I could organize one as I have run businesses before in a capacity as a manager, but I wouldn't know where to start. I would have to be more consultant than owner/worker because I'm in my seventies and wouldn't be able to pull my weight, but I could set up an office the bookkeeping and all. But where do you get the seed money and how do you get people involved to become owner/operators? I don't think a bank would be interested in lending money for such an enterprise.

Where I live, which is both a tourist destination for the beach and ocean attractions, as well as a wine country and agricultural area, doesn't have a base for retail businesses because they have been swallowed up by the big box stores.

Our real needs are to help our poor, but this wouldn't really make a paying business.



Maybe buying and running one of the many hotels here could be profitable, but I don't know anything about the hospitality business.

Seems some big buildings are there and pretty reasonable. Commune style. I've got a lot of people in some groups that travel to NOLA all the time and would be into this. Huge thread here:

http://chat.nojazzfest.com/showthread.php?13954-Whaddabout-a-Threadhead-Commune

Do a gallery, a small brewery, some charity, a makers space,and whatever skills you can ring.

The more people who form these and take business from the corporations, the better because then more people will want to be involved with and work for cooperatives.

exactly what I am talking about. Once everyone gets past theri private shit and everyone gets into a communal co operative situation then we can create something much greater than one person can create by themselves.

I belong to a makers space. A cooperative of artists and builders. there 50 of us and we all piled out tools and toys into a warehouse where we all create together and individually. we each have chores and we each do instruction and it is wonderful. ten times better than being in your garage and creating my yourself. Now I can get help and suggestions of the people that belong to the group. really expanded my horizons and I can to a lot more things now than I would be able to do if I did not have that.

You may remember I've been a passionate advocate for various types of member- and worker-owned cooperatives for ages.

The Yes! Magazine link is most excellent. Lots of great ideas. I've been making lots of connections in the co-op realm, people thinking way outside the box beyond the traditional organic food or utility co-op we tend to think of here in the States (we're woefully far behind other countries).

My main interest is the community land trust cooperative approach for alternative housing to strengthen local communities.

I'm convinced that nearly any type of venture can be done as a cooperative structure.

Heck, I even want to convert Wishadoo itself into a member-owned co-op.

Anyway, crowdfunding is a great way to generate seed capital for co-ops.

And one of the things they did which I LOVED (I had it in mind throughout the show that they should take a certain approach and was shocked when that's what they actually ended up doing...lol), was that they made the town hotel a co-op.

It was a very small town in Southern Cali, if I recall, and the highway diverted traffic away from their town, which used to be a tourist area.

The whole town ended up pitching in as co-owners via restructing as a co-op. They would donate x number of hours to work at the hotel per month and in return received member benefits. They also worked together...as co-owners...to make their little town a destination location again and attract tourists and other business (destination weddings are a big thing).

Very cool.

Regardless of the dilemma at hand for a business, my first reaction is always to investigate how a cooperative approach could help solve problems.

Co-ops aren't necessarily easy and come with their own set of problems, but I still believe it's the way of the future.

If one goes up for sale and they do now and then, it could be a start.

The problem is that most of us, who have worked for other people all our lives, are sometimes missing on the knowledge of the nuts and bolts of keeping a business successful. In the case of my town, it wouldn't be possible to do a community pitch in because there are a large number of retirees, very wealthy retirees who would see such moves as a threat to their portfolios. But if the employees of a hotel that is up on the block could pull together to buy such a business, maybe there is hope.

my biggest frustration lies in the fragmented nature of...well, nearly everything. There are so many good things being explored and being DONE, but I find the efforts to be very fragmented.

There's even a lack of cooperation in the co-op movement here in the States. LOL

It's a given that the focus and energy for most cooperative ventures is LOCAL. Obviously the movement's primary intention is to strengthen LOCAL economies.

That said, people are flailing around with a bit of a rugged individualist/bootstrap mentality toward these efforts, when it would help everyone if there was more connection and discussion and collaboration.

We don't need to reinvent the wheel each time. If there was a central go-to resource that could provide guidance and a general blueprint of sorts (recognizing that each venture and each location is unique, that would help the various efforts become much more effective and efficient. And successful!

The tax system in the US makes nearly everything more complicated here, so how these structures are best implemented varies from state to state. Still, there needs to be much more cohesion to further these movement along. I've been working on connecting with the leaders of the cooperative movement for years, toward that very end.

Can I come to you for advice and information if I plunge into this? I think it's time to start the ball rolling.

I'd be delighted.

Sounds like you have unemployed people who might be interested in sharing the work & benefits of operating a farm or winery or something.

