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WHEN THE LITTLE FISH SWALLOW THE BIG FISH
WHEN THE LITTLE FISH SWALLOW THE BIG FISH
Here's a good profile which proves the case against the continued existence of the Big C's:
Ryan is one of those young Millennium Generation entrepreneurs who are going to transform the USA into an even more entrepreneurial country. He is engaged, passionate, caring and VERY entrepreneurial.
The towns that can attract and nurture the Ryan Goodwin’s of their towns are going to better for it.”
http://boomtownusa.blogspot.com See Article on Mooresville Magazine, March 11, 2007.
There are many pressures and opportunities from all directions which is putting pressure on the current system and which will dive the forces of the Millennium Generation:
Over time, the ability of large corporations to amass market share, will become a strategy of the past. The market will devolve from shopping centers to a highly interactive online environment (think eBay). The online sellers will have little overhead compared to the Big C's, can make the product or provide the service a small faction of the price. The relatively higher percentage of profits will drive the formation and success of yet more similar enterprises.
The U. S. Government has provided protection of the Big C's by use of regulations which prevent the entry of competition or severely restrict the entry. The favorite devices of the Big C's has been to have members of Congress in their pocket. Watch while the MGen entrepreneurial folks take to the political process and take over those seats and vote against the Big C's.
Ryan is running for a City Council seat for Mooresville. He'll get elected and start bringing more from the MGen onboard.
The concept of “Economic Gardening” is best exemplified by the effort that Littleton, Colorado, has employed and which shows great promise.
And from Fairfield, Iowa:
Adding diversity and blending cultures, the school, which focuses on consciousness-based learning to foster intelligence, is a magnet for people who practice Transcendental Meditation — a form of meditation that focuses on reaching the brain’s full potential. In addition to its emphasis on education, the institution strives to create an influence of harmony and peace in society through the use of meditation. After a 1979 world peace conference, 800 new residents moved to Fairfield at the urging of the university’s founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Within the next two years, two large golden domes for meditation were built on the campus, attracting thousands more from across the globe. Now serving about 700 students from 62 countries, the university continues to influence the culture of Fairfield while embracing the area’s roots.
“Through the integration of new Iowans with old Iowans, the town gets a chance to reinvent itself with the new cultures that people bring,” says Mayor Ed Malloy. “The byproducts of those cultures are economy, art, and culture.” In the past 25 years, Fairfield has undeniably reinvented itself into a creative, diverse community boasting more than 20 art galleries filled with work from local artists, a thriving live music and theater scene, and a tantalizing mix of cuisines. “The boundaries of who’s who in Fairfield are fading away,” http://www.tm.org/news/iowan.html
An Entrepreneurial Approach to Economic Development
In 1987, the City of Littleton, Colorado pioneered an entrepreneurial alternative to the traditional economic development practice of recruiting industries. This demonstration program, developed in conjunction with the Center for the New West, was called "economic gardening." We have had many communities visit us and inquire about the program over the years. In an effort to provide a concise summary of our original thinking and the evolution of that thinking during the first years of the program, we present here a synopsis of our experience. More, much
more....http://www.littletongov.org/bia/economicgardening/
Schools are getting into the act: “Entrepreneurial Education Laws in the States By Kyle Zinth February 2007 Introduction One of the great historical drivers of this nation's economic success is the entrepreneurial spirit of its people. The 21st century will require more citizens to have an entrepreneurial approach to employment, as a rapidly evolving economy necessitates frequent career changes, forcing workers to identify and seize upon opportunities in order to be successful. Further, states that enjoy workforces with strong entrepreneurial skills are likely to be centers of innovation in an evolving economy favoring those able to quickly adapt to and exploit new opportunities. States have sought to harness and nurture entrepreneurship in many ways, including in their public school and higher education systems. One tool states have used is enacting legislation addressing entrepreneurship, and this document examines such legislation in 18 states. More….. http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/73/08/7308.pdf And from the annals of the growing force of Intentional Communities: “Intentional Community is an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, and other projects where people strive together with a common vision.” http://www.ic.org/ Communities Magazine #133 (Winter 2006)
Helping Your Local Economy Thrive
How a Steady State Economy Can Change Our Lives—Paula L. Craig; An Abundance of Small, Sustainable Solutions—Paul Glover; Our Own Money: Recipe for Healthy Local Economies—Albert Bates; Local Currencies—Stephen Burke “Mutual Enterprise”: Creating New Jobs Locally—Paul Glover; How Ecovillages Can Grow Sustainable Local Economies—Jonathan Dawson; When We Should Use “Blocking Power”—Caroline Estes, Bea Briggs, Karl Steyaert, and Tree Bressen; Seeking Community—Frank Beaty; Founding Community—Kees Kolff. http://communities.ic.org/back_issues/ Want proof? Want more proof. Is 14 billion in revenue enough proof?
