Defeating the garden predators

I had a unique garden pest today. It was of the two legged kind. It picked all my tomatoes (even though they were green) and picked a good portion of the leaves off of my beans. Yet my other plants seemed to have survived. I suspect it was only innocent fun by a kid. Still, it got me to thinking of non-lethal garden defenses that could be used if I really became dependent on the food I will be growing in the years ahead.

In my opinion, the best garden defense is diversity. That is, to plant a variety of plants so if one plant succumbs to a threat, the others of a different type may survive. This has been particularly effective when it comes to bug defense. For example, beans in one part of my garden have mites but other distant bean plants developed no such problem. The same is true of the mysterious leaf hole phenomena that has eaten some of the cauliflower plants but has yet to spread to the others. It even helped with the two legged tomato raider who picked the really large tomatoes but left some of the smaller cherry tomatoes on the other side of the garden.

When it comes to theft, I tend to go for discouragement rather than overt defense. I have a saying. In any given Walmart parking lot, there is one car with a million dollars in the trunk and another with a body in the trunk. The only reason we don't know which is which is that nobody bothers to check.

Keeping that in mind, I find that defense through obscurity seems to work. My surface tomatoes were harvested but the tasty ground hugging cucumbers and underground radishes seemed to have survived intact. The lettuce, lacking any interesting fruit like features also survived.

Still, I realize that locks, doors and even barbed wire also have their place for stopping the larger pests. This chap has the look that is rather representative of the type I'm talking about. Since such zombie like beings can't be conveniently killed in our present legal system, I'm considering some non-lethal options. For the small ones, a sensible 6 foot fence to obscure garden goodies should be sufficient. For those who are ambitious enough to climb fences, some prickly rose bushes may discourage frequent repeat visits.

Simplification rather than innovation

There is a good video series by Dr. Joseph Tainer on the collapse of complex societies. There is a belief that innovation will solve problems of sustainability. The video exposes the myth that innovation and technology by themselves will be able to somehow overcome Malthusian limits. Also, technical solutions that provide less expensive benefits may simply be a way of exhausting resources quicker.

The talk is available via YouTube.

U.S. healthcare - complex, expensive and for many, unavailable

I'm scheduled to go back to work next week. Yay! My problems are solved. Well, not really. In the United States, healthcare is typically paid by an employer. Unfortunately, I am finding that insurance, being tied to employment, is an incredibly bad system. This is especially true of some employers who offer either no insurance or insurance that is so bad it covers practically nothing (which is the case of my present employer).

Here was my introduction to healthcare problems in the U.S. I had been an employee at the same place for 10 years. So, I didn't appreciate how the system had deteriorated. When I was let go from my employer, I was offered the option of COBRA coverage. Only $540 a month. What a bargain (sarcasm). Taking on a new bill in spite of having no clear source of income struck me as being really ironic. So, I did what millions of working people in the U.S. do every day. I decided to go without any kind of insurance coverage.

That didn't mean I stopped taking care of myself. Since I have severe allergies, I was in a program of getting injections to try to build a tolerance to a whole bunch of allergens by getting progressively stronger injections of what I am allergic to. This process takes many years and I was not quite half way through it. Since I felt I could not afford insurance, I worked out a cash deal with my doctor to continue my weekly allergy injections for $20 a visit ($80/mo). The injections aren't too expensive. However, when I need to get a replacement dose mixed, it's thousands of dollars to do so.

During my period of unemployment, I applied for a temporary insurance plan offered by New York State (in partnership with a private insurance company). I didn't get it. Believe it or not, my unemployment insurance payments made me exceed the income limit! What amazed me was this. Even if I did get the plan they can legally deny paying for allergy injections for 12 months along with any other pharmaceuticals due to being preexisting conditions! Further, they can do it till 2014!


During the process, I filled out numerous web forms that are designed to penalize those who work for a living and don't have multiple children. I was at a disadvantage for qualifying for insurance since I'm not disabled nor am I mentally retarded other than having the feeling that working for a living is for suckers. Good news though. I'm apparently healthy enough to almost consistently get this response.

It looks like these people in your home make too much money or do not meet other program requirements for public health insurance.

