by Keith Taylor
How can a bar afford to pay it's workers so well?
Get rid of the one owner who makes more money by keeping wages down. Then replace that owner with hundreds of owners!
That's what the folks at Black Star Brew Pub in Austin, Texas did (well, they didn't kick out the owner so much as started their own brew pub from scratch, but you get the point). The pub is an innovative co-op model in that the workers own it with the consumers. So the person serving you the beer has an incentive to guarantee quality service (they are after all serving an owner), and the consumer has an incentive to make sure the workers and the product are top notch (hey, they own the business too, and no one wants to own a shoddy store).
When the workers and the consumers own the business together as a coop, you all of a sudden have a workplace where people work together for mutual gain. That means exploitation, alienation, and conflict are dramatically reduced, community is fostered, and people learn how to work together.
Say... why aren't they teaching brew pub co-ops in Civics 101 classes?!