Scene on Radio · Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University

S7 E12: Reimagined Economies

September 18, 2024·1 hr 3 min·5 clips

In a unique cooperative, workers have never faced permanent unemployment thanks to a solidarity-based safety net.

A dock, a field, stone walls. The narration finds John Fullerton at home near the Rhode Island border, looking toward Long Island Sound with gratitude and a little dread. The place is beautiful, but it comes with a warning. When Fullerton calls the view a gift "as long as it lasts," the host lets that line sit with mortality, sea level rise, and a bigger unease about the world people have built. His Wall Street past is part of the point. He is remembered as a rising figure at JPMorgan Chase until the early 2000s, when he was about 40. Then the episode widens out. Mondragon becomes the working example: an economy built around membership, voting, reinvestment, and obligation to one another. The rules are plain enough to grasp. Workers get one vote each, from top to bottom, and they decide how annual net profits are split. The money makes the model real. Ander Echeberria describes a typical division: about 60% for investment, about 30% for workers, and the rest for community and the umbrella corporation. That worker bonus is not a pat on the head. It sits inside a system where a worker can eventually recover the 18,000 euros paid to become a member, if the company does well. The missing 10% does real work too. It supports local nonprofit groups, kids' sports clubs, and the shared institution that ties 80 cooperatives together. Mondragon calls this solidarity. The corporation helps hold the member cooperatives together when some have a rough year. The mechanism is blunt and practical. Cooperatives that earn more help those that earn less, and even those losing money can get support. They call it pooling results. Echeberria says Mondragon has used that system since 1965, which makes it sound less like a slogan and more like an economic habit. The episode does not pretend the model is painless. Some cooperatives have closed when people judged them no longer competitive. That detail matters. This is not a frictionless alternative to capitalism. It is a serious question about what changes when ownership, profit, risk, and community are arranged differently.

As heard by us

A thoughtful case for an economy that shares risk as well as reward.

Scene on Radio follows John Fullerton from Wall Street into a harder, more interesting question: what should an economy actually protect? The move from his coastal Connecticut home to Mondragon gives the episode a clear shape, and the best stretches are the ones that slow down…

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Why you'd press play

If you want capitalism, cooperatives, and ecological risk in one slow burn, start here.

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