Socialism: work through Conservice as a co-op counterfactual

Add conservice.md: the company as it is (from public sources only), the same business founded as a locked co-op, what the profit split could mean at its scale under labeled assumptions, whether it would have grown, and who would have received less. Link it from the thesis, worker ownership and the index. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <[email protected]> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01QWPs69B8nQZjtPEUXMKzZx
2026-09-24 01:33:27 -06:00
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+---
+title: What If Conservice Had Been a Co-op?
+section: Making the Case
+order: 160
+summary: A real company that has taken on new private equity owners three times in ten years, imagined instead as a locked co-op from the day it was founded, with who would govern it, where its profit would go, and who would have received less.
+---
+
+# What If Conservice Had Been a Co-op?
+
+[The thesis](thesis.md) uses one example: "TPG's stake in Conservice." This page works that example through.
+
+It isn't a plan to take Conservice from anyone. This model doesn't buy or seize companies, and nothing here says any owner or founder did anything wrong. Every sale described below was lawful and chosen by the people selling. The question is about the structure, not the people: **what if a company with Conservice's business had been founded as a [locked co-op](the-lock.md) in 2000?** Who would govern it, where would its profit go, and who would have received less?
+
+Everything on this page comes from public sources.
+
+## The company as it is
+
+Conservice, based in Logan, Utah, was founded on August 28, 2000, by David Jenkins and a business partner. It started out billing apartment residents for their utilities ([Herald Journal, 2020](https://www.hjnews.com/news/business/progressive-workplace-conservice-marks-20-years-as-standout-local-employer/article_5768eef4-b633-58a2-b036-7077c76cf86e.html)). Today it handles utilities for nearly 8 million rental units and other properties, working with more than 20,000 utility providers ([TPG, 2025](https://www.tpg.com/news-and-insights/tpg-to-acquire-majority-stake-in-conservice)).
+
+It had 2,083 employees in 2020, up almost 900 in four years. By 2025 more than 2,000 came from its home county alone, making it one of the county's largest private employers. About 5,000 local people have worked there over its 25 years ([Herald Journal, 2025](https://www.hjnews.com/news/business/logan-based-company-conservice-celebrates-25-years/article_c24ef502-2cb3-4c43-916d-9a7320ec5977.html)). Its total headcount across all offices isn't public.
+
+A local-paper headline called it a "standout local employer." It moved its staff home early in the pandemic when, as its founder said, "we could make people come in the office." It gives paid time for community service and matches part of workers' retirement savings ([Conservice careers page](https://www.conservice.com/careers)). Those benefits are real. They're also the owners' to give and the owners' to take back. **This page isn't about bad management.** It's about who holds the claim on everyone's work.
+
+**Who owns it.** Private equity firms, which buy into companies with investors' money and borrowed money, have held stakes in it one after another:
+
+- **2016:** TA Associates invests ([TA](https://www.ta.com/portfolio/investments/conservice/)).
+- **2020:** Advent International buys a minority stake, at a value of $2.66 billion for the whole company ([Herald Journal, 2020](https://www.hjnews.com/news/business/progressive-workplace-conservice-marks-20-years-as-standout-local-employer/article_5768eef4-b633-58a2-b036-7077c76cf86e.html)).
+- **December 2025:** TPG agrees to buy a majority stake. TA sells out completely, and Advent keeps a large stake. The price wasn't published ([TPG](https://www.tpg.com/news-and-insights/tpg-to-acquire-majority-stake-in-conservice)).
+
+**What it earns.** TPG's purchase was backed by a loan package of more than $1 billion. The company was presented to lenders as earning about $230 million a year before interest, taxes and the accounting charges for wear and tear on its assets (a measure called EBITDA). People close to the deal told the trade press the real figure was more likely $175 million to $225 million ([Octus, January 2026](https://octus.com/resources/articles/update-1-blue-owl-crescent-expected-to-lead-private-credit-financing-for-conservice-buyout-by-tpg/)).
+
+## Where the money goes now
+
+- **Workers** get salaries and benefits. As far as public sources show, they have no vote on who owns the company, who runs it or where its profit goes.
+- **Lenders** get the interest on more than $1 billion. That money backed TPG's purchase. In deals like this it usually also pays off the company's earlier loans. Either way, it's the company's own earnings that pay it back.
+- **Owners** get what's left, and then the gain when they sell to the next owner. Each sale paid the previous owners, including the founders, at a price the buyer put at risk. And each price was a bet on the future work of people who still work there and had no say in the sale.
+
+That's what the thesis means by a claim on other people's labor that the owner doesn't work alongside. A stake like that can be sold, again and again, and each sale puts a price on thousands of people's future work.
+
+## The same company, founded as a co-op
+
+Now imagine the same business, the same customers and the same growth, but founded in 2000 as a worker co-op under this model. That's a big assumption, discussed below.
+
+**Who governs.** The workers are members, each with one vote. They elect a board, and the board hires the chief executive. Managers still manage. Members don't vote on every decision, only on what their bylaws say they vote on ([Worker Ownership](worker-ownership.md)). The company could have leaders much like its current ones. The difference is who they answer to.
+
+**Not everyone is equal on day one.** New workers become members after a probation of up to a year. Their share of the profit then grows over about five years until it's full. Non-members can do up to a quarter of the work hours, but no more ([Guarding the Pilot](pilot-safeguards.md#the-hidden-boss)).
+
+**No sales.** Under [the lock](the-lock.md), the company can never be sold to conventional owners. The 2016, 2020 and 2025 deals don't happen. No buyer means no billion-dollar loan to pay back.
+
