Every company should be owned by its employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#461

Post by specialist » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 1:32 PM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #378

zby wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To take over the market companies need to attract customers - i.e. make their lives better. Usually there are more consumers than employees - so I think that measure works quite well with optimising for humans. Profit is a side effect of taking over the market. But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - other…

> But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - otherwise everybody would work for cooperatives. There's much more at play than just "cooperatives are not any better". Cooperatives don't get as much funding from investors because investors won't be owning a larger share of them, and taking their returns, they in…

Yes and: IIRC, long-term governance of coops has been a challenge.

Coops have been vulnerable to "hostile takeovers" (I don't know what to call it), transmuting from benefitting members yet another rent seeking enterprise that remains a "coop" in name only.

I was a long time member of PCC and REI. As I understand it, both experienced juntas. Histories I'd love to understand better.

I've read that most farmer coops also fell prey, becoming profiteers, from helping to harming their members. IIRC, there was even a personal account here on HN by a dairy farmer.

In conclusion, I'd LOVE for coops to be the norm. My biggest concern is how to structure coops to remain true to their mission and resilient to enemy action.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#462

Post by empath75 » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 1:32 PM UTC

typicalset wrote: post #244

dash2 wrote: post #94

Employee stock options are not a new idea, obviously. If the story is "every company should offer stock options to its employees", then sure, that's often a good business plan. The reason not every company does it to all its employees is probably that for those employees, it wouldn't affect incentives much and it would make payment subject to the vagaries of the stock market. Your barista at Starbucks is not going to…

> If the story is "all companies must be fully employee-owned workers' cooperatives", then first, note that you are calling for a restriction on workers' rights: they have to be given part of their pay as stocks, and they can't sell them freely. This is simply not true. Many workers' coops issue one share per worker (there may not even be stock), which affords them one vote in company matters. In such a scenario the…

In any realistic scenario, those shares would quickly be diluted to nothing when the company needs to raise money from capital markets. Unions are in general a much better way to protect workers.

The real power disparity between capital and labor is that capital is concentrated and labor is diffuse. Every worker negotiates with the corporation as an individual over compensation and worker rights. When you have a union negotiating the contract, then both labor and capital are concentrated and on a more equal footing, producing more equitable outcomes. Giving employees a tiny ownership stake doesn't really change the power disparity at all.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#463

Post by randomdata » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 1:32 PM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #378

zby wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To take over the market companies need to attract customers - i.e. make their lives better. Usually there are more consumers than employees - so I think that measure works quite well with optimising for humans. Profit is a side effect of taking over the market. But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - other…

> But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - otherwise everybody would work for cooperatives. There's much more at play than just "cooperatives are not any better". Cooperatives don't get as much funding from investors because investors won't be owning a larger share of them, and taking their returns, they in…

> simply because they get extinguished by others with more capital.

Unless you go to where capital isn't concentrated (i.e. rural areas), then co-ops are everywhere. It is not uncommon to be able to get your groceries at a coop, your gas, your phone/internet services, you name it.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#464

Post by malcolmgreaves » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 1:33 PM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #444

forgetfreeman wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market has spent the GDP of Madagascar to fuck over cabbies in a handful of metro areas in the US. Meanwhile "efficiency" in the ISP market has lead to regional near-monopolies and some of the worst residential bandwidth on the planet. Let's not with "efficiency and innovation" yeah? The emperor is clearly buck-ass naked.

Ahhh yes, the old "because the market didn't turn out the way I wanted it to once, it means the entirety of the capitalist system and the idea of free markets is fundamentally broken" retort. I call this the "Jr. developer fallacy." Start a job, encounter some bugs, suggest rewriting the entire codebase from scratch on [insert-trendy-framework].

> once

The many systemic market failure modes of capitalism are well documented and written about at great lengths.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#465

Post by Sankozi » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 1:33 PM UTC

ossobuco wrote: post #343

Sankozi wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only shows how big economic illiteracy is. Not how much people are earning vs the cost of living.

The personal savings rate has slowly halved over the past 60 years[0]. Did everyone become illiterate or maybe the inflation rate has exceeded the growth rate of wages[1], among other things? What's funny is that on two comments rejecting my argument one accuses me of considering people "too dumb" to take their own financial decisions, the other tells me people are actually too dumb and that's why they are in financi…

The article you linked mentions "Lack of budgeting and financial planning" and "Social pressures" for reason of living paycheck to paycheck. And those are self reported values.

Last 60 years we experienced enormous growth of advertising - is it really hard to believe that many people are having big problems with limiting their spending.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#466

Post by bccdee » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 1:36 PM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #395

piva00 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - otherwise everybody would work for cooperatives. There's much more at play than just "cooperatives are not any better". Cooperatives don't get as much funding from investors because investors won't be owning a larger share of them, and taking their returns, they in…

But what are you suggesting? We forcibly allocate capital less efficiently; make markets less efficient and less responsive to innovation; with the sole aim of achieving a utopian worker-cooperative owned world? Hrmmm, where have I heard that before...

> We forcibly allocate capital less efficiently

Efficiency with regard to what goal? The current allocation of capital in the US is quite inefficient if we're interested in the welfare of the public. Billionaires have far more capital than they know what to do with, and since they're unaccountable for their investment choices, they strongly tend to steer the economy toward vanity projects. Meanwhile, many families can't put food on the table, and infrastructure is falling apart.

Whatever it is about this system that you find "efficient," I don't find it valuable. The Chinese state takes a rather strong hand in allocating capital, and that has treated it fairly well over the past few decades. A mixed economy where private capitalists are not solely responsible for investment choices, and where ownership of that capital is more evenly distributed among the public, could fix a lot of problems.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#467

Post by malcolmgreaves » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 1:37 PM UTC

jjmarr wrote: post #415

dash2 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better still, optimize for social value provided. If taxes and regulation are right, companies that provide social value will make profits and their owners will get rich. The proposed changes would make that less likely to happen. If nothing else, (a) individual companies all optimizing their own workers' welfare does not add up to optimizing the welfare of all workers and (b) non-workers are left out of the equation…

This is the purpose of the mixed economy in which most of us live. The government changes the rules of the game to try to align the profit motive with social good, because they are naturally not aligned. You haven't said why worker cooperatives optimizing the benefit of their own workers wouldn't add up to more welfare if the entire economy was based around worker cooperatives. in my opinion worker ownership of the m…

> good historical track record

Please cite some sources that are not communist countries. You know, “just socialism.”

You way want to also ignore the existence of Norway, much of Europe, and popular US federal programs too when you're doing this exercise.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#468

Post by nindalf » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 1:37 PM UTC

danaris wrote: post #369

Gormo wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making normative arguments, but the question is wholly empirical -- the metrics being applied here are the ones that actually measure the success and viability of firms, not metrics selected to fit the observer's emotional attachments. Firms that are optimized for turning market demand into revenue streams will naturally outcompete firms that are optimized for other goals, regardless of what ideals or prefere…

That's what laws and regulations are for : ensuring that entities that are trying to do the right thing and make life better for actual humans aren't "outcompeted" by entities that are trying to make things better for themselves at everyone else's expense.

We actually have two mechanisms: laws/regulations and customers voting with their wallet.

Since we see that a majority of customers consistently go with the cheaper option, we know how they feel. So the "better" firm gets outcompeted.

So regulation, you say. But those regulations are set by governments voted in by the same consumers. Their preference for lower prices is clear, and government follows their preference.

Is your suggestion that the government go against the will of the people and apply those pro-worker-coop regulations anyway?

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#469

Post by lupusreal » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 1:37 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #418

throwaway7ahgb wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All companies have to do is present a united front on keeping pay low and benefits nonexistent to prevent workers from having better options. I.e. USA 2024. Can we leave the cynical antiwork comments out? They aren't helpful. This is obviously not the case for a majority of companies and anecdotes don't help. Everyone is for the highest pay possible until they run their own company and have to provide payroll.

> Can we leave the cynical antiwork comments out? They aren't helpful. This is obviously not the case for a majority of companies and anecdotes don't help. Major companies are regularly prosecuted for conspiracy to suppress wages. It if weren't for government intervention your wages would be much lower and there wouldn't be anything you can do about it. This blind faith that billion dollar corporations would behave e…

Most companies aren't "major companies". I'm for busting up the big monopolies, but I'm not for throwing the baby out with the bath water and imposing communist reforms on all businesses, most of which are small and generally well behaved, just because some big ones with pathological behavior exist.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#470

Post by shkkmo » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 1:37 PM UTC

zby wrote: post #317

stavros wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then maybe "taking over the market" is a bad metric, and we should be optimizing for making a company that makes the workers' lives better. The US cultural bias is showing here, as it's assumed that profit is above all else, and a company that forgoes profit to make workers happier must thus be less good. The vast majority of people in companies are workers. Let's stop optimizing for owner wealth and start optimizing…

To take over the market companies need to attract customers - i.e. make their lives better. Usually there are more consumers than employees - so I think that measure works quite well with optimising for humans. Profit is a side effect of taking over the market. But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - other…

People like doing meaningful work that benefits their customers. I think that employee owned businesses tens to treat their customers better than companies that are owned by private equity, pension funds or other investors who never touch the product or interact with the customers.