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A document to help you start a tech cooperative

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Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative

#81

Post by closeparen »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #26
marricks wrote: post #17

Back in 19th century USA, during industrialization, the idea of working for someone came across to many as a form of wage-slavery. Going from farming or trade-skills to factories working, one gave up any control in their own worker rights and planning of their business. It seems fundamentally unfair that in most industries you don't have any real share of the company, or any say in the direction of it. People who con…

I have a close family member who is a doctor, and I've always said how envious I am of her company's structure. All new doctors that come in are on partnership track, and it only takes two years to make partner (but there is a buy-in period). It is a large practice with over 80 doctors, and the practice is wholly owned by the doctors (it also employs a large number of technicians and support staff). Being in a situat…

True, but medical practices are not quite in the egalitarian spirit of co-ops.

The physician's assistants, nurses, billing staff, typing pool (yes dictaphones are still a thing), IT staff, equipment repair contractors, and cleaning crew don't tend to also be owners.

Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative

#82

Post by Kalium »

icebraining wrote: post #55
Kalium wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this logic, worker-owned cooperatives can and should be expected to out-perform traditionally structured businesses. Do I interpret correctly? If that's true, then why do you think traditionally structured businesses generally out-perform cooperatives? People have tried.

Outperform by what metric?

If employees are more motivated, one would expect a greater level of employee productivity. So by the metrics of productivity, productivity growth, and most of the metrics used to measure corporate performance.

The obvious response, of course, is that none of these metrics matter because they only apply to traditionally structured highly inequitable corporations. There's a lot of truth to this! Yet it perhaps attempts to dodge the question. If cooperatives are more efficient at convincing people to be more productive, you would expect that this would allow efficient, motivated cooperatives to outperform traditional corporations and their inefficient, demotivated, dehumanized structures by financial metrics.

Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative

#83

Post by decasia »

ksdale wrote: post #25

This operating agreement doesn't really differ from a regular LLC agreement except that it does away with members putting capital into the business, which is usually where the entire difference in voting rights comes into play. Minor nitpick with the note about forming in Oregon vs Delaware - Businesses generally pay tax where they do business instead of/in addition to where they are incorporated. The discussion of c…

Some of these points are fair but I want to clarify the co-op idea has less to do with an argument that "all small business owners aren't fair," and more about wanting to get rid of the very distinction between labor, ownership and management.

In other words, fair management is one thing; abolishing management as such is something else. Like you point out, "Obviously not all businesses are owned by the people who work in it" -- I think that's the heart of this issue.

(That said, in what I've seen of the co-operative movement, there do end up being some sort of specialized managerial people much of the time. So it's far from clearcut on the ground, as you're pointing out.)

Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative

#84

Post by bobwaycott »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #45
marricks wrote: post #17

Back in 19th century USA, during industrialization, the idea of working for someone came across to many as a form of wage-slavery. Going from farming or trade-skills to factories working, one gave up any control in their own worker rights and planning of their business. It seems fundamentally unfair that in most industries you don't have any real share of the company, or any say in the direction of it. People who con…

More tech co-ops are great. The gig economy needs a unionization proxy to fight the ever worse contracts people are offering. But > "People who control those companies are solely executives or wall street share holders, not the people who spend countless hours making the company run and function" You imply that you think workers should all own equity in their employer. That sounds cruel and arbitrary to me. How is it…

Shouldn't everyone's pay be automatically increased via bonuses or equity grants when the company does well? Why should that only be limited to executives, when the workers are actually producing increased value?

You really call attention to the reality that execs can handle automatic penalties/rewards because their pay is so many multiples higher than employee pay. On the other hand, there's really no reason one couldn't reject that as nonsense, eliminate penalties altogether, place executive pay at a significantly lower multiplier, and then share rewards equitably among everyone.

Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative

#85

Post by ci5er »

vinceguidry wrote: post #64

I've tried starting a few companies and it eventually became clear that without significant revenue coming in, the cofounders need to be either particularly motivated by the vision and capable of putting aside personal politics to achieve it, the former being easier to achieve than the latter, immediate personal goals are going to slowly take priority and your startup will die a sad death. Once revenue is there, ever…

> Uniting collectively behind a vision seems to be one of those things humans just can't do very well. They can unite behind a person with a vision, but not the vision by itself.