So, it appears as though I need to fit into the "other program requirements" category before qualifying for healthcare. Fortunately, I think I found a plan. At $360 a month, it's like renting an additional apartment to live in. However, at least the plan is not income based. The effect being, that it won't soak me for everything I have due to the fact I'm still healthy enough to work for a living. It also has the additional benefit of not being tied to my employer. So, I can switch employers at will without totally redoing my insurance each time. (At least, that's my hope).

As expensive as the plan is, there are several conditions before I can join. First, I need to live in New York State and have a pre-existing medical condition. I suppose it's fortunate that I have a non-lethal but annoying condition that is on the list of ailments. My condition requires medicine and supplies but I've been paying cash for them. So far, I survived the 6 month waiting period. In spite of now being almost out of medicine, I anticipate being able to survive in a semi-miserable state until I am able to get medication at subsidized prices. One thing I though was odd in the application process was that I was either required to be an undocumented alien or a citizen with a valid U.S. passport. I happen to have a passport but it's rather unusual for anybody other than Homeland Security to ask for that level of ID. The application process got even more interesting at the end. It required me to fax my medical records and passport to an unlisted phone number. That requirement was a challenge for me since I don't have a regular phone line. However, I had a PC and scanner and there are still Internet fax services available. After sending off all the paperwork to a phone number with shockingly confidential information on it, there is then a period of absolutely no feedback. So, I can only conclude that I've either sent off my life's information to a healthcare provider or the mafia. Judging from how the application process went, I'm thinking that it may have been both.

I called later to see if they received my information. They did. However, I was informed that I need to wait until my application is reviewed to qualify for the plan. I have no doubt this review is to establish my financial health rather than my physical health since the whole point of the plan is to address people who have pre-existing medical conditions. Hopefully, getting this plan might allow me to avoid the fate of so many people as they go broke when they get hurt and then loose everything they have to medical bills. So, this was as much about insuring my financial health as well as my physical health too.


In my web travels, I ran across a different kind of insurance. It was for "hunger insurance" This unreasonable and expensive policy is being offered due to recent projections of food shortages. However, what was interesting was doing a word replace of "HUNGER INSURANCE" with "HEALTH INSURANCE" made it into a striking resemblance of the health insurance system we have now. Coincidence? Oh, I don't think so!

We've been here before

When I learned about tiny houses, I thought the concept was great! The idea would be to make a small house out of nice materials rather than a larger house out of not-so-nice materials. The small size would keep initial costs quite low even when high quality materials such as metal roofing were used. The houses would offer privacy, low cost upkeep and small land tax due to their size. Older single people might enjoy this since it would offer something close to carefree living.

However, people do get lonely. So, the next step might be to put these houses into little clusters. Perhaps a few tiny house owners could pool resources for grounds upkeep. The upkeep might start out just for lawn mowing. The program would likely expand to pathways, then parking lots and perhaps a central community building or two. Perhaps "blue boy" systems and composting toilets would be replaced with real water and sewer service hookups. Eventually, community resources might be pooled for roof repairs and painting of privately owned houses too. It would then be only a small leap to solar powered energy systems and community gardens. Once the list of possible shared systems expanded to shared tennis, pool and golf course access, I realized something.

I just re-invented the concept of the condo.

However, unlike a condominium, tiny houses can usually be moved to different locations. In fact, many tiny houses are by nature movable since they are frequently built directly on trailer frames. Due to this, they can have the ability to change their locations very quickly. Another indirect benefit of being on a registered vehicle trailer is that construction is regulated by the DOT rather than building code enforcement and homeowner associations. Still, these agencies sometimes have bans on RVs for extended stays and these probably could be extended to trailer mounted tiny houses.

Assuming tiny houses are legal to park in an area, I imagine a tiny house cluster model would more likely resemble a seasonal camp ground. In the image on the right, just take out the RVs and put in tiny houses. Unlike RVs, tiny houses would likely have enough insulation to be able to be occupied during the winter months. They might even have electric and water/sewer hookups. So, they might become semi-permanent structures. Depending on who is beholding it, such a community would either be a beautiful living arrangement or an eye sore.  Doh!  I just described a higher end trailer park.

As they say, history never repeats. However, at times it sure does echo!

Apocalypse when?

