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I'm curious what you guys think of cooperatively operated crown corps (vargar.org)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/ndp@lemmy.ca
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Meaning, crown corps, where equity is 100% state owned, but operations are wholly managed by a consumer coop where every Canadian resident is a member by default.

Crown corps in the traditional sense are kinda the same as normal corps, but where the board of directors is appointed by the respective minister/minister's office instead of shareholders.

What I'm talking about is a crown corp where the board of directors responsible for operations is voted in by Canadian residents.

I like to do business mostly with consumer coops (credit unions, grocery coops and so on). For the majority of things, they're managed very competently in my opinion, so "public is too stupid for more democracy" is pretty much a redundant critique.

I come from India, where state owned corps are notoriously corrupt. Direct accountability to the taxpayer instead of indirectly via Parliament would be a better way to represent taxpayer interests imo.

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[–] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

If the corp is owned by the gov't then it can't be owned by the workers. The equity is the ownership. What could be done is the gov't could be extending loans or provide grants, plus act as a customer that pays for the service the coop provides. For example the gov't wants to build low rise units, it helps establish this coop construction firm and gives it a contract to build units in Montreal. The coop takes that and fullfils the project.

With that said, this may not be in the rest of our interest as the firm might start prioritizing other private contracts that its workers deem more profitable. This is why, the gov't has to maintain some form of ownership, whether full or some controlling share scheme line PRC-style golden shares.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I'm not proposing worker coops. I'm proposing consumer coops.

    Government equity ownership means the consumer coop can't just decide to privatise by itself or take on debt secured by equity.

    The model I'm proposing is how most public housing works (government raises capital, builds housing which is government owned). Maintenance of that housing/other admin work is handled by housing coops (effectively consumer coops).

    Sure, worker coops can be preferred while giving contracts (like an architecture worker coop, landscaping worker coop and so on). But the operations of the crown corp itself are conducted by a consumer coop.

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