jheapsandClaude Opus 5.5
27dd0ccb3e
Add savings-guarantee.md: a co-op-funded insurance pool covering final unpaid wages, former members' payouts and a protected slice of current accounts, priced for near-zero recovery by an independent actuary, with a credit-union-style deposit, phased coverage, pro-rata payment when short, and rules against phantom profits, early quitting and fraud rings. Co-ops may no longer take member deposits or sell members bonds. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <[email protected]> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01QWPs69B8nQZjtPEUXMKzZx
1.9 KiB
1.9 KiB
title, section, order, summary
| title | section | order | summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Federation | Growing the Sector | 70 | Co-ops pool risk through a shared fund that absorbs shocks, moves workers when a firm fails, and becomes a lender in its own right. |
The Federation
Worker ownership has a risk problem that's easy to miss: concentration. It matters even more in a young, voluntary co-op sector.
A worker-owner holds their salary, their profit share, and their skills all inside one firm. That is exactly the risk a shareholder diversifies away and a worker cannot. It is the real source of risk-aversion: if one bad bet can kill the company that is also your paycheck and your equity, you take the safe option every time, and an economy of safe options stops producing breakthroughs.
The fix is a structure between firms, and Mondragon already built it:
- Firms pool a slice of profits into a mutual solidarity fund. The fund absorbs shocks. A firm having a bad year draws support instead of dying.
- When a firm does die, the federation redeploys its workers into member firms. Your company failing stops meaning your life failing. This is what licenses healthy risk-taking: not lower stakes on paper, but a floor under the fall.
- The fund becomes a second lender. Over time, the federation (financed by its members and by the indivisible reserves of dissolved co-ops) becomes a source of patient capital that doesn't depend on the public bank at all. That is the path to the co-op sector outliving the political coalition that started it.
- Federations can insure their members' savings. A federation can run its own savings insurance pool, as long as it meets the national standards and reinsures with the others. Its co-ops' workers are then covered close to home (see Protecting Members' Savings).
Membership is voluntary, but the incentives all point in: unfederated co-ops face the concentration problem alone.