MONDRAGON COOPERATIVE CORPORATION
“The Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa (MCC) began in the town of Mondragon in 1956 when a group of five young engineers were encouraged by their socialist priest, Father Jose Maria Arizmediarrieta, to set up a cooperative to make paraffin cooking stoves. Using Arizmediarrieta's vision the five young students built a financial base for the MCC today. By 1959 they had already formed the Caja Laboral Popular (CLP), the Working People's Bank, which is not only the bank for the cooperatives but is run as a cooperative itself. MCC has grown in its forty years of operation to include 160 employee-owned cooperatives, involving 23,000 member owners, with sales grossing US$3 billion in 1991.
The main focus of the Association of the Mondragon Cooperatives is the creation of owner-employee jobs to expand the opportunities for people to participate in the relationship economy. Statistics show the Mondragon cooperatives to be twice as profitable as the average corporation in Spain with employee productivity surpassing any other Spanish organisation. It is focused on social success, involvement of the people and industrial democracy. MCC has grown to be one of the twelve largest companies in Spain and is the biggest in Basque County. The MCC includes numerous community and employee based programs, their social systems include health care, housing, social security, primary and post secondary education, training and retraining and unemployment insurance. Extensive efforts to retrain or relocate workers who are affected by changes that occur in the wider economy is an essential component of it's program. The educational system that they have implemented has over forty schools and a college; there is also a student relationship cooperative, which allows working students to cover their tuition and living expenses for their private high school and college education while having the experience of running their own cooperative.
The MCC views capital as only a means to an end, the goal is for a happy and productive work environment and capital is a tool needed to achieve that. Ten percent of the annual net profits is donated to charity, 40 percent is retained in the collective internal account. This collective internal account is regarded as the portion of profits that is collectively owned and managed for the common good; if the cooperative ever ceased to exist, this portion would go to charity. The remaining 50 percent is open for use by the owner employees because it can be used as collateral at the bank for a loan at an interest rate only a point or two above the six percent it is earning, yet the cooperative has the use of the capital at the same time.
Another unique aspect of MCC is the way it deals with the establishment of new companies and the repayment of debt. The Coop always begins a new enterprise with a group of people who are friends, never with just one person. It sees the natural bonds of friendship as a building block for which successful ventures are built. The new enterprise and the MCC bank agree to stay together until the business is profitable. The members of the new group put up twice the membership fees that others will invest and the bank loans any additional capital necessary at a normal interest rate. If the business runs into trouble the bank will loan additional capital at roughly half the initial rate. If the company is still in financial trouble the interest rate will be dropped to zero, and if more assistance is needed the bank may donate capital to the business. Eventually, even if the company has to go through drastic changes like new managers or new product lines, the business becomes successful and is able to repay much of the loans, although the bank also uses a portion of its profits from time to time to reduce the size of the loans of all of its cooperative businesses.” http://www.iisd.org/50comm/commdb/desc/d13.htm
Why have we not heard of MCC in the United States before now? MCC has no presence in the U.S.A. Why is a mystery to me. To fill this gap, I have used MCC as a model in creation of a cookbook and road map for an intentional community, to be known as Mutual Aid Society of America (MASA). In researching MASA, I came across MCC, read three books by competent researchers and produced a paper under the direction of Dr. Martin Frick, Dept. of Agriculture, head of the Department of Agricultural Education. The paper is entitled,
Mutual Aid Society of America and Mondragon – and More, -- Mondragon, the Parent; MASA, the child
and can be viewed at: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df5wm7vr_0hcmsmp
So....., the folks in the “It's all about me” mode who want to play the game of survival, should be well aware that the folks in the “It's all about us” mode are going to survive. The self-centered folks will not survive.