Many people agree that no empire is forever. After all, in a few billion years the sun will eat the earth. Sometime before then, the United States will end. But how?

The effect of world resource depletion on the United States could be compared to a decaying automobile. Without repair, such a thing WILL stop working and usually does suddenly. The term "stops working" could be due to rust finally allowing the uni-body construction to crack in half such as Dimitri Orlov suggests in one of his essays It could also stop working due to lack of a critical part the system needs. That is, the principle of "peak everything", described by Richard Heinburg which covers the lack of availability of parts from ignition computers to gasoline. Using common sense, we know collapse of the United States is inevitable but cannot be precisely predicted.

Here's why. If someone were to look at say the death of a suburban shopping mall this fault is easier to see. When does an old shopping mall collapse? Is it when the mall's owners conclude occupancy is at a level that no longer covers operating costs? Is it when the mall finally closes it's last store? Is it the date when some square footage of roof section falls due to snow load? How about when the remains are finally leveled by a bulldozer to build a new golf course? Depending on how collapse is defined, a "collapse" doesn't happen at a specific time at all! Rather, it's a process consisting of events that can be spread over decades.

So, one might ask,"Will the U.S. achieve somebody's definition of collapse soon?" Absolutely. It's already happened. Just ask somebody who's unemployment has run out. Yet using different metrics, others may say the U.S. is OK or can at least muddle around for another hundred years even if the peak-oil and climate change doomers are correct. Maybe their definition is like mine. As long as the IRS is around, the U.S. still exists.

In my opinion, defining collapse metrics makes the analysis good only for identifying stages. Once the stages are identified, history can then be compared for similar scenarios. However, even if a relatively good historical match can be found little more can be done than setting general strategic direction. Still, analyzing collapse stages might be helpful when deciding on places to live, occupations to pursue and what capital should be built up first (both human and material).

As an example, one action I did in response to Peak Oil and Climate Change was to imagine stages of resource depletion using Dimitri's stages of collapse model. Then I biased that analysis on what I knew of my region's geography and it's history. So, I decided one effective tactic would be to buy a small house with a fixed rate mortgage in a walkable community with enough land for a decent size kitchen garden.  So far, so good.  Even though I'm currently unemployed and prices for all kinds of things are going up, I'm in no immediate danger of starving or being thrown out of my house. 

Why you know what's going on across the world but not across town.

I often wonder why it's harder to find news from across town rather than what's going on half way around the world. Most news seems to concern people and places that most of us don't particularly care about. It's as if the media exists more to distract than to inform.

When it comes to finding the truth in media, it's sometimes like, in the words of Will Farrel, "taking crazy pill shit." The duplication of messages is creepy. As an example, the Conan Obrien show demonstrated how seemingly different media centers reported exactly the the same story in the same way.

So, how is it possible to sort the real news from manufactured falsehoods? How can we tell the difference between some lazy reporters just grabbing an AP news feed on a slow news day versus active manipulation of the media? Well, there is no way of knowing.

Even if we can't tell truth from fiction, we can still put out a hypothesis then look at the facts. Then ask, do the facts fit the hypothesis? If so, the model may be good enough for rough predictions. For example, if most news sources say the weather will be sunny and you happen to live in Arizona, absent other sources, that prediction is probably true. Still, it's sometimes wise to have a bit of doubt and pack an umbrella if other sources disagree!

Another technique is to use media that can't be revoked easily. Physical books have this property along with newspapers, photographs and even old video tapes. The whole premise of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit_451 was based on the idea that the people who want to control society rely on people forgetting about past events. To solve this problem, they relied on a massive program of book burning. In George Orwell's book, 1984, that fictional world was also without books. Rather, people relied on flat screens for all of their communication and entertainment needs. Hmmm. Sound familiar? When people needed access to past information, they could look up archives. And this is where the character Winston Smith came in. In the story there is a description of Winston Smith's job. At work, Winston describes, the archives would be edited, facts changed, then filed again. The old media would then be thrown down a "memory hole". The function is opposite what it's name would suggest. It was a hole in the wall with a chute connected to an incinerator in the basement.

