Co-Ops and the Panoptic Society

In class, we were talking about the structural benefits of co-ops, using the Craig and Pencavel paper as a jumping off point.

Last night when I get home, reading Polanyi - he references Bentham.

It made me think of one aspect of the co-op that may be a downside we didn't talk about.

In a previous life, Bentham was known to me more because of his idea being referred to in Foucault's Discipline and Punish.

Foucault uses the Panopticon to expand from the prison to the panoptic society. It is a society where we are all being watched, not just by someone above us, but by each other (so much for having no bosses, everyone is simultaneous a boss and a subordinate).

This might extend to the co-op literature. There are fewer no direct supervisors in a co-op situation.

In classical firms, if you have one, you can shirk (like I'm doing right now). You might have more or less autonomy, but you can also take just a bit longer in the bathroom than you really need.

But in a co-op, every is a boss, always being watched and at the same time having to perform the role of the boss since there's no principal agent problem here. One could imagine that this increases the intensity of work on its own, and that's even before adding the extra hours.