Fish or cow for dinner?
Jim Miller jimmiller5417@yahoo.com March 25, 2007
--Advance the time about 20 years and watch the thousands of small, highly entrepreneurial folks act like Piranhas eating the cow which fell into the river.How could such an event or series of events happen? As the Big “C's” downsize, right size, and continue to wage war on the American Family Dream, the smart, highly motivated and entrepreneurial folks will quit the Big C's and start their owner/worker business, usually locally at first, then regionally, then nationally, and then globally. They will compete, head-to-head, with the Big C's whose corporate greed, bloated bureaucracy, and ability to transfer cost to the already unfairly paid American workers , will royally back-fire on them. In 10 to 20 years, these “small fish” which when totaled, will exceed the productive capacity of the Big C's, will eat the Big C's alive, as a school of Piranhas would strip all flesh from the cow which falls in to the river. The Fat Cats will realize this eventuality only after it happens.
By Jim Miller
Here's a good profile which proves the case against the continued existence of the Big C's:
Ryan's story.
“Ryan is only 23 years of age but this is not his first start-up. His first was a decorative metal panel business, Goodwin Industries, which he started at age 15. He is on the chamber board of directors, is a volunteer policeman and is running for the city council. He’s got a lot of energy!Ryan is one of those young Millennium Generation entrepreneurs who are going to transform the USA into an even more entrepreneurial country. He is engaged, passionate, caring and VERY entrepreneurial.
The towns that can attract and nurture the Ryan Goodwin’s of their towns are going to better for it.”
http://boomtownusa.blogspot.com See Article on Mooresville Magazine, March 11, 2007.
There are many pressures and opportunities from all directions which is putting pressure on the current system and which will dive the forces of the Millennium Generation:
- Sub-poverty wages being paid by most of the retail and service industries to workers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, and the like.
- High turnover cause by employer churning the low end employees to prevent vesting of and avoid paying benefits.
- More of these Millennium Generation Entrepreneurs will be green oriented, family-centric, and form entities which values quality of life higher than rewarding remote shareholders and the business “royalty”.
- More collaborative societies and business entities (think faith-based and faith neutral Hutterites).
- More local than regional and more regional than national.
- Create high value products and services.
- Use the World Wide Web to supercharge the flow of information and create collaborative spaces among researchers, inventors, developers, makers, distributors and customers.
- Foster a sense of trust, honesty, and respect among the workers who are also owners (think cooperatives, such as Mondragon Cooperative Corporation).
Over time, the ability of large corporations to amass market share, will become a strategy of the past. The market will devolve from shopping centers to a highly interactive online environment (think eBay). The online sellers will have little overhead compared to the Big C's, can make the product or provide the service a small faction of the price. The relatively higher percentage of profits will drive the formation and success of yet more similar enterprises.
The U. S. Government has provided protection of the Big C's by use of regulations which prevent the entry of competition or severely restrict the entry. The favorite devices of the Big C's has been to have members of Congress in their pocket. Watch while the MGen entrepreneurial folks take to the political process and take over those seats and vote against the Big C's.
Ryan is running for a City Council seat for Mooresville. He'll get elected and start bringing more from the MGen onboard.
The concept of “Economic Gardening” is best exemplified by the effort that Littleton, Colorado, has employed and which shows great promise.
