While researching IOOF for Eureka Lake I realized that the IOOF is NOT dead yet. It hasn’t devolved into a drinking club or sold out to commercial insurance firms like most other societies. It still runs modern retirement homes in at least three states, and has active lodges and new members in many cities.
Trinity House demonstrates that Mutual Benefit Societies can last 500 years if they’re not outlawed by Die-Versity and “rights”. IOOF has lasted 200 years, since 1819, without entirely losing its purpose.
A stronger Mutual sector would solve many problems. It would take energy away from Wall Street and the billionaires. Trinity House sponsored some of the best science research in the name of protecting shipping. Mutual is resilient EXACTLY BECAUSE it doesn’t belong to Wall Street or Bezos or government agencies. Above all Mutual is resilient because it’s reciprocal and responsive. It answers ONLY to its own members, who are the owners.
How can we strengthen the Mutual sector? I don’t have the slightest idea but it’s worth doing.
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One major problem, maybe the deepest problem and source of most other problems, is the Parkinson loop. Governments and corporations seek only GROWTH, not SERVICE or SOLVING.
When an institution has a healthy negative feedback loop to its customers or citizens, it works to gain more customers and to make the customers richer and better. Seeking profit forces a business to treat its customers and employees well. Loyalty is the key to profit.
Henry Ford, who was NOT a nice altruistic man, expressed this loop clearly. He wanted his employees to be able to buy Fords. So he treated them well, paid them well, and tried to improve their lives. In return they stayed on the job, improved their skills, and performed more efficiently. Loyalty for loyalty, respect for respect.
Now corporations seek GROWTH for its own sake so they move fast and break things to maximize SHARE VALUE.
Parkinson is most obvious in bureaucracies, which create problems in order to justify more power and budget to create more problems. Growth for the sake of growth, with NO OTHER PURPOSE.
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How do we break out of Parkinson? I’ve discussed two ways extensively.
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A strong leader who genuinely wants to solve problems and improve the company or country can break up the structures that maintain the death loop.
FDR knew exactly what he was doing. He was facing the three legs of Deepstate: Banks, Intel agencies, and Activists.
1. On his first day in office he started breaking and constraining the banks.
2. He then repealed Prohibition, which removed the Parkinson loop from FBI and ATF. Those agancies could no longer build gangs to provide “problems” that would be aggravated by building more gangs.
3. He then started to solve the overall economic problem, which relieved the stresses that were driving millions of working-class men into fascist and socialist activism.
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I’ve also discussed an unusual and perhaps unique exception to Parkinson. Trinity House was founded by Henry VIII and still operates with its original purpose intact. In 500 years it never lost track of its PROBLEM-SOLVING goal, never descended into pure growth-loop.
Trinity House succeeds because its income depends strictly and precisely on SOLVING one particular problem. Its purpose is to keep ships safe. It maintains lighthouses and radio beacons, and it has sponsored research in fog warnings, radio communication, and optics. Trinity House is funded by a tax on every commercial ship that docks in Britain. If ships are failing to reach port, its funding decreases. So it runs on a pure and simple profit loop, like a non-stock business.
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The long PURPOSEFUL life of IOOF shows that Trinity House is not unique. Other Mutual societies are capable of breaking Parkinson and avoiding capture by Bezos. The structure is still there waiting for more support and growth.
Lots of people are hungry to participate in a decentralized business, as the Bitcoin nonsense demonstrates. ‘Decentralized contracts’ (DAO) are fake coops, solely designed to grab money from suckers. If real PURPOSEFUL coops, including the social and FRATERNAL element of lodges, were available, this hunger would have a legitimate and productive outlet.
Polistra's Mill 