I'd maybe look for some land & approach a credit union for financing. Put together a business plan. Find markets nearby for community-supported agriculture, organic produce, etc. We have a lot of local food co-ops that try to buy locally. The potential is enormous, really.

I'm almost as old as you & not about to launch something like that, but the prospect does excite me. I would look to additional sources of revenue such as maybe creating a CBRF on the farm & housing developmentally disabled people, building therapy into the work routine (sort of a sheltered-workshop agricultural enterprise), etc.

Goofy ideas, maybe, but the world needs goofy ideas. i put these forth in hopes that they will stimulate someone to come up with something workable.

at farmers' markets. They are basically single entrepreneurs. Commercial operations have been dominated by the chemical fertilizer and frankenseed monopolies that it would be just as hard to break into their territory. Also, there is suspicion that the soil has been contaminated by these operations using pesticides because we seem to have a high cancer cluster here and no one knows why. Where is Erin Brockovich when we need her?

Every rich rancher around here has a boutique vineyard and they bottle their own wine under their own labels. (Actually, they take their grapes to one of the big wineries who process them and put them in casks for them. When they are aged and bottled the big commercial winery also does it. The owner puts on his own label.) It's a vanity among the rich to serve their own label wine at parties and to give as gifts. But actually, it's a very ecologically destructive industry IMHO. I can't go into detail because there is a lot to explaining the problem and what happens and why. Again the big wineries dominate. Also it takes years to establish a vineyard like an orchard.

However, the hospitality industry is ripe for the pickings. Although we have Marriott and Hilton here, there are a number of independent operators. Also, I forgot to mention there is a need for medical facilities due to the large number of senior citizens here. With the ACA act kicking in, it might be ripe for a group of doctors and nurses to set up clinics as cooperatives.

Also, there's an old broken down hot springs SPA with RV parking in the County that could use major renovations if someone could convince the owners to sell. A hotel, and restaurant is needed and maybe a beauty SPA. And it needs major remodeling. The way it is now I'm surprised anyone uses it that doesn't come out and require a delousing for bacteria. It's in a scenic spot, with a creek running by it and near a Buddhist Temple and would make an ideal vacation retreat of some sort if someone with bucks and imagination would do it.

become independent from this Shit we are Living through...Lies, Deception, Twisted Rhetoric ....then the better off we are...

But..we aren't THERE YET...doesn't mean that putting energy into something FOR US...isn't better than beating our guts out on the internets about Politicians who could care less about ANY of US.

K&R

material items were important. Boat, two cars, big house, etc. And as long as the economy kept growing that was fine. But it was really just a bubble. A big bubble and now it's broken and we need to reevaluate what's important to us. Really important.

Remember...they want to TAKE FROM US....to DO Their THiNG...

If we go too far in eating "roots & berries" THEY will THINK that they won...while dining on Caviar and Primo Kobe Beef in the Finest of Restaurants...they will want to cause us to "Forge Off the Land."

But...yes...the MORE WE DO to be self-sufficient...the better we are...! But...don't forget they will be "living HIGH" while we do the GRUNT WORK.... Needs to be SOME Parity here... given the sacrifice...

Just because they can afford to eat all that stuff that's not healthy for them doesn't mean they "won". Let them have their heart attacks and strokes.

The basics behind voluntary simplicity are meant to stop enriching the Sam Waltons of the world by buying the useless crap they sell in their stores. We, the middle class, are the ones propping up these jokers by buying crap we can live without and then wondering how we're going to pay for all that crap we charged on our big bank credit card.

I would like to see more of us spend at least one full month thinking very carefully about what we purchased, want to purchase and ask ourselves the tough question of WHY we are purchasing it. Then ask ourselves just how much time we gave up in the entire endeavor.

The oligarchs manipulate us because of our materialism.

is disrupting some of them..depending on where one lives...and so we always need a "Plan B" for Drought, Floods and Temperature Variations...!

Last year our Local Grower (Elizabeth) had a mixed veggie production. Flooding rains...then Drought and so the crops her (organic farm) did seemed to have some problems with what went on last year in the weather.

She is working hard to find some crop that is sustainable...and meanwhile her farm hens..free range roving...are giving her sustainability...but she doesn't grow the hens to kill ...so she's got to be dependent on the food stuff /eggs and crops that survive and here in Southeast we've had a few bad years...so she's constantly revising what she grows to try to deal with it...and what her customers really want.

It's tough with the Organic Growers because of the irratic weather the past few years as to "seed choice and growing conditions to get a crop."

