Experience Online Shopping at Cooperatives
A typical company is funded by investors, who put money up with the expectation of a return on that investment in the form of profit. These profiteers have two methods for extracting that profit:
In the first case, they are extracting their profit by overcharging you.
In the second case, they are extracting profit by requiring their workers to provide more value than they are compensated for.
In both cases, this extraction is unethical, but it's the way the system works at for-profit companies.
A cooperative (co-op) is a business that strives to be non-extractive. They typically seek to have the lowest prices possible because they aren't trying to make insane amounts of profits for shareholders quarter over quarter. In general, they seek to keep the price on par with the quality, avoiding number (1).
Worker co-ops in particular seek to avoid the second way of extracting profit. At a worker co-ops, the workers are the owners, rather than investors. This allows the workers to be compensated the amount of value they actually provide, decided democratically by the worker-owners themselves.
Maybe you're sold on the idea of co-ops, but where do you find them?
Cooperative Codebase (a tech worker cooperative) is building a one-stop shop online for shopping at co-ops. We believe that so many people are supporting extractive, profit-driven companies because they don't have a choice. They can choose between companies, but each of the options are just as extractive as the rest.
We believe that if people were given the choice, they would choose non-extractive, community-owned and worker-owned organizations to buy everything they need. If we all choose to stop supporting exploitative companies, we can build an alternative economy that doesn't funnel most money into the hands of the few.
For more information, check out our FAQ Page
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