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Every company should be owned by its employees

elysian.press

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Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#381

Post by mantas »

brabel wrote: post #340
robertlagrant wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of the population are consumers. Each of us consumes far more services than we produce. Making life better for consumers is making life better for everyone.

You're ignoring the proportions. Your happiness is maybe 80% related to your job and salary (at least up to a point where you can be considered wealthy, after that there's decreasing returns), and each product you consume from each different company affects your wellbeing by a minuscule amount. Even adding them all up won't give more than, say, 15% as most of your expenses are not on products, but things like housing…

EU is on the same path. Actually even worse with over-the-top ecological requirements. Making it harded for local businesses, while making trade deals with iffy countries left and right. For now it's rolling on selling assets to China or US. But obviously that's not sustainable long term. Either we need to protect our internal market and tax the crap out of imports, or the party will be over.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#382

Post by Gormo »

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.

That might be what their proponents intend them to be for, but the extent to which they actually achieve their goals -- especially goals at odds with the manifest intentions of the actual market participants, including workers themselves -- is another story entirely.

If reality works one way, but aspirational idealists are trying to "ensure" that it works in some other way, then their attempts will falter. Many regulatory interventions are at best performative rituals that measure their success in terms of creating the appearance that something is being done, with the question of whether what is being done actually resolves the actual problem (if there is one) barely being considered. In the worst case, these performative interventions create harmful unintended consequences at the same time, leading to them being a net negative.

It's worth noting, also, that nothing other than "actual humans" are involved in any aspect of this. There are no non-human "entities" in existence that have autonomous agency and participate in economic exchange. Every question here is about interactions among humans, and the organizational models that humans use to coordinate their activities are not separate "entities" with independent intentions.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#383

Post by piva00 »

infecto wrote: post #360
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…

Why are there so many more startups in the US compared to Europe? While not a perfect measurement, there is more innovation and economic generation that happens in the US compared to Europe. Time will prove which culture of business wins.

1. A larger, wealthier, cohesive consumer market sharing language, and culture.

2. A business-first, citizens-second approach to society.

3. Wealthier, and less risk-averse investors (ties back to point 2.).

Simply put, very different societies (even more considering Europe is not at all a homogeneous block), with different priorities, both extremely wealthy by global standards.

The question is more: which model is more sustainable as a society in the long-run, that play is still ongoing and we might not have a clear answer for the next 30-50 years.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#384

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

solidninja wrote: post #313
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…

Well maybe "taking over the market" is also a monopolistic and anti-competitive practice and if we had say, working regulation that forbade the existence of these behemoth companies then the landscape of value would look a little different.

This is maybe an underappreciated point, an employee-owned company with in a monopoly (or near monopoly) market position will act just as aggressively to screw over their captured consumer base as any other private ownership model. The employees may be better off, but the rest of us will suffer the same.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#385

Post by Gormo »

olex wrote: post #296
CodeGroyper wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it a wild statement? The whole point of a company is to make money. It's like asking why workers care about their salaries.

This is an often stated postulate, but I'm not sure I agree. Sure, making money is necessary for a company to survive, but it doesn't have to be an end goal, and imho it's detrimental when it is. The goal can and should be to make a great product, create and make available something that otherwise would not exist, improve some product or process, etc - money and company itself are or should be just a means to a goal…

And the measure of how well you are making a great product, creating something that would otherwise not exist, or improve some other product or process is how much your customers are willing to pay you for what you are doing. If you are creating value for other people, you are making money -- money is a measuring unit that quantifies transferable value.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#386

Post by rakoo »

zby wrote: post #380
peepee1982 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so many cooperatives to apply for, are there? Otherwise I would definitely prefer worker owned.

But you can create one? If many people wanted to join a cooperative - then it should be easy to do?

Please, again, don't be so naive. You know that creating a company requires capital (not just financial, all of them), which only the richest have. By design.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#387

Post by rakoo »

CodeGroyper wrote: post #271
rakoo wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> underoptimize for profit -> company goes bust That's a wild statement that is going to need some strong proof

How is it a wild statement? The whole point of a company is to make money. It's like asking why workers care about their salaries.

My point isn't that a company shouldn't optimize for profit. My point is that the supposed logical conclusion stating "if it doesn't optimize for profit, then it will die" needs to be backed up by strong arguments. There are myriads of examples of companies not optimizing for profit and still surviving, and there are myriads of examples of companies optimizing for profit and still going bust.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#388

Post by maxerickson »

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…

There are coffee shops that are owner operated, which is probably closer to what you'd get than Starbucks.

Not sure it'd be a bad thing to have more of the one and less of the other.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#389

Post by pembrook »

underbiding wrote: post #379
pembrook wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we said the point of a company was to make its employees' lives better? Good news. The world spent the entire last century experimenting with that idea. It did not work out well. I’ve already explained why. But, you are of course free to start a company doing that. If it turns out to produce better outcomes for customers (the world), you will win and society will win! I’m guessing you won’t test your ideas th…

[flagged]

Cuba still exists today and is ostensibly being run for the benefit of all workers.

Why don’t you go visit a Cuban state-run grocery store and tell me how much you’d enjoy living there?

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#390

Post by rakoo »

Gormo wrote: post #385
olex wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an often stated postulate, but I'm not sure I agree. Sure, making money is necessary for a company to survive, but it doesn't have to be an end goal, and imho it's detrimental when it is. The goal can and should be to make a great product, create and make available something that otherwise would not exist, improve some product or process, etc - money and company itself are or should be just a means to a goal…

And the measure of how well you are making a great product, creating something that would otherwise not exist, or improve some other product or process is how much your customers are willing to pay you for what you are doing. If you are creating value for other people, you are making money -- money is a measuring unit that quantifies transferable value.

No, because that falls under the fallacy that every market is a perfect market, where none is.

A perfect market is one where

- alternatives can be created for little to no money so they can easily exist

- consumers have an infinity of time, money and energy to analyze products

- consumers have total agency over their decision

- picking an alternative has no cost, no drawback

- it is possible to buy nothing and still be content

There are 0 markets that fall under those conditions. The measure of how good your product is is not in its sales figures it is in... reviews.

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