+**Where the profit goes.** Under the [default split](capital-accounts.md#where-each-years-profit-goes), 30% goes to a permanent reserve that nobody can ever withdraw, which pays for growth, the job outside investors' money does today. Up to 10% goes to the [federation](federation.md)'s shared fund. About 60% goes to members, split by how long each has worked there, up to a cap. At least a fifth of each member's share is paid in cash, half by default. The rest goes into their [capital account](capital-accounts.md), which is paid out after they leave. So nearly everyone among the 5,000 people who have worked there, everyone who stayed past probation, would have left with something.
+
+**Unions still have a place.** Members can still organize, and a union can still bargain over pay, schedules and grievances with the managers the board hires. Owning the company doesn't make every disagreement disappear.
+
+## What it could mean in dollars
+
+This model's case isn't about money ([Making the Case](the-argument.md)). But the numbers show the scale.
+
+They need two assumptions, because the real figures aren't public:
+
+- **Profit.** EBITDA is higher than real profit, because it leaves out the cost of equipment and software that wears out. So assume real profit of **$125 million to $175 million** a year.
+- **Headcount.** More than 2,000 employees come from the home county, and there are other offices. So assume **2,500 to 4,000** workers.
+
+The table also assumes the average member holds about 70% of a full share, since newer members are still ramping up.
+
+| Real profit | Workers | **A full-share member's profit share each year** (before income tax; about half in cash, the rest in their account) |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| $125 million | 4,000 | about $27,000 |
+| $125 million | 2,500 | about $43,000 |
+| $175 million | 4,000 | about $38,000 |
+| $175 million | 2,500 | about $60,000 |
+
+In a co-op, salary and profit share are two parts of one income. Members set the split, within the model's rules. The figures above are on top of whatever salaries the co-op pays, which might not match today's. On taxes: a co-op generally doesn't pay corporate income tax on the profit it assigns to members, but members pay income tax on their whole share in the year it's assigned. The reserve is taxed like any company's profit.
+
+These are rough numbers from public reporting, for a company that may never have existed in this form. They show the scale, not a promise.
+
+## Would it have grown?
+
+This is the honest weak point.
+
+- **It grew for sixteen years before any private equity firm bought in.** By 2016 it already had roughly 1,200 employees (2,083 in 2020, less the almost 900 added in the four years before). So its early growth didn't depend on private equity.
+- **Private equity's years brought acquisitions.** In 2020 it bought Capturis, a North Dakota company that pays commercial buildings' utility bills ([Conservice, 2020](https://www.conservice.com/press-releases/conservice-acquires-capturis-bringing-value-to-commercial-markets-served/)), and it has bought others since. A co-op can buy companies too. But under [the lock](the-lock.md), the people who work there have to become members, and some sellers wouldn't accept that. Otherwise the co-op ends up like Mondragon's foreign subsidiaries: a members' club that owns firms full of workers with no stake. So a co-op version would probably be smaller, and some of today's earnings came from companies it might not have bought.
+- **Borrowing would be harder.** A first loan from [the bank](the-bank.md), at market rates with no personal guarantees, is exactly what the bank exists for. (The real company had two founders. The [pilot](pilot-spec.md#who-can-borrow) would have required a third.) But the pilot caps each co-op at $3 million in loans over its lifetime, so the bank gets a company like this started, not grown. After that, a profitable business can borrow from ordinary lenders. Conservice's earlier loan came from private lending funds at a normal rate for a company like it ([Octus](https://octus.com/resources/articles/update-1-blue-owl-crescent-expected-to-lead-private-credit-financing-for-conservice-buyout-by-tpg/)). But those lenders were lending to a company with owners' money beneath them to absorb losses first. A co-op, with its members' accounts paid out as people leave and [the lock](the-lock.md) narrowing who could buy it if it failed, would likely borrow less, at a higher price.
+
+Whether co-ops can grow on those terms is exactly what [the test](the-test.md) is for.
+
+## Who would have received less
+
+**The founders.** As members, they would have had a founding share, their accounts, and executive pay while they ran it. They would never have sold. In the model's 200-person example, a co-op founder ends up with about $2 million against $29 million to $38 million for a conventional owner ([The Founder Problem](founder-problem.md#the-numbers)). Conservice was valued at $2.66 billion in 2020, so at its scale the gap would be far wider. What the founders actually received hasn't been published.
+
+The model's aim is for that value to stay with the people who keep producing it. But that raises the question the whole model rests on: **would these founders have started this company as a co-op?** Nobody knows. The founder problem isn't solved, and this example doesn't solve it.
+
+**The investors.** TA, Advent and TPG could still have lent to the co-op, or put in money for a share of profits that ends after a set time ([Capital, After](capital.md)). That would still be a claim on the members' work. The model's answer isn't that such a claim is free. It's that the claim ends and carries no vote. What they couldn't have bought is a permanent claim, the kind that can be sold again.
+
+**The workers, in one way.** A member's account rises and falls with the company. The [insurance pool](savings-guarantee.md) protects part of it, not all of it.
+
+## What this example doesn't prove
+
+- **It assumes the company would exist either way.** That's the biggest assumption on the page. If worker ownership makes firms less productive, or if the founders would never have started it, the comparison falls apart. [The pilot](pilot-spec.md) is built to find out.
+- **Conservice is unusually profitable.** A home-care co-op has very little profit to share. For low-margin work, ownership brings a say and not much money, which is why the model also has [a floor](the-floor.md).
+- **Ownership changes who gets the profit, not who pays it.** A co-op version would bill the same renters, who don't choose their building's billing company. They'd still need the same protection from unfair fees that they need now.
+- **Dollars aren't the main point.** It's about who decides. Thousands of people in one valley have seen new owners buy into their company three times in ten years, and none of them had a vote on any of those deals. In the co-op version, they would.
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ This model doesn't buy, seize or convert anyone's company. Instead it builds new

