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Comment on Why don’t more people start profit-sharing companies or co-ops?

American banks offering credit card have the highest profit margin of ANY US industry. In most other countries cash is still king. Hence credit unions in those countries need to charge fees and offer worse services.

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jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
If EU “credit unions”:

Are not nonprofits,

Everyone with a bank account isn’t an equal member and voter in meetings,

All members aren’t given the opportunity to present proposals and decide how to spend excess revenue

…then it seems like that’s the problem
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- MrMakabar@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Credit unions are a type of cooperative bank. The key is that anybody who opens a bank account becomes a member automatically. That is not the case for other types of cooperative banks.
  
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  - jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    What you’re describing is not a cooperative.
    
    The definition of a cooperative is where they’re Democratic and decisions are made collectively by all members.
    
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    MrMakabar@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Customer and member are not the same thing. A member owns a share of the business and has a vote, with cooperatives having one vote per member. That makes it different to company stock. For consumer cooperative like credit unions, most customers will own a share in the company, but it is not a requirement. For example when you withdraw money from a credit unions ATM, you are a customer of the credit union, but are not necessarily a member. There also are workers cooperatives, where the workers of the company are the members.
    
    Also cooperatives are meant to benefit their members, which makes them different from charities.
    
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