Elizabeth says they are trying..but, it's still a bit of "Trial and Error" and "Disaster Management" when things just don't work out. For Instance..she grew Organic Potatoes two years ago...and they didn't sell well...and Last Year..."EVERYONE" who visited her Stall wanted Organic Potatoes! She didn't know what the shift was in that year...and she overproduced when no one wanted...and under=produced when there was High Demand.

But...we told her..."Maybe it was the FOOD SHOWS that manipulate what the Population Wants. She replied...."I'm a farmer..don't have time to watch the "Food Shows" and what are they? (joking)

Edited...because our joke about Food Shows and the potato demand with Elizabeth came off in my post as if I was criticizing her in the way I wrote it. She was joking back about "Food Shows and what are they and laughed about not having time to watch them. It's become a joke between us and not how it sounded in my original.

but the students seemed to be able to grow a plethora of turnips and not much of anything else. People stopped buying because there is only so much you can do with turnips so the program was discontinued. Every other grower does it as a business or in the back yard for the farmer's market so to get something like that going again would be a heavy lift.

A number of local growers around here are using hoop houses to grow year round. These are catching on all across the country, because the grower can control the climate.

Also, it sounds like you need to be patient with Elizabeth, it sounds like she is still trying to figure out what is going on, and her clientele is growing and changing.

And no, TV isn't telling us what is popular in terms of food. What Elizabeth needs to do is at the beginning of each season, email a survey to all her subscribers to find out what they're going to want in terms of food, that way she can grow crops that better meet their needs, rather than guessing.

was trying to point out how hard it was for her with the Potato judgement...and I speculated that it could have been whatever the Food Network was promoting that year ... It didn't come off well.

She has expanded what she grows and there's always something she's experimented with that catches on...like kale which did well last year. But, the weather has caused problems with our drought then floods and some of her crops had losses due to that and not her judgement.

Just saying that being a farmer isn't an easy life being dependent on outside factors. But so glad we have her and that CSA's are expanding here is good news.

It just sounded like your friend was relatively new to the game, and needed some pointers.

Farming isn't an easy life, I know. I'm investing in the future with an organic orchard, and have invested so much time and money, before the trees are even mature enough to bear a commercial crop. Last summer's drought was a real eye opener, and I'm investing in a drip irrigation system this year, more money invested before I'm even making a cent.

They say that farmers are the biggest gamblers in the world for a reason, we're always thinking it will be better next season.

Good luck to Elizabeth and you, and you might gently suggest a hoop house(they're pretty cheap), and getting pre season suggestions from her subscribers. It could work out in everyone's favor.

but the Hurricanes that swept up East Coast last year...(Got winds here in the West Part of our State..that blew up to mild hurricane force...blew out her "Hot House Canopy" and even though it was staked...it was too much. So she lost what was in there.

Stuff Happens...and she's good in that she's trying to be adaptable in a time when the Climate Change and East Coast Storms with winds that come in ...are something she has to deal with.

She did E-Mail..that she's putting the "Hot House Canopy" up again because while it was blown out and what was in drowned in rain...that it was still not destroyed..so she's setting seedlings out for this year...

I take it you're a fellow Yes! Magazine fan?

I LOVE their magazine. Loved it for years.

But one thing that frustrates me is that they offer fabulous content, yet there's no place for those who appreciate their articles and want to gather to brainstorm and discuss and take action to come together.

I tried to reach them years ago but I may try again. The people who resonate with Yes! Magazine's content would also resonate with Wishadoo, and I have the perfect space ready for such online discussion and brainstorming.

Do you agree that there are people out there like me who want to discuss their articles and information they (and others) provide with others of like mind? Comment areas just aren't good for ongoing discussion.

Or maybe I'm odd in this overwhelming desire to gather and discuss and brainstorm and DO?

A makers space. http://www.thecuriousforge.org/ tis awesome.

I wish I lived near Grass Valley. It's exactly what I need to make my mosaic garden tiles or at least the ones I would like to make.

We pay 50 a month and share everything. 50 members and that pays the space, the lights etc.... We also have certains tuff we are required to do and some instruction we are obligated to provide at times.

contribute money and labor.

Also worked in Dead Tree Book Publishing...until that went down.

Nice to see your site..and will check out further.

The only way to get out from under the yoke of the corporations is to become self-sufficient and rely on community again.

Good post!

"It was our local credit union that saved us. “You’re owned by your members? What’s
so odd about that? We’re owned by our members,” the president of the Kitsap Credit Union mused.

With that financing, we were able to build 30 affordable homes and a common house, and to make space available for gardens, an orchard, a playfield, and a tiny urban forest. In 1992, we moved into Winslow Cohousing, the first member-developed cohousing community in the United States."

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/how-cooperatives-are-driving-the-new-economy/the-cooperative-way