Honestly the big tech tech companies are already captured by their employees. I used to think that would be a good thing but in reality it just means the economic opportunity is limited to a small set of people with highly elite and performative entry criteria. But a gradual path to employee ownership might make sense at smaller companies.
Every company should be owned by its employees
641–650 of 1001 posts
Re: Every company should be owned by its employees
#642Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We forcibly allocate capital less efficiently Efficiency with regard to what goal? The current allocation of capital in the US is quite inefficient if we're interested in the welfare of the public. Billionaires have far more capital than they know what to do with, and since they're unaccountable for their investment choices, they strongly tend to steer the economy toward vanity projects. Meanwhile, many families ca…
> The Chinese state takes a rather strong hand in allocating capital, and that has treated it fairly well over the past few decades. The Chinese government has spent massive amounts on vanity projects. A lot of government funds have also been looted by CCP honchos. Thanks but no. I’ll take American capital allocators over the Chinese any day. Most importantly, I don’t want to live in a dictatorship.
There's a big range between living in a dictatorship and having only private entities allowed to invest in things.
Re: Every company should be owned by its employees
#643Earlier quoted context omitted.
To take over the market companies need to attract customers - i.e. make their lives better. Usually there are more consumers than employees - so I think that measure works quite well with optimising for humans. Profit is a side effect of taking over the market. But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - other…
> But actually to have any employees companies need to optimize for workers lives anyway. And it seems that cooperatives are not any better in this area - otherwise everybody would work for cooperatives. There's much more at play than just "cooperatives are not any better". Cooperatives don't get as much funding from investors because investors won't be owning a larger share of them, and taking their returns, they in…
> they instead invest in a traditional company because then they can extract as much as possible from their investments
Sure. And workers extract as much as possible from their employers. And customers go for the lowest price possible, and sell their stuff for the highest price possible.
That's how people are.
In the 50s, my dad was in Italy watching the news on TV. A man had just won the lottery. The reporter asked him what he was gonna do with the money. Before he could reply, another man stepped in front of him, saying "he's a loyal member of the Communist Party, and he's going to give it to the Party!" The winner pushed him aside, announcing "Oh no, I'm not a Communist anymore!"
Re: Every company should be owned by its employees
#644Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's much more at play than just "cooperatives are not any better". Cooperatives don't get as much funding from investors because investors won't be owning a larger share of them, and taking their returns, they instead invest in a traditional company because then they can extract as much as possible from their investments. Unions should put their money where their mouth is and invest in cooperatives.
> Unions should put their money where their mouth is and invest in cooperatives. Unions aren't structured for investing, and that's not their reason to exist. I don't know where you are from so I can't comment on how unions function in your society, where I live they're definitely not in the same realm as a potential investor for cooperatives. You are also asking for unions to compete against VCs, and banks, let's be…
> Unions aren't structured for investing, and that's not their reason to exist.
They seem to have plenty of extra money to fund political candidates.
Re: Every company should be owned by its employees
#645I think it's easy to look at this with an existing, successful business in mind - but things don't always work out that way. How would a business like this get started? Usually the owner is the one who invests a lot of their own time and/or money into the business to get it off the ground in the first place. Would we be asking workers to pony up in those early years when failure is likely? With Central States, the st…
Individuals have visions not committee. We build monuments for individuals not for committee. Having said that no man is island of itself. Current incentive structure works great to motivate individuals to start companies
Seems like confirmation bias. We often than not like to lionize successful individuals, but plenty of visions are false or otherwise fail. On the other hand, we tend not to remember group efforts because it's harder to remember multiple individuals at a time. But surely they do exist. Was there a single visionary behind Bell Labs? Xerox PARC? The traitorous eight? The Apollo program? The Manhattan Project?
Re: Every company should be owned by its employees
#646If you tie your income and your savings together, you're not saving for a rainy day. A rainy day will wipe you out.
Ever heard the investment advice "diversify"? It's recommended because it's mathematically provable that you can achieve the same income with lower risk by diversifying away the co-variances between your different income streams.
In the same way that it's nice to go to the market and buy the phone you prefer, the car you prefer, the milk you prefer, etc. you should make investments that are right for you too from among choices.
Re: Every company should be owned by its employees
#647Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what are you suggesting? We forcibly allocate capital less efficiently; make markets less efficient and less responsive to innovation; with the sole aim of achieving a utopian worker-cooperative owned world? Hrmmm, where have I heard that before...
> We forcibly allocate capital less efficiently Efficiency with regard to what goal? The current allocation of capital in the US is quite inefficient if we're interested in the welfare of the public. Billionaires have far more capital than they know what to do with, and since they're unaccountable for their investment choices, they strongly tend to steer the economy toward vanity projects. Meanwhile, many families ca…
Without American billionaires, there would be no SpaceX.
YCombinator is billionaires investing in startups.
Re: Every company should be owned by its employees
#648It's amazing how many people believe that every company is publicly traded. The vast majority of companies do not have stock and never will.
If every company were owned by its employees, the net result would be higher unemployment, and many of those who found work would then do so as contractors. Hiring an employee is a major decision, especially for small- to mid-size companies. For a fledgling family business, giving an hourly employee an ownership stake in the company you and your wife started in your garage is a non-starter for most people regardless of their stated political ideology. For megacorps with deep pockets, mandatory ESOP would immediately accelerate the replacement of humans with machines.
If you look at the incentives you can fairly quickly guess a person's (and a company's) future behavior.
Re: Every company should be owned by its employees
#649Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what are you suggesting? We forcibly allocate capital less efficiently; make markets less efficient and less responsive to innovation; with the sole aim of achieving a utopian worker-cooperative owned world? Hrmmm, where have I heard that before...
Capital allocation under capitalism is also not efficient, it's pretty damn wasteful when you consider the resources used to find its "efficiency". Innovation is also becoming a meaningless word to defend the system, the innovations have their foundations fostered with public money, through funding of scientific research which is then later captured by the industries to develop products. The innovation is productiona…
It's way more efficient than any other system that has been tried. Free markets bury command economies.
Re: Every company should be owned by its employees
#650Earlier quoted context omitted.
more nuance wouldn’t hurt
The headline itself literally repeats Marxists theory: the means of production belong to workers aka proletartiat. Inside the article they oppose this working class to "evil rich CEOs" aka bourgeoisie. I won't even go deeper to unrelated to the article topics like "evil imperialism" and other nowadays popular in the west ideas used by Lenin&co hundred years ago. This crap cannibalizes the very foundation of the succe…
Recent article on Spain's Mondragon Corporation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40143814
> No one bats an eyelid at the co-operative model in countries such as Germany, “but with these ideas in Texas or Kansas, you’re basically a communist,” says Mendieta, only half jokingly.