However, revisions of history regularly happen in the real world too. Rather large stories are forgotten like this one. Physical media insures stories are remembered or at least forgotten more slowly. Even if the stories are inaccurate, having them in physical form at least prevents quick manipulation of stories one way or another. That means critical thought at critical moments can have a chance of happening.

The last and most important thing is to not rely on mass media. Take notice of what's going on around your town and city. Talk with your neighbors to get verbal history. Perhaps do a bit of gossip. Talk with older people and learn the oral history of your city or town from the perspective of the ones who lived it. Sometimes a change in the seemingly trivial is just as news worthy as what you'll see on a TV. The difference is, the changes happening in your neighborhood will more likely affect you than anything happening overseas.

Interships and co-ops- cheap till it's not

A few years, I had a conversation with one of my friends about how it would be possible to make an enormously profitable company by using nothing but interns who were required to work for welfare benefits. As is frequently the case, if I can think it, somebody else is already doing it.

For years companies and schools would hunt together for cheap help. The practice was widespread in the graphic arts fields, radio and television fields. Their preferred prey would be a matriculated (tuition paying) student who needs to get "experience". So, they get the student to do an "internship" for "credit". However, the physical reality of this situation means they not only work for free, but pay college tuition to do it! The presumption is that the student would learn all sorts of useful skills. The reality is that they often only do very routine work. I've personally seen this and it was nothing short of employee exploitation. As an example, years ago, I was managing a Radio Shack. For about a month, I had a Syracuse University student employed in a sales position. During his stay, he made a little bit over minimum wage being a sales clerk just like the other minimum wage sales clerks. I tried teaching him some basic selling techniques, how to stock shelves and count change - the same skills that were taught to others who didn't have a college degree. I hope he picked up something else since he was paying S.U. tuition just to be in my store!

I had thought that interning had fallen out of style. Nope. It's expanded in a big way. I recently found this out when I was offered a "co-op" position at an I.T. company. At first, I thought I would be working for a real co-op which usually requires "sweat equity" to "buy" a voting share on the board (rather than investing a bunch of money as a lump sum). However, that wasn't the deal. I was simply playing the supply-demand game and currently it's a buyer's market.

I've found several other "job offers" that were like this. One of the worst examples was at a company that make of all things, products for I.T. security! It is amazing these companies are taking such large risks with their business infrastructure. The position of an I.T. person is as much about trust as skill. An I.T. person can easily install tools to allow them to make off with production secrets, sell customer information, gather credit card information or simply embezzle. An inexperienced I.T. person can accidentally open security holes and knock out many computers at once. All but the lowest level I.T. person can have more access to company information than the chief financial officer. Yet for all this power, entry level I.T. workers are either underpaid or unpaid. The fact that I.T. interns sometimes make less than a floor sweeper really shows how saturated this field has become.

Judging from the existence of these low-ball offers, I can only conclude that there is currently a massive over supply of I.T. people or an under-supply of competent management. Other industries that have legitimate shortages of workers frequently offer training deals or bonuses for joining. That's rare in I.T. except for very specialized skills. Ah, but the market is constantly changing. Here's to hoping it will start changing for the better soon!

Time to retool with a visit to the innovators guild

The conventional economy is undergoing changes. I realize this as I contrast how my father's generation and my generation differ in terms of occupations. Had I known even 10 years ago what I know now, I would have no problem finding employment at top dollar. Now, it's very difficult to find paid work at all. The difference? What I know now is now known to more people. So, I need to find a way to re-gain some exclusivity in the market place.

One of my favorite places to do this is at the Syracuse NY hackerspace. Being in Syracuse, it's a bit far for me to regularly travel to. However, it's still worth an occasional trip. So, I decided to stop by to see if I could do some networking (more social than technical)

The event I participated in this time was soldering instruction. The exercise was to put together an Arduino kit. Although there wasn't quite enough time to finish up my board, it did get me interested in the technology. Thanks to the soldering tips I received that night, it was easy to quickly finish up the through-hole soldering at home. It is nice to know my soldering skills are still good. The board works flawlessly!

The idea of the Arduino is to have an open source, low cost platform available to people so they can build small low cost electronic projects. The most popular board uses a "shield" approach which allows for easy expansion with supplemental electronics such as temperature sensors, RFID sensors, lights, relays and other ready-made boards. It also gives a nice platform for making user designed boards too. Rather than requiring an expensive programmer and support electronics, the boards can be programed with only a USB cable.

