Cooperative Economics for Engineers; or, Why You Have ...
summary
Tech history ties concrete practices to current tech labor: medieval guilds using apprenticeship and self‑inspection to guarantee quality; merchant contract law reused as pirate articles that give crews votes, bonuses, and disability pay; pirates’ captain earning ≈2× not 2000× the crew; modern tools include NLRB elections, anti‑union consultants, platform cooperatives and cooperative accelerators; Kickstarter wins an NLRB election; these examples show what was built, how it worked, and where similar structures might scale in tech.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Cooperative economics intro
- 1:19Tech workers and labor
- 5:13Medieval guilds and worker-owned businesses
- 9:50Pirates and contracts
- 13:17Luddites and sabotage
- 16:44Marxism unions and race
- 18:49Software anti-union tactics
- 20:34Kickstarter union retaliation
- 21:36Tech cooperatives and platforms
- 23:22Call to ethical tech work
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