Financing and marketing management (1+1)

Unit 1 - Cooperation

1.8. Benefits
Economic benefits:
The cooperatives try to secure for their members various types of services at low costs. According to Casselman these benefits may be enumerated thus:

• The substitution of profit incentive in business by that of services to humanity or production for consumption;
• A more equitable distribution of wealth
• The break up of monopolistic tendencies and trusts which operate at the expense of the consumer
• The increase in the purchasing power and real wages of an individual by giving him more and better goods for his money.
• Reduction in cost of distribution system by elimination of unnecessary middlemen, elimination of fraudulent practices, eradication of such practices as misleading advertisement and high pressure salesmanship, removal of useless duplication of services.
• The rejection of accounting inaccuracies by encouraging frankness in business
• The more accurate correlation of demand and supply as a result of the greater certainty and regularity of the consumer market.
• Stabilization of employment which will result from the regularity of demand and the absence of speculation
• The fair treatment of all labour and general improvement in employer-employee relationship and
• The training of people to spend wisely

Besides these other economic benefits are

• The provision of insurance, health and medical care
• Promotion and conservation of natural resources
• Encouragement for savings and administration of credit
• Increased use of fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, machine services, electricity on the farm and in small scale industries
• Consolidation of holdings and development of irrigation schemes
• Cheap processing and marketing of farm products at reasonable prices.

Social benefits:
Cooperation also brings in social benefits for its members. This is because the object of cooperation is to provide means of improving the members condition so that he gives the best in him which lifts him to a higher plane of life.
According to a U.N.O publication these social benefits are

• To provide a unique education in democracy, responsibility and toleration.
• To train for political power.
• To evolve an industrial relationship in which the element of authority is much more evenly distributed than in private business.
• To encourage a general advance rather than the advance of particular individuals.
• To secure rational constructive and unifying approaches to social and economic problems
• To prevent under employment and unemployment.
• To secure the moral as well as the physical satisfaction of pure quality, good weight, honest measure, fair dealing in train
• To achieve better physical and mental health
• To prevent exploitation of man by man.

It is unfortunate that the social value of co-operation has never fully realized.
Educational benefits
The individual learns by experience gained in practical work of co-operation. Co-operation and education go hand in hand, for “ sometimes education produces the cooperatives, while sometimes co-operative sponsor education.” Through better education, the social and economic conditions of members are improved.
“Co-operation provides a business medium through which progressive and socially minded men and women with high ideals can find satisfaction and peace in useful work. It is revolutionary in that it aims at bringing about a more equitable distribution of wealth by returning to its members as nearly as possible the full value of the product of their labour. It is a direct antithesis of the competitive system which is responsible for our present chaotic conditions of our present criminal inequality in the distribution of goods and services.”
In sum, co-operation is the noblest ideal which transforms human life from a conflict of classes, struggling for opposite interests, to a friendly rivalry in the pursuit of the common good for all”