This technology, combined with RepRap technology, could in theory allow people to engage in manufacturing of niche products right in their own home! Just as sewing machines allowed some households to make their own clothes and occasionally get extra income from selling wedding dresses, a person could make electronic products for their own use and possibly make some money servicing niche local markets with custom electronic products.

The Arduino is only one technology which is at the hackerspace. There are others. From analog radio to video production, the space is frequently a fountain of ideas and answers. The only problem for me is that it's quite far away. So, I can't visit physically as often as I would want. However, being a technology group, it's still possible to visit it virtually. It's at http://SIG315.org.

I'm also working on a project using the board I built. If you want to know more, visit http://plasticnerd.blogspot.com

Sequestering carbon dioxide

Some say the answer to global warming is to sequester carbon dioxide from power stations as it's burned. Even if this idea was technically practical, my opinion is that it's doomed to failure. The reason has little to do with technology and everything to do with human nature.

"If you have enough of anything, it's valuable"

The example on the right illustrates the point. To most people, manure is something to be removed as soon as possible. Very elaborate and expensive sewer systems have been constructed to remove this product. Yet other people have become rich selling manure. So, it's likely that sequestered carbon from coal fired power plants would present a similar opportunity.

Just as a manure vendor with a large amount of material will eventually find a market for that product, somebody will figure out a way to sell railway cars full of sequestered coal plant byproducts. Short term, the most likely market will be the U.S. government. It's yet another way for politicians to subsidize the fossil fuel industry while getting a re-election subsidy themselves. By the time the public realizes this, the U.S. government will likely have entered into multi-year contracts that will force the government to pay top dollar to transport the carbon to underground in former gas wells. But will that really solve the problem? It might be possible to economically transport the gas to an underground location and successfully contain the gas. It might even be efficient rather than having the problem of Ethanol where it takes nearly the same amount of energy put in as is released. However, assuming it was efficient and technically possible, there is another problem. There is more than one way for gas to escape.

The fact is, storage facilities might be able to be built to withstand the pressures of escaping gas but few systems can withstand government corruption! It's a good bet that this resource will simply be re-sold a few years later by private companies as is now being done with helium reserves. Unlike other coal fired waste products such as mercury or sulfur, carbon dioxide is non-toxic (in the same sense water is) and would be made relatively pure in the process of being compressed. This makes it an attractive resource to re-sell or even steal.

Due to this, it's likely that railway cars and trucks of this material will re-appear in the open market. If prices become low, percolating the last dregs out of tired oil wells becomes economical. If prices become still lower, I suspect entirely new uses will develop too. Perhaps inexpensive dry-ice powered camping refrigerators will appear in the market. Perhaps people will insist on auto tire inflation with dry CO2 just as some buy nitrogen tire fill-ups now. Compressed air engines may also appear on the market, fueled by inexpensive CO2. I know not the uses that will come into being if gas sequestering coal plants are built. However, human nature being what it is, I am relatively sure that zero profit geological formations will not be the final destination for most captured carbon dioxide.

A visit to Green Drinks of Syracuse

The event was at the hotel Skyler. The building was a former library turned hotel. It has a very nice new lounge and bar area with high prices to match. I decided to try to be ecological and drive my motorcycle there. In spite of the reasonably warm temperatures, most people were driving automobiles rather than cycles. There were a small group of chemistry students from ESF who were taking the opportunity to network. There were also some Green Drink regulars too.

One of the interesting conversations was with a person who sold industrial gassifiers. Now there is a person in a high-growth industry! This industry barely existed 10 years ago. The last time I looked at the industry in 2001, I could find only a few references to WWII gassifiers used in transport, an article in Mother Earth news about a truck mounted gassifier and only a few industrial scale gassifiers such as the electric power plant in Burlington VT. Since then, there has been a huge amount of progress. Even with the temporally low natural gas prices, there has a been some tremendous progress in this technology.

