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

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#501

Post by specialist » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 2:02 PM UTC

lupusreal wrote: post #469

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we leave the cynical antiwork comments out? They aren't helpful. This is obviously not the case for a majority of companies and anecdotes don't help. Major companies are regularly prosecuted for conspiracy to suppress wages. It if weren't for government intervention your wages would be much lower and there wouldn't be anything you can do about it. This blind faith that billion dollar corporations would behave e…

Most companies aren't "major companies". I'm for busting up the big monopolies, but I'm not for throwing the baby out with the bath water and imposing communist reforms on all businesses, most of which are small and generally well behaved, just because some big ones with pathological behavior exist.

There's A LOT of daylight between liberal capitalism and communist socialism.

The social democracies, a middle path, as the Nordic countries have experimented with, seem to have done quite well. And there's now strong evidence that our system (neoliberalism) has stunted economic growth.

Regardless...

I support simple social reforms, like sovereign wealth funds (Alaska, Norway) and universal healthcare, greatly reducing the tension between labor and capital. Then these labor, employment, and ownership reforms wouldn't be so fraught.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#502

Post by kaibee » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 2:02 PM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #457

t0mas88 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that employees make most money from the profits paid to them as owners, instead of an increase in the stock price and then selling.

Companies frequently make no profits. Imagine missing your rent payment because your company had a bad quarter.

Are... are you familiar with layoffs? Y'know, that thing companies do where they stop paying you and you don't have a job anymore?

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#503

Post by s0l1dsnak3123 » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 2:03 PM UTC

Gormo wrote: post #426

s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bit of a misnomer: what's being said is not to "start optimizing for employees instead of customers", but rather to keep customers where they are in the pecking order, and to re-align the owners in this dynamic. Customers are paramount, owners are less important, workers are what make the business move. I think workers should have a seat on every board; workers should have a right to first refusal -…

> Customers are paramount, owners are less important, workers are what make the business move. No, no one is more important or less important than anyone else. Every role has to be played order for anyone to benefit. Someone has to bear the risk and pay the upfront costs; someone has to do the operational work in order to deliver value to the market and someone has to be willing to pay for the resulting product in or…

Sorry, I don't agree. Owners are less important. They don't need to be there for most businesses to continue to operate just fine. The same is simply not true when workers decide to down tools. Don't conflate ownership with steering and management. I don't think any owner should have some inalienable right to profit in perpetuity at the expense of everyone else including the customer. I think this is a very popular viewpoint for a reason.

> So the participants negotiate arrangements that mutually incentivize each other to pay their parts satisfactorily.

I don't think this is accurate. Stakeholders in a founding business certainly do this in order to set the pace of initial growth and retain key staff. Organisations which are in the last stages of an exit do not act in the interests of the workers or the customer - they act in the interest of the party that is set to buy them and the major stakeholders set to profit the most. And whether it's by destroying terms and conditions, laying off staff, or by slashing pensions, all of this serves the owners and major stakeholders at the expense of everyone else. Having a better distribution of ownership disincentivises these malicious activities.

Studies show that cooperatives produce more stable, sustainable businesses which are not designed for short-term speculation.

• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive

• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment

• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently

• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models

• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms

Source: https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/2020-10/worker_co-op...

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#504

Post by karaterobot » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 2:05 PM UTC

I've never worked for a company where I would have traded $1 of my salary for $2 in ownership. Most companies' stock isn't worth anything financially, and I don't give half a shit about a sense of ownership. Just pay me money in exchange for work, and let me get back to living my life.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#505

Post by Aeolun » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 2:05 PM 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…

I’m not sure what you are saying the argument against them is? It kinda reads like the answer is “people with capital don’t like them because it doesn’t increase their capital fast enough”.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#506

Post by vegetablepotpie » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 2:05 PM 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…

The story I read are that ESOPs are an alternative to unionization, it allows founders to cash out, it aligns incentives towards long term growth of a company and this has shown better performance in tough economic times. The barriers are that knowledge of them is low and there isn't institutional support in government for organizing companies in this way.

Getting stock or pay are not an either/or. Employee actual wages have been effectively flat for the last 30 years, whereas corporate profits have continued to increase. Companies can do both. The money is there. Most of us are not getting it. Corporate organizing hasn't worked for everyone over the last 40 years. The mantra that corporations should only deliver value to shareholders has lead to laser sharp focus on quarterly profits in exclusion to everything else. Financial engineering like stock buybacks and leveraged buy-outs only concentrate wealth and destroy value. While declaring the end of neoliberalism and ESG have been attempts at turning that around, they have not been effective at influencing change. Being smart about how to align incentives is what is going to lead to more value in our economy and lead to more equitable outcomes for all.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#507

Post by blackhawkC17 » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 2:05 PM UTC

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #467

jjmarr wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the purpose of the mixed economy in which most of us live. The government changes the rules of the game to try to align the profit motive with social good, because they are naturally not aligned. You haven't said why worker cooperatives optimizing the benefit of their own workers wouldn't add up to more welfare if the entire economy was based around worker cooperatives. in my opinion worker ownership of the m…

> good historical track record Please cite some sources that are not communist countries. You know, “just socialism.” You way want to also ignore the existence of Norway, much of Europe, and popular US federal programs too when you're doing this exercise.

Norway has more billionaires per capita than the USA.

It’s not socialist in any sense. It’s a diehard capitalist country with a lot of public services and welfare (funded by taxes generated under a capitalist system).

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#508

Post by keybored » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #249

cen4 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now please use the barista argument on what house wives should be paid.

>> ...what house wives should be paid. House wives are often very well compensated. They have a home they don't pay for. They often have a bank account they can use to cover expenses (effectively direct deposite). The entire reason alimony exists is an acknowledgement that she has effectively been getting that benefit from the marriage and is not prepared to abruptly lose it in a divorce even after splitting the asse…

> The entire reason alimony exists is an acknowledgement that she has effectively been getting that benefit from the marriage and is not prepared to abruptly lose it in a divorce even after splitting the assets.

Perhaps partly. But there’s also the loss of professional work experience if she has been a full-time housewife.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#509

Post by eszed » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 2:07 PM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #468

danaris wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We actually have two mechanisms: laws/regulations and customers voting with their wallet. Since we see that a majority of customers consistently go with the cheaper option, we know how they feel. So the "better" firm gets outcompeted. So regulation, you say. But those regulations are set by governments voted in by the same consumers. Their preference for lower prices is clear, and government follows their preference.…

We already do this in lots of areas. It would be "cheaper" - and doubtless more profitable; lots of people would choose them! - to produce / buy, say, bicycle helmets that are made out of cardboard and nails, but we collectively recognize that would be counter-productive and require that only the "expensive" types be offered for sale. I'm sure there are some people who are upset by this.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#510

Post by Workaccount2 » Thu, Jul 25, 2024, 2:07 PM UTC

xmprt wrote: post #18

I think the most surprising thing about trends in modern executive class pay is just how steep it is compared to the median employee. It makes me wonder why shareholders outside the company are happy with it. For example, the Boeing CEO made 22M in 2022 and 32M in 2023. I'd argue that he did a much worse job in 2023 than in 2022 but somehow got paid almost 50% more. Even Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, is "only" being p…

CEO pay, like in the case of Boeing, is borne by shareholders, not the company itself.

It's chronically repeated as if companies are robbing salary coffers to pay exorbitant CEO compensation. But that is not true. It's Boeing shareholders forking over $34M, not Boeing inc.