That's insightful. Can you speak more about this?

Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative

#86

Post by tomcam »

amingilani wrote: post #8

I mean absolutely no offense by this, but the logo has an uncanny resemblance to DickButt. Maybe change the logo? Or, not, if it's not a problem. I don't know what I would do if I were in your position and someone pointed this out to me.

Says a lot more about you than the logo

Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative

#87

Post by vinceguidry »

ci5er wrote: post #85
vinceguidry wrote: post #64

I've tried starting a few companies and it eventually became clear that without significant revenue coming in, the cofounders need to be either particularly motivated by the vision and capable of putting aside personal politics to achieve it, the former being easier to achieve than the latter, immediate personal goals are going to slowly take priority and your startup will die a sad death. Once revenue is there, ever…

> Uniting collectively behind a vision seems to be one of those things humans just can't do very well. They can unite behind a person with a vision, but not the vision by itself. That's insightful. Can you speak more about this?

Sure. A vision is an imagining of what the future might hold. If you don't have someone keeping the vision, a visionary, calling the shots and resolving conflicts, then the vision gets diluted amongst all the different people believing in it. It's a game of telephone only the end result is the livelihoods of everyone involved. It's easy to lose faith in.

Whereas if you have a person where the buck stops, vision-wise, then you don't have to know every little detail, you can just trust the person to make everything work. Most people aren't very imaginative, they want to deal with their own stuff and leave the kingdom-building to someone else. It's just enough for them to keep the faith.

Picture it this way. Say you have a plan for a better world. If the plan is, "hope X will happen," then that's a very different thing to believe in than "do X, Y, and Z, and if we do those things right, then A will happen." Both are imagined sequences of events, but one is more concrete than the other. A person in charge of the vision makes the vision that much more concrete than if it's spread out amongst random others.

Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative

#88

Post by [deleted] »

ci5er wrote: post #85
vinceguidry wrote: post #64

I've tried starting a few companies and it eventually became clear that without significant revenue coming in, the cofounders need to be either particularly motivated by the vision and capable of putting aside personal politics to achieve it, the former being easier to achieve than the latter, immediate personal goals are going to slowly take priority and your startup will die a sad death. Once revenue is there, ever…

> Uniting collectively behind a vision seems to be one of those things humans just can't do very well. They can unite behind a person with a vision, but not the vision by itself. That's insightful. Can you speak more about this?

[deleted]

Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative

#89

Post by amingilani »

tomcam wrote: post #86
amingilani wrote: post #8

I mean absolutely no offense by this, but the logo has an uncanny resemblance to DickButt. Maybe change the logo? Or, not, if it's not a problem. I don't know what I would do if I were in your position and someone pointed this out to me.

Says a lot more about you than the logo

Shoot the messenger, why don't you.

Re: A document to help you start a tech cooperative

#90

Post by josephg »

Kalium wrote: post #82
icebraining wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outperform by what metric?

If employees are more motivated, one would expect a greater level of employee productivity. So by the metrics of productivity, productivity growth, and most of the metrics used to measure corporate performance. The obvious response, of course, is that none of these metrics matter because they only apply to traditionally structured highly inequitable corporations. There's a lot of truth to this! Yet it perhaps attempt…

> by financial metrics.

There are three stakeholders in any company:

* The owners (stockholders)

* Employees

* Customers

When a company makes profit (eg, they manufacture a mattress for $500 thats worth $1000), the profit is divided between those three groups of people. How the money gets divided depends on the relative power those groups hold.

- In a market with lots of competition, the price goes down and the customers get a windfall through cheaper products

- When there's not enough supply of labour (like in software), the employees can demanding higher wages, better working conditions or shorter hours

- And otherwise, usually the owners get the profits.

The easiest metric of a company is to evaluate profit to shareholders. Thats not what coops are trying to optimize for. Instead they want a high quality of life for their employees. So I would expect you would see coops rated poorly, even when they're functioning (for their employees) very well.

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