“Chris, this concept is quite intriguing but I think you could argue that it's the recipe for the combination of both the biological and mechanical systems that makes a business successful across markets. Larger companies tend to be 'mechanism' laden to accommodate functioning with a large number of individuals/employees over a broad geographic area. Smaller companies tend to be 'biologically' founded with much reliance on the dynamic ability of a small number of individuals. (or the proprietor them self) For competitive purposes, the goal then of course is for larger companies to decentralize parts of the decision process for becoming somewhat more biological and for smaller companies to create more mechanisms so that they can be more consistent with customer experience and less reliant upon specific individuals.” Scot
Scot D. Lee Loveland Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Center 5400 Stone Creek Circle Loveland CO 80538 970-667-6311 970-667-5211 fax slee@loveland.org www.Loveland.org Loveland Economic Gardening Program www.LovelandEconomicGardening.com
And from Fairfield, Iowa:
“For much of its history, Fairfield was a typical rural community with an agricultural foundation that embraced the traditional values of hard work and leadership. In 1974, Maharishi University of Management (then known as Maharishi International University) purchased Parsons College, a financially unstable Fairfield school.
“The move of the university to Fairfield was a real turning point for the community,” explains Craig Pearson, MUM executive vice president.
Adding diversity and blending cultures, the school, which focuses on consciousness-based learning to foster intelligence, is a magnet for people who practice Transcendental Meditation — a form of meditation that focuses on reaching the brain’s full potential. In addition to its emphasis on education, the institution strives to create an influence of harmony and peace in society through the use of meditation. After a 1979 world peace conference, 800 new residents moved to Fairfield at the urging of the university’s founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Within the next two years, two large golden domes for meditation were built on the campus, attracting thousands more from across the globe. Now serving about 700 students from 62 countries, the university continues to influence the culture of Fairfield while embracing the area’s roots.
“Through the integration of new Iowans with old Iowans, the town gets a chance to reinvent itself with the new cultures that people bring,” says Mayor Ed Malloy. “The byproducts of those cultures are economy, art, and culture.” In the past 25 years, Fairfield has undeniably reinvented itself into a creative, diverse community boasting more than 20 art galleries filled with work from local artists, a thriving live music and theater scene, and a tantalizing mix of cuisines. “The boundaries of who’s who in Fairfield are fading away,” http://www.tm.org/news/iowan.html
More about Littleton, CO:
An Entrepreneurial Approach to Economic Development
In 1987, the City of Littleton, Colorado pioneered an entrepreneurial alternative to the traditional economic development practice of recruiting industries. This demonstration program, developed in conjunction with the Center for the New West, was called "economic gardening." We have had many communities visit us and inquire about the program over the years. In an effort to provide a concise summary of our original thinking and the evolution of that thinking during the first years of the program, we present here a synopsis of our experience. More, much more....http://www.littletongov.org/bia/economicgardening/
Schools are getting into the act: “Entrepreneurial Education Laws in the States By Kyle Zinth February 2007 Introduction One of the great historical drivers of this nation's economic success is the entrepreneurial spirit of its people. The 21st century will require more citizens to have an entrepreneurial approach to employment, as a rapidly evolving economy necessitates frequent career changes, forcing workers to identify and seize upon opportunities in order to be successful. Further, states that enjoy workforces with strong entrepreneurial skills are likely to be centers of innovation in an evolving economy favoring those able to quickly adapt to and exploit new opportunities. States have sought to harness and nurture entrepreneurship in many ways, including in their public school and higher education systems. One tool states have used is enacting legislation addressing entrepreneurship, and this document examines such legislation in 18 states. More….. http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/73/08/7308.pdf And from the annals of the growing force of Intentional Communities: “Intentional Community is an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, and other projects where people strive together with a common vision.” http://www.ic.org/ Communities Magazine #133 (Winter 2006)
Helping Your Local Economy Thrive
How a Steady State Economy Can Change Our Lives—Paula L. Craig; An Abundance of Small, Sustainable Solutions—Paul Glover; Our Own Money: Recipe for Healthy Local Economies—Albert Bates; Local Currencies—Stephen Burke “Mutual Enterprise”: Creating New Jobs Locally—Paul Glover; How Ecovillages Can Grow Sustainable Local Economies—Jonathan Dawson; When We Should Use “Blocking Power”—Caroline Estes, Bea Briggs, Karl Steyaert, and Tree Bressen; Seeking Community—Frank Beaty; Founding Community—Kees Kolff. http://communities.ic.org/back_issues/ Want proof? Want more proof. Is 14 billion in revenue enough proof?
