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Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

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Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#411

Post by tristor »

gamblor956 wrote: post #64
tristor wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is generally not how things work. Your same argument could be made if they realized the restaurant was very popular/profitable (with low empoloyee wages). Rents have to be somewhat in line with market. They can't just increase rents ignoring the rest of the market. No, that is actually pretty much exactly how things work. Successful restaurants get higher rents on lease renewal which is why they're incentivize…

The Applebee's location is also leased by Dardens (or McDonalds) from the mall...the difference is that they are leasing the plot of land and not a building, so they get to build the restaurant to their own specifications. (For franchised locations, Dardens/McDonalds then leases the completed restaurant to a franchisee. Sources differ on the %, but McDonalds only owns about 40-60% of the land, and about 66-75% of the…

To be more exact, individual owners may not be able to sign longer lease terms, especially when starting out. The franchise-based restaurants generally arrange things so that the corporate entity (let's say McDonald's) owns or long-term leases the /land/, and then builds and owns the building, which they then lease-back on shorter terms to the franchisee so they can afford to start/operate the business.

So sure, McDonald's might have a 50-year lease w/ the mall property owner, but the actual franchisee/operator likely has a 1-5 year lease w/ McDonald's for the building + land that's tied to their franchise license.

I allude to this very thing in my prior comment, by pointing out that landlord's incentive to rent-seek in turn incentivizes restaurants to look for longer lease terms.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#412

Post by monero-xmr »

dontlaugh wrote: post #402
monero-xmr wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WRONG - it should be voluntarily expanded to everything. One dealbreaker for me and far-left thinking is the required authoritarianism of implementing their ideas in society. If your ideas are so good, go start something yourself, and see if it catches on. If people still want to work for Apple, there must be a reason, despite the lopsided revenue distribution.

Workers don’t have capital, by definition. How would they start anything significant, in general? The current authoritarianism of the capitalist class is what keeps workers from having capital, by not paying workers the full value their labour produces. They enforce this with laws, courts police and armies. Workers did in fact also start things themselves and got attacked for it. From monopoly practices to starve co-…

The whole article and HN comment thread is about how people are doing this! Themselves! As the proletariat! So don't force me at gunpoint to do the same

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#413

Post by dontlaugh »

monero-xmr wrote: post #412
dontlaugh wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Workers don’t have capital, by definition. How would they start anything significant, in general? The current authoritarianism of the capitalist class is what keeps workers from having capital, by not paying workers the full value their labour produces. They enforce this with laws, courts police and armies. Workers did in fact also start things themselves and got attacked for it. From monopoly practices to starve co-…

The whole article and HN comment thread is about how people are doing this! Themselves! As the proletariat! So don't force me at gunpoint to do the same

In a few isolated cases. Very good, but not enough on its own.

Stop forcing me at gunpoint to give up a large portion of the value I create. And stop supporting your country forcing others at gunpoint to be like it.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#414

Post by monero-xmr »

dontlaugh wrote: post #413
monero-xmr wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole article and HN comment thread is about how people are doing this! Themselves! As the proletariat! So don't force me at gunpoint to do the same

In a few isolated cases. Very good, but not enough on its own. Stop forcing me at gunpoint to give up a large portion of the value I create. And stop supporting your country forcing others at gunpoint to be like it.

You can always go to Venezuela, enjoy

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#415

Post by dontlaugh »

monero-xmr wrote: post #414
dontlaugh wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a few isolated cases. Very good, but not enough on its own. Stop forcing me at gunpoint to give up a large portion of the value I create. And stop supporting your country forcing others at gunpoint to be like it.

You can always go to Venezuela, enjoy

Why should I not want my own country to be sovereign?

And why should I not want NATO to stop attacking Venezuela?

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#416

Post by hnbad »

rcme wrote: post #351
sam0x17 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically anyone already wanting to work at such a place would care to do it with the proper resources. Imagine if you could easily get a government grant to start such a co-op...

Even if we're imaging a scenario with free government money, I'm not sure a co-op makes sense because of the financial incentives at the heart of capitalism. Imagine you could get government money to start a co-op or take private investment and maintain a large ownership stake in the business? Isn't the upside way higher for you if you go the private investment route? Of course, the government could subsidize co-ops…

This assumes all founders act as rational economic actors. Yes, it's hard to pivot from a traditional corporation to a co-op because of capitalism, but there are plenty of people who love the idea of a co-op but either don't have the capital or where the available capital is not evenly distributed among those interested to found the co-op with them. Amazingly, most humans do not do primarily what has the biggest economic advantages for them but what they think aligns best with who they think they are or want to be.