 ## Why it matters

-This isn't mainly about money. **People deserve a say in governing the place where they spend most of their waking lives.** Today most workers are ruled by distant owners who answer to nobody who works there. Co-ops are rare, and one likely reason is that nobody will lend to them. This model fixes the financing and lets people choose. [Making the Case](the-argument.md)
+This isn't mainly about money. **People deserve a say in governing the place where they spend most of their waking lives.** Today most workers are ruled by distant owners who answer to nobody who works there. Co-ops are rare, and one likely reason is that nobody will lend to them. This model fixes the financing and lets people choose. [Making the Case](the-argument.md) and, for one real company worked through, [What If Conservice Had Been a Co-op?](conservice.md)

 ## Honest about what's unsolved

@@ -13,6 +13,6 @@ There is *personal property*: your house, your car, your savings, your tools. Th

 Then there is *productive capital*: a perpetual, tradeable claim on the output of a thousand people you will never meet. This is not the same kind of right. It has been wearing the same word by accident, and the accident does political work for the people who benefit from it.

-The dividing line: **it stops being a tool and becomes capital when it earns you a claim on other people's labor that you don't work alongside.** The plumber's van is not extracting from anyone. TPG's stake in Conservice is.
+The dividing line: **it stops being a tool and becomes capital when it earns you a claim on other people's labor that you don't work alongside.** The plumber's van is not extracting from anyone. TPG's stake in Conservice is. (What that company would look like as a co-op is worked through in [What If Conservice Had Been a Co-op?](conservice.md).)

 What follows from the thesis is not "therefore the state may take that capital." It is something narrower and harder to argue with: **therefore there should be firms where that claim never forms in the first place, and nothing in law or finance should stop people from building them.**
@@ -24,4 +24,4 @@ Why the cap: uncapped tenure weighting builds a gerontocracy of shares and chain
 - **Base salaries still exist**, set by the company. A brain surgeon won't work somewhere without a high salary, and shouldn't have to. Hard jobs and in-demand jobs still pay more. The incentive to do difficult work survives intact. Pay isn't capped, but raising salaries doesn't let members skip the co-op's reserve: it takes its share of pay above the going rate too ([Investing for the Long Run](the-long-run.md)).
 - **Governance is up to each company.** Workers pass bylaws deciding what requires a vote and what doesn't. Some will use direct democracy, some representative systems, some will delegate almost everything to management they hire and can fire. "Workers vote on every decision" is a strawman and always was.

-The concrete case: the average employee where I work generates roughly $150,000/year in profit after all costs. That money currently flows upward to private equity. A firm with those economics, built as a co-op, sends it to the people who made it.
+The concrete case: the average employee where I work generates roughly $150,000/year in profit after all costs. That money currently flows upward to private equity. A firm with those economics, built as a co-op, sends it to the people who made it. The numbers, using public figures, are in [What If Conservice Had Been a Co-op?](conservice.md).