Gassifiers can be setup to use several different types of woody biomass fuel. The image on the right shows a layout for an electrical generation station. Small models are good at providing efficient heat and some have been modified to power vehicles. Industrial scale ones can efficiently provide electricity as was done in Burlington VT in the late 70's. A rather new development is that some industrial scale units have the ability to produce relatively pure syngas which can be processed into polymer products such as transport fuel that can stay liquid at remarkably low temperatures. Some demonstration plants show that it is possible to provide a non-gelling diesel fuel from woody biomass. The production price of this diesel equivalent might be as low as $10 a gallon. Very encouraging news!

For more on gassifiers (at least the older ones) visit HERE.

The possibility of a newer better world

I'll admit have not read the book "Ecotopia". From what I can gather, it's a fantasy novel about how several western states broke off from the rest of the U.S. and decided to abolish the car, embrace vegan diets and try to live in harmony with nature. At least, that's my uninformed cynic synopsis. However, even if the plot seems a bit sketchy, the book probably has some good practical ideas on how to make life be better. I say this based on an article about the author.

...Chick had left a final document on his computer, something he had been preparing in the months before he knew he would die, and asked if TomDispatch would run it. Indeed, we would. It’s not often that you hear words almost literally from beyond the grave -- and eloquent ones at that, calling on all Ecotopians, converted or prospective, to consider the dark times ahead. Losing Chick’s voice and his presence is saddening. His words remain, however, as do his books, as does the possibility of some version of the better world he once imagined for us all.

Maybe his book is OK. Maybe not. However, his last brief work "Epistle to the Ecotopians" is worth a read. Farewell Ernest Callenbach!

Short term engineering

The other day a friend of mine needed help changing a starter battery in their vehicle. Little did I know the trouble I was in for! I have a Subaru on the left. The Subaru battery is clearly visible in the middle. Easy to see. Easy to replace if needed. On the right is the engine compartment of a Ford van. Finding the battery at all was challenging! Changing it out took a while since quite a bit of other stuff needed to be removed to get to the battery at all!Cars have been around a while. However, the Ford engineers apparently forgot the basics of car design. Battery lifetimes are no secret. They need replacing on occasion. For that matter, gasoline mileage of a van is still laughably low at 19MPG. That design is a symptom of a problem. The problem is that American cars are designed to be sold rather than to work. So, engineers change things around in the name of style rather than function. Marketing trumps engineering! The end result is a stupid battery layout like that makes the car become something to be disposed of rather than to be maintained. Naturally, selling more cars due to this is desirable to U.S. automotive companies since car sales in the US are caused by a rather inelastic demand.

Looking at the Fukushima disaster, I feel the G.E. engineers must have been under similar non-engineering pressures but on a much larger scale. Today's reactors aren't designed to last 10,000 years. Not even close! Otherwise they would likely be large hulking invulnerable pyramid like things made of limestone. Instead, today's reactors are designed with the minimum of materials which should just be good enough to deliver profits for about 50 years give or take half a century. Long term safety is treated as an accessory rather than a fundamental requirement. Squeezing short term profits out of a nuclear facility in the name of shareholder value is the only reason I can see for designing reactors the way they are. I mean, would any engineer thinking even 100 years ahead really put radioactive fuel that is flammable when exposed to air in a swimming pool a couple of floors above the ground in an earthquake zone next to an ocean? Yes, there probably was some savings in land cost. However, I'm pretty sure the shareholders aren't enjoying the property tax savings now!

Here is an article on what the experts think is going on in one of the reactors now Very scary!

So, how can the nuclear industry be fixed? Simple. Change the engineering criteria. There is a saying in software engineering. You can make a piece of software better, cheaper or faster. Pick two.
What if we pick only "better" and "faster" in the sense that dealing with nuclear waste eventually needs to get done. Engineers can design bridges for say the "hundred year flood" or in some cases such as the Hoover Dam, the "ten thousand year flood". What is needed is to design a new type of reactor that can be fueled with "waste" material for the ten-thousand year spam of time. The reactors don't need to be particularly efficient. Just incredibly safe. Perhaps they could simply be giant monolithic units that can be shipped to various federal government buildings to be used as heat sources for central heating. Mixing nuclear material with glass and further encasing it in high quality concrete wrapped in thick stainless steel may be an approach that would work. Such units not only would save the government money in future heating cost but their proximity would offer a strong motivation to politicians to have such units produced correctly!

