It's hard to find Canadians who dislike @mec, the venerable, beloved co-operative outdoor store modeled on REI. Millions of us have paid $5 to join the co-op and make it our first port of all for outdoor gear.
It's being sold to a rapacious American Private Equity fund.
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No. Really.
It's a sordid and disgusting tale.
About a decade ago, the board started to favour members who had operational experience over traditional board members - drawn from the co-ops rank and file.
They rammed through by-law changes in '13 that let them:
a) Disqualify potential board candidates from nomination; and
b) Recommend slates of candidates to the membership
This kicked off a spiral of ever-more-rigged elections that changed the co-op's fundamental character.
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Board seats started going to people whose experience was in the C-suites of major for-profit corporations; while the executive ranks were filled with merchandisers from failed electronics stores who filled the co-op stores with stupid gadgets.
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The co-op underwent disastrous expansion under this new regime, and began to lose money - $23.5m in losses on $462m in sales in 2018/19.
The board ignored members and founders who called on it to return to selling good outdoor gear at good prices:
As a reminder, here's the private equity playbook: buy beloved companies, load them with debt, reduce the quality of their products, liquide their pension funds, collect gigantic "management fees" and walk away, leaving behind wreckage and sorrow.
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MEC's board undertook this decision without putting it to the co-op membership - you know, the actual owners of MEC - who could have rescued the co-op with a modest $5-10 fee per member.
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It's not clear what will become of the proceeds of the sale (the co-op owns $372m in assets) - I wouldn't be surprised if the board and C-suite of the co-op found a way to take the lion's share in "consulting fees" and similar grifts.
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I have served as a board member on a Canadian co-op. This is absolutely illegitimate, reckless conduct and I hope the board is sued over it. I think they acted illegally.
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Co-op members (savemec.ca) have started a petition - which has attracted 30,000 signatures in mere days. I signed it.
In other words, the world we're living in is the best possible world, and the fact that you got contact burns from collapsing on the scorching sidewalk outside of the grocery store where you couldn't afford your weekly shopping is unfortunate, but unavoidable.
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*Corporate Bullshit: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America* is @NickHanauer, @joanwalsh and @donaldrcohen12's 2023 book on the history of corporate apologetics; it's great:
I found out about this book last fall when @ddayen reviewed it for the @TheProspect; Dayen did a great job of breaking down its thesis, and I picked it up for my newsletter.
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Last weekend, I was at @Defcon 32, where I had the privilege of giving a talk: "Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification."
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
This was a followup to last year's talk, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification," a talk that kicked off a lot of international interest in my analysis of platform decay ("enshittification"):
Once you learn about the "collective action problem," you see it everywhere. Democrats - including elected officials - wanted Biden to step down, but no one wanted to be the first one to take a firm stand, so for months, his campaign limped on: a collective action problem.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Patent trolls use bullshit patents to shake down small businesses, demanding "license fees" that are high, but much lower than the cost of challenging the patent and getting it revoked.
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Every performer and creator on Patreon is about to get screwed out of 30% of their gross earnings, which will be diverted to Apple, the most valuable company on Earth. Apple contributes nothing to their work, but it can steal a third of their wages:
Enshittification starts with companies being good to end users. In this case, Apple made a quality product - Iphones - and carefully tended its App Store.
Walmart didn't just *happen*. The rise of Walmart - and Amazon, its online successor - was the result of a specific policy choice, the decision by the Reagan administration not to enforce a key antitrust law.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: