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

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#121

Post by shswkna » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:41 AM UTC

Guthur wrote: post #62

shswkna wrote: post #55

There are many advantages to having employees own shares in a company. However, I would add that it depends on the industry, type of company and other circumstances. These are factors that play a role and should add to a more nuanced discussion: - Ownership also implies responsibilities and risk. There might be capital risks or surety needed for certain industries. Not all people want this in their lives. - For any c…

What capital risks? Private equity many times purchases a company, loads it up with debt, strips it off assets, pay themselves fat dividends and then walks away when it all falls apart.

That is the “popularised” and one-sided view of reality I was referring to. A full set of experiences will give you a more nuanced view.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#122

Post by stavros » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:42 AM UTC

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…

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 for worker happiness instead.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#123

Post by eru » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:42 AM UTC

atmosx wrote: post #97

Reminds of Varoufakis proposal which is way more radical tl;dr: —————— To imagine what transcending capitalism might mean in practice requires rethinking the ownership of corporations. Imagine that shares resemble electoral votes, which can be neither bought nor sold. Like students who receive a library card upon registration, new staff receive a single share granting a single vote to be cast in all-shareholder ballo…

> To imagine what transcending capitalism might mean in practice requires rethinking the ownership of corporations.

> Imagine that shares resemble electoral votes, which can be neither bought nor sold.

Interesting idea. Perhaps the take-away is that we should allow trading in electoral votes.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#124

Post by eru » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:42 AM UTC

gorgoiler wrote: post #52

I haven’t heard of an ESOP before. As I understand it, this is an (additional?) pension fund where the value of your pension is tied to the company valuation in the form of a promise to sell you stock units when you either retire or leave the company. Sounds like a nice perk to have but one would obviously be unwise to rely on that for retirement.

You are better of taking the value of that entitlement, and investing it in an index fund or annuity.

Diversification is the one free lunch we have in finance.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#125

Post by f6v » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:43 AM UTC

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…

> note that you are calling for a restriction on workers' rights: they have to be given part of their pay as stocks

No matter the mental gymnastics, that’s how it already works in big tech. You can view the stock grant as “incentive”, but you can’t refuse it and take cash upfront.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#126

Post by eru » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:43 AM UTC

TomK32 wrote: post #30

oleg_antonyan wrote: post #3

It's insane how socialism is growing in the west after defeat of soviet union

The Soviet Union was just the same old russian feudalism with a new name tag and leadership. In a sense even modern-day russians are still not emancipated citizens like we are in the West.

'Real Socialism has never been tried'?

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#127

Post by irusensei » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:43 AM UTC

If I lived in the authors socialist lalaland and had a good marketable idea the first thing I would do is to and start my company in another country.

Maybe that’s why they’ve build a wall to keep people in.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#128

Post by stavros » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:44 AM UTC

jrflowers wrote: post #15

Murky3515 wrote: post #5

>Every year, those employees get a percentage of their salaries in company stock. Ok? Anybody can choose to do this if they work at a public company. But what happen if it's mandatory and the stock goes down? Now your labor was stolen at below market rate! Then we will hear "employees compensation should be resilient to market fluctuations."

I like this caricature of the spoiled entitled employee because it completely ignores the concept of shareholders having a say in governance. If stocks were only a proxy for money and nothing else the example would be spot-on.

> If stocks were only a proxy for money and nothing else the example would be spot-on

They are, in the modern startup world that HN is mostly in. That's why commenters here don't remember there are voting shares.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#129

Post by eru » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:45 AM UTC

ossobuco wrote: post #111

eru wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interpreted charitably, you are making an argument that people's comp should be higher. But I don't see any argument that paying that higher comp in the form of shares instead of in the form of cash is any better? (Unless you want to imply that people are too dumb and need to be protected from themselves, and that why we need to give them more stocks instead of more cash? Or something else?)

> Interpreted charitably No need for your charity, thanks. I'm simply making the argument that you must live in a bubble if you think that enough people have the excess liquidity and market knowledge for this to be an applicable solution to the general population. > Unless you want to imply that people are too dumb and need to be protected from themselves Not being wise in the markets != being dumb. Protected from th…

Nudging people to own a substantial chunk of their net worth in one single company protects them from speculators and exploiters? OK..

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#130

Post by sgammon » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 7:45 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #114

sgammon wrote: post #71

Equity is zero-sum. Once you hand it out, it's gone. You can create more, but it will dilute everyone else. Not a very good arrangement for something that should create value over a long period of time.

You know that stock buybacks are a thing? In any case, things are a bit more complicated. If the company manages to sell equity at a premium to current market prices, existing shareholders benefit, they don't get diluted in any absolute sense. Conversely, if the company does stock buybacks at a premium, continuing shareholders suffer.

Yes, a thing predicated on cooperation between humans.