MONDRAGON COOPERATIVE CORPORATION
“The Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa (MCC) began in the town of Mondragon in 1956 when a group of five young engineers were encouraged by their socialist priest, Father Jose Maria Arizmediarrieta, to set up a cooperative to make paraffin cooking stoves. Using Arizmediarrieta's vision the five young students built a financial base for the MCC today. By 1959 they had already formed the Caja Laboral Popular (CLP), the Working People's Bank, which is not only the bank for the cooperatives but is run as a cooperative itself. MCC has grown in its forty years of operation to include 160 employee-owned cooperatives, involving 23,000 member owners, with sales grossing US$3 billion in 1991.
The main focus of the Association of the Mondragon Cooperatives is the creation of owner-employee jobs to expand the opportunities for people to participate in the relationship economy. Statistics show the Mondragon cooperatives to be twice as profitable as the average corporation in Spain with employee productivity surpassing any other Spanish organisation. It is focused on social success, involvement of the people and industrial democracy. MCC has grown to be one of the twelve largest companies in Spain and is the biggest in Basque County. The MCC includes numerous community and employee based programs, their social systems include health care, housing, social security, primary and post secondary education, training and retraining and unemployment insurance. Extensive efforts to retrain or relocate workers who are affected by changes that occur in the wider economy is an essential component of it's program. The educational system that they have implemented has over forty schools and a college; there is also a student relationship cooperative, which allows working students to cover their tuition and living expenses for their private high school and college education while having the experience of running their own cooperative.
The MCC views capital as only a means to an end, the goal is for a happy and productive work environment and capital is a tool needed to achieve that. Ten percent of the annual net profits is donated to charity, 40 percent is retained in the collective internal account. This collective internal account is regarded as the portion of profits that is collectively owned and managed for the common good; if the cooperative ever ceased to exist, this portion would go to charity. The remaining 50 percent is open for use by the owner employees because it can be used as collateral at the bank for a loan at an interest rate only a point or two above the six percent it is earning, yet the cooperative has the use of the capital at the same time.
Another unique aspect of MCC is the way it deals with the establishment of new companies and the repayment of debt. The Coop always begins a new enterprise with a group of people who are friends, never with just one person. It sees the natural bonds of friendship as a building block for which successful ventures are built. The new enterprise and the MCC bank agree to stay together until the business is profitable. The members of the new group put up twice the membership fees that others will invest and the bank loans any additional capital necessary at a normal interest rate. If the business runs into trouble the bank will loan additional capital at roughly half the initial rate. If the company is still in financial trouble the interest rate will be dropped to zero, and if more assistance is needed the bank may donate capital to the business. Eventually, even if the company has to go through drastic changes like new managers or new product lines, the business becomes successful and is able to repay much of the loans, although the bank also uses a portion of its profits from time to time to reduce the size of the loans of all of its cooperative businesses.” http://www.iisd.org/50comm/commdb/desc/d13.htm
Why have we not heard of MCC in the United States before now? MCC has no presence in the U.S.A. Why is a mystery to me. To fill this gap, I have used MCC as a model in creation of a cookbook and road map for an intentional community, to be known as Mutual Aid Society of America (MASA). In researching MASA, I came across MCC, read three books by competent researchers and produced a paper under the direction of Dr. Martin Frick, Dept. of Agriculture, head of the Department of Agricultural Education. The paper is entitled,
Mutual Aid Society of America and Mondragon – and More, -- Mondragon, the Parent; MASA, the child
and can be viewed at: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df5wm7vr_0hcmsmp
So....., the folks in the “It's all about me” mode who want to play the game of survival, should be well aware that the folks in the “It's all about us” mode are going to survive. The self-centered folks will not survive.
Fish or cow for dinner?
Jim Miller jimmiller5417@yahoo.com March 25, 2007
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