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Every company should be owned by its employees

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Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#321

Post by android521 »

infinitedata wrote: post #301

When I first saw this, more than money, I thought about voting rights. You shouldn’t need a CEO, direction of the company would be all about shareholders voting and bringing ideas.

wow, have you seen any organization with more than 50+ people that can make it work this way? if everyone has equal voting rights, this company or organization would be destroyed in no time. In democracy, you vote a leader but then the leader(s) or the elite elected few would make decisions themselves. You can vote them out but you certainly don't get to vote on every decision or ideas.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#322

Post by germandiago »

jltsiren wrote: post #310
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free markets almost never can survive longterm without (sometimes extensive) regulation. There is no such thing as "without regulation". Nobody is suggesting a system in which murder is legal and the most powerful warlord gets a monopoly. But there is a difference between "the government enforces contracts and anti-trust laws and prices major externalities" and "the government micromanages the economy and is captur…

"The government" is a fictional entity. In reality, it's just a bunch of people. I think the real issue is that free markets and free speech are not really compatible. If people are allowed to express political opinions, some opinions will inevitably become popular. Sometimes that happens because people don't like the outcomes of the market. Then they try to change things by regulating the market. Repeat that often e…

As such we must be very aware of your first sentence. It is really important that people understand that those who manage us are people like us with their own set of interests.

Some people think it is something like an overload that takes the perfect, most fair decision and, on top of that, without room for mistakes.

Looking at the results I would say it does not respond to that premise at all.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#323

Post by tomp »

stavros wrote: post #122
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…

I think this is just your anti-capitalist bias showing. “Market” is meant in purely game-theoretic terms.

> The vast majority of people in companies are workers. Let's stop optimizing for owner wealth and start optimizing for worker happiness instead.

All these workers could set up cooperatives and work for / own them instead. The fact that this hasn’t happened suggests that in reality, the for-profit companies are better at optimising workers happiness than cooperatives (maybe they pay better? Maybe they enable more job hopping?)

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#324

Post by zby »

rakoo wrote: post #238
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…

> 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. Pleast don't be so naive. The reason not every company does that is that giving ownership gives power and dilutes your own, reduces the chances at doing humongus profits that can be hoarded by a minority. Business ow…

And yet people overwhelmingly prefer to work for these non-employees owned companies instead of working in cooperatives - how do you explain that? They could take those humongous profits for themselves but they don't do that.

My answer to that question is that organizing people is much more difficult than everybody thinks and politics is the biggest source of inefficiencies on any human organisation bigger than a few persons. And cooperatives introduce additional political layer.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#325

Post by pembrook »

stavros wrote: post #122
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…

The point of a company is to make a product that customers want, and make it as accessible as possible. “Taking over the market” and producing profit is only a byproduct of doing that. A competitor would wipe out that profit if there existed a cheaper option that delivered the same value to customers.

The minute you start optimizing for employees instead of customers, you’re delivering less value to customers (the world) and asking to be disrupted. This is good.

In the US a vast majority of adults now own index funds (either via their personal retirement or public pensions). In fact, the largest shareholder in almost all public companies is some index fund.

So workers do own the companies, in proportion to how much value they deliver to the world due to market cap weighting.

The system we have now has evolved out of thousands of years of humans battle-testing various other systems. The current form has taken pretty much the entire world out of devastating poverty at breakneck speed. Seems like we shouldn’t redesign it based on the whims of armchair internet commenters.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#326

Post by KolmogorovComp »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #308
marsten wrote: post #66

My favorite pizza place in Sunnyvale became employee-owned, and shortly after decided they only wanted to stay open 3 days a week. I'm happy for those employees but man, I also wish I could get pizza on Monday.

> I also wish I could get pizza on Monday In a functional market there would be others willing to send you a pizza on Monday.

A neighborhood is not a functional market, because location is key and not fungible.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#327

Post by zby »

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…

If you cannot choose to work for an organization that is governed in a different way - then this is a restriction on your rights.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#328

Post by robertlagrant »

Nevermark wrote: post #287
robertlagrant wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it would be nicer if everything were free, though. Why would an investor invest in a company that, if it fails, they lose their money, and if it succeeds, their ownership is taken away?

Nobody “takes” ownership. Owners are bought out. For a public company that just means buying back shares. A company whose employees care very much about share price sounds good to me. It is not much different from companies who let employees “take” options. That could be financially mismanaged too. There would need to be a rational structure.

> For a public company that just means buying back shares

But in practice, what does it mean? Do you want to make illegal a shareholder selling when they want to? They have to sell at whatever the price is when the company needs their shares?

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#329

Post by vidarh »

Nevermark wrote: post #267
robertlagrant wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously they exist. But they are only certain types of business. How is a company that requires hundreds of millions of dollars before it's profitable supposed to be a co-op? Step by step?

It would be nice to have a legal framework for companies to increase employee ownership, but be able to do it incrementally with no requirement to go straight to 100%. Or ever. For instance, even public companies might increase the percentage of employee ownership over time. But capital needs could still be met, as the public or private non-employee stock class would still exist.

There are multiple legal frameworks for that. The simplest way is to "just" have the company buy back shares and re-issue them to staff over time. Depending on jurisdiction there can be more tax efficient ways. Some places it may be more practical and/or tax efficient to use trusts (e.g. the John Lewis Partnership in the UK, with 80,000 employees, is a trust for the benefit of employees - it means shares can't be cashed out, but all present employees share in dividends) and sell or give shares to the trust bit by bit.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#330

Post by paxys »

Planktonne wrote: post #297
pie_flavor wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's so easy, why aren't you doing it? Presumably it requires some amount of investment to break into, but with such a high upside it's still massively +EV.

Some people want to do work they find meaningful.

Then why complain about how much someone else is getting paid?
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