Speaking from personal experience, as a founder who does not come from wealth the biggest reasons not to pivot to a co-op are that you're giving up control over something you created, you have a lot of money caught up in it that could have instead gone towards your personal life and that someone you hired as an employee is not necessarily interested in becoming a co-owner (e.g. if your country has workers rights they might be losing access to certain guarantees and benefits by doing so).

Your wording is also needlessly abrasive. The government subsidies a large part of the economy like agriculture and fossil fuels (this is true in Germany and also seems to be the case in the US). Calling subsidies "free government money" suggests this is unheard of and unrealistic. If we want to go full utopia, the government could not simply subsidize co-ops, it could mandate them, e.g. by enacting a law that requires non-publicly traded businesses above a certain size to be worker-owned (with all liabilities to the founders being converted to standard loans) and prohibiting natural persons from holding more than a given percentage of any publicly traded company to shut down the potential loophole of just going public. It's the government. It's what allows corporations to exist so it could also restrict them.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#417

Post by hnbad »

dagw wrote: post #362
fouc wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone else had to get it off the ground implying what? that "workers" can't start something? Even if we imagine there's a category of people that are suited to be "starters" or "entrepreneurs" that category is still plenty numerous, easily 10-35% of the population, if not more.

implying what? that "workers" can't start something? Technically if there's no company yet there is nowhere to work and thus no workers. You need "founders" to get the company started for there even to be workers. Now those people have to decide if they want to never hire anybody new, 'give away' a a piece of 'their' company each time they hire, or give up on the worker-owned idea all together. Of course most "founde…

As someone who founded a company and had employees: it's not all that different, though the specifics depend on the kind of business. The biggest difference is that in order to found a company you need capital and workers generally don't have enough capital to found a company (and if they do and do found a company, as you said they become founders themselves).

There is of course different work to be done at every stage of development of a company and this means that founding a company may require skills running it may not or vice versa but there is no reason someone who is good at founding companies should continue to call the shots or pocket most of the revenue once the company is fully operational. That's an expectation tied to the return on investment primarily and our system being set up in such a way that founders are owners and workers coming in later are not.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#418

Post by Aunche »

dpig_ wrote: post #329
afavour wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is only true when you're defining success as a binary "does this company still exist." Worker-owned companies are significantly less likely to expand Why would that be a criteria of “success”, though? A worker owned business capable of supporting all its employees and maintaining itself long term is definitionally a success.

Absolutely agree. Why does everything need to scale up forever? Resources are finite.

The existence of a few restaurant co-ops doesn't preclude the existence of a soulless megacorp like McDonald's. If your goal is to give more people a fair wage, it's much more effective to expand as much as possible.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#419

Post by randomdata »

sh34r wrote: post #275
sharts wrote: post #80

Worker-owned anything can work. It's democracy in the workplace.

It's amazing how many people have been brainwashed into supporting dictatorship in the workplace, isn't it? So-called free men, who find the idea of no gods and no masters to be unthinkable. You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Not really. Democracy requires an incredible amount of work. Most people don't want that work. Even in governments which are technically democracies, the vast majority of the population never participate and accept a dictatorial rule. Not because of brainwashing, but because they don't want to get involved. They just want to live out their life and let someone else make the decisions.

Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?

#420

Post by rcme »

hnbad wrote: post #416
rcme wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we're imaging a scenario with free government money, I'm not sure a co-op makes sense because of the financial incentives at the heart of capitalism. Imagine you could get government money to start a co-op or take private investment and maintain a large ownership stake in the business? Isn't the upside way higher for you if you go the private investment route? Of course, the government could subsidize co-ops…

This assumes all founders act as rational economic actors. Yes, it's hard to pivot from a traditional corporation to a co-op because of capitalism, but there are plenty of people who love the idea of a co-op but either don't have the capital or where the available capital is not evenly distributed among those interested to found the co-op with them. Amazingly, most humans do not do primarily what has the biggest econ…

I don’t think my words were abrasive. I was just pointing out that there exists financial incentives that disfavor co-op formation. If my argument, which is opposed to your argument, assumes “founders act as rational market participants” doesn’t that imply your argument assumes market participants act irrationally? Of course people act irrationally all the time, but what seems more likely on the whole, especially in regard to money?
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