite tried to goad them into saying that executing their program would require leaving the eurozone, but they never took the bait.
(27 Feb 2015)
Could be a foretaste of political changes in other countries. -BA
The Crackdown on Little Free Libraries
Conor Friedersdorf, Atlantic
The Danger of Being Neighborly Without a Permit
Three years ago, The Los Angeles Times published a feel-good story on the Little Free Library movement. The idea is simple: A book lover puts a box or shelf or crate of books in their front yard. Neighbors browse, take one, and return later with a replacement. A 76-year-old in Sherman Oaks, California, felt that his little library, roughly the size of a dollhouse, "turned strangers into friends and a sometimes-impersonal neighborhood into a community," the reporter observed. The man knew he was onto something "when a 9-year-old boy knocked on his door one morning to say how much he liked the little library." He went on to explain, "I met more neighbors in the first three weeks than in the previous 30 years."
Since 2009, when a Wisconsin man built a little, free library to honor his late mother, who loved books, copycats inspired by his example have put thousands of Little Free Libraries all over the U.S. and beyond.
… Alas, a subset of Americans are determined to regulate every last aspect of community life. Due to selection bias, they are overrepresented among local politicians and bureaucrats. And so they have power, despite their small-mindedness, inflexibility, and lack of common sense so extreme that they’ve taken to cracking down on Little Free Libraries, of all things.
(20 Feb 2015)
Image: Group heat conservation posture. Image by NPL FP2011 via http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Posicion_grupal.png
