Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the goal of the system described above would be a more equitable distribution of economic gains (profits) and control - to avoid the concentration of wealth and power that comes from letting equity (capital) own and control businesses. Concentration of power is corrupting and the concentration of wealth is the concentration of power. It harms society at large. On top of that, work is where most people spend m…
In your worker co-op utopia, when say you envision the workers as the owners, how exactly does one change jobs then? Would I be forced to sell my ownership any/every time I wanted to leave a job? If not, wouldn't I just be an outside capitalist investor in my old company at that point? If yes, then am I bought out by the existing owners in an equitable manner? Or do new employees get my share of ownership? If they do…
> when say you envision the workers as the owners, how exactly does one change jobs then? Would I be forced to sell my ownership any/every time I wanted to leave a job?
Open question. I think there are a couple of ways you could explore implementing this.
One would be through ownership similar to what you describe. Workers would earn ownership over the course of their employment, when they want to move jobs the cooperative has to buy out their share (which would also enable retirement) at some agreed upon value. The cooperative would have to maintain capital reserves to cover this case. It doesn't really make sense for workers to take their share with them with out equity markets. They'd just be selling their equity back to the cooperative at a later date.
Another approach would be to consider businesses as institutions to be governed, rather than property to be owned. In this case, no one owns the business. The workers govern it. There's no equity earned. It would be one worker one vote. In this case retirement would need to be handled either through pensions set aside, or more likely through national social security (which we already have). It's also possible that retirement could be handled through normal savings accounts. With out a stock market, financing would happen through traditional banks (as worker cooperatives), credit unions, or municipal banks and there would be much more incentive to pay real interest on savings accounts.
In the former case, the earned equity overtime probably more accurately values workers contributions, and therefor also founder contributions.
In the later case, the system is simpler, more egalitarian, and less prone to manipulation by founders looking to retain authoritarian power as long as possible.
Important to note, I think there are existing worker cooperatives experimenting with both implementations (and probably additional ones as well), so if we're interested in seeing the effects of each approach (and possible unintended consequences) it would be worth studying what they're doing.
If I ever manage to save up enough to take a multi-year sabbatical I want to write a book on the topic and do that research.