Aside from racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia just as common in the cooperative movement as in the rest of American society, the US doesn’t have a culture compatible with the concept of Economic Democracy.
Over the past year, I have quoted the preamble to the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution to people without identifying them.
I asked people if they agreed with the importance of working for the common welfare, the common good. Regardless of whether conservative or progressive, the majority of people failed to recognize what I was talking about and described it as Un-American, impractical, unrealistic, with some calling it communism and socialist.
One reason is that while there are numerous institutions that exist to promote the creation of cooperatives like the USFWC, they focus only on creating a cooperative business framework never addressing the inculcation of cooperative cultural values.
The most I find is the promotion of vaguely defined ideals and slogans, with no actual social science involved at all. The result is people who are still deeply invested in Neo-liberal Class values working in a narrowly compartmentalized representational democratic framework. A culture that mirrors all the same problems of American democracy right now.
They are also more concerned with appearing inclusive than to actually do the hard work of being inclusive. Of course, it is worth noting that CoTech isn’t even concerned with appearing inclusive in any meaningful way.
Next point, while there is a relatively large Do-It-Yourself Maker Culture in the US it lacks the deep cultural roots found in the UK and across Europe where DIY often doesn’t even have a special name because it’s been so much a part of the cultural common sense for literal centuries.
By contrast, a disturbingly large per cent of Americans adopt an aristocratic posture of ignorance about a wide range of things, thinking to project the image that they can afford to pay others to know and do for them. I live in a poor community where people barely making it from paycheck to paycheck own insanely expensive cars that cost more per month than their rent and act offended if I ask them when the next bus is coming, responding with, “I wouldn’t know, I don’t use public transportation.”
I know it’s childish, but I admit to sometimes asking just to get a rise out of them.
We talk a lot about democracy but throughout American history, we have never actually let go of the assumptions of generational aristocracy, so not surprisingly we now have the best government money literally can buy, and no earnest will by common folk or those with power to fix it even now when it seriously could lapse into openly fascist authoritarianism.
I live in a nation that is much like passengers on the Titanic obsessing over decorum and proper arrangement of lounge furniture on the deck after it hit the iceberg.
We have one large group claiming the iceberg is fake news, another large group profiteering off the sale of lifeboats and life vests, another group threatening mutiny and lynching the first officer for not helping, and the remainder angry about their schedules and vacations being interrupted despite a large number of their fellows, men, women, children already drowned or frozen to death right before their eyes.
My personal problem is that despite a much healthier cooperative culture throughout the UK and EU, the same cannot be said for the perception of Black foreigners and LGBTQ people who are not associated with being entrepreneurs in technology manufacturing businesses, or tech leadership of any kind.
So that last bit would make my move a net sum gain unless I have the support of White Europeans willing to run defence and strategies on how to navigate around barriers to success.
American Whites never do this anything of the kind unless it is to their personal benefit, and though White Europeans like to feel they are more progressive, Black and Brown families who have lived in Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal show evidence systemic discrimination is not less than in the US, just different.
In summary, the main advantage of my immigration is not finding less discrimination but finding a better business climate for a cooperative tech manufacturing company.