Solving resource depletion and climate change

I'm sure it's been said before but it's worth repeating. "The first step to making a better world us imagining that it's possible at all". The author below has taken that step and has some practical solutions to going further. What If We Stopped Freaking Out Over Climate Change. It's worth a read.

2012 upstate cooperatives summit

This event was held at the Syracuse South Side Innovation center. The center is sponsored by Syracuse University. They did a good job restoring the former warehouse into a nice looking business center. It's clearly a resource that has a need to balance community wants with the need for security and safety. To this end, they offer a card access system to members that allows access using an automated badge system. Here, a few of us can be seen gathering at the side entrance to be let in.

Inside, I found some glass enclosed cubical areas. The furniture, computers and carpeting seem reasonably new. The main part of the center appears to be a large main lecture hall surrounded by several business incubator offices. This large room and a smaller conference room were where the talks were held. There were other offices that I presume had shared resources that the tenants could use.

I was impressed that the hosts were able to offer low cost tickets (or no cost for unemployed people such as myself) and still put on a good show. After a short check-in period, the talks started. They were all interesting. Like so many events of this nature, I really wanted to be in two places at once!

There were several messages that I got from the event. Co-ops come in many forms.

• Worker Co-Ops, (can be for profit or not)
• Membership non-profit
• General catch-all
• Agricultural co-ops

Here's some other quick trivia. Co-ops are more popular in times of economic distress. Co-ops (including banks) do over two trillion dollars a year in business. Co-ops need at least 5 members. Owners are "members", each having one share and one vote. They have the same personal asset protection benefits of a corporation. The Bylaws define how the co-op operates and also specifies how it disbands should the members desire that. Dividends are legally limited to 12% of capital. Co-ops tend to have a better success rate than other business structures. A new development is that co-ops can now issue non-voting "preferred" stock for investors. I didn't catch the jurisdiction of this. So, it may be state based laws that govern this rather than national. When forming a co-op, it's wise to deal with lawyers and accountants that specializes in them.

While there was much more covered in the talks, here is my highly biased opinion of co-ops. In my opinion, a co-op member is essentially "buying" their job. The buy-in amount is typically quite large. However, members sometimes "buy their share" over time through salary deduction. This of course creates a large incentive for co-op members to succeed and reduces employee turnover. However, it also requires a great deal of trust since such a situation can lead to self-exploitation of co-op members.

Second, unlike corporations, co-ops are not legally required to make shareholder profit be a primary goal. Instead, they can choose to measure success in other ways. Since the co-op isn't a slave to maximizing short term profits, this is potentially a very powerful business structure!

Third, co-ops still need to provide a good "Value Proposition" to all involved parties. Just like any business, they need to succeed in terms of offering better prices, better quality or better variety. Working with "anchor institutions" such as universities seems to be a niche strategy that co-ops are uniquely able to do. Non-profits sometimes have "goals" that can be more easily achieved via a co-op rather than through a conventional profit oriented business. For example, minimizing CO2 in some operations may be a technique that conventional business cannot do since it would not be as profitable to the shareholders.

During the Q&A session, I asked if it was beneficial to start as another business structure then convert to a co-op. I then asked several other people about this. The consensus was, If a co-op is what is desired, then it should start that way. The one exception to this would be for an existing business to be bought by the employees while offering a fair deal to the former owners.

Other points I picked up was a review of how the federal government makes laws. This was during the discussion of the proposed law HR3367 which would provide funding for assisting the formation of new co-ops in urban areas. I had forgotten how much a law could be changed by going through various committees in both Congress and the Senate! Reviewing the lobbying process, I'm surprised any law survives even remotely in it's original form.

Finally, at the end, the "Dream Freedom Revival" performed for the group. They also involved the audience (I even got up on stage myself). It was performance art at it's best. Very motivational! The food was good too. It was served on reusable plates, was disposed of organically and dishes were cleaned with the help of the guests. Overall, the whole event was very well run.

The talks covered can be seen at http://cny.coop/schedule
There is an active discussion group at http://lanyrd.com/2012/cnycoop/
They also have a Facebook page
There is a directory in case you want to find a coop in NY state.
The main site is at http://www.cny.coop/